to me, unchanged except for the ravages of grief, how many of them I had known, even in the First Time, when they were handsome, wholesome, sturdy animals, all self-reliance and competence. Among them I saw my old friend Ben, descendant of David and his daughter Sais, and he sensed me so strongly that he was standing close against me, tears running down his face, his hands held out as if waiting for mine. I manifested myself in the shape he had seen me last, and put my hands in his, and he flung himself into my arms and stood weeping. ‘At last, at last,’ he wept, ‘have you come for me now? May I come now?’ – and all the others pressed in about us, clutching and holding, and I nearly lost myself into the gulf of their longing. I stood there feeling myself sway, feeling my substance dragged out of me, and I stepped back from them, making them release me, and Ben, too, took away his hands, but stood close, moaning, ‘It’s been so long, so long …’
‘Tell me why you are still here?’ I insisted, and they became silent while Ben spoke. But it was no different from what he had told me before, and as he finished and the others stood crying out their stories one after another, I knew I was caught and bound by the necessities of Zone Six, and my whole being was fermenting with impatience and even fear, for all my work was ahead of me, my work was calling me – and I could not get myself free. What they told me was always the same, had always been the same – and I wondered if they remembered how I had stood here, they had stood there, so long ago, saying the same things … they had made themselves leave this gate, and they had turned themselves around and crossed the plain, and had entered Shikasta – some of them recently, some of them not for centuries or millennia – and all had succumbed to Shikasta, had suffered some failure of purpose and will, and had been expelled back to this place, clustering around the Eastern Gate. They had tried again, some of them, had succumbed again, again found themselves here – on and on, for some, while others had given up all hope of ever being strong enough to enter Shikasta and win its prize, which was, by enduring it, to be free of it forever; and hung and drifted, thin miserable ghosts, yearning and hungering for ‘Them’ who would come for them, would lift them out and away from this terrible place as a mother cat takes its kittens to safety. The idea of rescue, of succour, was evidenced here always, at this gate, as strongly as I have known it anywhere, and the clutch and cling of it was maddening me.
‘Ben,’ I said, and I was speaking to them all, through him, ‘Ben, you have to try again, there is no other way.’
But he was weeping and clasping me, begging, pleading – I was in a storm of sighs and tears.
He had not given up. I could not accuse him of that! Again and again he had hovered waiting at Shikasta’s ‘gates’, and when his turn came he had gone down full of purpose and determination that this time at last … but then, it was not until he left Shikasta, after months or years or a full life-span (whatever it was at that time) that he remembered, back in Zone Six, what he had set out to do. He had meant to save himself by the use of the terrors and hazards of Shikasta so that he would crystallize into a substance that could survive and withstand, but when he came to himself he realized he had spent his life again in self-indulgence and weakness and a falling away into forgetfulness. Again and again … so that now he regarded the place with such horror that he could not force himself to line up with the crowds of souls waiting at the Shikastan entrances for a chance of rebirth. No, he had given up. He was doomed, like all the rest here, to wait and to wait until ‘They’ came to take him away. Until I came … and he held me and would not let go.
I said what I had said to them before, to him before: ‘You must all make your way across the plain to the other side, and you must patiently wait your turn – but it will not be so long a wait now, for Shikasta is being crowded with souls, they are being born in droves, more and more. Go, and wait and try again.’
A great clamour and a complaint went up all around me.
Ben cried, ‘But it is worse now, they say. It gets worse and harder. If I could not succeed then, why should I now? I can’t …’
‘You must,’ I said, and began to force my way through them.
And now Ben let out a roaring raucous laugh, an accusation. ‘There you go,’ he shouted, 'you're all right, you can come and go as you please, but what of us?’
I had passed through. Well away from them, I looked back. The crowd there wailed and lamented and swayed about under the force of their grief. But Ben took a step forward from them. And another. I pointed across the plain, and watched him take a painful step forward. He was going to try. He was on his way over that vast, painful plain. I heard them singing as I went on:
Eye of God,
Watching me,
Pay my fee,
Set me free,
Here I am,
Waiting here,
Save me, God,
Save me, Lord … on, and on, and on.
Already depleted by grief, that emotion which of all others is the most useless, I ran across the plain, feeling the dust thick and soft underfoot. I remembered the grasses and bushes and rivers of my last visit, while I stepped across dry channels and used dry riverbeds as roads. Crickets and cicadas, the shimmer of hot light on rock – this would be desert very soon. And I thought of what I must face when I at last was able to enter Shikasta.
Sitting on an outcrop of low stone I saw a figure that was familiar, and I approached a female shape drooping in sorrow and lassitude so deep she did not move as I approached. I stood over her and saw it was Rilla, who on my last visit had been with the crowds at the Eastern Gate.
I greeted her, she lifted her face, and I saw it set in dry, obdurate woe.
‘I know what you are going to say,’ said she.
‘Ben is trying again,’ I said. But when I looked back I could not see him: only the dust hanging reddish in the air, and the dry broken grasses. She looked with me, passively.
‘He is there,’ I said. ‘Believe me.’
‘It is no use,’ she said. ‘I have tried so often.’
‘Are you going to sit here for the rest of time?’
She did not answer, but resumed her post, looking down, motionless. She seemed to herself a static weight, empty; to me she was like a whirlpool of danger. I could see myself, thinned and part transparent, could feel myself sway and lean – towards her, into her locked violences.
‘Rilla,’ I said, ‘I have work to do.’
‘Of course,’ said she. ‘When do you ever say anything different?’
‘Go and find Ben,’ I said.
I walked on. Long afterwards I looked around – I did not dare before, for fear I would turn and run back to her. Oh, I had known her, I had known her well. I knew what qualities were shut up there, prisoners of her despair. She was not looking at me. She had turned her head and was gazing out into the hazy plains where Ben was.
I left her.
I had lost my way. Memories of the last time were not helping me, could not – everything had changed. I was looking for the abode of the Giants. I did not want to see them, because of the degeneration I knew I would find. But they were
