So I turned on all the equipment, including this time the video recorder, and pressed the CONTINUE GAME key.
SITUATION? I asked.
NO APPRECIABLE CHANGE. NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUING SLOWLY.
OK. I decided to have a look around.
The various working commissions were still meeting, struggling slowly with the convoluted, and mostly unreal, problems created by centuries of fear and distrust. Kaila and Malvau met in one ducal pavilion or the other at the end of each day to tote up the progress, sometimes minute but better than before when there had been nothing. The Duke and the Duchess had withdrawn completely from negotiations and even from public appearances. B’Mella, still embarrassed by the idiocy she had displayed the night N’Rasia was injured, was devoting her time to painting—fierce, passionate mountain landscapes, often with wild and destructive storms raging over the peaks and down the valleys. I had not witnessed their stormy season yet, didn’t in fact know they had one till I peered over her shoulder and watched her bring the storms to life. They looked as if they would more than satisfy my passion for summer storms.
Wearing a short brown paint-smeared smock, B’Mella worked with precise intensity; she waved off distractions with a brisk hand, ignored the pain which fell on her long legs, and nodded curtly at the end of the day when the exhausted Malvau reported on the day’s work for peace.
ACCESS DUKE, I instructed the program.
SEARCHING.
COME ON.
SEARCHING.
We finally found him, deep in the forest wandering about like a man in a trance. Mad Sweeney from the Irish sagas, not quite turned into a bird yet and not quite matter for a Seamus Heaney poem or a Flann O’Brien novel, but living already in another and more pleasant world. His face was transformed by a happy smile and he ambled contentedly through the blossoming trees.
Yet not quite as mad as mad Sweeney. When Ranora raced through the forest like a gazelle fleeing from a predator, grabbed his hand, and turned him back towards the meadow, he came quietly enough. They chatted enthusiastically about the birds and the trees and the forest animals; Ranora called forth with her pipe some giant, gentle white furry creatures which looked like oversized orangutans, and which danced merrily and with surprising grace to her tunes.
She certainly didn’t seem worried that the Duke might, like Sweeney, turn into a bird and fly around the countryside complaining about his fate.
In their recreation pool, Kaila recounted to the Duke the meagre progress of the day on one of the fishery disputes. Lenrau’s questions indicated that he knew more about fishing than any of the negotiators. An able Duke, for a few minutes, then he closed his eyes and floated blissfully on the water—until Ranora like an avenging water sprite dove in and dunked both of them, Kaila quickly and efficiently and the Duke at great length and with considerable squirming and wrestling.
She skillfully managed to keep the Duke between herself and her Protector at almost all times, yet she laughed affectionately at him and asked if he was going to walk by the moonlight with G’Ranne.
He blushed. “She is not my kind of woman, impudent child.”
“Hmmf…” she sniffed skeptically, apparently only mildly upset that her protector might be having a love affair. “And did the Duchess look lovely today?”
“We never see the Duchess. She is in her chamber painting.”
“Painting!” Arms on the edge of the pool, little feet kicking water in the Duke’s face, enough to tease, not enough to offend. “The Duchess paints and the Duke daydreams.”
“And neither stands in the way of peace with their ill-tempered behavior.”
“While the priests plot, and the warriors sharpen their weapons, and the people grow tired of the negotiations and wish there was some entertaining war to keep them interested as spring turns to summer. We will not have peace,” vigorous splash of water, hitting the Duke right between the eyes, “until this sleepy Duke and that painting Duchess realize that they have to impose it!”
The Duke grabbed her around her tiny waist and dunked her repeatedly. “You have only one topic on your mind, troublesome child.”
She loved it, of course, as all teenaged girls love to be dunked. “I bet,” sputtering for air, “that you wouldn’t do this,” more sputtering and fiddling with her swimsuit top, also part of the act, “to ’Ella if you had her in the pool.”
“If I did,” laughter as he finally released her, “she might cut my throat.”
All the while, Kaila watched with melancholy longing. I hoped that G’Ranne would take his mind off the ilel for a short time on this glorious spring evening.
ACCESS CARDINAL.
The Cardinal and the Admiral, this time, were happily free of the Mothers Superior. Still the subject was murder, not “the razor’s the boy” as Shanahan suggested but, stylo curiae, the knife in the back.
“We must stop these negotiations,” the Admiral insisted, pounding the wall of the cave in which they were meeting. “Put a knife in Malvau or Kaila or maybe both.”
“Pity that those drunken louts didn’t kill both him and his wife,” the Cardinal murmured in his usual richly pious voice. “That would have restrained them nicely.”
“Two quick jabs some night and we’re rid of both of them.”
“There is no useful purpose served by using that technique at the present time. Murder is only appropriate when we can be sure that it will be effective. Those two young fools are both so indiscreet that they might liquidate all of us.”
“If they should mate, which is not altogether impossible?”
“Oh,” the Cardinal smiled gently, “that will solve many of our problems. Yes,” his smile widened, “then it will be very simple.”
Not if I can help it, buster.
My friends the technological warriors had traded in their cave in the mountains for an island on one of the larger lakes and their mechanical cannon for test tubes, retorts, and steaming vats.
“What if it explodes before we are ready to use it?”
“Then there will be no more island.”
“And if we are on the island?”
“No more us. It will probably not explode, not till we have it under the table on which they will sign the final peace.”
“It will destroy the meadow and everyone in it?”
“Most certainly.”
“What else?”
“Possibly both cities.”
“Very interesting.”
“Possibly the whole land.”
“And us?”
“Where would we be but in the land?”
They laughed insanely, a chorus which was joined by the half-dozen white-gowned assistants.
ZAP LAB.
HOW ZAP?
BREAK IT UP ANY WAY YOU WANT.
The program was becoming ingenious in its destructive techniques.
One steaming test tube flashed red and white and green and broke open with a loud pop. The retort next to it cracked and spewed a dark amber fluid which ate into a rubberlike hose. Two more tubes began to flash as a thick black substance gushed out of the hose.
The experimenters raced desperately for the doors of their hut and then out into the small meadow in the middle of the island. The hut was smoking like a Fourth of July firecracker about to blow.
And then it blew—poof, no more hut, no more island, and a bunch of conspirators paddling desperately for shore. Where the island had been there was a tiny mushroom cloud.
I started to be very worried about these clowns. They might have stumbled upon something far more deadly than they realized.
My final stop for the evening was Malvau’s pavilion. He and his wife were eating their dinner and companionably discussing the day’s conferences in exquisite detail, he explaining patiently what had happened, she listening with apparent interest and asking careful and seemingly intelligent questions
He was exhausted, a business executive who hadn’t had a vacation in years. She was pale and thinner, but seemingly recovered from her brush with death.
After their meal they walked briefly in the moonlight, holding hands passively, returned to their chamber, and offered together their nighttime prayer to the Lord Our God, looking right into the big screen on my Zenith.
“We thank you for saving our lives,” he began.
“And bringing peace to our land,” she continued. A bump on the head and loss of appetite had done wonders for her figure.
“And especially renewing our love.”
“We pray for the Duke and the Duchess.”
“And all who labor in the cause of peace.”
“We are especially grateful” (together) “for the ilel whom you have sent to us in our time of need.”
“And,” a light laugh from the woman, “for her wondrous pipe.”
They waited, expecting me to say something.
What the hell?
BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER, I said, feeling that such advice never did harm to anyone.
They were sweetly affectionate to one another in their bath and then began elegiac ministrations to each other’s bodies in their bed.
I tuned out, suspicious. It was too perfect, too considerate, too affectionate. Malvau had a porcelain doll on his hands, one whose theme had been celebrated by the magic elfkind; N’Rasia, having obtained her starring role, was trying to figure out what it meant. The change from middle-aged matron to peace symbol was not quite as satisfying as she might have hoped.
For neither of them was there room to fight. You can’t be happy in an intimate relationship unless you have a protocol and a rhetoric with which to fight constructively. So, if you want to keep your new relationship alive, you contain any emotions which are too passionate.
Passionate lovers fight passionately. Elegiac lovers don’t fight. After a time, they either don’t love or a volcano explodes between them. The latter is more dangerous and more constructive.
Did either of them have the resources to fight explosively and constructively?
It certainly didn’t look that way.
I decided to leave G’Ranne and Kaila to themselves. Like ‘Nora I didn’t care at that point whether they were sleeping with each other or not.
I suspended the game and thought about that part of the plot. The ice warrior, if no longer ice maiden, was attractive and intelligent and, for a warrior woman, remarkably unferocious. She and Kaila would make a good match. Might that not be a happy solution?
Ranora, like Shane, could walk over the mountain, piping her happy little tune.
Maybe.
Only if she agreed, however.
And the rest of the plot?
Clearly we had to move the leading characters off their rear ends and towards a denouement. But that, on a late July Sunday in Grand Beach, could wait till Monday morning.
I slept soundly, undisturbed by dream visitors—or at least by any I remembered—and awoke late for the ski crowd.
“Well,” Michele complained, as she and Bob bounded into my Chevy. “Where were you?”
“Asleep.”
“If we overslept…”
“It’s my boat.”
“That totally does not make any difference.”
I should note here that Michele’s nagging is never disrespectful. She either learned very early in life or was genetically programmed to be “half fun and full earnest” up to the last centimeter before shrewishness and then stop.
“It sure does make a difference.”
“Hmmp … all right. But you have to ski first this morning, no matter how cold the water is.”
“All right.”
“Oh, I almost forgot, ‘member that you asked me whether I ever played a horn?”
“Yes?”
“Well, my mother reminded me that I once played a flute.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh; not for long though. I lost my breath blowing on it.”
I didn’t want to know any more. After I’d returned the skiers to their respective daytime occupations the Hagans were waiting at my door.
“Can we come in and chat a few minutes?”
Sure. Bargain-basement summertime therapy.
But it was not that simple.
Tom was determined that the two of them should enter family therapy. Joan was vigorously against it. Usually it was the other way around—the Irish wife dragging the husband to therapy under threat of moving out of his bedroom. Moreover, the Grand Beach consensus was that she was the long-suffering woman, putting up with a selfish and inconsiderate, not to say monumentally unintelligent husband. (This was, to be fair, an Irish community’s official reaction to any troubled marriage, because, you see, the official reaction was always shaped by the women.) Now he was making sense and she was acting like a fink.
“I’ve been to see Doctor Shanahan,” he explained, “and I was very impressed.”
“Shanahan? Does she have a partner named Lamont?”
“She does, as a matter of fact. Do you know them?”
“No, just heard about them.”
“I don’t know who this woman is at all.” When Joan screwed her pretty face in a frown it looked faded. “I know nothing about her marriage. Why should I trust her with my marriage? What gives her the right to tell me how to solve my problems when for all I know she’s not very good as a wife and mother?”
“That’s not what it’s about, Joan.” The big ex-football lug gripped his hands tightly. “She doesn’t tell us what to do, she, uh, creates an environment in which we can talk to one another and solve our problems ourselves.”
“I don’t see why we need another woman to help us talk.”
Envy and jealousy mixed together.
“We could find a male therapist. She mentioned a Doctor Orlick…”
“Orlick?”
“Do you know him?”
“I think I’ve heard of him.”
“Well, that would be a little better, but I don’t think either of us is mentally ill or anything like that.”
“Therapy,” Tom continued doggedly, “is not for the ill, it’s for healthy people with problems that they can solve if they have some assistance.”
“The psychiatrists were not able to help my Great Aunt Maude. She spent thirty years in Dunning.”
You have to understand that Joan is a topflight account executive for a major LaSalle Street investment house, a smart, successful woman. Yet her attitudes on therapy could just as well have been expressed by her mother thirty years before. I had never met the mother, but I suspected I wouldn’t like her at all.
“Their methods of treatment have improved since then. They can do wonders with medication.”
“I will not take any drugs.”
Mother probably said that too.
“What do you think?” Tom interrupted their dialogue to turn to me. I had taken a leaf from the book of one of my favorite characters, Monsignor Blackie Ryan, and made them a pot of McNulty’s raspberry tea. Like Blackie, I filled their cups before answering the question.
(Do authors imitate the behavior of their characters? I told you, didn’t I, that life imitates fiction?)
“There’s no point in entering family therapy unless both parties want it. Everyone in the family, kids too.”
“I just don’t think we need it,” Joan pleaded.
Among the problems, I began to suspect, was frigidity and her resentment that Tom had not been able, probably didn’t know how, to help her overcome it. Not that she wanted to overcome it with any more than half of her personality.
“I don’t think,” I repressed a Blackie-like sigh, “that the issue of family therapy ought to be expressed in terms of need. Rather the question is whether a family might profit from it. I suppose that a majority of families would find it very helpful at some time in the course of their existence.”
“Really?” I had made it respectable, which of course was the problem to begin with. Even respectable people sought family therapy.
“I could name, oh, at least two dozen families here in Grand Beach.”
Not a complete lie.
“Really, well, if you think it’s a good idea…”
OK, you need someone to blame if it doesn’t work. I’m used to that game too. “I said that it helps a lot of people.”
Which isn’t the same thing, not that it matters.
“Shall we call Doctor Orlick for an appointment?” Tom wanted to rush ahead the way he had always rushed through life.
“Well, if you think this Shanahan woman is so good … it might be helpful to have a woman’s perspective.”
Curiosity overcoming envy and jealousy, God bless it.
Poor Joan, four kids, eighteen years of marriage and few if any orgasms. Sexual pleasure wouldn’t solve everything, not by a long shot. But it sure would help, maybe enough to make the other problems manageable. Maybe not too. However, with any luck they might end up at the Loyola sexual dysfunction clinic. Fortunately for her she was still sufficiently attractive that a man, once educated, would take almost any personal risk to help her.
Damn her mother, anyway.
“Is she pretty, Tom?” I asked, giving him a cue.
“Not as pretty as my wife,” he took the cue.
“I’ll do anything to save our marriage,” tears in her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Me too.” Tom was not too swift, as the kids would say, not nearly as intelligent as she, and, so far, long on enthusiasm but short on sensitivity. If goodwill were enough, there’d be no problem.
Prognosis? I thought as I cleaned my teacups. Poor to terrible.
Same as the prognosis for my friends in Nathan’s God Game. Same, maybe, for all of us.
But, as I hope is clear, they were very different people from Malvau and N’Rasia. With different problems. No, finally, maybe the same problem we all have: fear of the vulnerability that intimacy demands.
Maybe I could bring a tin whistle back from Dublin town and have Michele roam around Grand Beach blowing it.
So, after a phone call to my agent Nat in which he told me Tor Books’ latest offer and I told him that it was not nearly enough, I returned to Nathan’s God Game.
ACCESS DUCHESS.
NEGATIVE.
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN? ACCESS DUCHESS.
NEGATIVE. ACCESSING ILEL.
Huh?
“Well, where have you been?” She was standing by her private lake, fully clothed in red and white this time, her pipe tucked under one arm, foot tapping the ground impatiently, small jaw jutting defiantly in my direction.
I’VE OTHER WORLDS BESIDES THIS ONE TO WORRY ABOUT.
“This one needs you now!”
Yes, ma’am.
“We have to do something about the Duke and the Duchess.”
DO WE?
You must understand that she was talking to me in remarkably Michele-like tones from the TV screen.
“We do.” She folded her arms solemnly across her lovely young breasts. “They will never mate unless we push them.”
DO WE WANT THEM TO MATE?
She raised her hands in a “what can I tell you?” gesture. “Do you have any other suggestions? Unless they unite, the negotiations will last until the day after the last warrior kills the last nonwarrior. Malvau is sweet and Kaila” (did I note a tinge of embarrassment?) “is a dear,” wicked grin, “for a Protector I mean, but politics and wisdom won’t save this land. We need love.”
“You mean lust.”
“You yourself said they can’t be separated.”
Yeah, I did, but not to you. Never mind.
SUPPOSE THEY KILL ONE ANOTHER.
“What other chance do we have?”
NONE, I SUPPOSE.
“It’s taking too long.”
A story ought not to drag. You can keep hero and heroine out of each other’s arms just so long.
ALL RIGHT. LET’S GET ON WITH THE STORY. WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE?
“Well,” the words flew out at Concorde speed, “there is this old houseboat on a lake way into the forest and I’m going to have it repaired today and made real nice and I’m going to put food and drink in it and comfortable chairs and a big bed and a nice smell and tonight they will go to it and fall in love with each other and mate.”
JUST LIKE THAT?
“Just like that.”
HOW DO WE GET THEM THERE?
“We don’t,” loud snigger and hunched-up shoulders. “You do.”
How?
“I don’t know. Lust. Love. Whatever.” Another snigger.
AND IF THEY TRY TO KILL EACH OTHER … THEY’RE WARRIORS BRED AND TRAINED, YOU KNOW.
“Don’t let them … anyway, Kaila has warrior in him and he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
I’LL TRY.
Did she read books? Romantic novels, maybe?
Well, it was a common enough story line.
So all day she presided over the rehabilitation of the “houseboat,” a cheerfully lemon-colored pavilion on a flat barge, floating by a dilapidated pier on a very small lake, maybe an hour’s walk into the forest. Lots of privacy.
I don’t know where she recruited her help, but swarms of laborers descended upon the site and turned it into a nineteen-thirties Hollywood love nest. ‘Nora herself added the final touch by spraying the chamber inside with what must have been very strong perfume.
Then she wandered around it, playing the Lenrau theme and the B’Mella theme in whimsical, mischievous, lascivious, and finally profoundly serious combinations.
Next she boarded a red-and-white-striped skiff which was parked on the tiny beach and poled it out into the lake. Reaching into the hull she produced a large, floating lamp, lit it by flicking a switch and carefully cast it into the water like a young nun replacing a sanctuary lamp. She piped another tune, faintly comic, giggled, and tossing off her gown dove into the water (wearing this time her peppermint-candy bikini).
She climbed back in the boat, almost overturning it, and still giggling, poled back to the shore.
Then, slipping the gown over pasted-down blond hair, she knelt down in solemn respect and sounded my theme in peremptory tones—a monarch summoning a servant.
“Please, Lord Our God, please help them. I love them both so much. They’re dear, sweet people. It’s probably the only chance they’ll ever have to be happy. I do so want them to be happy. What else is a silly little ilel like me for except to make people happy? I’m sorry if I told you off this morning. It was just that you wouldn’t come when I played your theme. Anyway, you know what’s best and I don’t. So it’s really all up to you. If you don’t want it to work out, I accept that. But please, please want it so they can be happy.”
She scrambled to her feet and rushed off to the little chariot she sometimes used. On the chariot, reins in hand, after patting the horse creature and cooing to him how nice he was, she blew my tune again.
“Please!”
I wonder how good the Other Person is at resisting such appealing little connivers.
As the sun—or was it two suns? I never was quite sure—sank behind the mountains I ordered the machine to scan for trouble:
SEARCH FOR UNREST.
It was a bad night with hints that the others would get worse. Little groups of warriors were strolling about singing marching songs and telling stories about the great warrior barons of the past. Clergy were scurrying about in their caves (where they always seemed to meet) plotting devious tricks and talking about whose back would be the target for the next knife. My friends the mad scientists were messing with some new concoction, this time in a tent near Lenrau’s pavilion. Kaila and Malvau were getting themselves quietly drunk, most unusual behavior for both of them, at the latter’s pavilion, while N’Rasia kept a disapproving distance.
The center was not holding. Neither was everything else.
OK, imp child. You win.
My first visit was to the woman in the case. Somehow I thought she would be the more difficult of the two. No point in even trying with Lenrau if B’Mella was not interested.
She had finished up a painting and thrown aside her brown smock, and was testing the water in her private bath.
HEY, HAVEN’T YOU FORGOTTEN SOMETHING?
She glared at me. “You don’t listen to my prayers anymore.”
I pressed her key, typed in PRAY and held down the REPEAT button. Reluctantly she knelt down and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.”
You’re so beautiful, how could I do anything else?
“I don’t know what to do,” she pleaded.
YOU DO TOO.
“I won’t do it.” She jumped up.
WHY NOT?
“I am afraid. Two good men have already died. I do not want to lose this one too.”
YOU CAN’T SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE LOCKED IN YOUR CHAMBER.
“I wish I were dead.”
Worthless chitchat. She did not.
It was, I told myself, only a story, a game, Nathan’s game. Besides, clever little Ranora saw the same ending.
SEDUCE DUKE. I told the keyboard.
“No!” she screamed. “I hate him.”
I held down the REPEAT button.
She jumped from her knees, threw off her undergarments and jumped into the bath. I’ve often thought since then that if she had been serious in her resistance, she would have turned on the cold water.
She didn’t.
I kept my finger on the REPEAT button.
She looked up at me, appealing for escape.
“You don’t mean it.”
No more chitchat.
“It might be interesting.” She smiled faintly. “I suppose I could still do that sort of thing.”
I didn’t take my finger off the key.
“It’s been so long.” She reached for a vial of what was probably some sort of bath scent and emptied it into her pool.
“He is quite handsome.”
Tell me about it.
“You insist?”
I wasn’t going to play that game either.
“How?”
Oh come on.
“Where?”
HOUSEBOAT IN WOODS.
She nodded soberly. “It’s the only sensible strategy. The worst that can happen is that we both die. We will die anyway if there is another war. A night of warmth together … all right.”
She prepared herself very carefully. As in all matters, when B’Mella made up her mind she proceeded ruthlessly.
After the ointment and scent were appropriately distributed, her long hair brushed so it glowed, and her face converted to a work of art, she searched among her clothes and removed a short brown tunic, mostly transparent, considered it carefully, held it up to the light, nodded, and pulled the gown over her head. Then she slipped a knife into the belt of her undergarment, and robed herself over the tunic with a brilliantly colorful rosy garment more like a shawl than a coat—what your local Duchess wears when she goes walking in the woods of an evening.
She knelt again and said a short prayer. “Help me to be brave and to please him.”
Strange sort of request, but sure, I’ll try. It’s mostly up to you now. I’ve unleashed the energies available to me.
She pushed aside the screens which created her room—walls were portable and easily changeable in their pavilions, rather like those in Japanese homes—and slipped into the night.
Then she crept back into her chamber, removed a vial from the table next to her couch, and doused herself with more scent.
Vain little chit.
The Duke was already asleep, much I daresay to Ranora’s fury, when I keyed into his chamber.
Direct method with the male. GO TO HOUSEBOAT ON LAKE IN THE WOOD AND MAKE LOVE TO DUCHESS.
He stirred in his sleep, restless with the sexual desire I was activating.
I pressed the REPEAT key down and held it.
He sat up, rubbed his face in his hands, and tried to decide whether he was awake or asleep.
It was a warm night in spring turning to summer. The Lord Lenrau had not made love to a woman in a long time. He probably thought that sexual desire had left him forever. Now, suddenly and without warning, he was on fire with passion.
“Why?” he asked sleepily.
WHY NOT?
“Why not, indeed? It would be good to be between her thighs—that little imp said that once, didn’t she?”
I didn’t have all day. So I changed the instruction to LOVE DUCHESS and held the REPEAT key again.
“She is most lovable. That night of the Two Moon Meal, I almost asked her if she would sleep with me and bring us all peace. I think she would have.”
Damn right.
“Life is short.” He stood up and stretched. “She is beautiful, and I need a woman. All simple enough.”
LOVE HER.
“I will try.”
His preparations were even more elaborately vain than hers, short golden tunic for him, with a crimson robe—and lots of scent. No facial makeup but lots of time in arranging the hair properly.
All right, nothing wrong with making it solemn high.
He strapped a belt around his waist, searched for his most impressive jeweled sword, and strode forth into the night, his woman to win.
Outside, he looked up at the string of moons across the sky, paused, and knelt, looking up at me. “May I be gentle and cherish her and bring her joy and pleasure.”
Not bad, fella, I’m on your side. If you hurt her, I’ll zap you, and my machine and I are pretty good at zapping these days.
They both knew what was happening and accepted it, a danger, a thrill, an opportunity. I loved them both. Flawed, arrogant, stupid, they still had courage and flair.
And curiosity.
My grace maybe kicked some of the hormones in their bodies into motion, but only to push them in a direction they both wanted to go anyway.
That’s what I told myself later when it all seemed to fall apart.
Why didn’t I make them leave their weapons home?
Well, they were warriors and warriors carry weapons. Moreover, it was not perfectly safe that deep in the woods at night, not with all the weirdos I’d observed earlier. Finally, I was too dumb to realize that in that culture, which I knew pretty well by now, a weapon can be dangerous on a night of love.