Robert Silverberg - Tom O'Bedlam

Tom O'Bedlam

Robert Silverberg

An [e - reads ] Book

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any

information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the

Author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of

the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or

locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First e-reads publication 1999

www.e-reads.com

ISBN 0-7592-0373-3

Author Biography

Robert Silverberg was born in New York City in 1935. He tends to keep his personal

life to himself, but has made allusions to being a lonely and bitter child who found a

release of a sort in science fiction and fantasy.

In 1956, he graduated from Columbia University, having majored in Comparative

Literature, and married Barbara Brown. His literary background would surface

eventually in his writing, but for a time, he seems to have kept the “straight” separate

from the science fiction he wrote, as it was pure adventure stuff with little that would

indicate interests beyond the typical science fiction of the day.

In 1959, Robert Silverberg announced that he was retiring from science fiction. In spite

of this retirement, books and stories continued to appear, mostly anthologies of

collected stories written during the earlier days and expansions of previous short works

into novels. However, after much pleading from editors and fans, he held out until 1978,

when he found himself working on what became Lord Valentine’s Castle.

Silverberg has won 5 nebulas and 4 Hugos.

This one's for Don

To consider the Earth the only populated world in infinite space is as

absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with millet only one grain

will grow.

— Metrodoros the Epicurean

c. 300 B.C.

Table of Contents

Chapter 01

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

Chapter 08

Tom O'Bedlam

One

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye,

And the spirit that stands by the naked man

In the book of moons, defend ye.

That of your five sound senses

You never be forsaken

Nor wander from yourselves with Tom

Abroad to beg your bacon.

While I do sing, "Any food, any feeding,

Feeding, drink, or clothing?

Come, dame or maid,

Be not afraid

Poor Tom will injure nothing."

— Tom O'Bedlam's Song

THIStime something had told Tom to try going westward. West was a good direction,

he figured. You head for the sunset, maybe you can walk right off the edge into the

stars.

Late on a July afternoon he came struggling up the slope of a steep dry wash and paused

in a parched field to catch his breath and look around. This was about a hundred,

hundred-fifty miles east of Sacramento, on the thirsty side of the mountains, in the third

year of the new century. They said this was the century in which all the miseries were

supposed finally to end. Maybe they really would, Tom thought. But you couldn't count

on it.

Just up ahead he saw seven or eight men in ragged clothes, gathered around an old

ground-effect van with jagged red-and-yellow lightning bolts painted on its rusting

flanks. It was hard to tell whether they were repairing the van or stealing it, or both.

Two of them were underneath, with their heads and shoulders poking into the propeller

gearbox, and one was fiddling with the air intake filter. The rest were leaning against

the van's rear gate in a cozy proprietary way. All of them were armed. No one paid any

attention to Tom at all.

"Poor Tom," he said tentatively, testing the situation. "Hungry Tom." There didn't seem

to be any danger, though out here in the wild country you could never be sure. He

rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, hoping one of them would notice him. He

was a tall, lean, sinewy man with dark, tangled hair, somewhere around thirty-three,

thirty-five years old: he gave various answers when he was asked, which wasn't often.

"Anything for Tom?" he ventured. "Tom's hungry."

Still no one as much as glanced toward him. He might as well have been invisible. He

shrugged and took his finger-piano from his pack, and began to strum the little metal

keys. Quietly he sang:

Time and the bell have buried the day,

The black cloud carries the sun away —

They went on ignoring him. That was all right with Tom. It was a lot better than being

beaten up. They could see he was harmless, and most likely they'd help him out, sooner

or later, if only to get rid of him. People generally did, even the really wild ones, the

killer bandidos: not even they would want to hurt a poor crazy simpleton. Sooner or

later, he figured, they'd let him have a bit of bread and a gulp or two of beer, and he'd

thank them and move onward, westward, toward San Francisco or Mendocino or one of

those places. But five minutes more went by, and they continued not to acknowledge his

presence. It was almost like a game they were playing with him.

Just then a hot, biting wind rose up suddenly out of the east. They paid attention to that.

"Here comes the bad news breeze," muttered a short thick-featured red-haired man, and

they all nodded and swore. "God damn, just what we need, a wind full of hard garbage,"

the red-haired man said. Scowling, glaring, he hunched himself down into his shoulders

as if that would protect him from whatever radioactivity the wind might be carrying.

"Turn on the props, Charley," said one with blue eyes and rough, pitted skin. "Let's

blow the stuff back into Nevada where it came from, hey?"

"Yeah. Sure," one of the others said, a little sour-faced Latino. "That's what we oughta

do. Sure. Christ, blow it right back there."

Tom shivered. The wind was a mean one. The east wind always was. But it felt clean to

him. He could usually tell when radiation was sailing on the wind that blew out of the

dusted places. It set up a tingling sensation inside his skull, from an area just above his

left ear to the edge of his eyebrow ridge. He didn't feel that now.

He felt something else, though, something that was getting to be very familiar. It was a

sound deep in his brain, the roaring rush of sound that told him that one of his visions

was starting to stir in him. And then cascades of green light began to sweep through his

mind.

He wasn't surprised that it was happening here, now, in this place, at this hour, among

these men. An east wind could do it to him, sometimes. Or a particular kind of light late

in the day, or the coming of cold, clear air after a rainstorm. Or when he was with

strangers who didn't seem to like him. It didn't take much. It didn't take anything at all, a

lot of the time. His mind was always on the edge of some sort of vision. They were

boiling inside him, ready to seize control when the moment came. Strange images and

textures forever churned in his head. He never fought them any longer. At first he had,

because he thought they meant he was going crazy. But by now he didn't care whether

he was crazy or not, and he knew that fighting the visions would give him a headache at

best, or if he struggled really hard he might get knocked to his knees, but in any case

there was nothing he could do to keep the visions from coming on. It was impossible to

hold them back, only to bang and jangle them around a little, and when he tried that he

was the one who got most of the banging and jangling. Besides, the visions were the

best thing that had ever happened to him. By now he loved his visions.

One was happening now, all right. Yeah. Yeah. Coming on now, for sure. The green

world again. Tom smiled. He relaxed and yielded himself to it.

Hello, green world! Coming for to carry me home?

Golden-green sunlight glimmered on smooth alien hills. He heard the surging and

crashing of a distant turquoise sea. The heavy air was thick as velvet, sweet as wine.

Shining elegant crystalline forms, still indistinct but rapidly coming into sharp focus,

were beginning to glide across the screen of Tom's soul: tall fragile figures that seemed

to be fashioned of iridescent glass of many colors. They moved with astonishing grace.

Their bodies were long and slender, with mirror-bright limbs sharp as spears. Their

faceted eyes, glittering with wisdom, were set in rows of three on each of the four sides

of their tapering diamond-shaped heads. It wasn't the first time Tom had seen them. He

knew who they were: the aristocrats, the princes and dukes and countesses and such, of

that lovely green place.

Through the vision he could still dimly make out the seven or eight scruffy men

clustered around the ground-effect van. He had to tell them what he was seeing. He

always did, whenever he was with other people when a vision struck. "It's the green

world," he said. "You see the light? Can you? Can you? It's like a flood of emeralds

pouring down from the sky." He stood with his legs braced far apart, his head thrown

back, his shoulders curving around as if they were trying to meet behind him. Words

spilled from his lips. "Look, there are seven crystallines walking toward the Summer

Palace. Three females, two males, two of the other kind. Jesus, how beautiful! Like

diamonds all up and down their skins. And their eyes, their eyes! Oh, God, have you

ever seen anything so beautiful?"

"Hey, what kind of nut do we have here?" someone asked.

Tom barely heard. These ragged strangers hardly seemed real to him now. What was

real was the lords and ladies of the green world, strolling in splendor through glades and

mists. He gestured toward them. "That's the Misilyne Triad, d'ye see? The three in the

center, the tallest. And that's Vuruun, who was ambassador to the Nine Suns under the

old dynasty. And that one — oh, look there, toward the east! It's the green aurora

starting! Jesus, it's like the sky's on fire burning green, isn't it? They see it too. They're

all pointing, staring — you see how excited they are? I've never seen them excited

before. But something like this —"

"A nut, all right. A real case. You could tell, right away, first thing when he walked up."

"Some of these crazies, they can get damn ugly when the fit's on them. I heard stories.

They bust loose, you can't even tie them down, they're so strong."

"You think he's that bad?"

"Who knows? You ever see anybody this crazy?"

"Hey, crazy man! Hey, you hear me?"

"Let him be, Stidge."

"Hey, crazy man! Hey, nutso!"

Voices. Faint, far-off, blurred. Ghost-voices, buzzing and droning about him. What they

were saying didn't matter. Tom's eyes were glowing. The green aurora whirled and

blazed in the eastern sky. Lord Vuruun was worshipping it, holding his four translucent

arms outstretched. The Triad was embracing. Music was coming from somewhere, now,

a heavenly music resonating from world to world. The voices were only a tiny

scratching sound lost somewhere within that great mantle of music.

Then someone hit him hard in the stomach, and he doubled over, gagging and gasping

and coughing. The green world whirled wildly around him and the image began to

break up. Stunned, Tom rocked back and forth, not knowing where he was.

"Stidge! Let him be!"

Another punch, even harder. It dizzied him. Tom dropped to his knees and stared with

unfocused eyes at brown wisps of withered grass. A thin stream erupted from him. It

felt like his guts ripping loose and spewing out of his mouth. It was a mistake to have let

himself fall down, he knew. They were going to start kicking him now. Something like

this had happened to him last year up in Idaho, and his ribs had been six weeks healing.

"Dumb — crazy —nut —"

"Stidge! Damn you, Stidge!"

Three kicks. Tom huddled low, fighting the pain. In some corner of his mind one last

fragment of the vision remained, a sleek and gleaming crystalline shape,

unrecognizable, vanishing. Then he heard shouts, curses, threats. He was aware that a

fight was going on around him. He kept his eyes closed and drew his breath carefully,

listening for the inner scrape of bone on bone. But nothing appeared to be broken.

"Can you stand up?" a quiet voice asked, a little while later. "Come on. Nobody's going

to hurt you now. Look at me. Hey, guy,look at me."

Hesitantly Tom opened his eyes. A man whose face he did not know, a man with a

short-cropped dense black beard and deep dark rings under his eyes — one of those who

had been working inside the gearbox before, most likely — was crouching beside him.

He looked just about as mean and rough as the others, but somehow there seemed to be

something gentler about him. Tom nodded, and the man put his hands to Tom's elbows

and delicately lifted him.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so. Just shook, some. More than some."

Tom glanced around. The red-haired man was slumped down by the side of the van,

spitting up blood and glaring. The others were standing back in a loose semicircle,

frowning uneasily.

"Who are you?" the black-bearded man asked.

"He's just a fucking nut!" the red-haired one said.

"Shut up, Stidge." To Tom the man said again, "What's your name?"

"Tom."

"Just Tom?"

Tom shrugged. "Just Tom, yeah."

"Tom from where?"

"Idaho, last. Heading for California."

"You're in California," the black-bearded man said. "You going toward San Francisco?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure. Doesn't matter a whole lot, does it?"

"Get him out of here," Stidge said. He was on his feet again. "God damn you, Charley,

get that nut out of here before I —"

The black-bearded man turned. "Christ, Stidge, you're asking for a whole lot of trouble."

He brought his right arm up across his chest and cocked it. There was a laser bracelet on

his wrist, with the yellow "ready" light glowing. Stidge looked at it in astonishment.

"Jesus, Charley!"

"Just sit back down over there, man."

"Jesus, he's only a nut!"

"Well, he'smy nut now. Anybody hurt him, he's gonna get hard light through his belly.

Okay, Stidge?"

The red-haired man was silent.

Charley said to Tom, "You hungry?"

"You bet."

"We'll give you something. You can stay with us a few days, if you like. We'll be going

toward Frisco if we can ever get this van moving." His dark-ringed eyes scanned Tom

closely. "You carrying anything?"

Tom patted his backpack uncertainly. "Carrying?"

"Weapons. Knife, gun, spike, bracelet, anything?"

"No. Nothing."

"Walking around unarmed out here? Stidge is right. Yougot to be crazy." Charley

flicked a finger toward the blue-eyed pitted-faced man. "Hey, Buffalo, lend Tom a spike

or something, you hear? He needs to be carrying something."

Buffalo held out a thin shining metal strip with a handle at one end and a teardrop-

shaped point at the other. "You know how to use a spike?" he asked. Tom simply stared

at it. "Go on," Buffalo said. "Take it."

"I don't want it," Tom said. "Someone wants to hurt me, I figure that's his problem, not

mine. Poor Tom doesn't hurt people. Poor Tom doesn't want any spike. But thanks.

Thanks anyway."

Charley studied him a long moment. "You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay," Charley told him, shaking his head. "Okay. Whatever you say."

"They don't come no crazier, do they?" the little Latino asked. "We give him a spike, he

smiles and says no thanks. Out of his head crazy. Out of his head."

"There's crazy and crazy," said Charley. "Maybe he knows what he's doing. You carry a

spike, you likely to annoy somebody who's got a bigger spike. You don't carry any,

maybe they let you pass. You see?" Charley grinned. He clapped his hand down on

Tom's bony shoulder, hard, and squeezed. "You're my man, Tom. You and me, we

going to learn a lot from each other, I bet. Anyone here touches you, you let me know,

I'll make him sorry."

Buffalo said, "You want to finish on the van now, Charley?"

"To hell with it. Be too dark to work, another couple hours. Let's get us some jackasses

for dinner and we can do the van in the morning. You know how to build a fire, Tom?"

"Sure."

"All right, build one. Don't start no conflagration, though. We don't want to call

attention to ourselves."

Charley began pointing, sending his men off in different directions. Plainly they werehis

men. Stidge was the last to go, limping off sullenly, pausing to glower at Tom as though

telling him that the only thing keeping him alive was Charley's protection, but that

Charley wouldn't always be there to protect him. Tom took no notice. The world was

full of men like Stidge; so far Tom had managed to cope with them well enough.

He found a bare place in the dry grass that looked good for making a fire and began to

arrange twigs and other bits of kindling. He had been working for about ten minutes,

and the fire was going nicely, when he became aware that Charley had returned and was

standing behind him, watching.

"Tom?"

"Yeah, Charley?"

The black-bearded man hunkered down next to him and tossed a narrow log on the fire.

"Good job," he said. "I like a neat fire, everything lined up straight like this." He moved

a little closer to Tom and peered around this way and that as if making sure no one else

was nearby. "I heard what you were saying when you were in that fit," Charley went on.

His voice was low, barely more than a whisper. "About the green world. About the

crystal people. Their shining skins. Their eyes, like diamonds. How did you say the eyes

were arranged?"

"In rows of three, on each side of their heads."

"Four sides to the head?"

"Four, yes."

Charley was silent a while, poking at the fire. Then he said, in an even quieter voice, "I

dreamed of a place just like that, about six nights ago. And then again night before last.

Green sky, crystal people, eyes like diamonds, four rows of three around their heads. I

saw it like I was seeing it in a show. And now you come along talking about the same

place, shouting it out like you're possessed, and it's just the same place I saw. How in

hell is that possible, that we could both have the same crazy dream? You tell me: How

in hell is that possible?"

2

THEsun was still half an hour on the far side of the Sierra Nevada when Elszabet awoke

and stepped out on the porch of her cabin, naked, just the way she had slept. The

coolness of the summer morning enfolded her. A soft blanket of fog lingered on out of

the night, shrouding the tops of the redwoods and drifting more thinly down to ground

level.

Beautiful, she thought. From all sides came the quiet plunking sounds of condensation,

clear cool droplets falling from the lofty branches and hitting the soft carpet of deep

brown duff. The hundreds of sword-ferns on the hillside in front of her cabin glistened

as though they had been polished. Beautiful. Beautiful. Even the bluejays, shrieking as

they started their day's work, seemed beautiful.

An altogether gorgeous morning. There was no other kind here, winter or summer. You

had to like to be an early riser, here at the Nepenthe Center, because all the useful

mindpick work necessarily was done before breakfast. But that was all right. Elszabet

couldn't imagine not liking to awaken at dawn, when the dawn was a dawn like this.

And there was no reason not to go to sleep early. What was there to do in the evenings,

out here in the boonies hundreds of miles north of San Francisco?

She touched the face of her watch and the morning's schedule came scrolling up in clear

glowing letters:

0600

Father Christie, A Cabin

Ed Ferguson, B Cabin

Alleluia, C Cabin

0630

Nick Double Rainbow, B Cabin

Tomás Menendez, C Cabin

0700

—

A quick delicious shower, using the outdoor rig behind her cabin, first. Then she slipped

into shorts and halter and made a fast breakfast of cider and cheese. No sense bothering

to go all the way up to the staff mess hall this early in the morning. By five of six

Elszabet was on her way up the steps of A Cabin, taking them two at a time. Father

Christie was there already, slouched in the mindpick chair while Teddy Lansford

bustled around him getting the pick set up.

Father Christie didn't look good. He rarely did, this hour of the morning. This morning

he seemed even farther off center than usual: pale, sweaty-jowled, yellowish around the

eyeballs, almost a little dazed-looking. He was a short plump man, forty-five or so, with

a great mass of curling grayish hair and a soft pleading face. Today he was wearing his

clerical outfit, which never managed to look as though it fit him. The collar was soiled;

the black jacket was rumpled and askew as if he had buttoned it incorrectly.

But he brightened as she entered: phony brightness, stage cheer. "Good morning,

Elszabet. What a lovely sight you are!"

"Am I?" She smiled. He was always full of little compliments. Always trying for little

peeks at her thighs and breasts, too, whenever he thought she wouldn't notice. "You

sleep well, Father?"

"I've had better nights."

"Also worse ones?"

"Worse also, I suppose." His hands were trembling. If she hadn't known better, she

would have guessed he'd been drinking. But of course that was impossible. You didn't

drink any more, not even on the sly, once you had had a conscience chip implanted in

your esophagus.

Lansford called out from the control console, "Blood sugar okay, respiration, iodine

uptake, everything checks. Delta waves present and fully secured. Everything looks

fine. I'm popping the Father's pick module into the slot now. Elszabet?"

"Hold it a second. What reading do you get on mood?"

"The usual mild depression, and — hey, no, not depression, it's agitation, actually. What

the hell, Father, you're supposed to be depressed this time of morning!"

"I'm sorry," said Father Christie meekly. The comers of his lips were twitching. "Does

that upset your programming for me?"

The technician laughed. "This machine, it can compensate for anything. It's already

done it. We're all set if you are. You ready for the pick, Father?"

"Any time," he said, not sounding as if he meant it.

"Elszabet? Okay?"

Robert Silverberg - Tom O'Bedlam

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