He started to get up, but she pulled him down.
'Don't be a coward, my brave spaceman.'
'It's not cowardice, it's, uh, just good plain common sense, discretion. And I'm afraid I'm losing them fast. Listen, Gulthilo, this is crazy! If we were on Earth, I wouldn't hesitate a second, since we'd both know exactly where we stand. But we're on Mars, and this society is different from mine. Mine has been very permissive, but even there attitudes are changing, and things are not going to be so loose. But that's not the point. Even if you were willing to take the chance, uh, to do it just for the sake of passion... what am I saying? I'm talking like somebody in a Victorian novel! You know what I mean.'
Gulthilo stood up. Though it was dark, there was enough light for him to see that she was still smiling. If she was hurt, she wasn't showing it.
'You're wrong to believe that I wouldn't lie with you unless you were in love with me.' She paused. 'I think.'
He didn't like looking up at her, so he stood up. But he still had to bend his head back. She was so tall.
'Little black man whom I love so much, I'm going back to my village now. I may or may not see you again, though I think I will. I'd like it very much if you came to see me instead of my seeking you out. But if you do, then I'll know that you know you're in love with me.'
'You mean, I'll be asking you to marry me?' he said, hoarsely.
'Of course. You're vibrating like a plucked harp string. You're shaken, aren't you?’
She reached out and enfolded him in her arms and kissed him on the mouth. For a moment, feeling the large soft breasts crushed against him, those large soft lips against his, he almost weakened. But she released him and he stood back, her hand on his shoulder. She had a very strong grip.
'Shalom, Richard. Though I imagine you don't feel so peaceful just now.'
Laughing softly, she swayed away.
Orme expelled a long hard breath. What a woman! A lioness! And what a state she'd left him in! His groin ached; he was quivering.
On the way home he began to feel cooler, and his thoughts stopped seething. Perhaps, and he cursed his eternal suspicion, she was working for the Martian government. It had appointed her to seduce him so that he'd marry her. And if he did that, then he might abandon his Terrestrial ties, become a Martian.
Or perhaps she was supposed to seduce him and then, if he refused to make her an honest woman, as the old phrase went, he could be imprisoned as a criminal. Or perhaps...
To hell with those speculations. If she was a seductress, she certainly was not a conventional one. She could have had him if she'd really tried.
Near his house he passed a drunken half-disrobed couple under a bush. One more marriage in the making.
Bronski was sitting in the front room watching the festivities on the TV. He looked up as Orme entered but said nothing.
'You can quit worrying,' Orme said. 'Here I am, and the virtue of the native women is untouched. At least, the one you saw with me is as chaste as she ever was.'
'It would have been a damn fool thing to do,' Bronski said. 'Who was she?'
'The woman with the Gothic name. I told you about her.'
The Frenchman stood up. 'I'm going to bed. I was really concerned about you. You could have got into terrible trouble.'
'Not to mention the moral reflection on you and the others,' Orme said.
'No, there wouldn't have been any terrible trouble. All I'd have had to do was marry her. And she's certainly willing.'
'You mean...?'
'Yes. She proposed.'
'And...?'
'I turned her down, though I didn't really put it into words. I mean, I told her I didn't love her.'
'And if you did love her?’
'I don't know. If I marry her I have to convert to Judaism. Or the Martian brand of Christianity or whatever it is. You know that. Once I do that, I become a Martian. My loyalties to Earth are dissolved. At least, they're supposed to. Could I do that? I mean, turn Martian? It sounds too much like a turncoat.'
'Not at all,' Bronski said. He was smiling, caught up in a problem that probably seemed to him rabbinical.
Bronski said, 'For one thing, your loyalties are not to Earth, as you put it. They're to your nation, Canada, primarily. Secondarily, to the North American Confederation. You have no loyalty whatsoever to the communist nations. You're thinking of Earth as a monolithic entity as opposed to the monolithic entity of Mars. Mars is one, but Earth is not. You need to reorganise your thinking, not to mention your emotions.'
'What's the difference between the two?'
Bronski frowned, then smiled.
'In most people, there's none. Well, you ponder on it. I'm going to bed.'
He started towards the bedroom, then stopped.
'Say, you know when you said that you showed perception.'
'What?'
'About the difference between thinking and emotion. Or I should say, to quote you, "What's the difference?" Very good.'
Orme said, 'Wait a minute. I only said... I don't know what I was saying.'
'The basic part of you did. Good night, Richard. You should get to bed too. Tomorrow... that may be the most important day of our lives. You should be rested. You'll need all your strength, physical, mental, emotional. If there's any difference in them.'
Orme said goodnight, but he paced back and forth for at least two hours. His thoughts alternated between Gulthilo and that man who was said to live inside the Martian sun. Both offered, or seemed to offer, a new life. Yet, at this moment, both were unacceptable. And, if they became acceptable, they would present him with new problems. But any new life, however better than the old, introduced new problems.
Did he really believe in the validity of either? She might be an agent to tempt him into becoming a Martian. As for the man called Jesus, he could be a hoax. Or, if not that, something other than what the Martians claimed he was.
Whatever he was, he wasn't what Orme had expected him to be. Orme believed, or thought he'd believed, that Jesus was the only begotten son of God, and that his purpose had been determined always, from before the beginning of time. He had sacrificed himself so that all the world might be saved, might live forever in blessedness, in the ecstasy of seeing God face to face. One day, a day that had been promised for more than two thousand years, the Last Judgement would come with uttermost terror and absolute joy. And those who had rejected God would go to hell. Hell would be the realisation that God was forever denied to the damned.
But here was Jesus, not on Earth but on Mars. And he was only a man who had thought of himself, when on Earth, as the Messiah, a Jew come to restore the holy kingdom of the Jews. Very little that had been written about him in the New Testament was true.
Orme should have been shattered by this revelation. The shock had been great but not as great as it should have been. Why? Because his belief had not really been as deep and firmly fixed as he had thought. He'd paid more than lip service to his religion, but it hadn't been rooted in his heart. He hadn't really been convinced. Not down there where the genuine, the living, convictions lived and looked up through the deep at the pseudo-convictions, the half-dead, swimming in what they thought was the light. The real light was in the darkness.
He went outside. It was quiet now. Everybody had gone home; the houses were dark. Possibly there were policemen patrolling the streets, but he saw no one. Anyway, though he knew they existed, he had never seen a policeman. According to what he'd been told, they didn't wear uniforms, and there were very few of them. That told him a lot about this society, the only one of its kind in the solar system. Where was there a better place to live? Nowhere.
He walked out into the silent street and looked up at the globe hanging below the apex of the cavern. It shone now with a candlepower equal to that of Earth's full moon. It even had the same markings, the man in the moon if you were a Westerner, the hare if you were a Japanese.
Up there, inside the glowing sphere, a man did live - if you could believ
e the Martians. There was no reason not to but he just could not accept the reality.
He stood for a moment, his neck bent back. And then he lifted up both hands and shouted, 'You up there! Do you have the answers to my questions?'
There was, of course no reply.
13
The sky was a great light show.
Orme, looking out of the window, saw that the blue had become spectra. Horizontal bands of bright and flashing purples, blues, oranges, red, greens, yellows, whites, and blacks were spread around the dome. Here and there, gold, indigo, scarlet, and silver stars were born, expanded, and exploded. Variously- shaped clouds of different colours and hues sprang from scattered points, swelled, raced writhing across the sky, and the starbursts momentarily met, coalesced, glowed, pulsed then faded away.
'Hey, Avram, come look at this!'
Bronski joined him, and his eyes grew large.
'It makes me shiver.'
'I wonder how they do that?' Orme said. 'The whole dome must be set with electronic devices.'
'No, I don't think so. You forget how far ahead of us they are. I'll wager that they use some principle unknown to us. Anyway, that's a small item to consider today. Forget you are an engineer, Richard. At least for today.'
The people were coming out of their houses. They were dressed in their best, both sexes clad in long silky robes of many colours, wearing flowers in their hair. They were laughing and skipping, many hand in hand. Orme opened the door and stepped outside. Now he could hear music from a distance, many bands playing: drums beating, trumpets blaring, flutes and fifes shrilling, harps twanging, cymbals crashing.
Abruptly a voice spoke from behind them. Orme turned to see Bronski gesturing for him to come back in. He did so and found the holograph image of a smiling Hfathon before the set.
'We expect you at the square in an hour,' he said. 'You'd better start out at once. It won't be easy to get through the crowds.'
Orme looked at his wristwatch.
'Yes, we know. Couldn't you send someone to drive us there?'
'The only one who rides today is the Messiah,' the Krsh said. 'Last night everybody drove or walked in and set up camp or stayed with relatives or friends. Perhaps I should have told you you'd be expected to walk. Please hurry. May he smile upon you. Shalom.'
His image blinked out.
Orme looked at Bronski, shrugged his shoulders, and said, 'You'd think they'd give us special treatment. After all, we are their guests. And part of this is for our benefit.'
The Frenchman looked at the gloriously pulsating sky.
'You still suspect that this is a hoax?'
'Now, I didn't say that!' Orme said. 'It's just that I have to keep a tight rein on my emotions.'
'You're not the only one,' Bronski said. 'Well, we'd better get going.'
They went out of the house again. Orme thought of how nice it was that he didn't have to lock the door. Then he thought, that was an irrelevant thought. Or was it? I've been trying all this morning to think of irrelevant things. To get my mind away from... Him. But it's like trying not to think about a hippopotamus.
They went out into the street, which was by then empty of Martians. Shirazi, looking pale and grim, stepped out of the house directly opposite theirs. Orme met him in the middle of the street.
'Where's Madeleine?'
'She says she's not going. She doesn't feel well.'
'Did she tell Hfathon that?'
Nadir shook his head. 'No. She didn't say a word to him.'
Orme grimaced. 'That's a hell of a note. Is she really sick?'
Shirazi nodded. 'Yes, but I don't believe it's from any physical cause. She's emotionally upset. She keeps saying that this is all a trick, a big con. So why should she go? I told her she had to because it would insult the Martians if she didn't.'
Orme got angry, but he told himself that perhaps he felt so furious because he was experiencing the same emotions as she. It was fear that was making her sick, the fear that this might be true.
But why should he, a Christian, be so terrified? Shouldn't he be as joyous as the Martians?
'This is nonsense,' he said loudly. 'Let's get her... if we have to drag her there!'
He led the others into the house. He had expected that at least she'd have the TV set on so she could see the events. But it was off, and she was lying in her bed. When she saw him storm in, she sat up.
'You might at least have the decency to knock!'
'You knew we were coming. Come on, Madeleine, get up and get going. Quit acting like a child!'
That brought her to her feet. Eyes wide, face distorted, she spewed French at him. Then she stopped, passed her hand over her face, shook, and said, in English, 'You got me mad to make me get out of bed, didn't you?'
He nodded. 'You have to go, Madeleine, unless you're really sick. In which case, I'll get a doctor.'
He didn't add that the doctor would be able to determine if she really were ill; she couldn't fake it.
'I don't know what's the matter with me,' she said. 'But I can make it. It's just that...'
'That you're like me,' he said. 'You're afraid it might be true.'
'What? But you...?'
'Let's talk about it some other time.'
They went out into the street and walked down along it until they came to the edge of the crowd. Neither said a word and the two men spoke in low voices to each other infrequently. When they reached the square, they drowned in a seastorm of noise. Everybody was talking, and what seemed like a hundred bands were blasting away. As for the numbers here, Orme thought there had to be a million people at least. They were squeezed shoulder to shoulder, breast to back, forming a colossal ring around a broad high stone platform in the centre of the square. Orme had never seen it before. The reason for that was that its top had been flush with the pavement. It was rising slowly now out of the ground. On its top stood about fifty men and women.
Shirazi yelled, 'How can we get through? It's hopeless!'
'Hfathon must have known this!' Orme yelled. 'What's he up to? He should have made arrangements to get us here early!'
He jumped as someone touched his shoulder. Turning, he saw a Krsh dressed in a green robe with a crimson slash angling across its chest.
Behind him was a long silvery boat. At least, it looked like a rowboat, though there were no oarlocks or oars.
The Krsh turned and walked away, gesturing at Orme to follow him. Orme got the others' attention, and led them to the craft. The Krsh reached into his robe and pulled out a small metallic cylinder. Holding one end against his lips, he spoke. His voice blared out.
'Please get into the shrrt.'
The four looked at each other, shrugged, and climbed in, where they sat down on low high-backed seats. The Krsh sat down at the chair in the bow and pulled out from under the bow covering a small box with levers. He turned and spoke through the bullhorn.
'Hang on. It'll just take a minute.'
He did something to the levers. Gently, the boat lifted off the ground straight up, paused when it was twenty feet above the ground, turned towards the platform, and slowly accelerated towards it. There was no noise from any propulsive unit, though it could have been drowned by the roar of the mob. Nor was there any feeling by the passengers that power was being applied.
When the boat was above the platform it lowered gently, landed, and the Krsh indicated that they should get out. A moment later it rose and, going faster this time, shot out beyond the crowd. There it landed, and the Krsh got out.
Hfathon said, 'You could have got here by asking the people to step aside. They would've made a path for you. But you were behind schedule, so I ordered a shrrt.'
His expression indicated that they had failed some sort of test. Probably the IQ, Orme thought. He did not mention Madeleine's reluctance. The Krsh, however, must have known that there was something wrong with her. Her skin was almost grey, and her eyes moved from side to side as if she expected something to come at her. Possibl
y, though, he didn't look any better. Was he pale beneath his dark pigment, and did his face look strained?
Neither Bronski nor Shirazi looked at ease.
The platform was still moving upwards slowly, but when it was about thirty- five feet above the ground, it stopped. Minutes passed. He looked up near the globe, shading his eyes. It was burning as brightly as ever.
A Krsh stepped out of the closely packed throng in the centre of the shaft. His robe was branded with alternating white and blue, over his real beard he wore a false one, long, curling, and red, and in his right hand was the shaft of a shepherd's crook of some dark blue wood.
'Rabbi Manasseh ben-Makhir,' Hfathon said in Orme's ear.
The rabbi lifted the staff. The roar and the music faded to a complete silence except for a number of crying babies. A woman at the edge of the crowd below the platform uncovered and stuck her nipple in her baby's mouth, and then it fell silent. Orme, seeing the magnificent breast, felt a surge in his groin. A moment later, he felt shame. Here he was waiting for the Messiah to appear, due in a few minutes, and he was sexually excited.
'Lord, forgive me,' he murmured.
But he thought, how could I help it? It's been a long time, and I'm no saint.
The rabbi began chanting, and on the third phrase the crowd joined in. The words were in Hebrew, which Orme did not understand but he chanted with them, filling in with nonsense words for a while, then switching to the Lord's Prayer in English.
Hfathon nudged him then and said, 'It's not necessary for you to join in with them. Better to be silent than say the wrong words.'
Orme felt his face burning.
The rabbi lifted his staff again. Silence once more, except for the screaming of babies. This time, though, there seemed to be fewer. Orme didn't look down; he didn't want to be distracted by bare breasts. Nevertheless, he thought, he can read my mind, and he'll know. But a second later he thought that that was surely nonsense. After all, according to what he'd been told, the Messiah was only a man - though adopted by God - and was not a telepath. And then he thought, anyway, I don't know that he is what they say he is. Maybe Danton is right.
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