by James Morrow
“I believe she has a minority report for us,” said Nazra. “I, for one, would like to consider it.”
Tez waited for dead silence, soon got it, began. “I sat here and heard it all, and I must confess to a bewilderment beyond words. I had always thought that Zolmec stood for something. Yes, nonviolence is certainly good business. It keeps people alive. It spares everyone the financial burden of courts and locks. But nonviolence is also right.” She slid into the aisle. Reaching the edge of the pit, she turned to confront the whole council. “Are you really ready to forsake the noblest tradition in human history on the word of two carnival barkers from outer space? Are you ready to abandon our litanies because these conmen say you should? ‘Thieves are unknown,’ boasts Zolmec. ‘Warriors unnamed.’ Have you forgotten?”
Nazra watched Tez’s face with pained, unvarying eyes. “You have done a brave thing in coming, Dr. Yon.” He rumbled at the crowd: “We should all remember, in the impending days, that this woman may have spoken the truth!”
“Forgive me, governor,” said Burne, “but this woman has spoken nothing but barf. An opoch ago Lostwax and she stopped loving each other. Dr. Yon is very upset.”
Francis burst from the shadows. “No, that isn’t fair. She has deep moral convictions!” His voice, louder than he expected, reached the farthest tier.
Tez spun toward the pit and offered Francis a grateful smile. “Thank you.” Now she fixed on Burne. “I have no doubt that you are destined to get your criminal little war. But I shall not join it, nor will my brother, nor will anyone else I can influence, beguile, convince, or seduce.”
“Zolmec,” said Nazra, “has always taught that the greatest words are ‘I could very well be wrong.’ A world without neurovores seems to me a beautiful dream, one that will reap for Quetzalia far more loaves than stones. But I could very well be wrong.”
Tez made her exit, charging for the nearest portal. As the dark tunnel closed around her, she cried out, in a voice that reached even to the pit, “And I have not stopped loving the Nearthling!”
The words bounced off granite and died, Francis thought: Nor I the Quetzalian.
16
SEVEN DAYS LATER Burne armed Momictla with a sword and brought her into Governor Nazra’s private study, and no matter how many slaps, pokes, and pinpricks he heaped upon her she refused to strike back. Afterward, Burne apologized.
Momictla returned the sword, holding its hilt as she would the tail of a diseased rat. “In church I shall use this to behead you,” she commented.
“I’d like to watch,” said Burne. “I’d like to see me in your dreams.”
Momictla’s spontaneous recovery from her bout with violence so impressed Nazra that he offered to let his palace become an army barracks. Burne replied that palaces did not lend themselves to toughening up soldiers. Instead, he would establish a boot camp in the backyard. Nazra’s backyard comprised ten grassy acres, flat and green as a billiard table.
Runners sent word that the adventure of the age was brewing at the governor’s palace, and every population center from mighty Tepec to piddling Oaxa sent volunteers. Francis was easily convinced to pack up his beetle, move out of Olo, and come supervise the inductions.
Sitting behind a marble desk in the palace’s main hall, he created soldiers at the rate of a hundred a day.
“Name?” He rarely looked up from the induction paper.
“Minnix Cies.”
“Address?”
“The Cies family cottage, south of Cuz on Harmony Road.”
“Now, repeat after me. The First Army of Aca hereby receives my strength…”
“This is silly,” said Minnix. The previous inductees had expressed similar opinions.
“My will…”
“Of course it does.”
“And my everlasting obedience.”
“That sounds rather neurovorean.”
Francis checked off the square indicating that Minnix had taken the loyalty oath. “We need to test your muscles.”
The minute he handed Minnix the longbow, Francis realized this was the fiery Antistasist who had defended their war in the Vij Arena. “So it’s you—our champion!”
“Bold ideas deserve nothing less. You are taking the dullness from our lives.”
“Don’t bother with the bow, soldier. We’re in your debt.”
But Minnix tried anyway, bringing the bow to maximum arc. Francis explained that new recruits must report to the brigadier general’s tent behind the mansion, and Minnix fired off an uncertain impersonation of a salute.
In the brigadier general’s tent, Burne gave pep talks about the new day that was dawning on Luta and how, throughout history, dying for your country had always been regarded as the chance of a lifetime. Most inductees, Antistasists included, replied that idiot patriotism was not for them. They were here to fight one war, one battle, after which they intended to become religious again. Often Burne found himself saying, “I don’t think you would make a very good soldier,” and with grating predictability he heard that he wouldn’t make a very good pacifist. But he dared not shrivel his ranks by sending such upstarts home. He made them dig latrines.
ONE FINAL HOUR of recruiting, and the First Army of Aca would have its thousand. Eyes swimming with the day’s succession of induction papers, Francis dragged his pencil up to the Name line. “Name?”
“Tez Yon.”
Automatically he transcribed the words. “Address?” He read what he had written. “Tez!”
“I want to talk,” she said wearily.
A dormant bitterness awoke. “Talk? Why not follow your custom and leave an insulting note on my pillow? The bedroom is upstairs.” Tez merely glowered. “I thought perhaps you were joining the First Army.” He meant this half-seriously. The crazed notion that Tez was reversing her scruples had come to him the instant he recognized her. Francis’s weaknesses included jumping blithely past the absurdity of such a thesis and managing to perceive all subsequent words and deeds as fitting it perfectly.
“I would not join your army,” said Tez in stately tones, “if you planted a barbary bush in my stomach.”
“You, of course, are a virgin in such matters. You never thought about cutting Mool’s heart out. You just thought you thought about it.”
“I didn’t come to quarrel, Francis!”
He rushed the remaining volunteers through induction, leaving out the loyalty oath and the longbow test. The First Army stood at one thousand exactly. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Traumatized by an incipient winter, the governor’s garden looked blasted and grim. The snows were still two opochs away, but all the colors had gone south. Everywhere, fountains gurgled with incongruous jollity.
“I think about your father sometimes,” said Francis.
“He’s not suffering.”
“That’s good. I think about your brother, too.”
“He’s not suffering either. Just insufferable.”
“And I think about you.”
“I should thank you for defending me against Burne in the arena. It must have been hard to contradict a friend.”
“It…happened.”
“Then there’s hope. Your intuitions say this war is wrong.”
“I thought you didn’t want a quarrel.” Francis waved his thumb toward the boot camp. “You came to talk them into going home? I admire your determination.”
“I’ll say it straight out. I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“I am, to use an insipid expression, carrying your child.”
“It’s really mine?”
“And mine.”
Joy possessed Francis. “Glory! Dwarf’s foot is fallible!”
“On Nearthlings, at any rate.”
“Obviously I was meant to be a father again. It’s like Barry’s coming back.”
“Via a new mother.”
“That’s the best part.” He drew her near, half expecting rebuff, but their lips met comfortably.
&
nbsp; “I missed you,” she hummed.
“When you moved out I tried not to care, but I couldn’t.” Facing the nearest fountain, he moved his hand forward, rotating it until he felt the icy water pound his palm. “This baby won’t get diabetes, either. We’ll bring the pills when we leave.”
“Leave?”
“For Nearth.” He had spoken without plan, and it suddenly rushed upon him what he had said. We. Yes! He meant it.
“You want me to go back with you?”
He did not expect the idea to be automatically popular, and on the evidence of her collapsed face it was not. “I want him, her—the child—to be a Nearthling.”
“Which can only be accomplished by making the mother one too?”
“If all goes well, we’ll be launching Darwin in less than forty days. The baby can’t be born here if Nearth’s to be his home. Oh, my planet has its humanities, you’ll see. Nobody should grow up without riding a roller coaster.” He smiled like Mr. Nose. “This child is going to be happy.”
“I didn’t ride a roller coaster, and I was happy.”
“It’s just that this is so important to me.” He was practically jumping up and down.
Tez took one look and felt herself melting. God of the brain, I do love him. But—leave? No more marionette shows with Loloc? No more Legend Eves?
She broke the silence by announcing that she would seriously consider going to Nearth, “but only if two things happen.”
“Yes?”
“First, we don’t take off as long as my father is alive.” Francis protested that Burne would want to leave the minute Darwin was in hand. “If my father is alive,” Tez replied, “you will leave without me. The second condition is that you withdraw all your support for this war nonsense. I won’t ask you to encourage desertions, but I expect you to leave Aca. Tell Burne you will stay behind when the army marches out. You once said the idea of genuinely pacifist deities charmed you. How could killers—generals and Joan of Arc—be thought great? Now prove your convictions!”
“Burne will think me spineless.”
Her lips pressed together and vanished.
Francis withdrew his hand from the fountain, watched wet pearls fall from his fingertips. “There is also the matter of avenging Kappie and Luther.”
“They will be avenged, and it won’t matter one jot whether you’re around or not. Look, if I’m going to change cultures, I want the goodwill of my friends. I want them to know that Burne Newman is not the paragon of Nearthlings. Some of them, like Francis Lostwax, have morals to match our own.”
He pushed a sigh through his teeth. “Our foetus is already—what? An opoch old? He’s been a fish—and an amphibian. Two billion years of evolution. It’s time I grew up too.” He explained that it would take him three or four days to settle his affairs, pack his belongings, and work up enough nerve to tell Burne his decision, after which he would join her at Olo.
“I appreciate your sacrifice,” said Tez with no intended irony.
“You’re making the sacrifice.”
“Can Nearth use an experienced neurosurgeon?”
“And an experienced puppeteer. Oh, we’re going to do splendidly, Tez. You can train our doctors in homeopathy, and they can teach you about robot limbs and dialysistems. We can fly kites in the spring and carve pumpkins in the autumn, and maybe, if you’re very, very good, I’ll teach you how to drive a magnecar.”
WHEN FRANCIS FINALLY got around to revealing that his plans for the future included not only deserting the army but also bringing his pregnant lover back to Nearth, Burne predictably went up in smoke.
“Lostwax, what are you doing to me? How can I expect Quetzalians to fight for your ship when you won’t?” The palace balcony overlooked a drill field, and Burne pointed down at his army. Officers watched helplessly as privates gavotted in outré patterns that fit precious few definitions of marching.
“I talked with Minnix Cies,” said Francis. “He says he fights for Quetzalia’s freedom, not for Darwin. The Antistasists understand my position.”
“I wish I did.”
Francis alternated between arguments stressing his frantic desire to raise a Nearthling child and arguments stressing his personal belief that mass murder was not a good thing to do, even when gilded by euphemisms like war and destiny. “I realize I’m being a crushing bother. Now you’ll have to fly Darwin back here and pick us up. Still, I speak from deep convictions.”
Burne went “hrumph,” said that he should probably respect Francis’s convictions, “even though they’re wrong.”
“Remember, I was the one who figured out we could reprogram these people. I’ve made my contribution to your war, Burne. One more volunteer can’t win it for you, especially a marshmallow like me.”
Burne suddenly brightened. “Actually, it’s already won, as far as I’m concerned—and despite the quirks of my so-called soldiers.”
“They march funny,” Francis observed as he watched the army run into itself.
“They can’t see the necessity of concerted action. Everybody’s a goddam soloist.”
Burne recounted a recent conversation between himself and one of his more trustworthy lieutenants. “General, I’ve never been in a battle, but from what I’ve read it’s a pretty individualist thing. You charge at your own speed toward the enemy, slashing your sword on your own initiative and at times selected by you, and by yourself you pick out a likely neurovore to kill, and if it throws a spear you don’t wait for orders to duck, you just duck. I think you can see where I’m heading, sir. All this conformity you’ve been promoting—wearing liveries and walking in lockstep—it’s useless. You should be training us in intuition and creativity.”
Francis asked, “What did you tell him?”
“I told him he was a troublemaker.”
“Hmmm…I’m not sure I disagree with him.”
“Unfortunately, your lack of disagreement is shared by seven-eighths of this camp.”
Burne began to prattle and whine. Two days ago he had issued uniforms, and everybody proceeded to restitch seams, add pockets, insert feathers, and slap on designs until the First Army of Aca boasted a diversity rarely found outside of zoos. Every military custom since Troy was greeted with counterclaims and sneers. Burne would say, “We need bugles,” and the volunteers would answer, “What for? We can hear you.”
“We need banners.”
“What for? We can see you.”
“We need to group ourselves into regiments. The regiments into battalions, the battalions into companies, the companies into platoons, the platoons into squads. That’s what we need around here—organization!”
“What for? We know who we are.”
The more Francis heard, the more his puzzlement grew. “I don’t understand. Your army is a shambles, yet you expect total victory.”
“That’s absolutely true. You see, these soldiers can do the one thing soldiers must be able to do—use weapons.”
“You’ve seen them duel?”
“Of course not. Quetzalians won’t cross swords, not for anything. It’s their archery, Lostwax, that’s where we’ve got the Brain Eater by the scrotum. Sure, we’ll take armor into the desert, lots of it, but this war is going to be won from afar, I guarantee it.”
“They can shoot well?”
“Come to target practice.” Burne elaborated that every volunteer had made a longbow, and the bull’s-eye got hit so often the rest of the target might as well not be there.
“Obviously they don’t see it as aggression.”
“They see it as a game. And they’re mounted, too. From a charging lipoca they can shoot the tits off the queen of spades at fifty meters. Hell, they’re the finest light cavalry in the solar system!”
“There, you see—everything will be great. I’d only get in the way.”
“I suppose I should be furious, but who am I to stand between you and the love of your life?”
Nipped by the autumn air, Francis announced his intent to
head for the nearest hearth. “But I have one last question. Why are you only a brigadier general? Why not a four-star general?”
“Because there must be a rank I can promote myself to for winning the war.”
Francis shook his friend’s hand, turned, and ambled toward Nazra’s kitchen, a colossal smile on his face. Good old Burne.
THE NEXT TWENTY DAYS were the best Francis had ever known on Luta or any other planet. Once, twice, sometimes three times an afternoon a Tepecan would stop by, say hello, and thank the Nearthling for being more moral than Quetzalia’s own Antistasists. In the sacred city an impassioned antiwar movement was fermenting, and Francis had become its emblem. For his afternoon visitors he represented the larger potential of humanity, the possibility that pacifism might be as natural as aggression. He glowed with self-respect.
Fantasy became his principal mode of thought. As he shuffled around his favorite places—Olo’s gardens, Tepec’s clean streets—mental images accompanied him like benevolent ghosts. He saw himself as a professor at the Galileo Institute, his office aswarm with prizes and several generations of corkscrew beetles. He saw Tez by his side, dazzling Nearth doctors with her uncanny knowledge of folk remedies that worked. And he saw a little boy—sometimes it was a girl—asking his father to take him to the circus. They went and had a grand old time.
Of course, all these dreams were predicated on Quetzalia winning the war. Every morning, incertitude hacked into him, and he had to remind himself that Burne Newman could do anything.
For Tez the days crackled with an expectation that was sometimes frightening but usually fun. She was not one to brood over her commitments, even her revocable commitments, and she knew how to squelch doubt with busyness. Collecting her tools from the Hospital of Chimec, selling off the conglomerated geegaws of her life, packing her puppets into footlockers—all such tasks helped convince her that the emigration was going to happen, had to happen, and should be viewed as an enviable adventure, not a loss.
Tez and Francis’s hours together confirmed each as the other’s ideal mate. Through mental discipline and an herb called motherweed, Tez eluded both the pesky nausea and the sexual disinterest common to early pregnancy. Out of bed, the lovers strolled through the city and rode their lipocas far into the country. They collaborated on a puppet play called The Gestation Waltz.