Sailing to Byzantium: Six Novellas Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF ROBERT SILVERBERG

  “Nightwings is Robert Silverberg at the top of his form, and when Silverberg is at the top of his form, no one is better. A haunting, evocative look at a crumbling Earth of the far future and a human race struggling to survive amidst the ruins, full of memorable characters and images that will long linger in your memory, this is one of the enduring classics of science fiction.” —George R. R. Martin

  “No matter if Silverberg is dealing with material that is practically straight fiction, or going way into the future … his is the hand of a master of his craft and imagination.” —Los Angeles Times

  “The John Updike of science fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review

  “What wonders and adventures he has to tell us.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

  “He is a master.” —Robert Jordan

  “One of the very best.” —Publishers Weekly

  “In the field of science fiction, Silverberg occupies a place in the highest echelon. His work is distinguished by elegance of style, intellectual precision, and far-reaching imagination.” —Jack Vance

  “When one contemplates Robert Silverberg it can only be with awe. In terms of excellence he has few peers, if any.” —Locus

  “Robert Silverberg is our best … Time and time again he has expanded the parameters of science fiction.” —The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

  Sailing to Byzantium

  Six Novellas

  Robert Silverberg

  Contents

  Introduction

  Sailing to Byzantium

  Thomas the Proclaimer

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Born With the Dead

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Homefaring

  We are for the Dark

  The Secret Sharer

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  A Biography of Robert Silverberg

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Introduction,” copyright © 2013 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Sailing to Byzantium,” copyright © 1984, 1985 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Thomas the Proclaimer,” copyright © 1972, 2000 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Born with the Dead,” copyright © 1974 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “Homefaring,” copyright © 1983 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “We Are for the Dark,” copyright © 1988 by Agberg, Ltd.

  “The Secret Sharer,” copyright © 1987 by Agberg, Ltd.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Sailing to Byzantium

  Thomas the Proclaimer

  Born with the Dead

  Homefaring

  We Are for the Dark

  The Secret Sharer

  INTRODUCTION

  The short novel—or “novella,” as it is often called—is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms. Spanning twenty to thirty thousand words, usually, it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, delivering, to some degree, both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.

  Some of the greatest works of modern literature fall into the novella class. Consider Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice,” James Joyce’s “The Dead,” Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”or William Faulkner’s “The Bear,” Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” or Carson McCullers’s “The Ballad of the Sad Café.”

  In science fiction, too, the novella has been particularly fruitful, from H. G. Wells’s “The Time Machine” of the 1890s onward. The roster of classic science-fiction novellas includes such masterpieces as Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps,” Wyman Guin’s “Beyond Bedlam,” Isaac Asimov’s “The Dead Past,” Roger Zelazny’s “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” James Blish’s “A Case of Conscience,” and James Tiptree Jr.’s “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?”

  I have long found the novella a valuable form. One of the prime tasks of the science-fiction writer is to create carefully detailed worlds of the imagination, and therefore the writer must have room for those details. The short story can give only a single vivid glimpse of the invented world; the full-length novel frequently becomes so enmeshed in the obligations of plot and counter-plot that the background recedes to a secondary position. But the short novel, leisurely without being discursive, is ideal for the sort of world-creation that is science fiction’s specialty. And so, from “Hawksbill Station” of 1966 and “Nightwings” of 1968, I have returned again and again to the novella length with special pleasure and rewarding results: I have won more Hugo and Nebula awards for novellas than for stories of any other lengths.

  Here, in one volume, are six of my best novella-length stories, written over a period of seventeen years. They were exciting stories to write and I’m delighted to have the opportunity to bring them together in collected form.

  —Robert Silverberg

  SAILING TO BYZANTIUM

  It was the spring of 1984. I had just completed my historical/fantasy novel Gilgamesh the King, set in ancient Sumer, and antiquity was very much on my mind when Shawna McCarthy—who had just begun her brief and brilliant career as editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine—came to the San Francisco area, where I live, on holiday. I ran into her at a party and she asked me if I’d write a story for her. “I’d like to, yes.” And, since the novella is my favorite form, I added, “a long one.”

  “How long?”

  “Long,” I told her. “A novella.”

  “Good,” she said. We did a little haggling over the price, and that was that. She went back to New York and I got going on “Sailing to Byzantium,” and by late summer it was done.

  It wasn’t originally going to be called “Sailing to Byzantium.” The used manila envelope on which I had jotted the kernel of the idea out of which “Sailing to Byzantium” grew—I always jot down my story ideas on the backs of old envelopes—bears the title, “The Hundred-Gated City.” That’s a reference to ancient Thebes, in Egypt, and this was my original note:

  Ancient Egypt has been recreated at the end of time, along with various other highlights of history—a sort of Disneyland. A twentieth-century man, through error, has been regenerated in Thebes, though he belongs in the replica of Los Angeles. The misplaced Egyptian has been sent to Troy, or maybe Knossos, and a Cretan has been displaced into a Brasilia-equivalent of the twenty-ninth century. They move about, attempting to return to their proper places.

  It’s a nice idea, but it’s not quite the story I ultimately wrote, perhaps because I decided it might turn out to be nothing more than an updating of Murray Leinster’s classic novella “Sidewise in Time,” a story that was first published before I was born, but which is still well remembered in certain quarters. I did use the “Hundred-Gated” tag in an entirely different story many years later—“Thebes of the Hundred G
ates.” (I’m thrifty with titles, as well as old envelopes.) But what emerged in the summer of 1984 is the story you are about to read, which quickly acquired the title it now bears as I came to understand the direction my original idea had begun to take.

  From the earliest pages, I knew I was on to something special, and it remains one of my favorite stories, out of all the millions and millions of words of science fiction I’ve published in the past five decades. Shawna had one or two small editorial suggestions for clarifying the ending, which I accepted gladly, and a friend, Shay Barsabe, who read the story in manuscript, pointed out one subtle logical blunder in the plot that I hastily corrected; but otherwise the story came forth virtually in its final form as I wrote it.

  It was published first as an elegant limited-edition book, now very hard to find, by the house of Underwood-Miller, and soon afterward, it appeared in Asimov’s February 1985 issue. It met with immediate acclaim, and that year it was chosen, with wonderful editorial unanimity, for all three of the best science-fiction-of-the-year anthologies, those edited by Donald A. Wollheim, Terry Carr, and Gardner Dozois. “A possible classic,” is what Wollheim called it, praise that gave me great delight, because the crusty, sardonic Wollheim had been reading science fiction almost since the stuff was invented, and he was not one to throw around such words lightly.

  “Sailing to Byzantium” won me a Nebula award in 1986, and was nominated for a Hugo, but finished in second place, losing by four votes out of eight hundred. Since then, the story has been reprinted many times and translated into a dozen languages or more, and even optioned for film production. Whenever I have one of those bleak four-in-the-morning moments when I ask myself whether I actually did ever accomplish anything worthwhile as a science-fiction writer, “Sailing to Byzantium” is one of the first pieces of evidence I offer myself to prove that I did. It’s a piece of which I’m extremely proud, and a virtually automatic choice to lead off this collection of my novellas.

  AT DAWN HE AROSE and stepped out onto the patio for his first look at Alexandria, the one city he had not yet seen. That year the five cities were Chan-gan, Asgard, New Chicago, Timbuctoo, Alexandria: the usual mix of eras, cultures, realities. He and Gioia, making the long flight from Asgard in the distant north the night before, had arrived late, well after sundown, and had gone straight to bed. Now, by the gentle apricot-hued morning light, the fierce spires and battlements of Asgard seemed merely something he had dreamed.

  The rumor was that Asgard’s moment was finished anyway. In a little while, he had heard, they were going to tear it down and replace it, elsewhere, with Mohenjo-daro. Though there were never more than five cities, they changed constantly. He could remember a time when they had had Rome of the Caesars instead of Chang-an, and Rio de Janeiro rather than Alexandria. These people saw no point in keeping anything very long.

  It was not easy for him to adjust to the sultry intensity of Alexandria after the frozen splendors of Asgard. The wind, coming off the water, was brisk and torrid both at once. Soft turquoise wavelets lapped at the jetties. Strong presences assailed his senses: the hot heavy sky, the stinging scent of the red lowland sand borne on the breeze, the sullen swampy aroma of the nearby sea. Everything trembled and glimmered in the early light. Their hotel was beautifully situated, high on the northern slope of the huge artificial mound known as the Paneium that was sacred to the goat-footed god. From here they had a total view of the city: the wide noble boulevards, the soaring obelisks and monuments, the palace of Hadrian just below the hill, the stately and awesome Library, the temple of Poseidon, the teeming marketplace, the royal lodge that Marc Antony had built after his defeat at Actium. And of course the Lighthouse, the wondrous many-windowed Lighthouse, the seventh wonder of the world, that immense pile of marble and limestone and reddish-purple Aswan granite rising in majesty at the end of its mile-long causeway. Black smoke from the beacon fire at its summit curled lazily into the sky. The city was awakening. Some temporaries in short white kilts appeared and began to trim the dense dark hedges that bordered the great public buildings. A few citizens wearing loose robes of vaguely Grecian style were strolling in the streets.

  There were ghosts and chimeras and phantasies everywhere about. Two slim elegant centaurs, a male and a female, grazed on the hillside. A burly thick-thighed swordsman appeared on the porch of the temple of Poseidon holding a Gorgon’s severed head and waved it in a wide arc, grinning broadly. In the street below the hotel gate three small pink sphinxes, no bigger than housecats, stretched and yawned and began to prowl the curbside. A larger one, lion-sized, watched warily from an alleyway: their mother, surely. Even at this distance he could hear her loud purring.

  Shading his eyes, he peered far out past the Lighthouse and across the water. He hoped to see the dim shores of Crete or Cyprus to the north, or perhaps the great dark curve of Anatolia. Carry me toward that great Byzantium, he thought. Where all is ancient, singing at the oars. But he beheld only the endless empty sea, sun-bright and blinding though the morning was just beginning. Nothing was ever where he expected it to be. The continents did not seem to be in their proper places any longer. Gioia, taking him aloft long ago in her little flitterflitter, had shown him that. The tip of South America was canted far out into the Pacific; Africa was weirdly foreshortened; a broad tongue of ocean separated Europe and Asia. Australia did not appear to exist at all. Perhaps they had dug it up and used it for other things. There was no trace of the world he once had known. This was the fiftieth century. “The fiftieth century after what?” he had asked several times, but no one seemed to know, or else they did not care to say.

  “Is Alexandria very beautiful?” Gioia called from within.

  “Come out and see.”

  Naked and sleepy-looking, she padded out onto the white-tiled patio and nestled up beside him. She fit neatly under his arm. “Oh, yes, yes!” she said softly. “So very beautiful, isn’t it? Look, there, the palaces, the Library, the Lighthouse! Where will we go first? The Lighthouse, I think. Yes? And then the marketplace—I want to see the Egyptian magicians—and the stadium, the races—will they be having races today, do you think? Oh, Charles, I want to see everything!”

  “Everything? All on the first day?”

  “All on the first day, yes,” she said. “Everything.”

  “But we have plenty of time, Gioia.”

  “Do we?”

  He smiled and drew her tight against his side.

  “Time enough,” he said gently.

  He loved her for her impatience, for her bright bubbling eagerness. Gioia was not much like the rest in that regard, though she seemed identical in all other ways. She was short, supple, slender, dark-eyed, olive-skinned, narrow-hipped, with wide shoulders and flat muscles. They were all like that, each one indistinguishable from the rest, like a horde of millions of brothers and sisters—a world of small lithe childlike Mediterraneans, built for juggling, for bull-dancing, for sweet white wine at midday and rough red wine at night. They had the same slim bodies, the same broad mouths, the same great glossy eyes. He had never seen anyone who appeared to be younger than twelve or older than twenty. Gioia was somehow a little different, although he did not quite know how; but he knew that it was for that imperceptible but significant difference that he loved her. And probably that was why she loved him also.

  He let his gaze drift from west to east, from the Gate of the Moon down broad Canopus Street and out to the harbor, and off to the tomb of Cleopatra at the tip of long slender Cape Lochias. Everything was here and all of it perfect, the obelisks, the statues and marble colonnades, the courtyards and shrines and groves, great Alexander himself in his coffin of crystal and gold: a splendid gleaming pagan city. But there were oddities—an unmistakable mosque near the public gardens, and what seemed to be a Christian church not far from the Library. And those ships in the harbor, with all those red sails and bristling masts—surely they were medieval, and late medieval at that. He had seen such anachronisms in other places be
fore. Doubtless these people found them amusing. Life was a game for them. They played at it unceasingly. Rome, Alexandria, Timbuctoo—why not? Create an Asgard of translucent bridges and shimmering ice-girt palaces, then grow weary of it and take it away? Replace it with Mohenjo-daro? Why not? It seemed to him a great pity to destroy those lofty Nordic feasting halls for the sake of building a squat brutal sun-baked city of brown brick; but these people did not look at things the way he did. Their cities were only temporary. Someone in Asgard had said that Timbuctoo would be the next to go, with Byzantium rising in its place. Well, why not? Why not? They could have anything they liked. This was the fiftieth century, after all. The only rule was that there could be no more than five cities at once. “Limits,” Gioia had informed him solemnly when they first began to travel together, “are very important.” But she did not know why, or did not care to say.

  He stared out once more toward the sea.

  He imagined a newborn city congealing suddenly out of mists, far across the water: shining towers, great domed palaces, golden mosaics. That would be no great effort for them. They could just summon it forth whole out of time, the Emperor on his throne and the Emperor’s drunken soldiery roistering in the streets, the brazen clangor of the cathedral gong rolling through the Grand Bazaar, dolphins leaping beyond the shoreside pavilions. Why not? They had Timbuctoo. They had Alexandria. Do you crave Constantinople? Then behold Constantinople! Or Avalon, or Lyonesse, or Atlantis. They could have anything they liked. It is pure Schopenhauer here: the world as will and imagination. Yes! These slender dark-eyed people journeying tirelessly from miracle to miracle. Why not Byzantium next? Yes! Why not? That is no country for old men, he thought. The young in one another’s arms, the birds in the trees—yes! Yes! Anything they liked. They even had him. Suddenly he felt frightened. Questions he had not asked for a long time burst through into his consciousness. Who am I? Why am I here? Who is this woman beside me?

  “You’re so quiet all of a sudden, Charles,” said Gioia, who could not abide silence for very long. “Will you talk to me? I want you to talk to me. Tell me what you’re looking for out there.”