Avon Fantasy Reader/Issue 05/The Words of Guru
C. M. Kornbluth first made his literary debut under a variety of pen names, among which were Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, and Kenneth Falconer. It was under the last cognomen that this story originally appeared in the pages of a magazine called "Stirring Science Stories," a short-lived venture of the immediate pre-war period. The story is a striding example of the young writer at his most forceful. The tight-lipped, hard-boiled style of presentation carries the tale along relentlessly to a jolting conclusion that may leave you gasping.
The Words of Guru
by C. M. Kornbluth
YESTERDAY, when I was going to meet Guru in the woods a man stopped me and said: "Child, what are you doing out at one in the morning? Docs your mother know where you are? How old are you, walking around this late?"
I looked at him, and saw that he was white-haired, so I laughed. Old men never see; in fact men hardly see at all. Sometimes young women see part, but men rarely ever see at all. "I'm twelve on my next birthday," I said. And then, because I would not let him live to tell people, I said, "and I'm out this late to see Guru."
"Guru?" he asked. "Who is Guru? Some foreigner, I suppose? Bad business mixing with foreigners, young fellow. Who is Guru?"
So I told him who Guru was, and just as he began talking about cheap magazines and fairy-tales I said one of the words that Guru taught me and he stopped talking. Because he was an old man and his joints were stiff he didn't crumple up but fell in one piece, hitting his head on the stone. Then I went on.
Even though I'm going to be only twelve on my next birthday I know many things that old people don't. And I remember things that other boys can't. I remember being born out of darkness, and I remember the noises that people made about me. Then when I was two months old I began to understand that the noises meant things like the things that were going on inside my head. I found out that I could make the noises too, and everybody was very much surprised. "Talking!" they said, again and again. "And so very young! Clara, what do you make of it?" Clara was my mother.
And Clara would say: "I'm sure I don't know. There never was any genius in my family, and I'm sure there was none in Joe's." Joe was my father.
Once Clara showed me a man I had never seen before, and told me that he was a reporter—that he wrote things in newspapers. The reporter tried to talk to me as if I were an ordinary baby, I didn't even answer him, but just kept looking at him until his eyes fell and he went away. Later Clara scolded me and read me a little piece in the reporter's newspaper that was supposed to be funny—about the reporter asking me very complicated questions and me answering with baby-noises. It was not true, of course. I didn't say a word to the reporter, and he didn't ask me even one of the questions.
I heard her read the little piece, but while I listened I was watching the slug crawling on the wall. When Clara was finished I asked her: "What is that grey thing?"
She looked where I pointed, but couldn't see it. "What grey thing, Peter?" she asked. I had her call me by my whole name, Peter, instead of anything silly like Petey. "What grey thing?"
"It's as big as your hand, Clara, but soft. I don't think it has any bones at all. It's crawling up, but I don't see any face on the topwards side. And there aren't any legs."
I think she was worried, but she tried to baby me by putting her hand on the wall and trying to find out where it was. I called out whether she was right or left of the thing. Finally she put her hand right through the slug. And then I realized that she really couldn't see it, and didn't believe it was there. I stopped talking about it then and only asked her a few days later: "Clara, what do you call a thing which one person can see and another person can't?"
"An illusion, Peter," she said? If that's what you mean." I said nothing, but let her put me to bed as usual, but when she turned out the light and went away I waited a little while and then called out softly. "Illusion! Illusion!"
At once Guru came for the first time. He bowed, the way he always has since, and said: "I have been waiting."
"I didn't know that was the way to call you," I said.
"Whenever you want me I will be ready. I will teach you, Peter—if you want to learn. Do you know what I will teach you?"
"If you will teach me about the grey thing on the wall," I said, "I will listen. And if you will teach me about real things and unreal things I will listen."
"These things," he said thoughtfully, "very few wish to learn. And there are some things that nobody ever wished to learn. And there are some things that I will not teach."
Then I said: "The things nobody has ever wished to learn I will learn. And I will even learn the things you do not wish to teach."
He smiled mockingly. "A master has come," he said, half-laughing. "A master of Guru."
That was how I learned his name. And that night he taught me a word which would do little things, like spoiling food.
From that day, to the time I saw him last night he has not changed at all, though now I am as tall as he is. His skin is still as dry and shiny as ever it was, and his face is still bony, crowned by a head of very coarse, black hair.
When I was ten years old I went to bed one night only long enough
to make Joe and Clara suppose I was fast asleep. I left in my place something
which appears when you say one of the words of Guru and went
down the drainpipe outside my window. It always was easy to climb
down and up, ever since I was eight years old.
I met Guru in Inwood Hill Park. "You're late," he said.
"Not too late," I answered. "I know it's never too late for one of these things."
"How do you know?" he asked sharply. "This is your first." "And maybe my last," I replied. "I don't like the idea of it. If I have nothing more to learn from my second than my first I shan't go to another."
"You don't know," he said. "You don't know what it's like—the voices, and the bodies slick with unguent, leaping flames, mind-filling ritual! You can have no idea at all until you've taken part."
"We'll see," I said. "Can we leave from here?"
"Yes," he said. Then he taught me the word I would need to know, and we both said it together.
The place we were in next was lit with red lights, and I think that the walls were of rock. Though of course there was no real seeing there, and so the lights only seemed to be red, and it was not real rock.
As we were going to the fire one of them stopped us. "Who's with you?" she asked, calling Guru by another name. I did not know that he was also the person bearing that name, for it was a very powerful one.
He cast a hasty, sidewise glance at me and then said: "This is Peter of whom I have often told you."
She looked at me then and smiled, stretching out her oily arms. "Ah," she said, softly, like the cats when they talk at night to me. "Ah, this is Peter. Will you come to me when I call you, Peter? And sometimes call for me—in the dark—when you are alone?"
"Don't do that!" said Guru, angrily pushing past her. He's very young—you might spoil him for his work."
She screeched at our backs: "Guru and his pupil—fine pair! Boy, he's no more real than I am—you're the only real thing here!"
"Don't listen to her," said Guru. "She's wild and raving. They're always tight-strung when this time comes around."
We came near the fires then, and sat down on rocks. They were killing animals and birds and doing things with their bodies. The blood was being collected in a basin of stone, which passed through the crowd. The one to my left handed it to me. "Drink," she said, grinning to show me her fine, white teeth. I swallowed twice from it and passed it to Guru.
When the bowl had passed all around we took off our clothes. Some, like Guru, did no; wear them, but many did. The one to my left sat closer to me, breathing heavily at my face. I moved away. "Tell her to stop, Guru," I said. "This isn't part of it, I know."
Guru spoke to her sharply in their own language, and she changed her seat, snarling.
Then we all began to chant, clapping our hands and beating our thighs. One of them rose slowly and circled about the fires in a slow pace, her eyes rolling wildly. She worked her jaws and flung her arms about so sharply that I could hear the elbows crack. Still shuffling her feet against the rock floor she bent her body backwards down to her feet. Her belly-muscles were bands standing out from her skin, nearly, and the oil rolled down her body and legs. As the palms of her hands touched the ground she collapsed in a twitching heap and began to set up a thin wailing noise against the steady chant and hand-beat that the rest of us were keeping up.
Another of them did the same as the first, and we chanted louder for her and still louder for the third. Then, while we still beat our hands and thighs, one of them took up the third, laid her across the altar and made her ready with a stone knife. The fire's light gleamed off the chipped edge of obsidian. As her blood drained down the groove cut as a gutter into the rock of the altar, we stopped our chant and the fires were snuffed out.
But still we could see what was going on, for these things were, of course, not happening at all—only seeming to happen, really, just as all the people and things there only seemed to be what they were. Only I was real. That must be why they desired me so.
As the last of the fires died Guru excitedly whispered: "The Presence!" He was very deeply moved.
From the pool of blood from the third dancer's body there issued the Presence. It was the tallest one there, and when it spoke its voice was deeper, and when it commanded its commands were obeyed.
"Let blood!" it commanded, and we gashed ourselves with flints. It smiled and showed teeth bigger and sharper and whiter than any of the others.
"Make water!" it commanded, and we all spat on each other. It flapped its wings and rolled its eyes, that were bigger and redder than any of the others.
"Pass flame!" it commanded, and we breathed smoke and fire on our limbs. It stamped its feet, let blue flames roar from its mouth, and they were bigger and wilder than any of the others.
Then it returned to the pool of blood and we lit the fires again. Guru was staring straight before him; I tugged his arm. He bowed as though we were meeting for the first time that night.
"What are you thinking of?" I asked. "We shall go now."
"Yes," he said heavily. "Now we shall go. Then we said the word that had brought us there.
The first man I killed was Brother Paul, at the school where I went to learn the things that Guru did not teach me.
It was less than a year ago, but it seems like a very long time. I have killed so many times since then.
"You're a very bright boy, Peter," said the brother.
"Thank you, brother."
"But there are things about you that I don't understand. Normally I'd ask your parents but—I feel that they don't understand either. You were an infant prodigy, weren't you?"
"Yes, brother."
"There's nothing very unusual about that—glands, I'm told. You know what glands are?"
Then I was alarmed. I had heard of them, but I was not certain whether they were the short, thick green men who wear only metal or the things with many legs with whom I talked in the woods.
"How did you find out?" I asked him.
"But Peter! You look positively frightened, lad! I don't know a thing about them myself, but Father Frederick does. He has whole books about them, though I sometimes doubt whether he believes them himself."
"They aren't good books, brother." I said. "They ought to be burned."
"That's a savage thought, my son. But to return to your own problem—"
I could not let him go any further knowing what he did about me. I said one of the words Guru taught me and he looked at first very surprised and then seemed to be in great pain. He dropped across his desk and I felt his wrist to make sure, for I had not used that word before. But he was dead.
There was a heavy step outside and I made myself invisible. Stout Father Frederick entered, and I nearly killed him too with the word, but I knew that that would be very curious. I decided to wait, and went through the door as Father Frederick bent over the dead monk. He thought he was asleep.
I went down the corridor to the book-lined office of the stout priest and, working quickly, piled all his books in the center of the room and lit them with my breath. Then I went down to the school-yard and made myself visible again when there was nobody looking. It was very easy. I killed a man I passed on the street the next day.
There was a girl named Mary who lived near us. She was fourteen then, and I desired her as those in the Cavern out of Timeand Space had desired me.
So when I saw Guru and he had bowed, I told him of it, and he looked at me in great surprise. "You are growing older, Peter," he said.
"I am, Guru. And there will come a time when your words will not be strong enough for me."
He laughed. "Come, Peter," he said. "Follow me if you wish. There is something that is going to be done—" He licked his thin, purple lips and said: "I have told you what it will be like."
"I shall come," I said. "Teach me the word." So he taught me the word and we said it together.
The place we were in next was not like any of the other places I had been to before with Guru. It was No-place. Always before there had been the seeming passage of time and matter, but here there was not even that. Here Guru and the others cast off their forms and were what they were, and No-place was the only place where they could do this.
It was not like the Cavern, for the Cavern had been out of time and space, and this place was not enough of a place even for that. It was No-place.
What happened there docs not bear telling, but I was made known to certain ones who never departed from there. All came to them as they existed. They had not color or the seeming of color, or any seeming of shape.
There I learned that eventually I would join with them; that I had been selected as the one of my planet who was to dwell without being forever in that No-place.
Guru and I left, having said the word.
"Well?" demanded Guru, staring me in the eye.
"I am willing," I said. "But teach me one word now—"
"Ah," he said grinning. "The girl?"
"Yes," I said. "The word that will mean much to her."
Still grinning, he taught me the word.
Mary, who had been fourteen, is now fifteen and what they call incurably mad.
Last night I saw Guru again and for the last time. He bowed as I approached
him. "Peter," he said warmly.
"Teach me the word," said I.
"It is not too late."
"Teach me the word."
"You can withdraw—with what you master you can master also this world. Gold without reckoning; sardonyx and gems, Peter! Rich crushed velvet—stiff, scraping, embroidered tapestries!"
"Teach me the word."
"Think, Peter, of the house you could build. It could be of white marble, and every slab centered by a winking ruby. Its gate could be of beaten gold within and without and it could be built about one slender tower of carven ivory, rising mile after mile into the turquoise sky. You could see the clouds float underneath your eyes."
"Teach me the word."
"Your tongue could crush the grapes that taste like melted silver. You could hear always the song of the bulbul and the lark that sounds like the dawnstar made musical. Spikenard that will bloom a thousand thousand years could be ever in your nostrils. Your hands could feel the down of purple Himalayan swans that is softer than a sunset cloud."
"Teach me the word."
"You could have women whose skin would be from the black of ebony to the white of snow. You could have women who would be as hard as flints or as soft as a sunset cloud."
"Teach me the word."
Guru grinned and said the word.
Now, I do not know whether I will say that word, which was the last that Guru taught me, today or tomorrow or until a year has passed.
It is a word that will explode this planet like a stick of dynamite in a rotten apple.