The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2

by Gordon Van Gelder

  “It lies between us; I do not have to touch it. I fear your unchangeability because I am a butterfly against your grey castle.”

  “You are beautiful, Eva, so beautiful!—And may a butterfly not rest unharmed on a castle wall?” He fitted into her allusive way of speech with difficulty.

  “Walls! I cannot bear your walls, Derek! Am I a bulldozer that I should want to come up against walls? To be either inside or outside them is to be a prisoner.”

  “Let us not quarrel until we have found some point of agreement,” he said. “Here are the stars. Can’t we agree about them?”

  “If we are both indifferent to them,” she said, looking out and impudently winding his arm about her. The staircase had reached the zenith of its travels and moved slowly sideways along the upper edge of Eyebright. They stood on the top step with night flashing their images back at them from the glass.

  Eva Coll-Kennerley was a human, but not of Earthborn stock. She was a velure, born on the y-cluster worlds of the dense Third Arm of the galaxy, and her skin was richly covered with the brown fur of her kind. Her mercurial talents were employed in the same research department that enjoyed Belix Sappose’s more sober ones; Derek had met her there on an earlier visit to Pyrylyn. Their love had been an affair of swords.

  He looked at her now and touched her and could say not one word for himself. When she flashed a liquid eye at him, he essayed an awkward smile.

  “Because I am oriented like a compass towards strong men, my lavish offer to you still holds good. Is it not bait enough?” she asked him.

  “I don’t think of you as a trap, Eva.”

  “Then for how many more centuries are you going to refrigerate your nature on Earth? You still remain faithful, if I recall your euphemism for slavery, to your Mistress, to her cold lips and locked heart?”

  “I have no choice!”

  “Ah yes, my debate on that motion was defeated: and more than once. Is she still pursuing her researches into the trans-mutability of species?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. The mediaeval idea that one species can turn into another was foolish in the Middle Ages; now, with the gradual accumulation of cosmic radiation in planetary bodies, it is correct to a certain definable extent. She is endeavouring to show that cellular bondage can be—”

  “Yes, yes, and this serious talk is an eyesore in Eyebright! You are locked away, Derek, doing your sterile deeds of heroism and never entering the real world. If you imagine you can live with her much longer and then come to me, you are mistaken. Your walls grow higher about your ears every century, till I cannot, cannot—oh, it’s the wrong metaphor!—cannot scale you!”

  Even in his pain, the texture of her fur was joy to his warmsight. Helplessly he shook his head in an effort to shake her clattering words away.

  “Look at you being big and brave and silent even now! You’re so arrogant,” she said—and then, without perceptible change of tone, “Because I still love the bit of you inside the castle, I’ll make once more my monstrous and petty offer to you.”

  “No, please, Eva!—”

  “But yes! Forget this tedious bondage of Earth, forget this ghastly matriarchy, live here with me. I don’t want you forever. You know I am a eudemonist and judge by standards of pleasure—our liaison need be only for a century or two. In that time, I will deny you nothing your senses may require.”

  “Eva!”

  “After that, our demands will be satisfied. You may then go back to the Lady Mother of Endehaaven for all I care.”

  “Eva, you know how I spurn this belief, this eudemonism.”

  “Forget your creed! I’m asking you nothing difficult. Who are you to haggle? Am I fish, to be bought by the kilo, this bit selected, this rejected?”

  He was silent.

  “You don’t really need me,” he said at last. “You have everything already: beauty, wit, sense, warmth, feeling, balance, comfort. She has nothing. She is shallow, haunted, cold—oh, she needs me, Eva . . .”

  “You are apologising for yourself, not her.”

  She had already turned with the supple movement of a velure and was running down the staircase. Lighted chambers drifted up about them like bubbles.

  His laboured attempt to explain his heart turned to exasperation. He ran down after her, grasping her arm.

  “Listen to me, will you, damn you!”

  “Nobody in Pyrylyn would listen to such masochistic nonsense as yours! You are an arrogant fool, Derek, and I am a weak-willed one. Now release me!”

  As the next room came up, she jumped through its entrance and disappeared into the crowd.

  V

  Not all the drifting chambers of Eyebright were lighted. Some pleasures come more delightfully with the dark, and these pleasures were coaxed and cossetted into fruition in shrouded halls where illumination cast only the gentlest ripple on the ceiling and the gloom was sensuous with ylang-ylang and other perfumes. Here Derek found a place to weep.

  Sections of his life slid before him as if impelled by the same mechanisms that moved Eyebright. Always, one presence was there.

  Angrily he related to himself how he always laboured to satisfy her—yes, in every sphere laboured to satisfy her! And how when that satisfaction was accorded him it came as though riven from her, as a spring sometimes trickles down the split face of a rock. Undeniably there was satisfaction for him in drinking from that cool source—but no, where was the satisfaction when pleasure depended on such extreme disciplining and subduing of himself?

  Mistress, I love and hate your needs!

  And the discipline had been such . . . so long, also . . . that now when he might enjoy himself far from her, he could scarcely strike a trickle from his own rock. He had walked here before, in this city where the hedonists and eudemonists reigned, walked among the scents of pleasure, walked among the ioblepharous women, the beautiful guests and celebrated beauties, with My Lady always in him, feeling that she showed even on his countenance. People spoke to him: somehow he replied. They manifested gaiety: he tried to do so. They opened to him: he attempted a response. All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.

  Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.

  He roused from his meditation knowing that Eva Coll-Kennerley was again somewhere near. She had not left the building, then! She was seeking him out!

  Derek half-rose from his position in a shrouded alcove. He was baffled to think how she could have traced him here. On entering Eyebright, visitors were given sonant-stones, by which they could be traced from room to room; but judging that nobody would wish to trace him, Derek had switched his stone off even before leaving Belix Sappose’s party.

  He heard Eva’s voice, its unmistakable overtones not near, not far . . .

  “You find the most impenetrable bushels to hide your light under . . .”

  He caught no more. She had sunk down among tapestries with someone else. She was not after him at all! Waves of relief and regret rolled over him . . . and when he paid attention again, she was speaking his name.

  With shame on him, like a wolf creeping towards a camp fire, he crouched forward to listen. At once his warmsight told him to whom Eva spoke. He recognised the pattern of the antlers; Belix was there, with Jupkey sprawled beside him on some elaborate kind of bed.

  “. . . useless to try again. Derek is too far entombed within himself,” Eva said.

  “Entombed rather within his conditioning,” Belix said. “We found the same. It’s conditioning, my dear.”

  “However he became entombed, I still admire him enough to want to understand him.” Eva’s voice was a note or two astray from its usual controlled timbre.

  “Look at it scientifically,” Belix said, with the weighty inflections of a man about to produce truth out of a hat. “Earth is the last bastion of a bankrupt culture. The Earthborns n
umber less than a couple of millions now. They disdain social graces and occasions. They are served by parthenogenetically bred slaves, all of which are built on the same controlled genetic formula. They are inbred. In consequence, they have become practically a species apart. You can see it all in friend Ende. As I say, he’s entombed in his conditioning. A tragedy, Eva, but you must face up to it.”

  “You’re probably right, you pontifical old pop,” Jupkey said lazily. “Who but an Earthborn would do what Derek did on Festi?”

  “No, no!” Eva said. “Derek’s ruled by a woman, not by conditioning. He’s—”

  “In Ende’s case they are one and the same thing, my dear, believe me. Consider Earth’s social organisation. The partheno slaves have replaced all but a comparative handful of true Earthborns. That handful has parcelled out Earth into great estates which it holds by a sinister matriarchalism.”

  “Yes, I know, but Derek—”

  “Derek is caught in the system. The Earthborns have fallen into a mating pattern for which there is no precedent. The sons of a family marry their mothers, not only to perpetuate their line but because the productive Earthborn female is scarce now that Earth itself is senescent. This is what the Endes have done; this is what Derek Ende has done. His ‘mistress’ is both mother and wife to him. Given the factor of longevity as well—well, naturally you ensure an excessive emotional rigidity that almost nothing can break. Not even you, my sweet-coated Eva!”

  “He was on the point of breaking tonight!”

  “I doubt it,” Belix said. “Ende may want to get away from his claustrophobic home, but the same forces that drive him off will eventually lure him back.”

  “I tell you he was on the point of breaking—only I broke first.”

  “Well, as Teer Ruche said to me many centuries ago, only a pleasure-hater knows how to shape a pleasure-hater. I would say you were lucky he did not break; you would only have had a baby on your hands.”

  Her answering laugh did not ring true.

  “My Lady of Endehaaven, then, must be the one to do it. I will never try again—though he seems under too much stress to stand for long. Oh, it’s really immoral! He deserves better!”

  “A moral judgement from you, Eva!” Jupkey exclaimed amusedly to the fragrant gloom.

  “My advice to you, Eva, is to forget all about the poor fellow. Apart from anything else, he is barely articulate—which would not suit you for a season.”

  The unseen listener could bear no more. A sudden rage—as much against himself for hearing as against them for speaking—burst over him, freeing him to act. Straightening up, he seized the arm of the couch on which Belix and Jupkey nestled, wildly supposing he could tip them onto the floor.

  Too late, his warmsight warned him of the real nature of the couch. Instead of tipping, it swivelled, sending a wave of liquid over him. The two unglaats were lying in a warm bath scented with ylang-ylang and other essences.

  Jupkey squealed in anger and fright. Kicking out, she caught Derek on the shin with a hoof; he slipped in the oily liquid and fell. Belix, unaided by warmsight, jumped out of the bath, entangled himself with Derek’s legs, and also fell.

  Eva was shouting for lights. Other occupants of the hall cried back that darkness must prevail at all costs.

  Picking himself up—leaving only his dignity behind—Derek ran for the exit, abandoning the confusion to sort itself out as it would.

  Burningly, disgustedly, he made his way dripping from Eyebright. The hastening footsteps of Jon followed him like an echo all the way to the space field.

  Soon he would be back at Endehaaven. Though he would always be a failure in his dealings with other humans, there at least he knew every inch of his bleak allotted territory.

  ENVOI

  Had there been a spell over all Endehaaven, it could have been no quieter when My Lord Derek Ende arrived home.

  I informed My Lady of the moment when his lightpusher arrived and rode at orbit. In the receptor bowl I watched him and Jon come home, cutting northwest across the emaciated wilds of Europe, across Denmark, over the Shetlands, the Faroes, the sea, alighting by the very edge of the island, by the fjord with its silent waters.

  All the while the wind lay low as if under some stunning malediction, and none of our tall trees stirred.

  “Where is my Mistress, Hols?” Derek asked me, as I went to greet him and assist him out of his suit.

  “She asked me to tell you that she is confined to her chambers and cannot see you, My Lord.”

  He looked me in the eyes as he did so rarely.

  “Is she ill?”

  “No.”

  Without waiting to remove his suit, he hurried on into the building.

  Over the next two days, he was about but little, preferring to remain in his room. Once he wandered among the experimental tanks and cages. I saw him net a fish and toss it into the air, watching it while it struggled into new form and flew away until it was lost in a jumbled background of cumulus; but it was plain he was less interested in the riddles of stress and transmutation than in the symbolism of the carp’s flight.

  Mostly he sat compiling the spools on which he imposed the tale of his life. All one wall was covered with files full of these spools: the arrested drumbeats of past centuries. From the later spools I have secretly compiled this record; for all his unspoken self-pity, he never knew the sickness of merely observing.

  We parthenos will never understand the luxuries of a divided mind. Surely suffering as much as happiness is a kind of artistry?

  On the day that he received a summons from Star One to go upon another quest for them, Derek met My Lady in the Blue Corridor.

  “It is good to see you about again, Mistress,” he said, kissing her cheek.

  She stroked his hair. On her nervous hand she wore one ring with an amber stone; her gown was of olive and umber.

  “I was very upset to have you go away from me. The Earth is dying, Derek, and I fear its loneliness. You have left me alone too much. However, I have recovered myself and am glad to see you back.”

  “You know I am glad to see you. Smile for me and come outside for some fresh air. The sun is shining.”

  “It’s so long since it shone. Do you remember how once it always shone? I can’t bear to quarrel any more. Take my arm and be kind to me.”

  “Mistress, I always wish to be kind to you. And I have all sorts of things to discuss with you. You’ll want to hear what I have been doing, and—”

  “You won’t leave me any more?”

  He felt her hand tighten on his arm. She spoke very loudly.

  “That was one of the things I wished to discuss—later,” he said. “First let me tell you about the wonderful life form with which I made contact on Festi.”

  As they left the corridor and descended the paragravity shaft, My Lady said wearily, “I suppose that’s a polite way of telling me that you are bored here.”

  He clutched her hands as they floated down. Then he released them and clutched her face instead.

  “Understand this. Mistress mine, I love you and want to serve you. You are in my blood; wherever I go I never can forget you. My dearest wish is to make you happy—this you must know. But equally you must know that I have needs of my own.”

  Grumpily she said, withdrawing her face, “Oh, I know that all right. And I know those needs will always come first with you. Whatever you say or pretend, you don’t care a rap about me. You make that all too clear.”

  She moved ahead of him, shaking off the hand he put on her arm. He had a vision of himself running down a golden staircase and stretching out that same detaining hand to another girl. The indignity of having to repeat oneself, century after century.

  “You’re lying! You’re faking! You’re being cruel!” he said.

  Gleaming, she turned.

  “Am I? Then answer me this—aren’t you already planning to leave Endehaaven and me soon?”

  He smote his forehead.

  He said inartic
ulately, “Look, you must try to stop this recrimination. Yes, yes, it’s true I am thinking . . . But I have to—I reproach myself. I could be kinder. But you shut yourself away when I come back, you don’t welcome me—”

  “Trust you to find excuses rather than face up to your own nature,” she said contemptuously, walking briskly into the garden. Amber and olive and umber, and sable of hair, she walked down the path, her outlines sharp in the winter air; in the perspectives of his mind she did not dwindle.

  For some minutes he stood in the threshold, immobilized by antagonistic emotions.

  Finally he pushed himself out into the sunlight.

  She was in her favourite spot by the fjord, feeding an old badger from her hand. Only her increased attention to the badger suggested that she heard him approach.

  His boscises twitched as he said, “If you will forgive a cliché, I apologise.”

  “I don’t mind what you do.”

  Walking backwards and forwards behind her, he said, “When I was away, I heard some people talking. On Pyrylyn this was. They were discussing the mores of our matrimonial system.”

  “It’s no business of theirs.”

  “Perhaps not. But what they said suggested a new line of thought to me.”

  She put the old badger back in his cage without comment.

  “Are you listening, Mistress?”

  “Do go on.”

  “Try to listen sympathetically. Consider all the history of galactic exploration—or even before that, consider the explorers of Earth in the pre-space age, men like Shackleton and so on. They were brave men, of course, but wouldn’t it be strange if most of them only ventured where they did because the struggle at home was too much for them?”

  He stopped. She had turned to him; the half-smile was whipped off his face by her look of fury.

  “And you’re trying to tell me that that’s how you see yourself—a martyr? Derek, how you must hate me! Not only do you go away, you secretly blame me because you go away. It doesn’t matter that I tell you a thousand times I want you here—no, it’s all my fault! I drive you away! That’s what you tell your charming friends on Pyrylyn, isn’t it? Oh, how you must hate me!”