The back of his neck twitched again. Seamus O’Neill whirled around. There was nothing behind him, the bridge was empty, the winding street behind it dark and deserted. There was no sign of life in the buildings on the other side of the bridge. Yet someone had been watching him. All day long they had been spying on him … spying on the spy. Well, that’s fair enough.
It was, he had concluded earlier in the day, a planet that had been dominated by terror for centuries—the terror imposed by those determined to do good and to constrain others to do the same. Fanatics. No one worse than a good person, herself had often said, than a good person who knows he’s good.
“Or she,” he had added.
“Ay,” the Cardinal touched her ruby ring of office, “we women are superior even in fanaticism.”
And now the terror of the fanatic was right behind him. He rubbed his neck and turned back to the stream. There was a network of such streams running through the City toward the great river. They were part of the City’s sanitation and water supply system, with bottoms and banks made of the same rocklike substance out of which the buildings were constructed.
Once more he felt like an ignorant bumpkin. He had thought that the system of waste management and recycling on the Iona was sophisticated. It was a primary-grade student’s childish drawing compared to the immense and sophisticated Zylongian scheme for recycling waste so that it could be used again and again and generate energy in the process. Moreover, the abundance of natural resources on the planet seemed to make this recycling system unnecessary. The natural process of the swift-flowing river would have cleaned the City’s waste in an hour or two. And the river itself could easily have been channeled to provide hydroelectric power. The Zylongi knew about such things because they had power plants up in the foothills of the mountains; you respected the forces of nature and did not violate them, as the First Ones and the Founder had taught, but you made up the rules as you went along about what constituted such respect. In the mountains the River was not sacred. Near the City it was. If you began with such definitions, it was all easy.
He began to spell “River” in his own mind with a capital R because it was obviously sacred by the time it reached the City. You did not pollute the River either with waste or dams and generators. Why not? Because the First Ones had taught that you must respect the great powers of nature. They contained the Most High.
Fair enough, except they were not a religious people, as far as he could tell. And recycling waste was interfering with the processes of nature too.
But his task was to observe, not to argue. Nor to look for consistency. A visitor would doubtless find Tarans inconsistent too—though, he hoped, more honest with themselves and others about their inconsistency. When caught in a seeming contradiction, the locals here would either argue passionately, like the good Sammy, or sneer like the good Margie. Tarans would simply laugh and say, “Ah well, we never did claim to be logical, now did we?”
He had spent most of the last two days in the “Resource Center” of Zylong, leafing through their various historical documents. The Resource Center apparently had a large staff (which had been instructed to bring him everything he wanted, no questions asked) but almost no clients. For all the piety in references to the Founder and the First Ones, there was little interest in their lives or the time of their “Arrival.”
Earlier that day, his library search mostly complete, Seamus had slumped over his terminal in the Resource Center, head in hands. He had seen evil during the years of his pilgrimage on the Iona, but he could not have imagined the barbarism of Zylong’s millennium of history. And he probably didn’t know the half of it. No great psychic, Seamus Finnbar Diarmuid Brendan O’Neill, he still felt the terror of Zylong in every nerve ending of his body. He had to get out of here and bring his woman with him as quickly as possible.
Still, he told himself, if this place can produce someone like Margie it’s not all bad.
He uncrumpled his notes on Sayings of the Founder and considered them again. “I hope to hell you folks up there are keeping track of this cow dung,” he whispered to the readers on the monastery.
His translator was revealing the sayings in Spacegael, but even in translation it was obvious that they represented different times, different situations, different authors. Some were flat and harsh:
Have no congress with beasts. Eliminate those who do.
Every woman is a walking womb.
Slay them who turn away.
Others were more paradoxical:
The woman is for the man. Man is for the woman.
Food for everyone. Women for everyone.
Let them who eat too much, starve. Let them that bear too many be made barren.
Destroy those who would make peace. Make peace with those who would destroy.
Still others made no sense at all:
Beware the time of the wind. Beware the word of the prophet. Beware the body of the tempter.
Let not sex interfere with your manliness.
Let those who disturb go to Zylong to learn peace.
Love him who punishes your needs.
Yet others were reasoned and occasionally moving:
In our world we must have only those rules which free the natural human propensity to goodness.
Sex is joy for all who will enjoy it.
All are equal, men and women, old and young; let there be no distinctions. Treat all life with respect.
No power should endure, lest it corrupt.
Reverence all who share this world with us.
We must be equal to be free and free to be equal. No freedom which threatens equality.
No equality which threatens freedom.
There were finally a larger number of sayings that described women, of which the mildest was: “He who kills a male child does a great evil. He who kills a female child prevents a great evil.”
It was possible, Seamus thought, that if anyone had the stomach for it, he could find the times in the history of the Zylongi settlement—now 1119 Earth-years old—for most of these sayings. The reasonable ones went back to the fervent idealism of the Founder, who believed in natural, human goodness, commonality of property, respect for nature, and complete sexual freedom.
Reading between the bland and pious lines of official history, Seamus was able to piece together much of the story in rough outline.
It soon turned out the sexual freedom was for men and not for women and it meant that men had the fun and women did the work. “Sexual freedom = sexual slavery for women after two generations at the most,” Seamus had scrawled on the paper.
There had been a revolt of women that was mercilessly put down. The Great Lords then took hordi females as wives and built great cities all over the plains. In violent and bitter wars, they destroyed one another, tearing down great settlements and destroying much of the machinery they had brought with them. Then came the time of the “First Reorganization”; sobriety and frugality were imposed by the “Reorganizers,” who pitilessly destroyed all who seemed to have hordi genes in them and began to rebuild the central city where the first settlement had occurred. They extirpated every other town from the world and forbade all but the outcasts and “degenerates” to live in the country.
Sexual freedom returned. An attempt was made to exterminate all hordi as “evil ones.” There was no explanation of why it had failed.
There then followed a time called the “Terrible License” in which morals degenerated and, according to the sources from that era—maybe four centuries ago—every vice was practiced, despite the warnings of occasional wise men about the evils of “yielding to the body.” Then came the Second Reorganization about two and a half centuries ago in which a “Guide” and a “Committee of Secretaries” and “Order of Guardians” had been established to maintain “order, discipline, probity.”
“A very wise plan, the Second Reorganization,” one of the sages had remarked.
Well, Seamus thought, it seems to have kept them from slaughtering one another for two hundred and fifty years, so it can’t be all bad.
What’s next? The Second License?
As much as he was shocked by the stories of torture, massacre, and near genocide, Seamus was impressed by the durability of the original vision and the sincere commitment of the Zylongi, however twisted their methods, to that vision: an orderly world of equality, commonality, and publicly approved virtue. If women and hordi were often attacked, the reason that was given was that they were a threat to virtue. If sex was often denounced, the reason was that it was seen as an obstacle to a sober and rational life of civic responsibility. If personal freedom was constrained, it was in the cause of justice for all.
So a thousand years of destruction, tyranny, and death. What had been accomplished? Well, for the last quarter of a millennium they had created a successful illusion, which maybe was an impressive accomplishment. Now the illusion was fading, still powerful for Sammy’s generation but not for her son’s or for Margie’s.
And the illusion was maintained by a terror that at times on Zylong, even in the crisp, quiet library, was palpable. (Here Seamus was certain, though he could not explain yet why or how.)
Ought that not be enough for the geniuses up on the Iona? Probably not. They’d want details of the terror today. Get with it, Seamus.
So here he was risking the terror by breaking the local rules and walking along the side of the sanitation system after the “advisory” curfew hour and in a section of town which he had been warned by Sammy was not “suitable” for walking. So what?
Seamus was never one to take such rules very seriously. Besides, the disturbing presence of his host and hostess had begun to overwhelm him. Their relationship was baffling—especially since they slept in separate rooms, as it would seem did all Zylongi couples. He needed a few peaceful moments in the clear night air to try to make some sense out of this weird world into which he had been set, much against his will and, as he was saying now, against his better judgment too.
He had been walking through the Old City of Zylong, whose narrow streets followed the paths of the first settlers and whose low buildings commemorated the era before skyscraper apartments. At the end of the street leading to the bridge, he saw the glow of the great Central Plaza. Drinking in the colors and sounds, he had ambled across the plaza, filled with elegant, brightly dressed bodies, walking, talking, sitting at tables, listening to strolling musicians. Their voices were soft, their manners discreet, their greetings to him elaborately civilized. His host and hostess saw no problem with his “taking a bit of air,” though they only dimly knew what he meant.
Zylong City at ten-thirty at night was a pulsating, shining, glowing place. Seamus drank in its charms—which included most notably the greatest collection of shapely female forms he had ever seen. It was a great place, it was … with the most lovely women in the cosmos, though none—his question was now answered—as lovely as the fair Marjetta, whom he had alas not set eyes on since the fruit-nibbling preprandials.
If only they weren’t spying on me …
Then the lights flickered, warning the folks to go home. Without reluctance or protest the crowds slipped away and left the center of the City deserted in less than a quarter hour. Then the lights went out, leaving Seamus alone, or so it seemed, in the total darkness, broken only by the frail light of one of several tiny and unimpressive moons.
Alone except for the spies.
He frowned at the black waters of the stream. It looked pretty deep. Of course they weren’t telling him the truth. Or rather they were telling him so much which was true that he was not really getting the truth, not even the truth of why they were so eager to give him a crash course on Zylongian life. Somewhere something was very wrong.
Again, the twitch in his neck. Damn it, still no one there. “Come out in the open and fight,” he said in Spacegael. There was no one willing to respond. Back again to the flowing waters. Deep and rapid, doubtless some kind of sewer.
I’d sure hate to get pushed in.
In the morning everything had been straightforward. Technical Institute, Computer Institute, Body Institute—he got the full official tour of each one. He saw the great Central Plaza with the sprawling complex of Central Building, computer center and military headquarters. He walked some of the curving little streets of the Old City behind the plaza. His questions about politics were answered in great detail: they were governed by an elaborate structure of Committees that made all the decisions at every level in the society—unanimously, he was assured.
He had to ask very few questions. Most of his queries were anticipated. Someone had sent the word to tell him everything—so much of everything that he would be drowned by detail. If you keep pointing out the technical name of each tree, you don’t give anyone time to focus on the forest. He had heard everything and learned virtually nothing.
At the sternly antiseptic Body Institute with its pastel green walls, O’Neill was surprised at the relationship between Samaritha and her staff. He expected the Director of Research to be stiff with her juniors, but she actually unbent and relaxed. Her gang seemed to like her; their banter was mild compared to what went on aboard the Iona, but in this uptight place it was almost disrespectful. She actually smiled once or twice, even managing something which by Zylongian standards must be considered a laugh. When she laughed, the urge to hug and kiss her was strong again. He had to watch himself.
The Zylongi, he learned from the doctor and her staff, lived in close harmony with their environment. At the time of the Reorganization, it had been determined that population expansion was to cease and that the rest of the continent would be left to its natural inhabitants. Jarndt, their main crop, was the source of their food and clothing. Rock and metal ore quarried beyond the City provided them with materials for their buildings. Research was required merely to develop new and drought-resistant forms of jarndt and new techniques for exploiting its bounty and, in Samaritha’s case, for the better understanding of the inhabitants with whom they shared the planet.
All reasonable enough, he supposed, until they got to the genetic engineering part of the story. Young people were mated in infancy after a computer examination of their genetic potential. Random mating, he was told, was undisciplined and socially dangerous. The Body Institute staff were astonished that O’Neill was pledged to no one and that if he wished to marry, he could choose anyone he wished.
After the Body Institute, Samaritha walked with him to the Music Center, where he was to listen to her husband conduct a rehearsal. He sensed disapproval and anxiety in her tense, voluptuous little body. “You truly have no pledge to a woman, Poet O’Neill?” she asked dubiously, a frown on her face. “Does that not lead to promiscuity?”
“Well, I usually manage to keep my animal instincts under control, though it’s hard when I’m walking with beautiful women.…”
Her frown deepened. “You must try to understand our culture and not to dislike it,” she said primly, ignoring the compliment.
She said a formal good-bye to him at the entrance to the Music Center and turned to walk back down the street. Seamus enjoyed the sight of her swaying buttocks as she melted in with the crowd. Lord save you, man, she’s twenty years older than you. He still watched until she was lost from sight.
He thought of her swaying body again as he watched the sewer water glide swiftly by him. The Central Plaza was as dark, according to the Taran saying, as a Cardinal’s heart. He should hurry back to the living space. They might worry. Sammy and Ernie were merely doing their duty of hospitality. They had been told by the Committee to provide him with answers to all his questions. They may have suspected something else was happening, but they were either afraid to know or too wise to ask.
Did they know about the shadows that had been on him all day? Probably not. For Sammy it was essential that he not only know the answers to questions he really had not got around to asking but also that he accept the wisdom of Zylong’s cultural decisions. Did that mean she had her own doubts?
This time he was sure he heard sounds in the street. Still no one there. Sammy was a true believer, though; her husband apparently less so.
“My mate is a virtuous woman,” Music Director Ornigon had said that day. “She is not able merely to explain and accept, she must also defend. For an Honored Guest, that can be tiresome.” Again there was a deep tinge of melancholy in this gifted man’s voice.
O’Neill observed that such a splendid woman could never become tiresome.
Ornigon continued. “The Honored Research Director has been very popular since her youth and very enthusiastic. Such traits are admirable in a scientist, I think. As an artist, I may be excused, perhaps, for being more cynical.” He shrugged his shoulders ruefully.
It was after the rehearsal, a mechanical Haydn played with instruments that looked like caricatures of the symphony instruments he knew. The horns, violins, even the wind instruments were almost half again as long as they were in the prototypical Taran orchestra. There were also a couple of super bassoon-type things that made a deep and haunting sound.
O’Neill and his host stood on Reorganization Bridge watching the fading sun color the big stream scarlet as it rushed through the City toward its confluence with the great River in the midst of the vast sandy banks beyond the walls.
They sipped companionably from a container of la-ir that Ornigon had managed to find in a back room of the concert arena.
“Is it true that mates are chosen here by a computer?” O’Neill asked, leaning casually against the bridge.
“Oh yes, it is true. I know of no evidence that it has notably improved our species, save perhaps in some physical ways. I do know that it produces certain divisions in our society. Mates are chosen according to principles which lead people to mate within their own groups. Thus the Honored Doctor and I are both from families of important people in the country. Our son’s mate, the Military Student, is the daughter of important officials. The goal of a society without classes seems to be in conflict with the goals of a genetically improved society.” He spoke gently, but the empty paper container crumpled in his hand.
“But how does someone like Dr. Samaritha explain that conflict?” O’Neill drained his paper cup and filled it again.
“She says that our society exists in its essence during the planting and harvesting of the crops—which reflect our origins, after all. The Festivals that come after are times when we return to primitive equality. Whether that satisfies those who think we have rigid social division and that they are the victims of it, I am not wise or informed enough to say. The Committees have thought so; one hears very little complaint. Of course, those of us at the top would not complain, would we?” He shook his head negatively to Seamus’s offer of more drink, noticing with surprise what he had done to his cup.
“Social divisions?” O’Neill asked, not bothering to hide his curiosity.
“A small matter.” His host regretted his quiet outburst almost at once. “It is rarely discussed.”
O’Neill emptied the container into his own cup and glanced at the glorious skyline. Heaven save us, it is beautiful. Not worth the price that’s paid for it, but still beautiful. A pastel symphony against the serene blue sky, much softer and more flexible than the concert piece he had heard.
Who was in charge here? What shadowy forces if any made the real decisions? On the Iona, you knew what the factions and the parties were and who dominated the Captain Abbess’s council this year and who had the ear of the Abbess and the Prior and the Subprior and whom to see when you wanted something done. But here it was impersonal, mysterious, secret. “Committees,” “Guides,” “computers”? Nonsense. Someone had to be in power.
Didn’t they? Or could a cultivated civilization become so rigid and so old that no one was in charge? At least a third of the recycling units did not seem to work and two of the streams were bone-dry, their artificial stone beds harshly stained in the sunlight. They would be repaired “shortly,” he was told. But the word sounded more like an approved cliché than a confident assertion that the repairmen were on the way. One of the two lifts in the Ernie/Sammy skyscraper would also be fixed “shortly”; but when he demanded how long it had not worked Seamus learned that (a) he should not ask such questions and (b) for several months.
“The Repair Committee is very busy. There is much to be done. It assigns the proper priorities. We who do not understand must wait patiently. It serves no purpose to complain.”
Which O’Neill interpreted as meaning that the efficient Samaritha wanted to complain and repressed her urges, even to herself.
In a society with the wealth and resources this one possessed, there was no reason for anything breaking down for a long period of time. Save for bureaucratic incompetencies, about which Seamus had read, but which, heaven knows, he had never experienced in the small contentious world of the monastery. If the repair crews didn’t show up in fifteen minutes, you sought out the responsible person and posed numerous questions about his ancestry, his sexual preferences, and the advisability of propelling him instantly through the space lock into permanent individual orbit. He responded in kind but then came with his surly crew and did the job; after which, a bit of the drink was always happily taken. No waiting for months.
“Does the computer decide when you can have children too?”
“Pregnancies are authorized by the Pregnancy Committee,” Ornigon responded slowly. “Only after careful tests do they approve it. The most any family is permitted is three pregnancies; the normal is two; many have only one. Sometimes none are authorized. In addition there is a test the infant must pass to qualify for life. Should he fail, he is disposed of. It is very difficult to get permission for a replacement pregnancy.” Ornigon paused. “We had a second child … a daughter … she had a slight defect.…” Brusquely he added, “It was a pity, but there is a social cost in such defects that a society like ours simply cannot afford. The child would not have been happy in any case.”
“Is this same thing done to old people?” O’Neill inquired, beginning to suspect why he had seen so few.
“All careers are ‘terminated’ at the age of ninety—about seventy-two of your years, I understand. It is possible to apply for an earlier termination; sometimes, in cases of illness, termination orders are issued before the officially designated date. You wonder how we ‘terminate’ careers, but you are reluctant to ask?”
O’Neill nodded, draining the last drop of la-ir and hoping his own horror did not show.
“Well, at Harvest Festival,” Ornigon explained, “they “go to the god.’ They become one with Zylong.”
“Human sacrifice?” O’Neill gasped, his own paper cup now crumpled into a tight little ball.
“It may have been once, Honored Guest. Now, of course, we are too civilized to do such a thing. It is all quite painless, not frightening at all—an easy way to end one’s career. At least it is said to be easy. We have no testimony from those who have been terminated.” Noticing that O’Neill was gripping the bridge railing tightly, Ornigon smiled wanly. “You are shocked at our customs. They are perhaps different from yours? Our motives are humane; no one wishes to be a burden on the rest of society. It is always said they would not be happy alive.…” His voice trailed off. The two of them silently watched the sun disappear from the sky.
Later that night, leaning on a smaller bridge over the swiftly moving sewer, O’Neill thought that there was much repressed cruelty in this graceful and cultivated civilization. But it all seemed to work. There was no reason why everyone in the cosmos had to be Celtic anarchists like the Tarans. He turned away from the bridge to begin his walk back to the living space, hesitating as he tried to figure out which direction he should go.
Yes, there was. The Tarans were crazy, but they loved kids, even handicapped ones, especially handicapped ones. And they treasured the old for their wisdom and their storytelling and their goodness.
It’s not just a difference of opinion, he told himself firmly. These folks are civilized and we’re barbarians, but we’re right and they’re wrong, damn it all.
His neck twitched dangerously. And a little too late. A foul smell filled his nostrils as a dirty rag was pressed against his face; hands were grabbing at his shoulders and ankles. Violently he thrust the hands away, but they persisted, slowly dragging him to the ground. He felt nauseous; his strength was failing him. His head spinning, consciousness slipping away, he tried to continue his struggle, but his muscles grew lazy and sluggish.
He was roughly hoisted to the rail of the bridge and pushed. He floated in space and then abruptly hit the water. It was cold and dirty. A sewer indeed, he thought absently as he went under. He made a vague effort to swim, but his lazy body dragged him under again. He surfaced once more, one hand grasping for something to hold. It hit a projection on the stone riverbank. He clung to it. The current ripped at his arm, tore him away from his grip on life and bore him under in the darkness. His head was beginning to explode; so were his lungs. He wanted to pray.
A hand grabbed his arm, a firm strong hand. He yielded to its strength. In total darkness he was pulled to shore, hauled laboriously up on the bank, forced to stand on unwilling feet, and then, smelling of sewer, dragged into a building, up a short flight of stairs, into a room. He collapsed on a hard bed.
After a time he opened his eyes. The room was a yellow blur. The sickness was passing. The effects of the drug wore off quickly. That way they don’t find any traces in your body.
“Our la-ir is too potent for you, Taran Visitor,” said a woman’s voice reprovingly. Ah, it couldn’t be herself now, could it? Was she the guardian angel the good guys had sent to protect him?
“La-ir, hell, woman,” he replied weakly. “I was poisoned.” He tried to focus his eyes. Was it really her?
“Oh,” said the voice skeptically, “how interesting.”
’Twas indeed herself. Seamus Finnbar O’Neill’s heart began to beat rapidly. He opened his eyes.
The room was small, barrackslike in its simplicity: a bed, on which he was sprawled, a chair, a table, a video screen, a small bathing pool, lemon-colored walls, diffused light. Somehow it was an intensely feminine room, in part because of the intensely feminine presence in it.
“I should at least know the name of the lovely lady to whom I owe my life,” he said, rubbing his aching head.
Strong brown eyes regarded him critically. “You know very well who I am, Visitor; you made a fool of yourself ogling me at the Research Director’s living space. I am Lieutenant Marjetta of the Zylong army, Visitor. I’m not sure your life is worth saving.”
“Well,” said Seamus weakly, “’tis yourself that’s worth ogling.”
“You can watch to your heart’s content now, not that it makes any difference to me.” She had already tossed aside her robe. Now she slipped a practically invisible zipper and discarded the top of her lentat.
Ah, that’s how they work, in two parts, is it?
He also settled the critical issue of his daydream world about the most desirable variety of breasts; in this area too, the exquisitely flowering Marjetta was perfection.
Quickly, but not rushing, she slipped into the pool. “I don’t care whether you wish to continue to smell like a waste-disposal unit. If you don’t, you may use the pool. You will not disturb me.”
“If it were the la-ir,” Seamus defended himself, “if I’m drunk, how come I’ve come out of it so soon?”
“Come here,” she ordered briskly.
He obeyed, as he would a command from the Lady Deirdre, with whom she could fairly be compared, Seamus realized with a touch of unease.
He put his feet on her soft carpet and stumbled toward the pool. She had sunk low enough into its opaque waters to serve the basic requirements of modesty but still suggest enough womanly attractiveness to threaten his self-possession.
She peered intently at his eyes. He tried to look innocent, though his heart was beating rapidly.
Dissatisfied, she pulled his head toward her face. “Let me look at you. I’m not going to rape you. Hmmm. So it would appear that you were assisted in your evening swim. That is no concern of mine.” She released his head and sank lower in the water. Despite her words, she was puzzled and perturbed. Maybe she was only a chance, not an official guardian angel. “So, as I suspected, the Fourth Secretary did not find your god legend amusing.”
“It was him, was it?”
She shrugged her strong shoulders indifferently. “Who else has power in this chaos? There are others who might have done it, but they hardly know of you yet.”
“Others?”
“If you stay in our city long enough, you will learn of them.”
“Maybe it would have been safer for you just to have let me go under,” he said, probing for her reaction.
Her brown eyes turned hard with anger. “Don’t be absurd. I am commissioned to protect life.…” She hesitated, wondering perhaps who had other designs. “Poet O’Neill, for so I am told you are called, you smell of the foul stream. Would you please remove your garments and step into this pool. I will look the other way while you undress, lest I offend your strange outworld prudery. After I have bathed, you will remain here, looking at the wall, while I dress. Then I will leave the room while you do the same. Then I will escort you to the living space of Samaritha and Ornigon.”
“Sure, in my condition, even your great beauty would not stir me up.” He tried to laugh as he stripped off his clothes and slipped into the pool, careful to stay as far away from her as he could. Still, his eyes sought out her breasts, just beneath the level of the water and not altogether invisible.
She gripped his shoulders and turned his face firmly to the wall. “You will do as you have been told.” No sense of humor at all. He was still dazed. He tried to think it out. His body ached.
“Ah now, ‘twas a very fortunate thing for me, wasn’t it, Lieutenant Marjetta, that you just happened to be coming down the street when I was going under,” he remarked amiably to the wall.
The discreet splashing of water at her end of the bathing pool stopped. “You’re quite right, Poet O’Neill. I might also have been the one who pushed you in. You will just have to take the chance that I am not, won’t you?” The voice was firm but not hard, the womanly laugh that followed made him forget he was still dizzy. He clenched his fists, grimly determined not to look away from the wall.
“You’re a terrible woman altogether,” he complained, causing another laugh.
She’s enjoying this. She’s got me in an awkward and embarrassing situation and loves every second of it.
“Well, just for the record, I want to say thanks for saving my life. It may not be all that much a life—” a plea for pity “—but it’s the only one I have.”
“It is indeed not much of a life, to judge by the reports about you, which I do not altogether believe,” she said in a terse, hard voice, “and all I did was my duty. I would do it for anyone.” Then the voice softened, becoming almost maternal. “Still, I accept your gratitude and am happy I could save your life. You are not—” she gave a small, only faintly disapproving laugh “—a light burden to pull from the sewer.”
There was a splashing noise indicating that she was climbing out of the pool. Seamus did not dare look.
“This cloak will probably cover you adequately until we return to the living space of the Research Director.” She threw a huge brown sacklike garment on the couch. “It is a mountain robe. It may be a little warm,” she actually giggled. “But you do not come in any of our regular sizes. Now I will leave the room, so as not to offend your male prudery.” Silently and unsmilingly she left.
After O’Neill, thoroughly humiliated, had dressed, they left her room and walked down the steps. A cruddy old place for someone like her, he thought. Then without reflection he muttered the age-old Gaelic benediction. “Jesus and Mary and Brigid be with this house.”
“Who are they?” Marjetta demanded.
“Ah, holy people.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, special friends of God.”
“I see,” but in the darkness she sounded like she did not. “Your god has special friends?”
“Well, kind of. We pray to Him through them. We sort of hope they’ll use their influence with Him.”
“How consoling. A kindly god then?”
“Sometimes too kindly by half. Won’t leave us alone. Head over heels with us. If you take my meaning.”
“Extraordinary. And yet somehow not unreasonable. I should like someday to know more about him. It is him, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” O’Neill answered. “Well, the Old Fella has the characteristics of both.”
“You do not deceive me?”
“Why would I do that?”
She conducted him back to the quarter of his hosts. They said not a word to each other till they came to the small parklike plaza in front of the Sammy/Ernie skyscraper.
“Thanks again.” He reached in the darkness for her hand. “I owe you one.”
“What nonsense is that?” she demanded imperiously.
“You’ve saved my life, so I am, uh, well, not in debt to you—” he searched for an explanation “—but, well, at your service if you ever need me.”
“That is very beautiful,” she said, her voice choking up. “I may well need you. And I will call upon you gladly.”
Now that was a change of tune, O’Neill thought uneasily.
“How can I help?” he asked spontaneously.
“No one can help.” She sounded close to tears.
Then they were, unaccountably, in each other’s arms, locked in as furious an embrace of love as O’Neill had ever known, her breasts pressed against his chest, his hands digging into her rump, their lips glued together, their bodies twisting in the preliminary motions of passion. His cloak fell off him, her robe slipped away with a simple touch of his hands. He felt her body stiffen in resistance. “Please …,” she begged.
O’Neill was an expert on no’s. This was a real no, reluctant, sad, but definitive. She didn’t expect him to honor it, which was, his instincts told him, all the more reason to do so. It would be much better eventually when she said yes.
Besides, the pavement was awfully hard.
Then in an instant Seamus Finnbar O’Neill discovered what love was. Her fragility became more important than his passion, her fears more important than his need. His lips and hands became instruments not of conquest but of reassurance, his embrace not an imperious demand but a tender offer of protection, his kiss a delicate and sensitive tribute to her goodness.
She melted in his arms. He released her. She leaned against him for a few seconds and then pulled back.
He reclaimed his coat and her robe in the darkness and arranged the robe around her trembling shoulders.
“You stopped,” she said, her voice shaking.
“You wanted me to.”
“Most men wouldn’t. It was my fault. My emotions are more undisciplined than I thought. Now I owe you a favor.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“You may be a space parasite, Poet O’Neill, but you’re still a good man.” She paused. “And a fine lover.”
“I’m flattered.” He tried to laugh. “At least I think I am.”
“You kiss Dr. Samaritha that way?” she asked curiously.
“I’ve never kissed anyone that way in my life.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve never quite loved anyone like I love you.”
When we finally know what love is, the Cardinal had often said, we know what God is like.
“Now I am flattered. But enough. I must take you home. Here is my hand,” she laughed, “for guidance purposes. Follow me.”
His heart sang within him. She felt the same way he did. She needed to be saved from this terrible place and he was the man to save her.
“Poet O’Neill found our City so fascinating that he became lost,” she sternly told the four people who were anxiously waiting, Horor, the slender, intense son, and Carina, the diminutive hard-faced future daughter-in-law, having joined his host and hostess.
The kids were impassive; Ernie and Sammy were obviously relieved. “You folks certainly provide charming guides.” He smiled expansively, going along with Marjetta’s lie.
“A happy event which brings the good Lieutenant to our living space,” said Sammy warmly, taking the girl’s hand.
Everyone in the room seemed delighted by the trim soldier’s presence, the young people especially. For a kid not yet twenty, she was very well known. Ah, woman, I’ve got to get to know you better. Still he was more than a little afraid of her. She was almost as tough as the Lady Deirdre. Come to think of it, Your Ladyship, who the hell tried to kill me and why?
When she left the apartment, she said, with a glance at O’Neill, “Jesus and Mary and Brigid be with this house.”
They stared at her in astonishment.
“It is one of the Poet’s blessings.” She permitted herself a small smile. “Friends of his god. I find it consoling.”
Glory be to God!
Later O’Neill was luxuriating in the fragrant waters of his bath. The jungle smell that filled the room had chased the last memories of the drug and the sewer. The Zylongi were bathing freaks, worse than the Tarans, if that were possible. Even the Technical Student—in whose quarters he was staying—had a vast bathtub, set into the floor, in which many-colored pulsating waters created a feeling of deep tranquillity. Then he thought about the simple almost harsh quarters of the Lieutenant. Not everyone was equal in this world, not by a long shot.
He splashed some water on his face and sank lower into the tub, fantasizing about the long trim legs of Lieutenant Marjetta. His door panel slid open and Dr. Samaritha entered.
“I am concerned about your health, Honored Guest.” She leaned against the door, slightly and becomingly out of breath. Oh Lord, now two women on my mind.
“Not a thing wrong with me,” he boasted. “Just a long hard day in the most pleasant possible company.”
Dr. Samaritha smiled. Then she asked, “Honored Poet Guest, may I ask you a question?”
O’Neill nodded.
She blurted out, “Do I displease you completely?”
“Of course not. What would make you think that? Sure, I doubt any space tramp has ever had a more gracious and considerate hostess.” He again splashed his face with water, trying to hide his unease.
“Poet O’Neill, you are a strange man. Sometimes you joke, sometimes you say improper things, sometimes you are kind and considerate, sometimes you look at me very suspiciously. It is … it is most disconcerting.” There was a muscle in her throat that twitched bewitchingly.
She was at her best when she was vulnerable. He pressed his hands against the bottom of the tub to restrain his impulse to jump out and embrace her. “Well, lovely women always throw me off balance, I guess. Besides, sometimes I get the impression there are many things I don’t understand.”
“Must you understand everything?” she pleaded, extending her lovely arms. “It is not too good to be too curious. The Music Director and I intend you no harm. You should allow us to please you. But … I have said too much.” She turned and fled, as though some emotion were too powerful to contain.
Uh, oh, O’Neill, you may just be in really serious trouble. You’ve been here a couple of days and already you have two beautiful, vulnerable, fragile women on your hands. This wasn’t supposed to be part of the program.
At all. At all.