Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  I asked myself what the hell Tamur meant, for he was an historian and supposedly committed to fact. This was not their Apocalypse.

  Unless they could be one and the same . . . ?

  Why not? I mused. Tirellian's handful of people were the remnant of what had obviously once been a highly developed culture. They had had wars, but no holocausts; science, but little technology. A plague, a plague that did not kill . . .? Could that have done it? How, if it wasn't fatal?

  I read on, but the nature of the plague was not discussed. I turned pages, skipped ahead, and drew a blank.

  M'Cwyie! M'Cwyie! When I want to question you most, you are not around!

  Whould it be a faux pas to go looking for her? Yes, I decided. I was restricted to the rooms I had been shown, that had been an implicit understanding. l would have to wait to find out.

  So I cursed long and loud, in many languages, doubtless burning Malann's sacred ears, there in his Temple.

  He did not see fit to strike me dead, so I decided to call it a day and hit the sack.

  I must have been asleep for several hours when Braxa entered my room with a tiny lamp. She dragged me awake by tugging at my pajama sleeve.

  I said hello. Thinking back, there is not much else I could have said.

  "Hello."

  "I have come," she said, "to hear the poem."

  'What poem?'

  "Yours."

  "Oh."

  I yawned, sat up, and did things people usually do when awakened in the middle of the night to read poetry.

  "That is very kind of you, but isn't the hour a trifle awkward?"

  "I don't mind," she said.

  Someday I am going to write an article for the Journal of Semantics, called "Tone of Voice: An Insufficient Vehicle for Irony."

  However, I was awake, so I grabbed my robe.

  "What sort of animal is that?"-she asked, pointing at the silk dragon on my lapel.

  "Mythical," I replied. "Now look, it's late. I am tired. I have much to do in the morning. And M'Cwyie just might get the wrong idea if she learns you were here."

  "Wrong idea?"

  "You know damned well what I mean!" It was the first time I had had an opportunity to use Martian profanity, and it failed.

  "No," she said, "I do not know."

  She seemed frightened, like a puppy being scolded without knowing what it has done wrong.

  I softened. Her red cloak matched her hair and lips so perfectly, and those lips were trembling.

  "Here now, I didn't mean to upset you. On my world there are certain uh, mores, concerning people of different sex alone together in bedrooms, and not allied by marriage . . . Um, I mean, you see what I mean?"

  "No."

  They were jade, her eyes.

  "Well, it's sort of . . . Well, it's sex, that's what it is."

  A light was switched on in those jade lamps.

  "Oh, you mean having children!"

  "Yes. That's itl Exactly."

  She laughed. It was the first time I had heard laughter in Tirellian. It sounded like a violinist striking his high strings with the bow, in short little chops. It was not an altogether pleasant thing to hear, especially because she laughed too long.

  When she had finished she moved closer.

  "I remember, now," she said. "We used to have such rules. Half a Process ago, when I was a child, we had such rules. But," she looked as if she were ready to laugh again, "there is no need for them now."

  My mind moved like a tape recorder played at triple speed.

  Half a Process! HalfaProcessaProcessaProcess! No! Yes!

  Half a Process was two hundred-forty-three years, roughly speaking!

  --Time enough to learn the 2224 dances of Locar.

  --Time enough to grow old, if you were human.

  --Earth-style human, I mean.

  I looked at her again, pale as the white queen in an ivory chess set.

  She was human, I'd stake my soul--alive, normal, healthy, I'd stake my life--woman, my body . . .

  But she was two and a half centuries old, which made M'Cwyie Methusala's grandma. It flattered me to think of their repeated complimenting of my skills, as linguist, as poet. These superior beings!

  But what did she mean "there is no such need for them now"? Why the near-hysteria? Why all those funny looks I'd been getting frorn M'Cwyie?

  I suddenly knew I was close to something important, besides a beautiful girl.

  "tell me," I said, in my Casual Voice, "did it have anything to do with 'the plague that does not kill,' of which Tamur wrote?"

  'Yes," she replied, "the children born after the Rains could have no children of their own, and--"

  "And what?" I was leaning forward, memory set at "record."

  "--and the men had no desire to get any."

  I sagged backward against the bedpost. Racial sterolity, masculine impotence, following phenomenal weather. Had some vagabond cloud of radioactive junk from God knows where penetrated their weak atmosphere one day? One day long before Shiaparelli saw the canals, mythical as my dragon, before those "canals" had given rise to some correct guesses for all the wrong reasons, had Braxa been alive, dancing, here--damned in the womb since blind Milton had written of another paradise, equally lost?

  I found a cigarette. Good thing I had thought to bring ashtrays. Mars had never had a tobacco industry either. Or booze. The ascetics I had met in India had been Dionysiac compared to this.

  "What is that tube of fire?"

  "A cigarette. Want one?"

  "Yes, please."

  She sat beside me, and I lighted it for her.

  "It irritates the nose."

  "Yes. Draw some into your lungs, hold it there, and exhale."

  A moment passed.

  "Ooh," she said.

  A pause, then, "Is it sacred?"

  "No, it's nicotine," I answered, "a very ersatz form of divinity."

  Another pause.

  "Please don't ask me to translate 'ersatz.' "

  "I won't. I get this feeling sometimes when I dance."

  "It will pass in a moment."

  "Tell me your poem now."

  An idea hit me.

  "Wait a minute," I said, "I may have something better."

  I got up and rummaged through my notebooks, then I returned and sat beside her.

  "These are the first three chapters of the Book of Ecclesiastes," I explained. "It is very similar to your own sacred books."

  I started reading.

  I got through eleven verses before she cried out, "Please don't read that! Tell me one of yours!"

  I stopped and tossed the notebook onto a nearby table. She was shaking, not as she had quivered that day she danced as the wind, but with the jitter of unshed tears. She held her cigarette awkwardly, like a pencil. Clumsily, I put my arm about her shoulders.

  "He is so sad," she said, "like all the others."

  So I twisted my mind like a bright ribbon, folded it, and tied the crazy Christmas knots I love so well. From German to Martian, with love, I did an impromptu paraphrasal of a poem about a Spanish dancer. I thought it would please her. I was right.

  "Ooh," she said again. "Did you write that?"

  "No, it's by a better man than I."

  "No, a man named Rilke did."

  "But you brought it across to my language.--Light another match, so I can see how she danced."

  I did.

  "The fires of forever,"' she mused, "and she stamped them out, 'with small, firm feet.' I wish I could dance like that."

  "You're better than any Gipsy," I laughed, blowing it out.

  "No, I'm not. I couldn't do that."

  Her cigarette was burning down, so I removed it from her fingers and put out, along with my own.

  "Do you want me to dance for you?"

  "No," I said. "Go to bed."

  She smiled, and before I realized it, had unclasped the fold of red at her shoulder.

  And everything fell away.

  An
d I swallowed, with some difficulty.

  "AII right," she said.

  So I kissed her, as the breath of fallen cloth extinguished the lamp.

  III

  The days were like Shelley's leaves: yellow, red, brown, whipped in bright gusts by the west wind. They swirled past me with the rattle of microfilm. Almost all the books were recorded now. It would take scholars years to get through them, to properly assess their value. Mars was locked in my desk.

  Eeclesiastes, abandoned and returned to a dozen times, was almost ready to speak in the High Tongue.

  I whistled when I wasn't in the Temple. I wrote reams of poetry I would have been ashamed of before. Evenings I would walk with Braxa, across the dunes or up into the mountains. Sometimes she would dance for me; and I would read something long, and in dactylic hexameter. She still thought I was Rilke, and I almost kidded myself into believing it. Here I was, staying at the Castle Duino, writing his Elegies.

  . . . it is strange to inhabit the Earth no more,

  to use no longer customs scarce acquired,

  nor interpret roses . . .

  No! Never interpret roses! Don't. Smell them (sniff, Kane!), pick them, enjoy them. Live in the moment. Hold to it tightly. But charge not the gods to explain. So fast the leaves go by, are blown . . .

  And no one ever noticed us. Or cared.

  Laura. Laura and Braxa. They rhyme, you know, with a bit of a clash. Tall, cool, and blonde was she (I hate blondes!), and Daddy had turned me inside out, like a pocket, and I thought she could fill me again. But the big, beat word-slinger, with Judas-beard and dog-trust in his eyes, oh, he had been a fine decoration at her parties. And that was all.

  How the machine cursed me in the Temple! It blasphemed Malann and Gallinger. And the wild west wind went by and something was not far behind.

  The last days were upon us.

  A day went by and I did not see Braxa, and a night.

  And a second. A third.

  I was half-mad. I hadn't realized how close we had become, how important she had been. With the dumb assurance of presence, I had fought against questioning roses.

  I had to ask. I didn't want to, but I had no choice.

  "Where is she, M'Cwyie? Where is Braxa?"

  "She is gone," she said.

  "Where?"

  "I do not know."

  I looked at those devil-bird eyes. Anathema maranatha rose to my lips.

  "I must know."

  She looked through me.

  "She has left us. She is gone. Up into the hills, I suppose. Or the desert. It does not matter. What does anything matter? The dance draws to a close. The Temple will soon be empty."

  "Why? Why did she leave?"

  "I do not know."

  "I must see her again. We lift off in a matter of days."

  "I am sorry, Gallinger."

  "So am I," I said, and slammed shut a book without saying "m'narra."

  I stood up.

  "I will find her."

  I left the Temple. M'Cwyie was a seated statue. My boots were still where I had left them.

  All day I roared up and down the dunes, going nowhere. To the crew of the Aspic I must have looked like a sandstorm, all by myself. Finally, I had to return for more fuel.

  Emory came stalking out.

  "Okay, make it good. You look like the abominable dust man. Why the rodeo?"

  "Why, I, uh, lost something."

  "In the middle of the desert? Was it one of your sonnets? They're the only thing I can think of that you'd make such a fuss over."

  "No, dammit! It was something personal."

  George had finished filling the tank. I started to mount the jeepster again.

  "Hold on there!" He grabbed my arm.

  "You're not going back until you tell me what this it all about."

  I could have broken his grip, but then he could order me dragged back by the heels, and quite a few people would enjoy doing the dragging. So I forced myself to speak slowly, softly:

  "It's simply that I lost my watch. My mother gave it to me and it's a family heirloom. I want to find it before we leave."

  "You sure it's not in your cabin, or down in Tirellian?"

  "I've already checked."

  "Maybe somebody hid it to irritate you. You know you're not the most popular guy around."

  I shook my head.

  "I thought of that. But I always carry it in my right pocket. I think it might have bounced out going over the dunes."

  He narrowed his eyes.

  "I remember reading on a book jacket that your mother died when you were born."

  "That's right," I said, biting my tongue. "The watch belonged to her father and she wanted me to have it. My father kept it for me."

  "Hmph!" he snorted. 'That's a pretty strange way to look for a watch, riding up and down in a jeepster."

  "I could see the light shining off it that way," I offered, lamely.

  "Well, it's starting to get dark," he observed. "No sense looking any more today."

  '"Throw a dust sheet over the jeepster," he directed a mechanic.

  He patted my arm.

  "Come on in and get a shower, and something to eat. You look as if you could use both."

  Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else's . . .

  His only qualifications for leadership!

  I stood there, hating him. Claudius! If only this were the fifth act!

  But suddenly the idea of a shower, and food, came through to me. I could use both badly. If I insisted on hurrying back immediately I might arouse more suspicion.

  So I brushed some sand from my sleeve.

  "You're right. That sounds like a good idea."

  "Come on, we'll eat in my cabin."

  The shower was a blessing, clean khakis were the grace of God, and the food smelled like Heaven.

  "Smells pretty good," I said.

  We hacked up our steaks in silence. When we got to the dessert and coffee he suggested:

  "Why don't you take the night off? Stay here and get some sleep."

  I shook my head.

  "I'm pretty busy. Finishing up. There's not much time left."

  "A couple days ago you said you were almost finished."

  "Almost, but not quite."

  "You also said they'll be holding a service in the Temple tonight."

  'That's right. I'm going to work in my room."

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  Finally, he said, "Gallinger," and I looked up because my name means trouble.

  "It shouldn't be any of my business," he said, "but it is. Betty says you have a girl down there."

  There was no question mark. It was a statement hanging in the air. Waiting.

  --Betty, you're a bitch. You're a cow and a bitch. And a jealous one, at that. Why didn't you keep your nose where it belonged, shut your eyes? Your mouth?

  "So?" I said, a statement with a question mark.

  "So," he answered it, "it is my duty, as head of this expedition, to see that relations with the natives are carried on in a friendly, and diplomatic, manner."

  "You speak of them," I said, "as though they are aborigines. Nothing could be further from the truth."

  I rose.

  "When my papers are published everyone on Earth will know that truth. I'll tell them things Doctor Moore never even guessed at. I'll tell the tragedy of a doomed race, waiting for death, resigned and disinterested. I'll tell why, and it will break hard, scholarly hearts. I'll write about it, and they will give me more prizes, and this time I won't want them.

  "My God!" I exclaimed. "They had a culture when our ancestors were clubbing the sabre-tooth and finding out how fire works!"

  "Yes!" I said. Yes, Claudius! Yes, Daddy! Yes, Emory! "I do. But I'm going to let you in on a scholarly scoop now. They're already dead. They're sterile. In one more generation there won't be any Martians."

  I paused, then added, "Except in my papers, e
xcept on a few pieces of microfilm and tape. And in some poems, about a girl who did give a damn and could only bitch about the unfairness of it all by dancing."

  "Oh," he said.

  After awhile:

  "You have been behaving differently these past couple months. You've even been downright civil on occasion, you know. I couldn't help wondering what was happening. I didn't know anything mattered that strongly to you."

  I bowed my head.

  "Is she the reason you were racing around the desert?"

  I nodded.

  "Why?"

  I looked up.

  "Because she's out there, somewhere. I don't know where, or why. And I've got to find her before we go."

  "Oh," he said again.

  Then he leaned back, opened a drawer, and took out something wrapped in a towel. He unwound it. A framed photo of a woman lay on the table.

  "My wife," he said.

  It was an attractive face, with big, almond eyes.

  "I'm a Navy man, you know," he began. "Young officer once. Met her in Japan.

  "Where I come from it wasn't considered right to marry into another race, so we never did. But she was my wife. When she died I was on the other side of the world. They took my children, and I've never seen them since. I couldn't learn what orphanage, what home, they were put into. That was long ago. Very few people know about it."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "Don't be. Forget it. But," he shifted in his chair and looked at me, "if do want to take her back with you--do it. It'll mean my neck, but I'm too old to ever head another expedition like this one. So go ahead."

  He gulped his cold coffee.

  "Get your jeepster."

  He swivelled the chair around.

  I tried to say "thank you" twice, but I couldn't. So I got up and walked out.

  "Sayonara, and all that," he muttered behind me.

  "Here it is, Gallinger!" I heard a shout.

  I turned on my heel and looked back up the ramp.

  "Kane!"

  He was limned in the port, shadow against light, but I had heard him sniff.

  I returned the few steps.

  "Here what is?"

  'Your rose."

  He produced a plastic container, divided internally. The lower half was filled with liquid. The stem ran down into it. The other half, a glass of claret in this horrible night, was a large, newly opened rose.

  "Thank you," I said, tucking it into my jacket.

  "Going back to Tirellian, eh?"