I passed through Zones One to Five with all my inputs held to a minimum. I have visited them at various times, and they are lively and for the most part agreeable places, since their inhabitants are those who have worked their way out of and well past the Shikastan drag and pull, and are out of the reach of the miasmas of Zone Six. But they are not my concern now; and traversing them I experienced no more than rapid flickers of forms, sensations, changes from heat to cold, exhilaration. Soon I knew I was close to the environs of Zone Six by what I felt, and without being told, I could have said, Ah, yes, Shikasta, there you are again - and with an inward sigh, a summoning of forces.
A twilight of grief, mists of hungry longing, a sucking drag of all the emotions - and I had to force each step, and it was as if my ankles were being held by hands I could not see, as if I walked weighted by beings I could not see. Out of the mists I came at last and there, where last time I was here I had seen grasslands, streams, grazing beasts, now was only a vast, dry plain. Two flat black stones marked the Eastern Gate, and assembled there were throngs of poor souls yearning out and away from Shikasta, which lay behind them on the other side of the dusty plains of Zone Six. Feeling me there, for they could not then see me, they came jostling forward like blind people, their faces turning and searching, and they groaned, a deep yearning groan, and as I still did not show myself, they began a keening chant, or hymn, which I remembered hearing in Zone Six all those thousands of years before.
Meanwhile, my eyes were at work on those faces! How many of them were familiar 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 from 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 was always the same, had always been the same - and I wondered if they remembered how I had stood here, they had stood here, 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 had 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 crystallise into a substance that could survive and withstand, but when he came to himself he realised 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.