‘I still think so,’ said Hal. ‘But my report showed that though the man resembled Sigmen somewhat, the evidence was too inconclusive. The Forerunner may or may not have visited this planet a thousand years ago.’
‘Be that as it may, I maintain your theses are meaningless. You claim that his prophecies came true. I say, first, that they were ambiguously stated. Second, if they have been realized it is because your powerful state-church—which you economically term the Sturch—has made strenuous efforts to fulfill them.
‘Furthermore, this pyramidal society of yours—this guardian-angel administration—where every twenty-five families have a gapt to supervise their most intimate and minute details, and every twenty-five family-gapfs have a block-gapt at their head, and every fifty block-gapts are directed by a supervisor-gapt, and so on—this society is based on fear and ignorance and suppression.’
Hal, shaken, angered, shocked, would get up to leave. Fobo would call him back and ask him to disprove what he’d said. Hal would let loose a flood of wrath. Sometimes, when he had finished, he would be asked to sit down and continue the discussion. Sometimes, Fobo would lose his temper; they would shout and scream insults. Twice, they fought with fists; Hal got a bloody nose, and Fobo a black eye. Then the wog, weeping, would embrace Hal and ask for his forgiveness, and they would sit down and drink some more until their nerves were calmed.
Hal knew that he should not listen to Fobo, should not allow himself to be in a situation where he could hear such unrealism. But he could not stay away. And, though he hated Fobo for what he said, he derived a strange satisfaction and fascination from the relationship. He could not cut himself off from this being whose tongue cut and flayed him far more painfully than Pornsen’s whip ever had.
He told Jeannette of these incidents. She encouraged him to tell them over and over again until he had talked away the stress and strain of grief and hate and doubt. Afterward, there was always love such as he had never thought possible. For the first time, he knew that man and woman could become one flesh. His wife and he had remained outside the circle of each other, but Jeannette knew the geometry that would take him in and the chemistry that would mix his substance with hers.
Always, too, there was the light and the drink. But they did not bother him. Unknown to her, she was now drinking a liquor almost entirely Easyglow. And he had gotten used to the light above their bed. It was one of her quirks. Fear of the dark wasn’t behind it, because it was only while making love that she required that the lamp be left on. He didn’t understand it. Perhaps she wanted to impress his image on her memory, always to have it if she ever lost him. If so, let her keep the light.
By its glow he explored her body with an interest that was part sexual and part anthropological. He was delighted and astonished at the many small differences between her and Terran women. There was a small appendage of skin on the roof of her mouth that might have been the rudiment of some organ whose function had been long ago cast aside by evolution. She had twenty-eight teeth; the wisdom teeth were missing. That might or might not have been a characteristic of her mother’s people.
He suspected that she had either an extra set of pectoral muscles or else an extraordinarily well developed normal set. Her large and cone-shaped breasts did not sag. They were high and firm and pointed slightly upward: the ideal of feminine beauty so often portrayed through the ages by male sculptors and painters and so seldom existing in nature.
She was not only a pleasure to look at; she was pleasing to be with. At least once a week she would greet him with a new garment. She loved to sew; out of the materials he gave her she fashioned blouses, skirts, and even gowns. Along with the change in dress went new hairdos. She was ever new and ever beautiful, and she made him realize for the first time that a woman could be beautiful. Or perhaps she made him realize that a human being could be beautiful. And a thing of beauty was a joy, if not forever, then for a long time.
His enjoyment of her, and hers of him, was hastened and strengthened by her linguistic fluency. She seemed to have switched from her French to American almost overnight. Within a week she was speaking, within her limited but quickly increasing vocabulary, faster and more expressively than he.
However, his delight in her company made him neglect his duties. His progress in learning to read Siddo slowed down.
One day, Fobo asked him how he was doing with the books he’d loaned him. Hal confessed that they were too difficult for him—so far. Fobo then gave him a book on evolution which was used in the wog elementary schools.
‘Try these. They’re two volumes, but they’re rather slim in text. The many pictures will enable you to grasp the text more quickly. It’s an abridgement for the youngsters by a famous educator, We’enai.’
Jeannette had much more time to study than Hal, since she had little to do in the apartment while he was gone during the day. She tackled the new books, and so Hal fell into the lazy habit of allowing her to translate for him. She would first read the Siddo aloud and then translate into American. Or, if her vocabulary failed her, into French.
One evening, she started out energetically enough. But she was sipping beetlejuice between paragraphs, and after a while she began to lose interest in the translating.
She went through the first chapter, which described the formation of the planet and the beginnings of life. In the second chapter, she yawned quite openly and looked at Hal, but he closed his eyes and pretended not to notice. So she read of the rise of the wogs from a prearthropod that had changed its mind and decided to become a chordate. We’enai made some heavy jests about the contrariness of the wogglebugs since that fateful day, and then took up, in the third chapter, the story of mammalian evolution on the other large continent of Ozagen which climaxed in man.
She quoted,’ “But man, like us, had its mimical parasites. One was a different species of the so-called tavern beetle. It, instead of resembling a wog, looked like a man. Like its counterpart, it could fool no intelligent person, but its gift of alcohol made it very acceptable to man. It, too, accompanied its host from primitive times, became an integral part of his civilization, and, finally, according to one theory, a large cause of man’s downfall.
‘ “Humanity’s disappearance from the face of Ozagen is due not only to the tavern beetle, if it was at all. That creature can be controlled. Like most things, it can be abused or its purpose distorted so that it becomes a menace.
‘ “This is what man did with it.
‘ “He had, it must be noted, an ally to help him in the misuse of the insect. This was another parasite, one of a somewhat different kind; one that was, indeed, our cousin, in a manner speaking.
‘ “One thing, however, distinguishes it from us, and from man, and from any other animal on this planet with the exception of some very low species. That is, that from the very first fossil evidence we have of it, it was wholly—” ’
Jeannette put the book down. ‘I don’t know the next word. Hal, do I have to read this? It’s so boring.’
‘No. Forget it. Read me one of those comics that you and the Gabriel’s sailors like so much.’
She smiled, a beautiful sight, and she began reading Volume 1037, Book 56, The Adventures of Leif Magnus, Beloved Disciple of the Forerunner, When He Met the Horror from Arcturus.
He listened to her efforts to translate the American into the vernacular wog until he grew tired of the banalities of the comic and pulled her down to him.
Always, there was the light left on above them.
Yet, they had their misunderstandings, their disagreements, their conflicts.
Jeannette was neither puppet nor slave. When she did not like something Hal did or said, she was often quick to say so. And, if he replied sarcastically or violently, he was likely to find himself attacked verbally.
Not too long after he had hidden Jeannette in his puka, he returned after a long day at the ship with a heavy growth of stubble on his face.
Jeannette, after kissing him, made a
face and said, ‘That hurts; it is like a file. I’ll get your cream and rub off your whiskers myself.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ she said as she walked toward the unmentionable. ‘I love to do things for you. And I especially love to make you look nice.’
She returned with the can of depilatory in her hand.
‘Now, you sit down, and I will do all your work for you. You can think of how much I love you while I’m removing those so-scratchy wires on your face.’
‘You don’t understand, Jeannette. I can’t shave. I am a lamedhian now, and lamedhians must wear beards.’
She stopped walking toward him and said, ‘You must? You mean that it is the law, that you will be a criminal if you don’t?’
‘No, not exactly,’ he said. ‘The Forerunner himself never said a word about it, nor has any law been passed making it compulsory. But—it is the custom. And it is a sign of honor, for only a man worthy to wear a lamedh is allowed to grow a beard,’
‘What would happen if a non-lamedhian grew one?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, annoyance apparent in his voice. ‘It has never happened. It’s—just one of those things you take for granted. Something only an outsider would think about.’
‘But a beard is so ugly,’ she said. ‘And it scratches my face. I would as soon kiss a pile of bedsprings.’
‘Then,’ he said angrily, ‘you’ll either have to learn to kiss bedsprings or learn to get along without kisses. Because I have to have a beard!’
‘Listen to me,’ she said, going up close to him. ‘You don’t have to! What is the use of being a lamedhian if you don’t have any more freedom than before, if you must do what is expected of you? Why can’t you just ignore the custom?’
Hal began to feel both fury and panic. Panic because he might alienate her so far she would leave and because he knew that if he gave in to her he would be regarded suspiciously by the other lamedhians on the Gabriel.
As a result, he accused her of being a stupid fool. She replied with equal heat and harshness. They quarreled; the night was half over before she made the first movement toward a reconciliation. Then, it was dawn before they were through proving they loved each other.
In the morning, he shaved. Nothing happened at the Gabriel for three days, nobody made any remarks, and he put down to guilt and imagination the strange looks he saw—or thought he saw. Finally, he began to think that either nobody had noticed or else they were so busy with their duties that they did not think it worthwhile to comment. He even began wondering if there were other annoyances connected with being a lamedhian which he could do away with.
Then, the morning of the fourth day, he was called to the office of Macneff.
He found the Sandalphon sitting behind his desk and fingering his own beard. Macneff stared with his pale blue eyes at Hal for some time before replying to Hal’s greeting.
‘Perhaps, Yarrow,’ he said, ‘you have been too concerned with your researches among the wogs to think about other things. It is true we live in an abnormal environment here, and we are all concentrating on the day we start the project.’
He rose and began pacing back and forth before Hal.
‘You surely must know that as a lamedhian, you not only have privileges, you have responsibilities?’
‘Shib, abba.’
Macneff suddenly wheeled on Hal and pointed a long bony finger at him.
Then, why aren’t you growing a beard?’ he said loudly. And he glared.
Hal felt himself grow cold, as he had so often when he was a child and his gapt, Pornsen, had made this same maneuver toward him. And he felt the same mental confusion.
‘Why, I—I—’
‘We must strive not only to attain the lamedh, we must strive to continue to be worthy of it. Purity and purity alone will make us succeed, unending effort to be pure!
‘Your pardon abba,’ said Hal, his voice quivering. ‘But I am making a never-ending effort to be pure.’
He dared to look the Sandalphon in the eyes when he said that, though where he got the courage he did not know. To lie so outrageously, he who was living in unreality, to lie in the presence of the great and pure Sandalphon!
‘However,’ Hal continued, ‘I did not know that shaving would have anything to do with my purity. There is nothing in The Western Talmud or any of the Forerunner’s books about the reality or unreality of a beard.’
‘Are you telling me what is in the scriptures?’ shouted Macneff.
‘No, of course not. But, what I said is true, isn’t it?’
Macneff resumed his pacing, and he said, ‘We must be pure, must be pure. And even the slightest hint of pseudofuture, the smallest departure from reality, may dirty us. Yes, Sigmen never said anything about this. But it has long been recognized that only the pure are worthy to emulate the Forerunner by having a beard. Therefore, to be pure, we must look pure.’
‘I agree with you wholeheartedly,’ said Hal.
He was beginning to find courage in himself, a firmness. It had suddenly occurred to him that he felt so shaken because he was reacting to Macneff as he had to Pornsen. But Pornsen was dead, defeated, his ashes thrown to the wind. And it had been Hal himself who had scattered them at the ceremony.
‘Under ordinary circumstances, I would let my whiskers grow,’ he said. ‘But I am living among the wogs now so I may do more effective espionage, besides conducting my researches. And I have found out that the wogs regard a beard as an abomination; they have no beards themselves, you know. They do not understand why we let ours grow if we have means to remove them. And they feel uneasy and disgusted when in the presence of a bearded man. I can’t gain their confidence if I have one.
‘However, I plan to grow one the moment the project is begun.’
‘Hmm!’ sid Macneff, fingering the hairs on his face. ‘You may have something there. After all, these are unusual circumstances. But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You are so busy, from morning to bedtime, that I did not want to bother you,’ said Hal. ]He was wondering if Macneff would take the time and trouble to investigate the truth of his statement. For the wogs had never said one word to Hal about beards. He had been inspired to make his excuse when he remembered having read about the initial reactions of the American Indians to the facial growth of white men.
Macneff, after a few more words on the importance of keeping pure, dismissed Hal.
And Hal, shaking from the reaction of the lecture, went home. There, he had a few drinks to calm himself, then a few more to uninhibit himself for the supper with Jeannette. He had discovered that if he drank enough, he could overcome the disgust he felt on seeing food go into her naked mouth.
17
One day, Yarrow, returning from the market with a large box, said, ‘You’ve really been putting away the groceries lately. You’re not eating for two? Or maybe three?’
She paled. ‘Maw choo! Do you know what you’re saying?’
He put the box on a table and grabbed her shoulders.
‘Shib. I do. Jeannette, I’ve been thinking about that very thing for a long time, but I haven’t said anything. I didn’t want to worry you. Tell me, are you?’
She looked him straight in the eye, but her body was shaking. ‘Oh, no. It is impossible!’
‘Why should it be?’
‘Fi. But I know—don’t ask me how—that it cannot be. But you must never say things like that. Not even joking. I can’t stand it.’
He pulled her close and said over her shoulder, ‘Is it because you can’t? Because you know you’ll never bear my children?’
Her thick, faintly perfumed hair nodded.
‘I know. Don’t ask me how I know.’
He held her at arm’s length again.
‘Listen, Jeannette. I’ll tell you what’s been troubling you. You and I are of different species. Your mother and father were, too. Yet they had children. However, you may know that the ass and the mare have young,
too, but the mule is sterile. The lion and the tigress may breed, but the liger or tigon can’t. Isn’t that right? You’re afraid you’re a mule!’
She put her head on his chest; tears fell on his shirt.
He said, ‘Let’s be real about this, honey. Maybe you are. So what? Forerunner knows that our situation is bad enough without a baby to complicate it. We’ll be lucky if you are … uh … well, we have each other, haven’t we? That’s all I want. You.’
He couldn’t keep from being reflective as he dried her tears and kissed her and helped her put the food in the refrigerator.
The quantities of groceries and milk she had been consuming were more than a normal amount, especially the milk. There had been no telltale change in her superb figure. She could not eat that much without some kind of effect. A month passed. He watched her closely, She ate enormously. Nothing happened.
Yarrow put it down to his ignorance of her alien metabolism.
Another month. Hal was just leaving the ship’s library when Turnboy, the historian joat, stopped him.
‘The rumor is that the techs have finally made the globin-locking molecule,’ the historian said. ‘I think that this time the grapevine’s right. A conference is called for fifteen hundred.’
‘Shib.’
Hal kept his despair out of his voice.
When the meeting broke up at 1650, it left him with sagging shoulders. The virus was already in production. In a week, a large enough supply would be made to fill the disseminators of six prowler torpedoes. The plan was to release them to wipe out the city of Siddo: The prowlers would fly in spirals whose range would expand until a large territory was covered. Eventually, as the prowlers returned for reloading and then went out again, the entire planet of wogs would be slain.
When he got home, he found Jeannette lying in bed, her hair a black corona on the pillow. She smiled weakly.
He forgot his mood in a thrill of concern.
‘What’s the matter, Jeannette?’
The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage Page 15