Why I sensed that Rogo would enjoy a walk on the Sea Cliff Terrace I don't honestly know, but I had the afternoon off and wanted to give my new friend a treat. Even then he seemed to be "our" B-mot, though we had hardly had him long enough to decide whether we wanted to keep him. He had looked so helpless sitting at our door, and he was such a thoroughly pleasant fellow, and Janice liked his name so much—I couldn't foresee that either of us would ever want to send him away.
Too bad, that.
Rogo looked more or less like a dog most of the time— although as I watched him galumphing with me along the pedestrifare he seemed more to resemble an oversized bumper-pillow with four feet and two eyes. At other times he looked like a brown earless bunny, or a down-covered basset hound with small pointed ears where the big flappers should have been. B-mots change in their appearance from time to time, which is awfully disconcerting, and until I adjusted to it I was forever thinking my eyes were trying to be funny.
Rogo charged on down through the public doors and sat eagerly waiting, his head twitching in the breeze. There were relatively few people about, and it looked to be a fine day outside the plexopolis. I hurried to join him, glad to smell the fresh salt air after two weeks indoors. "Feels good, eh, Rogo?" I luxuriated in the air from the sea; my cheeks livened at the cool, washing, shoreward breeze. Rogo perked his ears and twisted his head around with a doglike grin. We crossed the broad Terrace to get to the sea-railing, Rogo romping ahead of me and planting himself blissfully at the rail, facing seaward. As I caught up with him, he barked, without bothering to look around. His "bark" was more of a sigh, like air crying from a balloon whistle, pitched high and sliding down to a melancholy moan.
"Yeah, that's nice, Rog', you're absolutely right." The view was superb: the ocean splayed out in lines and streaks from the Terrace-topped cliff, breakers and distant whitecaps glittered in the afternoon sun, and from somewhere at the base of the cliff the cascade and crumple of water like repeating landslides kicked spray almost high enough to wet the Terrace. I leaned out over the railing, eyes half closed, gathering a hint of salty mist in my nostrils, against my face. Seen through slitted eyes, the sky itself was a blue-gray cotton sea, a shifting matrix of interloping currents of fluid and light and vertiginous depth. There was a sense of saturation in the sight, sharpened to a clear crystal by voices in the air, voices of walkers, loungers, lovers, arguers—and, over all, the lumber and hiss of the sea.
Sitting just close enough to hug my leg, Rogo was breathing with a soft, repeated sigh, a sound that was something between a purr and a contented hum. I liked his presence; he did not seem at all like a stranger. "Rogo, boy," I said, "I think we're going to keep you." And I swear he understood. He craned his ruffed neck and looked up at me with his small mouth partly open and his eyes filled with solemn and total devotion. Touched by this display, I batted him gently on the nose.
Too soon we had to start home for supper, and that meant a good four-section, three-level hike into the plexopolis, the enclosed city which the Terrace bordered like some giant's flowing mantel. As usual, my timing was precisely wrong; I have a knack for stumbling into the worst rushes on the pedestrifare. We were pushed and harried and delayed all the way to the Clarendon Level, and at times I had to swing my arms like a turnstyle just to keep mindless pedestrians from trampling Rogo. But through an hour of curses and elbows and body odor I not only kept my temper, I kept my good humor— and that was astonishing. I saw boredom, impatience, vicious ugliness on tired and hungry faces, but somehow it keyed my senses, made me brightly aware that there was life around me; and I found that the more turmoil I saw, the more alert I became. Rogo woofed and grinned whenever some moron stumbled over one of us, and while that may not seem like much, it kept me jolly, kept me happy, and kept the whole ridiculous business somehow in perspective, so that I could absorb the brutal jostling and dish it right back, all without losing an ounce of good spirits. I have no idea how he did it. I guess it was just his crazy B-mot manner.
I felt so good when we got home, I almost raped Janice before she could say hello.
"Aren't we frisky today!" she yelped in surprise, escaping from my clutches like a veteran. "What's got you so friendly?" She was starting to laugh.
That, I thought, was unnecessary. She looked terribly appealing in her clingy saffron houserobe—which was curious, since I had told her any number of times that I didn't like that robe. "Dunno," I said over my shoulder, going into the bathroom. When I came out again, I peered into the microcook to see whether anything was cooking—nothing was—and said, "We're keeping Rogo, okay?"
"Huh?"
"He's great company, and—look at him—we can't turn him in to the Commissioner. Who knows where he'd wind up? He trusts us—look at that." She turned and looked. Rogo was sitting respectfully by the door, as if waiting for us to finish the discussion and cast our votes, thumbs up or thumbs down. His fur was camel-brown at the moment and exceedingly fluffed, and he looked at us with dark, gumdrop eyes, ready to leave at once if that was what we wanted.
"We really don't have room, you know, Lackey dear."
"How much room can he take?"
"Well, I don't know—we'd have to get a permit." Her eyebrows were crunched together very thoughtfully.
"So we'll get one tomorrow. What do you say?" I took her by the shoulders and smiled, disarmingly, I hoped.
"Hmm. Okay." She grinned and kissed me suddenly. The sneak—she had been sold all along; she had just wanted to make me work for it.
"Rogo, you're in!" I shouted, hugging Janice fiercely. Rogo allowed himself a woof-sigh and settled down for a nap in his new home. Janice and I settled in for our own kind of celebration.
The night improved as it went along. While we didn't get around to supper until quite late, we enjoyed each other more that night than we had in ages. It was funny, because we had been snipping at each other for months, and suddenly that was all behind us. It was as if all those months had been a long pause, as if we had been holding our breath, and now we were free to tumble even more desperately into love than before. Rogo lay serenely near the foot of our bed while we made love, and his occasional wistful sighs filled our moments of silence nicely, making it all seem that much more right. The night fled quickly as we slept in tired, tangled peacefulness.
Though I felt springy and spry in the morning, I wanted to call in sick at work. But Janice talked me out of it, saying that she had to go to school anyway. So I went to the office and to my astonishment was afflicted by a sudden rush of interest in my work. Now, a job shuffling government personnel forms is not a likely target for enthusiasm, but I found myself actually reading documents I had handled for years, and suddenly I was marveling at the intricate nonsense that government paperwork entails. Employment histories, regional residency histories, mating histories, security ratings . . . I not only worked my full five hours; I stayed a half hour overtime.
When Janice got home from her art classes, we went down and registered Rogo at the Pet Commissioner's office:
CERTIFICATE OF REGISTRY OF RESIDENTIAL PET
Description of pet: B-mot. Name of pet: Rogo
Circumstances of acquisition: He acquired us (stray).
Veterinary clearance documentation: To be obtained.
Name of owner(s): John Lackland; Janice Lieberkind.
If joint ownership, length of prior cohabitation: 1 1/2 years.
Residence of owner(s): 924A-K Third Floor Clarendon
Level; same.
Occupation (s) of owner (s): G-11b Reg. Gov. Person. Clerk; Student.
Soc. Sec. No. owner(s): 3-647-55-6915, 3-654-82-9164.
Permit number, pet (to be assigned by Office of Commissioner): Bmt-34895AK.
. . . and so on and on; there was lots more of the same sort of thing. Three pages' worth, not counting duplicates, and I examined it all with great care and delight. Then, once he was official, we took old Bmt-34895AK to the nearest vet, who pronounced him fit and healthy. This was basically a formality, since B-mots are considered immune to terrestrial diseases anyway, but we needed the clearance note for the Pet Commissioner. By the time we were finished with all the tape-running, it was too late to do anything recreational that day, so we went home and hatched a plot for the following day.
I'd had a premonition that my new-found enthusiasm for work was likely to wear thin rather quickly, so instead of putting it to the test, I shuffled some papers bearing my own name and secured myself a week's advance vacation, beginning immediately. Janice, meanwhile, arranged for someone to cover for her in class. It was an outrageous thing for us to do, and we knew we'd pay for it later, but we were in the crazy high of having a good time for ourselves, and we just said, What the hell? So we made our excuses and ran, with Rogo.
We headed up the coast by train, several hundred kilometers north and a hundred or so inland, to Mount Adrexica—the man-made mountain which neither Janice nor I (nor, presumably, Rogo) had ever seen. It was an impressive edifice, appearing to be a hybrid between a real mountain and some of the old amusement park varieties; according to the guide literature it had been built largely out of industrial glassy slag and clinkers—urban refuse from an entire region—and sealed (they sounded as if they were joking) with Lake Erie dredge spoil. The basic lumpy mountain was then cut and shaped with fusors and carefully triggered landslides, filled, planted, landscaped, and finally frosted with snow and even a small glacier near the summit.
After checking into the Winterside Lodge, we spent the better part of the afternoon just gawking at the mountain from the various overlooks, finding it utterly entrancing: sleek false-winter snow capping the upper slopes and curling down and around the lower ones, here sweeping along a smooth-carved ski run, there dropping from an overhang down an ice-ornamented precipice. Skiers swam like dots and clusters down the wrinkles and ridges of the mountain's skin, then zipped out at the bottom onto a great wide apron of fresh powder. No ski lift was visible, just skiers disappearing into the mouth of the underground elevator like bowling balls into a hidden return. Janice was interested in the people rambling in and out of the chalet, brightly plumed and muffled folk with skis under their arms, a few of them with the longer and slower old-style skis, and everyone chattering and laughing, as if the crisp bright aura of the mountain had exorcised all spirits but glittering enthusiasm.
After a while, we hurried down from the promenade ourselves and went outside onto the snow. Rogo at first poked nervously at the edge of the icy, powdery stuff and sat himself down just clear of it, sighing and grinning wolfishly; but finally, with a lot of whistling and foolish giggling, we coaxed him out into the snow and got him romping like an excited puppy, bouncing and digging and coming up with snootfuls of snow. Being lowslung, he was never quite able to lift himself clear of the white stuff, so he looked as though he were swimming or belly-crawling, when he was actually just trying to walk. His fur rippled in the air like satin ruffles, gradually turning a pale buff, and it probably would have turned as white as a seal cub's coat if we'd stayed out long enough. When he focused his jet-black eyes on us to announce that he was getting cold, we raced with him back to the patio and the fireplace warmth of the chalet.
Around on the Summerside of Adrexica was the Gladepool, and that was where we headed next. It sat beneath straight, tall, snow-topped cliffs which split outward at the mountain's foot to shoulder a vale lush with vegetation, with a crystalline blue pool basin at its lower end. The air was heated, moist, and ripe with a flowery sweetness and the scent of ferns. We started our exploration with a stroll through a wide grove between the Summerside Chalet and the pool.
Here the only bit of unpleasantness marred a near-perfect day.
A tired-looking man stumbled toward us from somewhere off in the grove; he was leading a gray B-mot, not quite so large as Rogo, and he was drunk. Before he was even close, we smelled the Erythraean gin. "Hey, there!" he shouted—to whom, we didn't know. Janice urged me ahead, hoping to avoid him, but the man called out again, and this time it was clear he was addressing us. He walked up, swaying unpleasantly close to my face. "That beast of yours," he said, staring at me with a glazed, drunken intensity, "that thing is going to be a troublemaker; look at 'im."
I looked at Rogo, standing docilely. I looked at the man. "What?" I said.
"Yah, you say that. Here, now, keep him away from my Ricky." Rogo had noticed the other B-mot, and the two animals were touching noses but showing no great excitement. The man toed Rogo, who backed away hastily, looking insulted. If he had hurt Rogo, I would have slugged him. "Yah, you stay away from my Ricky," he grumbled. He looked around dazedly, suddenly ignoring us. He turned, coughed hoarsely, and croaked, "Place sure isn't all it's billed to be, is it?" Then laughed—an ugly, drunken laugh.
My good mood was gone, and I was becoming angry. What right, for god sakes, did this pitiful fool have to spoil our day? "Listen," I said, straining to keep my voice level, "there are a thousand other places you can go if you don't like it here." Janice was harrumphing, plucking at my arm, but now that this ass had bothered us, I was going to make it clear to him that I didn't like it at all.
"Sure, sure," he said blandly. "You and the woman getting a real charge out of all this, huh?" He chuckled obscenely, leered at Janice, looked back at me, and turned away.
"Listen, you—" I started, raising my fists, but Janice had a firm grip on me now. The epitome of calm. She caught my eye and shook her head. She knew damned well I had no tact when insulted, nor did I have intimidating bulk or the blessing of an agile tongue. In any case, the man was walking away with his Ricky; we had been forgotten. "Let's go, Rog'," I growled, and let Janice pick a new heading through the woods.
I was burning, my pride and my dignity offended, but I rather relished the feeling—it was the first genuine anger I had felt in months, and it was a purging anger; not boredom or frustration, but good honest malice. I gripped Janice's hand tightly as we walked, smelling the wood-green smells of the grove, feeling the spring of fallen pine needles under my feet, and living my anger to its fullest in the rushing world sealed in my mind—until the anger had burned itself pure and my good humor returned. The transformation was as cleanly perceptible as the rush of a clear liquor's vapors to my skull. We left the woods and walked at the edge of the pool basin and sat in the grass under a warming sun. Janice smiled at me, glad to see me happy again; the incident seemed not to have affected her at all. I touched her nose with a finger, stroked the front strands of her hair. When Rogo poked his head between ours to get his share of the affection, I roughed him up vigorously, and he sighed in perfect contentedness.
"We'll remember this," Janice said later, walking with her hand in mine around the pool. The water was utterly flat, a clear blue in the midst of the verdant leaves. The pool was fed from beneath, the basin an asymmetric funnel, darkening in the middle to its indiscernible source. "Mm-hm," I answered. Janice talked that way when she was feeling very close, very gentle, very much in love—and that was how I always answered.
Rogo lurched and nipped at the pool's bank, and we laughed quietly as we watched the sun breaking up behind the trees as it sank, and watched each other and were as happy as we would ever be in our lives.
***
No one seems to know just how the B-mots acquired their peculiar name. No doubt I have failed to ask the proper individuals. All I know is that they were brought here a few years back by the visitors from Betelgeuse—those gangling fellows who toured Earth with all the fanfare and spotlights. They brought along some of their pets, which after the official welcomings they displayed enclosed in strange little spheres for all the scientists and media people to see and record. They had a regular sampler of Betelian native stock, including plants and fishes and land animals. Under scientific supervision, some of these were released into Earth-type environments; a few died, but most were adaptable to Earth and appeared quite harmless. This was all very enlightening scientifically, no doubt, but the scientists could hardly have predicted the spectacular popularity of one animal, the B-mot, for which even one-time viewers developed a quick and unshakable adoration. The B-mots were the new darlings, and they seemed to love people as much as people loved them. Eventually the powers that be decided that it was all right to turn them loose, and the Betelians happily provided several hundred for distribution.
The B-mots bred like crazy, and soon it was possible for nearly everyone to have one. According to the Betelians, they would reproduce as long as they were happy, but not to excess—they would never breed in burdensome numbers. It seemed to be true; at least, I had never heard of anyone's wanting to wish them away. The Betelians themselves, I believe, went home. Don't quote me on that—some of them may still be around somewhere.
To Janice and me, Rogo was an all-new experience, and we learned as we went along. For a time, it seemed too easy—he ate little and kept himself clean—and we were lulled into believing that the cost of owning him would be no greater. He occupied a great deal of our attention, though, mainly just by being lovable, and we thought this a blessing. He was always jolly, or, if one of us was angry or depressed, sympathetic—the perfect companion.
Janice usually got home before I did and would often take Rogo out for some exercise and play—which was fine with me, until I began coming home to a place that was empty until suppertime. Eventually I chided her gently about this, and she blushed and promised never to let it happen again. "But," she said wryly, "who greets Rogo so effusively that half the time he forgets to say Hi to his beloved roommate, hmm?" Well, she had a point there. I grinned sheepishly and promised, et cetera, and we were both happy again, at least for a while.
My work started to get me down, though, mainly because of my boss. Mrs. Curtzen is a vicious old lady at heart, I believe, and when she chose to interrupt my peaceful reverie with her grating voice next to my ear, I would virtually shrivel on the spot. "You didn't have enough time on your vacation, Mr. Lackland?" would come the singsong-query nagging. A scowl, a shrug, and then back to looking as though I were working. Ah, but the reverie! Ever since the beginning of our trip, I had felt a glow in my fingertips, a sharpening of my senses. I was filled with marvelous conceptions of space, colors, smells, temperature rhythms, sound flows. Strange perceptions constantly at my notice. From my seat at work I had a perfect view of the lines, the depth of the office, the play of light on the curves of the desks and chairs. I listened to the heartbeat in my head, and noticed little twinges and tickles in my nervous system—signals, I suppose, of discharges, systems clearing the boards or recharging for the next round. Pleasant, intriguing—but I wasn't getting much work done. "Mr. Lackland, shall I call the supervisor and tell him you're not happy with your work?" Damn woman. I'd shake my head, dive energetically into my work.
When I wasn't lost in a symphony of senses, I was lost in thought, wondering why not; what was wrong with me?
I told Janice, and she gave me a Well, what can you expect? look and said, tugging at a piece of yarn on a tapestry puzzle she was making, "You ought to start thinking more like a robot when you're at work. Save some of that creative energy for me. You've been slipping a bit lately, you know."
Was that the best she could do? I had to act like a robot; did I have to think like one, too? Hey, wait a minute! "Who's been slipping? Me?" She slid one lip up over the other, half-smiled, shrugged. She would say no more, but she watched me as I walked around for a while, frowning and wondering.
We had gotten into the habit in the evenings of taking Rogo for walks in Clarendon Park, an indoor arboretum with some flowers and trees and a small aviary, all housed under a geodesic dome at the edge of Clarendon Level. It was a convenient place to let Rogo run. Out the right side of the dome, one could see, in staggered fashion downward, the lighted domes of Berkeley and Arlington parks, while above and to the left were the stepping-slab undersides of the upper-level parks, all dark and shadowy. The real attraction, though, was the Clarendon garden itself. Rogo liked to poke around the shrubbery; he snuffed his way curiously, with almost feline delicacy, rarely touching anything, even with his nose. Janice and I simply enjoyed the view and the flowers, and watched Rogo with his insatiable interest. It struck me as a curious thing that he was an alien from another world, because to us he was just someone with whom we shared our lives.
I was almost afraid to say it, but finally one night I remarked to Janice that I was getting a little tired of the park. Actually, I thought I was just in a soul-slump at the time, because I hadn't been enjoying much of anything lately. "Maybe it's the dog shit," she said dryly. I chuckled and dropped the subject, but I wondered what had prompted such a nasty remark. That was a long-standing annoyance to her, but she had been carefully keeping it to herself for harmony's sake. Well, one would have had to suppose that there was B-mot shit involved, too, although B-mots tend to be more discreet than dogs.
More deeply disturbing was her behavior later that night, when she became coldly cranky for no reason I could fathom. Rogo and I had worked up a game involving our polywater bed, which he loved bouncing around on, especially when it was rolling like surf. We played a sort of keep-away, with me jouncing the mattress energetically while Rogo fumbled with a Floppo-Ball too big for him to hold in his jaws which lurched and bounced crazily—and that was what Rogo did, also, romping and stumbling, and somehow always turning on his nose. B-mots do not normally turn on their noses. Rogo thought it great fun, and he could have gone on long after I tired.
I thought Janice was angry because she felt neglected. But when I apologized, she scowled and punched another videocassette into her study-deck. "If you're that crazy about him, go back and play," she muttered sullenly.
"Hey!" I went around in front of her so she would look at me. "Don't you like him, too?" Of course I knew she did; something else was wrong.
"Sure. I'll get in my hour another time." She ignored me, pretending to study. I was amazed; I couldn't believe she was seriously jealous of Rogo.
Dumbly I went back to sit beside Rogo. I wondered what was going on, and why I wasn't doing anything about it. I should have tried to get her to talk, but for a long time I didn't; I was hurt, and I just didn't want to. Finally, Janice accused me of not caring very much. "I care," I said defensively. But she didn't want to believe me, and she wouldn't listen. "Janice, talk to me now—don't just be mad."
Arched eyebrows. Back to her studying.
I sensed that jealousy was not the problem. It was something else—chemistry, brain waves, something. Okay, every couple has occasional bad nights. We'd been lucky to have had so few.
Before we went to bed, she said, "I'm sorry, Lackey. I'm not mad at you or Rogo. I'm mad at myself."
Which helped not at all. Rogo knew what was going wrong —oh yes—but by the time I understood, my world was far too far gone.
Shortly thereafter my work began to improve, in a manner of speaking. I was growing numb to it and was therefore less distracted, which kept Mrs. Curtzen off my back. In point of fact, I was growing numb to quite a lot of things. My walk to the office took me through a variety of neighborhoods, past noisy and interesting shops on Berkeley Level, but I found myself arriving at work or at home with hardly any impression in my mind of what the walk had been like. It was not that I was failing to pay attention; I saw the shops, the signs, the displays, the milling people, but none of it was sinking in; none of it mattered; none of it seemed worth remembering.
I was frightened, in the way one might fear a potentially serious and protracted illness. I had always prided myself on my appreciation of things around me. Perhaps it was just the weather outside, the season, the ions in the air. It was temporary; things would return to normal, I thought. But somewhere within me I suspected otherwise.
Then Janice confessed to me that she had been skipping her classes for the past two weeks. I was surprised; I didn't know what to say. "What have you been doing?" I asked.
"Walking," she said, "sitting at home, going out. Sometimes I take Rogo." She tried to smile, but the smile was an impoverished effort, flickering on her lips like a futilely struggling candle flame.
I started to tell her what she was risking by skipping school, but she stopped me immediately. Yes, yes, she said; but she couldn't concentrate, she was bored. "Oh." I had thought she liked her classes. "What's wrong, anyway?"
She looked at me very strangely for a long minute, as if she thought I knew very well what was wrong. She had not reckoned with my obtuseness, however. "My paintings: they're dull, gray, worse than nothing at all." She said it very emphatically, very dejectedly. Then she walked out into the kitchen and left me standing with a strange tight pressure across my chest, in a room full of emptiness, as if the air had exploded out of the room. I sat and stared into the distance of a blank blue wall and wondered how it was that everything I prized was tumbling, going to gray, turning flat; I was hardly aware that Rogo was beside me, absorbing the strokes of my hand on his fur with muffled, healthy little sighs. When he moaned and caught my attention, I realized that my hand was on his ruffed neck, and I jerked it back as if bitten; and I wondered, Now, why did I do that?
***
Later, I found Janice walking in a slow dance around Rogo, studying him as if he were a statuette for sale in a gallery. She stooped, touched his middle with her fingertips, looked exasperated and thoughtful. Rogo looked oblivious. "Measuring him for a dress or for the cooker?" I asked her.
"Mmm," she said, paying no attention.
"How's that again?" She still ignored me, so I tapped her on the arm.
She looked up, startled. "Hi," she grunted. "I was just thinking that this fellow is getting a bit big. And I wondered why."
"Feeding him too much." We fed him hardly anything.
"Uh-huh. John, how sure are we that Rogo's a guy?"
"The vet said so."
"Well, can little boy B-mots get pregnant?" She knelt beside him, stroking his flanks gently.
"Well, why don't we ask the vet? Never thought about it, myself." The idea was mildly disturbing, but I figured that taking him back to the medicine man would give us something to do.
We did, and he was. Pregnant. According to the vet, he still was a he, so we learned something else that day: B-mots are androgynous, or something along those lines. We did not press for a fuller explanation, because frankly we were too shocked at the thought of having a prospective mother on our hands. Rogo took the news calmly, silently.
On the way home Janice told me she didn't know whether she wanted to keep him. Our nice male pet was going to fill the living room with babies—that was a very alien thing to do, she said. And there was something else about Rogo that bothered her, but she chickened out of saying it, and that was as close as we came to bringing our growing suspicions into the open. (Now, why were we afraid? Was it some extraordinary embarrassment, or was it just part of his power over us, his charm that we were afraid to question or insult? Or were we merely stupid?) Janice kept me awake half the night, staring at me in the gloom from her side of the bed. "We can't just throw the poor guy out," I insisted logically. "Besides, you used to like him too."
"I do like him; he's adorable! But he's got me suspicious. What do we really know about him?" That he was turning us into glassy-eyed nervous wrecks? That was what I thought, but I didn't say it. Janice turned her back to me, making it clear that she considered the situation hopeless. Before she went to sleep I reminded her that we had a few weeks yet to decide before Rogo's babies were due.
I hadn't forgotten that Rogo was no Earthling. But only now did it occur to me to wonder why he had left his last owner . . . or why he had been thrown out. Could he have been pregnant that long ago? Had his previous owner reacted the same way as Janice? Should I not have thought through all of this long ago? Such questions skittered around in my head until I went to sleep—and then returned when I awoke.
But we were just being foolish. He was ours now, and he trusted us, and Janice was stirring up trouble over nothing. Ha, ha—right?
"Isn't that true, old boy?" I asked, hoping fervently that he would agree. Rogo sighed, sniffed, and stretched out his chin on the carpet. I sat on the floor and watched him. He knew he was under discussion, and it was hurting him. I felt rotten about it. When Janice went out for a while, I confided in him. "For some reason we're not getting along too well, Rog'." He knew I meant Janice and me. "We haven't—well, I don't know what it is, really." Like hell I didn't. But it looked as if I couldn't say it, even to Rogo.
Well . . . all right, I would say it. "I'm not . . ." He looked up at me, just moving his eyes. "We're not getting through to each other, Rogo. Not anymore." As if he didn't already know. "We're . . . I'm trying. It's not your fault, boy."
Coward. Shameless, groveling, sniveling coward. Was this beautiful, alien animal so innocent? Wasn't he self-assured and full of life now, watching me flounder in a morass I couldn't even begin to understand?
Nothing was getting through, for sure. Nothing was getting to me at all. Nothing. Now, not even the rottenness I had felt just moments ago. Could I be that numb? Could my gut feelings, my senses, be wafting, evaporating, disappearing from my body, like sweat from a dying man in a desert? For a moment I felt a harsh thickening in my throat and a fluttering spasm of the diaphragm. I shut my eyes tightly, tensed my muscles, and waited for it to go away—and it did; a feeling of profound, tearless despair wrenched at me with a vicious grip and in an instant left me tingling emptily, with the faintest nausea, wondering if I would ever feel any such emotion again.
Rogo studied me sadly: perhaps a bit fatter, a bit stronger.
I kept my distance from Rogo most of the evening, but that was as decisive as I became. When Janice came home we talked, not very interestedly, and passed the night. Rogo watched silently from his corner of the room, no sign of playfulness in him now. Janice puttered around in the kitchen for a while, then sat with me watching some nameless program on the big screen. We exchanged a few words, no touches, no expressions of comfort, none of anger. I assembled a wire-model tree kit; she worked on her tapestry puzzle. When our eyes met, it was with a start, an aborted surge of energy—and then we would be like strangers, or separating friends.
Some part of me was crying for help, but the cry was coming faintly from some closed, sealed place within. I was horrified at what was happening, at its suddenness, but I could find no handle to it, no way of knowing just what it was or how to put it into words. I was a man staring at myself with helpless eyes from some remote location, not able to speak or touch, but only to watch, to feel a secondhand anguish. I cut my finger, carelessly twisting a piece of wire on my model; I observed a small, dense globule of red liquid growing on my skin and wondered why, if it was blood, there was no pain.
Two days passed, and I sank steadily deeper into this quicksand as though wallowing in the self-pity of a futile love. Janice spoke not at all of things that mattered, and I could only assume that she too was suffering: but where were the words for asking? I quietly ceased caring, like a man drowning in a carbon monoxide slumber.
Janice found the will to struggle when I did not. How, I don't know—perhaps she was more immune, or simply stronger. She took me to the Sea Cliff Terrace, having insisted on leaving Rogo at home. It was a stiff, breezy day outside, the water and sky colorful and shifting. "He's got to go," she said, facing the water. There was no anger, no passion in her voice, only a firmer determination than I had suspected she possessed. "He goes before he ruins us completely."
Before? I almost laughed, but I stopped myself: it would have been a cheap laugh. Instead I said, "Isn't it a bit late for that?" I looked out to sea, searching for something to move me from dead center.
Janice stared into my eyes with what I thought might be anger. I knew it was no longer the pregnant mother she was worried about; it was the lovable, love-stealing alien himself we were harboring. "Is it too late?" she demanded flatly, still not sounding angry.
I thought about it. I continued searching the water, blue and a bit gray, churning up and down. I said, "We can't leave him out in the cold. He loves us; we have a responsibility to him." God, still I was defending him!
"John!" Her voice rose violently, suddenly filled with hysteria. "What about us, what about ourselves?" I shrugged; I didn't know. "Do you know what he's doing to us? Haven't you ever wondered why those bastards, those aliens, were so goddamn generous with their damn animals? Haven't you?" The woman was shrieking, actually scaring me.
"No!" I shouted in defense and alarm. But I had, and I knew she was right. And the more clearly I saw it, the less capable I seemed of acting on it. This was happening to someone else. There was an airy silence all around our nook of the Terrace; the sea crumpled quietly on the rocks below; a gull cried out over the water. So what? it cried.
"John."
"What?" She had been speaking to me, but I hadn't heard her.
"I said, Do you still love me?" She looked at me, glanced away, then back again. I was startled by the question, not because she had asked it, but because she had given me no time to prepare for it. I looked slowly, blindly, in several directions. I nodded vaguely, deflecting the question like a limp ball.
"Okay," I said suddenly, "he goes." The lie passed so easily from my lips. I loved Rogo; I wasn't going to get rid of him.
Janice nodded with real understanding and looked at me with crushed eyes, in a defeat that once would have broken my heart.
***
Rogo, I say, staring solemnly into his eyes, why did you come? To stay until there's nothing left to stay for? To move on, to do it all over?
He looks like a great unshorn poodle, gray and fluffy, sprawled uncomfortably under my stare. I can't hate him for being what he is. I can only love him, and be sorry. How long will you stay, Rogo? Did we last as long as the people before us? Will you need a more nourishing home so your babies can grow?
Do you suffer for us, Rogo?
I can only stare, loving him with what memories of substance remain in my heart, and absently, futilely, I wonder how he does it.
Rogo himself makes no answer. He just returns my gaze calmly, sadly, with those dark unblinking eyes which reflect so faintly, yet so clearly what he has stolen.
*****