by Tanith Lee
“Oh Hergal!” I practically screamed. “How could you?”
“What’s wrong?” Hergal inquired, lazily uncoiling her lithe, silver body from a floating couch and jumping neatly into bounce on the crystallize-rubber floor.
“You’re female!” I stated.
“Top marks,” she sneered. Her hair was long and twilight mauve, plaited and full of jewelry. She had emeralds pasted on the nipples of her small, delectable breasts, and a groin shield of flowers.
My happiness exploded and was gone. I explained, between the dry sobs of my furious disappointment.
“Well, how was I to know?” Hergal asked me, reasonably enough. She tried to comfort me, but at the touch of her lovely soft arm I rushed out and went home. I’d forgotten to give her the snake, but the pet had fun with it, and for units after I fell and tripped and skidded over dismantled pearl plates. Symbolism again, I suppose, of my dismantled hopes.
4
Hatta signaled.
To torture myself, looking into his four pink eyes, I imagined saying: “Hatta, make a child with me.” Ugh! Just to think of it. I didn’t suppose the Committee would allow it anyway. The baby would probably grow three or four heads, and hooves or something.
“No,” I said to Hatta, not really having listened to what he was saying, but having guessed—correctly too, presumably, judging from his woebegone expression. He went away.
The pet wanted to play and I didn’t. We had a one-sided row and it bit me.
Who? That was the question. Who? Who? Who? I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to give their half to my child. Besides, everyone seemed to be being female all over the place. Even Kley.
And then I thought of the sand-ships, one every twelve units, out of Four BEE, across the Burning Desert, etc., into Four BOO and Four BAA. Perhaps some handsome body with a handsome life spark inside it was waiting to be useful there. Oh joy!
“Want to come?” I asked the pet doubtfully.
I knew it would insist on coming, and bite everybody all the time, and go zaradann at the worst possible moments. It followed me to the porch, honking softly.
“Come on then.” I hefted it and ducked unsuccessfully a bite on the nose which turned out, luckily, to be a kiss instead.
5
It felt really strange, going out of Four BEE.
You had to book your place on a sand-ship, but I was lucky, they said, this was an off-peak traveling time. Actually, it’s always off-peak now. The desert and those great black mountains and volcanoes, extinct or otherwise, give people the creeps. When I got aboard I could see my fellow travelers sitting around cringing, waiting to be flung out at the inhospitable bosom of what it, after all, our own planet. There were a few Jang, but obviously a complete circle who didn’t want an outsider like me slipping in. They looked pretty female, anyway, even the two males. And they were cringing too, while being superficially ever so young and daring. They’d probably never even sabotaged anything. I must admit the first sabotage I did, with Hergal and Kley, nearly an eighth of a rorl ago, I felt really agoraphobic about the great open spaces beyond the lookout post at 6D, though it was sort of wonderful too, to find something your stomach could really churn over at last. The two or three other passengers were Older People, one hugging a pink animal, and I tugged at the pet’s scruff worriedly.
“You dare,” I said.
The pet, unstained innocence incarnate, licked its shimmering coat.
After we’d been sitting around for a while, a robot came aboard from somewhere or other and checked us, with irritating slowness, against a passenger list in one of the steel pillars.
The robot informed me that my animal was unregistered, and I would have to sign a special document if I wanted it to stay on board. I nearly took the opportunity to have the pet thrown out, but couldn’t bring myself to, so I signed. The pet tried to bite the robot. There was a lot of noise. Hey ho, conspicuous again.
There were clankings and the whoopings of sirens, and we started off at a slow gallop. The ejector nets grabbed us with a bit of juddering here and there, and we eased, with a high-pitched whistling sound, out of the electricity wave dome that covers Four BEE. The light changed. There was a soft bang as the dome locks shut. The passengers all glared around at the covered window spaces, looking ghastly with pretended jollity and sangfroid. And then this announcement came on that nearly made me choke with sadistic glee:
“Those of you who wish to avail yourselves of the Transparency Tower in the stern may now do so.”
And nobody, of course, stirred. Well, I mean, look at all that drumdik, beastly great desert, all those foul natural phenomena, like rain-carved rocks and wind-chiseled screes—I was up before I knew it. All right, I did want to avail myself of the Transparency Tower. The robot nearly collapsed, but tottered after me somehow to switch on a guide machine which droned on about natural features. The pet followed me and peered out too, probably remembering its desert home near Four BOO in the good old days, before stupid people dragged it out of its burrow by its long, curling, impossible whiskers, and condemned it to being a pet to some fool like me.
The T.T. was oval, made of glacia-view, resistant to atmospheric pressure, weather, sand, but completely seethroughable. The dome of the roof was also clear, bearing some sort of blurred crest of the old sand-ship fleet. They’re a pretty ancient institution. Everyone thought they’d be replaced by body displacing machines until we all found out that they make you vomit. By then everyone was anti-travel, anyway.
“How does it feel to man a relic?” I asked the guide machine, which was trying to bully me into turning into twenty pairs of eyes stuck in a revolving neck. “No, I won’t look at that geological fault. No, nor the extinct volcano on my left. I’ll do my own looking.” And I did. Honestly, the rock spires looked just like fantastic castles from some myth or other. I caught myself imagining they were, and stopped myself. Oh but… and the sky was dark, sort of turquoise more than blue, with a ghost of greenness moving through it all the time. Everything else was in tones of black, with the odd pinky-red vein here and there, except the sand which was just pale and seemed to reflect rainbow. Dust devils shimmered and canyons yawned, and I was just going into a quiet frenzy when suddenly the sides and roof opaqued. I had a moan at the robot about this, but apparently they clear automatically at certain periods of the day and then cloud pretty quickly, in case it proves too much for you and you go zaradann all over their ship.
Back below, I found the pet had run off and was having a fight with the pink animal, and everybody else was having hysterics. Couldn’t I control my monster, they wanted to know? No, I couldn’t; would they care to try? They backed away, and I lunged and somehow got the pet and an armful of teeth as well. The older female grabbed the pink animal and hugged its tattered, snarling body to her bosom. It kicked her.
Then, fortunately, this silvery ringing tone announced the arrival of a meal in the saloon, and we trouped off to gorge. It was pretty groshing, really, gold plates and so on, and goblets with patterns and little mauve bubbles blown in the crystallize. We started off with iced fire-tomatoes in red wine, progressed to root steak and forced beans in amber sauce with spices, and ended up with spike-fruits, desert plums, and lichen cheese with nuts. There were gallons of fire-and-ice and Joyousness, which contains ecstasy.
I ate alone and fed the pet from my plate, just to get on everyone’s nerves. It wasn’t keen, though, and only brightened up when the robot trundled up with its dish of syntho-meat substitute and cactus cream. I had to pay heavily for that. They even gave it some wine but what wine precisely I’m not clear on. It didn’t go into ecstasy though, or anything, thank goodness.
After the meal—apparently they only serve seven meals on the ships but you could get cold snacks in between; it’s sensible really. Even then, only one man attended every sitting—the Older People went off to watch picture-vision and the Jang had a swim in the pool-tank, which, I have to admit, tempted me. Not with them in it, however
. I took one of the large moving picture magazines from the ship’s store and went to sit in the Transparency Tower, keeping the pet firmly tucked between my feet.
Quite soon the glacia-view unclouded and I saw a troup of long-eared things with antennae and ski feet, thumping across the desert at a great rate. They looked dreadfully purposeful and intense. You could imagine them grabbing you at parties and telling you all about the Movement. It made me giggle, then feel odd, as if I’d been cut out of a circle and had to cry. However, the pet diverted my attention by staring at them and barking.
“You’ve never barked before,” I admired. “You should do it more often.”
It gave me a withering look.
Several opacities later, I saw that the turquoise sky was blushing slightly on the horizon, over a tall black funnel of mountain. There was a dullish boom of earthquake thunder and the ship sort of shuddered ever so gently. Immediate signal for cries and screeches from below. In the saloon, where some of them were having another meal, a solitary crystallize goblet bounced across the floor. I resigned myself to the stupid glacia-view clouding over to prevent my incipient, though in fact nonexistent, paranoid hysteria. But it didn’t. It probably presumed I’d have run below, yelling and sweating with the others. So I saw this derisann and positively insumatt eruption, complete with exploding pink and mauve flowers of smoke, fountains of sparks, and a great whoosh of lava and black ash. What joy! The sand-ship, of course, was suitably programmed to avoid this sort of involuntary cabaret and took off from its air cushions at a steep angle, going to port like anything and soon leaving the panorama behind. Still, I’d actually witnessed a real event. The pet honked.
“All right,” I said, “you’re always honking. There’s nothing so wildly original in that!”
I spent a really revolting night, at least to start with. First of all the pet kept jumping on to my anchored float-bed and messing up its soothing, rocking action. Then it kept forcing its way into the bed with me. Then there would be a scene, the pet would leave, and two splits later there it would be crashing down on me again. Eventually it wandered off and got rid of its wine ration in the saloon. It was the robot who woke me up this time with the above joyful news. It said I was to be sure to take the pet to the pet vacuum drift, next to the ordinary vacuum drift, as the automatic cleaners should not be got out at this time of night. So I guiltily crawled from bed and forced the pet into performing a pee of insignificant extent in the right place.
Then I really couldn’t sleep, despite turning on the bed’s cooler-waves, then the heaters, the ecstasy machine, and a lullaby unit that was utterly nauseous and seemed to think I was still at hypno-school.
I got up and tailed off to the T. Tower and, to my great delight, discovered it stayed clear all night, so I swallowed stay-awake pills in case and spent six hours or so with red-flickering, volcanic darkness, low-slung, hard, cold living stars, the quick ignition of animal eyes through rock arches and in strings of gold along the sand. And I actually saw a real dawn. It was less spectacular than in a dome, but they had a sort of ethereal wonder about them, those pale, arrowing green shafts of light that slowly pulled from the dark this round orange sun, which turned brighter and fiercer until I had to look away, my eyes streaming. I saw black spots for ages, and honestly got a bit scared until they finally went off. No one had warned me that you couldn’t stare at the real sun like you can stare at that false yellow thing in Four BEE.
6
The Jang passengers appeared fairly soon after. They’d been having some sort of suitable Jang orgy in their single cabin, with ecstasy, Upper-Ear music and, as I gathered the two males were married to the two females, presumably having love all over the place as well. They looked vague as they knocked back their energy pills and ate toasted angel-food.
“Attlevey,” I gaily cried, to see what would happen. They attlevey-ed in return, even more vaguely. Circles seemed to get more and more cliquey every vrek.
The pet and I had first meal alone again, and we ate cactus mushrooms and fried root bread. I don’t usually eat that early, but the journey had given me an appetite. Trite, wasn’t it? The pet snuffled about and decided it liked mushrooms. It toyed with its syntho-meat substitute, but golluped down all the wine with floating cream. I liked the look of that and ordered one. Mine came in a goblet, and very nice it was too, before the pet realized, gave it a good swipe out of my hand, and drank the resultant spilled stuff on the floor. Again the robot came and told me off, and the Older People, who didn’t seem terribly Jang-disposed, probably because being surrounded by a lot of explosive volcanoes disturbed them, chat-chatted away about disgraceful lack of training in the pet—all my fault—and disgraceful lack of table manners in me, letting it drink from my goblet. Well! That’s one way to put it, I suppose.
I was rather glad when we got to Four BOO. I’d heard the older female with the pink animal tell the robot that I ought to be put out of the ship, and the pet too. Apparently I had priority; the pet was just an afterthought. I didn’t think it would happen, though. It’s quite illegal unless, of course, I’d turned homicidal, and then they’d have to give me oxygen tablets or hypodermics, maps, drinking water, food, a floating hydrotent…. Still, it make you feel a bit odd when people want to throw you out that badly. I could just see that woman stunning me with her great big crystallize and gold chronometer, chucking me from the lock-port, and then thrusting the pet down the vacuum drift, through the antiseptic layer, into Nothing. The pet got the last laugh, though.
Just before arrival, I heard this female screaming around, yelling that she’d lost her pink animal. Everyone sort of joined in the search and eventually located these ghastly noises coming from the saloon. There were gasps and grunts and little wounded cries, and a sort of background honking that could only be—
“Oh! You abominable Jang Girl!” screeched the older female. “My poor little Honey-Nut is being massacred by your thing.” Honey-Nut was presumably the pink animal; the “thing” was presumably guess who.
In fear and trembling we all advanced into the saloon, and there they were, Honey-Nut and the pet, and honestly, I think the older female would have been happier if the pet had just torn Honey-Nut’s rose pink throat out.
“Aah!” she shrilled. “How could you!”
It was a small betrayal.
What the two of them were actually doing was having love. No, really. And apparently it was absolutely groshing, judging from the row. The female hopped around, yelping that somebody ought to go and tear them apart, and I think I really upset her when I asked how she’d like being torn apart from her chosen male in the middle of something like that. Anyhow, sense prevailed and we left them alone, watching fascinated until the climax came in a rolling, shrieking ball of flying fur and pistoning paws and thrashing tails. They collapsed exhausted. Well, it must have taken at least thirty splits. I felt ridiculously proud of the pet when it stood up, shook itself, and came strolling over, the epitome of nonchalance. I picked it up and congratulated it, being very careful how I held it. It was probably a little sensitive here and there.
“I’ll have the Committee on you!” yowled the older female. “Despoiling my animal! And if she lays an egg …!”
I thought she might be going to have a fit, but she didn’t, unfortunately. Somehow I got the feeling that Honey-Nut had laid eggs before.
And just then, luckily, the ship announced that we were approaching Four BOO.
7
Well, I really was out of Four BEE now.
Of course, Four BOO and BAA are pretty much the same, except for the volcanic pits at BOO and the huge android animal breeding grounds at BAA which produce gorgeous semi-synthetic creatures, like Jade Tower’s dragon. The other thing to remember is that a messenger bee in BAA becomes a baa, and a boo in BOO. Logical but confusing.
Anyway, naturally the first thing that happened when I got off the sand-ship was that my boo fell on my head in front of the Jang, the outraged Older People, a positiv
ely glowing Honey-Nut, and a whole crowd of robots and Q-Rs and general gawpers who’d come to see us arrive. I tried to look blasé.
I was ever so Jang for disembarkation. I had to attract Jang males, after all. I wore see-through trousers with little silver disks on the ankle hems, and a corresponding see-through tunic with corresponding disks at the hips. Both were lightly spangled with silver dust. Silver chains clanked around my groin, and between my breasts big greenish opals on platinum ropes quivered and bounced. I wore long turquoise earrings reaching to my navel, which also proudly sported a turquoise to match. My hair was a riot of silk flowers, metal do-dahs, and a big fan comb dribbling pearls.
We were on the Arrival Stretch, a close-shaved area of feather grass with artistic copper trees with tortured trunks. Nearby, outside the protective dome, volcanoes roared and spewed fire, but you’d never have known. They actually reduce all that splendor to helping their power station banks, but that’s kind of nice because it makes things cheaper and sometimes, after a particularly good eruption, everything you buy is free for the unit.
I stared around and flashed my toe rings, but there wasn’t a Jang male in sight.
We had to give our identities and place of origin at a little reception desk with glass pillars and a fountain. After that the others all trundled off into waiting rented bird-planes, bubbles, etc. I made for an old walkway with some rather nice eighth-dimensional sculptures along it. I wanted to see and be seen. The pet rushed along behind me, tapping at my silver ankle disks with heavy white paws.
“Who had love with Honey-Nut?” I felt suddenly prompted to ask, and we did a little dance together among the statuary. Astonishing! I felt wildly happy.
This machine thing with tentacles zoomed up soon after that and began offering me accommodations. They can spot a tourist in about two splits, the Committees in our cities, and once they have, they’re after you. Still, I suppose it’s quite useful. There were lots of exotic places to “relax and enjoy myself.” I chose the Volcanic Lake Palace; it sounded as though it would be crawling with Jang males. The tentacled thing rushed off in hysterical delight and was back in seconds with a bird-plane in rainbow colors that apparently would be free of charge. Good. The pet and I got in, and the tentacled thing gave the robot directions and then slipped tactfully away, assuring me I would never regret my choice. Well, that was a real laugh.