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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.

Silverberg, Robert - Tom O'Bedlam.pdf

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