The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Bahr shook his head. “I have talked with Mr. Halevi, too, and I fear that he is as much of a fanatic in his way as Mr. Kuroki. He talks a great speech about democracy and leads some sort of underground opposition. But once in power—”

  “Mother of God, have they even got politics here?”

  “Man is a political animal,” said Bahr.

  “Then I might as well go back to Earth; this turns out to be just as crass. What’s your idea?”

  Bahr explained. “First, I want to get in touch with the Záva. After all, they are what I came here for.”

  “Here now, don’t go joining them! Kuroki’s right about that. If we do get caught here, our only safety lies in absolute neutrality.”

  Althea burst out, “I don’t agree, Brian! If the Daryava are going to make an unprovoked attack on Zá to enslave its people, it’s our duty to warn them.”

  “Look, darling, if you want to risk your pretty neck for the sake of the monkey-men, that’s one thing; but ours, too, is something else. Gottfried, she’s a fine girl with noble instincts and all, but as a man of science you should take an impartial attitude, now shouldn’t you?”

  Bahr frowned. “I fear that I agree with Althea, although not for her reason.”

  “What then?”

  “I came here to do an important job; but if my subjects are all killed or enslaved, I cannot test them, can I?”

  “The Devil take your tests! Don’t tell me that learning whether a monkey can put a dot in the circle and in the triangle but not in the hexagon is worth more than life itself—even life on the Isle of the Free!”

  “There is more to it than that,” continued Bahr equably. “You said yourself that Mr. Kuroki will not help us to leave here, and our first chance otherwise would not come until the visit of the next ship bringing mail from Majbur.”

  “When’s that?” asked Althea.

  “Not for several ten-nights, as I ascertained by inquiry. But if we warned the Záva, we might be in a position to ask that they take us off this island in one of their ships.”

  Kirwan said, “But how are you going to get in touch with them?”

  “Through the so-called Virgin of Zesh.”

  “’Tis against the rules of the club to visit the lady,” said Kirwan.

  “That seems unreasonable,” said Althea.

  “You don’t know our latter-day Zeus,” said Kirwan. “The more unreasonable a thing is, the better he likes it. He claims the Záva are following in the fatal footsteps of us Terrans, by building up an industrialized, mechanized culture. So they’re as contaminating an influence as Earthmen, and he has tried to stop all contact with them.”

  “Well, he can’t stop Gottfried and me from going there,” said Althea. “We don’t belong.”

  “Maybe he can’t, but some of his muscle boys could have a lot of fun trying.”

  “Oh.” Althea had not until this moment realized the full implications of being where the only law was the whim of the head man. But she scornfully asked, “Are you afraid?”

  “Devil a bit. If you and Gottfried go, I’ll go, too. But if you’ll take a bit of advice, you’ll go at night, when the rest of the nature nuts are asleep.”

  After dinner, Althea and Bahr managed to avoid the officious heads of the colony. They spend the afternoon in professional work. Bahr taught Althea about psychology in general and psychometry in particular. Although Althea had had a fairly good education, it had been almost entirely in the arts and had barely skimmed the sciences. Now she found new vistas opening.

  She began to understand her own repressions, until she could believe that she might really have married Gorchakov willingly, as he claimed, under the control of a wanton, passionate, but normally suppressed part of her nature.

  Looking at Bahr’s sleek, dark head, she even wondered if she had been right in turning him down. But no, able teacher and conscientious scientist though he was, he had no more emotional appeal than any other piece of shiny, efficient machinery. Doubtless there was a human spirit struggling to express itself behind that façade, but that did her no good. Furthermore, she could not forget how unwilling he had been to bring her to Zesh until Kirwan had bullied him into it.

  Kirwan returned to the hut to wash for supper with clenched fists and grinding teeth. “The fiends!” he howled. “The foul Firbolgs! I’ll tear ’em to bits and dance on the gory remains!”

  “What now?” asked Bahr.

  “They’re putting on something called a folk drama; some rite of the equinox or some such nonsense, and wanted me to work on it. Well, says I, the great Brian Kirwan turns out as fine a piece of verse as any lad in Ireland, so if they’d like some lyrics—but no! A felly they call Euripides has already written the play. Well then, did they want me to act? Devil a bit. What d’ye think they did want?”

  “What?” said Althea and Bahr in chorus.

  “A stage hand! An assistant scene shifter, to crawl around tacking up pieces of burlap to symbolize the decadent Social Capitalism of Earth! The black shame of it! And if I was good, they said, maybe they’d let me carry a torch in the final procession that symbolizes the triumph of natural Roussellian man over the evils of civilization. Imagine that!”

  ###

  The Temple of Zesh stood in a rocky part of the island, two or three hoda from Elysion. Althea Merrick, Gottfried Bahr, and Brian Kirwan felt their way along the trail leading to this structure. They were helped by the fact that, for a short period, all three moons were in the sky at once.

  Suddenly, they were in front of the temple. To Althea, it looked like an oversized salt cellar with a light in the top.

  They approached it warily. Kirwan said, “D’you see anything that looks like a bell-button, now?”

  They looked around the door, but no knocker or other means of announcing their arrival appeared.

  “Well,” said Kirwan, the sweat on his forehead glistening in the moonlight, “we can’t stand here all night.”

  He smote the door with his knuckles. Nothing happened. Althea looked more closely at the structure. From the recent advancement of the Záva, she had the impression that the building must be of late origin. The weathered look of the stones, however, belied this. She whispered a question to Bahr.

  “It is not known,” he replied. “Possibly the tower was built back in the time of the Kalwm Empire, and later the tailless Krishnans who built it abandoned the island for one reason or another. My archaeological colleagues have not settled the question yet, albeit by radioactive methods it should be possible the date of construction to fix—”

  The door opened silently, framing a cloaked black figure. Bahr fell silent, and Kirwan recoiled with a start. The figure and the Terrans regarded one another silently, until Althea began to fidget.

  “The door of the righteous,” said the figure at last in Portuguese, “is ever open to the legitimate visitor. Do not let in all the flying things of the night.”

  They entered the door, which swung silently shut behind them, and followed the figure. The apparition led them through a short hall, lit by one feeble oil lamp, into a big central chamber with a dais in the middle. On this dais was mounted a curious metal tripod. The figure heaved itself up on the tripod and settled cross-legged.

  Several lamps lit the octagonal chamber. The walls bore weathered bas reliefs. Although blurred by time, the reliefs illustrated the amatory adventures of some hero or godlet. Althea, feeling herself blushing, saw that Bahr had lost himself in impersonal contemplation of these decorations.

  Although her own heart pounded, Althea pulled herself together. “Are you the Virgin of Zesh?”

  “The name of a thing is that which speakers commonly apply to the thing, whether or not it be well-applied.”

  A little taken aback, Althea decided that this oracular reply meant yes. She said, “We are three new arrivals at Elysion—one member of the cult and two non-members. We have news of interest to the Záva.”

  “News is judged by its verity, nove
lty, and portentousness, not by its origin.”

  In stumbling Portuguese, Althea told of her experience with the lecherous sailor on Memzadá’s ship. When she had finished, the cloaked figure said, “News, like fruit, spoils if delayed too long in transit.” She started to lower herself off the tripod.

  Bahr said, “Excuse me, senhora, but would you please also inform your Chief Yuruzh that I, Doctor Professor Gottfried Bahr, of the University of Jena, should like an interview with him?”

  “No time,” said the Virgin. “Out of my way, Terrans!”

  She scuttled through one of the arches and disappeared. Althea heard the diminishing sound of ascending footsteps. She and her companions waited around for some time, but nothing more happened.

  “Br-r-r, let’s be getting out of here!” said Kirwan. “The place gives me the shuddering creeps.”

  “Atavistic fears,” said Bahr. “However, as we do not seem to be accomplishing anything further, I am not averse with your suggestion to comply.”

  They trailed out. Althea looked back at the octagonal tower in the moonlight, from an upper window of which a light was winking. Then she plunged into the forest.

  She had been plodding at the tail of the procession, seeing only Kirwan’s broad back as little splashes of moonlight ran over it, for some time before she realized that Bahr was out of sight and hearing. She spoke, “Brian, you’d better hurry—”

  “And would you be afraid of being lost, now?” he said, turning. “To be sure, nobody’s ever lost with Brian Kirwan. And you don’t suppose, cuisle mo croidhe, that ’twas out of sheer weariness of spirit that I lagged?”

  “Why, I never thought—”

  Kirwan snatched Althea’s right hand in his. “Listen, darling, for days I’ve been tongue-tied with love for you, and me so eloquent and all. Even though the natural man turns out to be a fake and a disappointment, there’s enough romance left in the galaxy for a well-matched pair of hearts like ours. Let me show you—”

  “Brian! Let go!” said Althea, her voice rising in alarm. She twisted her arm, but Kirwan’s grip was too strong to break.

  “But me no buts, darling, for as sure as Ireland’s a damp little country, you belong to me body and soul. Why, if we could someday poison that worthless husband of yours, I might even let you marry me legal and all! Why should we let—”

  As Althea struggled to escape, the poet slid an arm around her waist. Squeezing her to him, he pinned her free arm between his body and hers and began to press slobbery kisses on her face. She squirmed and dodged while he poured out a stream of broken phrases: “Me little Sassenach rose . . . with three moons, we’ll love thrice as ardently . . . stop squirmin’, darlin’, and let me find a soft spot . . . isn’t one virgin on Zesh enough?”

  “Brian, please!” she cried. “Stop! Help!”

  His hot breath fanned her face. The bristles of his burgeoning beard scratched her skin. No help came.

  When Kirwan began to try to bend her down to the moss grass, Althea kicked him in the shins. He grunted and flinched. Getting an arm free, Althea raked his face with her nails, bit his wrist, and butted him in the nose.

  “Ye devil!” he panted. She got loose enough to bring a knee up to his crotch.

  He bawled with pain, and she broke free and ran like a deer. Kirwan blundered after. She had the advantage; besides his fat, his legs were short and his vision not the keenest.

  Althea tripped over a root and sprawled but was up again in an instant. Behind her, Kirwan fell even more heavily over another obstacle. After a few minutes of dodging, she stopped to get her breath and listen for sounds of pursuit. From afar came a call.

  “Althea, darling! Where the devil are you? Sure, come back; I’ll not be hurting you! You’ll be lost in the woods!” Althea supposed that they were both lost by now, but she did not intend to trust Kirwan again. She walked at random until she could no longer hear his calls. Then she found a thicket, pulled together a bed of vegetation, and curled up to sleep.

  VIII

  When it was light enough to see, Althea shook herself awake and climbed a tree. From her perch, she could see the top of the Temple of Zesh to the north, and in the opposite direction the clearings and hutroofs of Elysion. She knew that the path from one to the other ran close to the cliffs along the east side of Zesh, sometimes coming out to the edge. If she simply walked east, watching carefully, she should soon pick up this trail and follow it south to the village.

  She arrived back at her cabin to find Bahr leaping to his feet to seize her. She let herself be hugged but discouraged the scientist when he proffered more intimate attentions.

  “Althea, tell me what happened! Brian came limping in a couple of hours ago, with a wild story of having met a tailed Krishnan savage in the forest and fought him in the dark, while you ran away and disappeared. I doubted the story, having made a psychological analysis of the man. I concluded that it was more likely a fantasy composed to account for the scratches on his face, which he had received at your hands.”

  Althea told Bahr what had happened. The psychologist commented, “That is typical of these emotionally infantile types. They will lie to avert an immediate unpleasantness, even though they know that the truth will shortly transpire.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked.

  “What should I do? I doubt if Brian is willing to be psychoanalyzed, even if I had the time to do so.”

  “That’s not what I meant!” said Althea in exasperation.

  “What did you mean, my dear?”

  “I thought maybe you’d like to knock his block off.”

  “Really? But my dear Althea, that is a most impractical suggestion. In the first place, he is stronger than I and no doubt more proficient in using his fists. Therefore, the probability is that I should be the one to have the block knocked off, as you so picturesquely put it.”

  “You defied Halevi on the playing field,” she said in a last effort to arouse Bahr’s masculine belligerence.

  “That has nothing to do with the case. My analysis of the psychological factors told me that there was little chance of Halevi’s forcing the issue. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that Kirwan, if attacked, would fight vigorously. In the second place, even were I victorious, such treatment would do nothing to abate the urges and the neuroses that cause Brian to behave in this irrational manner. I think that you are being a little emotionally infantile yourself.”

  Althea sighed. No doubt a wish to see Bahr wipe up the alleys of Elysion with the battered remains of Brian Kirwan did indicate emotional immaturity. But if Bahr had done so, she thought that she might even have managed to fall in love with him. As it was, he was hung more securely than ever on his pedagogic peg.

  At the sound of voices outside, she looked out. It was not, however, another disturbance involving Kirwan. Diogo Kuroki was standing on the square, talking with the lookout. The latter said, “. . . only one galley, but it’s their biggest. I think I saw Yuruzh himself in the bow.”

  “Round up the Council,” said Kuroki. “We shall go down to meet them.”

  Bahr, looking over Althea’s shoulder, said, “Let us go, too, yes?”

  Althea and Bahr started for the beach. The news swiftly spread, so that the path became crowded with other villagers. Bahr and Althea arrived just ahead of Kuroki. Several older members had wreaths on their heads and their cloaks pinned about them in artistically Classical folds. Most of these had also greeted Kirwan on his arrival.

  The Council scrambled breathlessly down the last few meters of the path. As they reached the sand, they lined up and advanced toward the water with majestically measured strides, wielding their staves as they went.

  Out in the emerald sea lay a war galley, her toothed ram pointing shoreward. The oars on each side lifted and fell in unison as the ship felt her way toward the beach. A command resounded. The oars dug in, water foamed, and in she came with a rush, to stop with a sigh of sand at the water’s edge.

&nbs
p; A swarm of dark beings spilled off the bow on the sand. Althea had seen tailed Krishnans before. They were a little shorter than most human beings, hairy, and less human of visage than the tailless Krishnans. By human standards, they would be deemed ugly. Now a score of them, naked but for helmets, sword belts, and small shields slung over their backs, leaped down on the sand and lined up on either side of the ship’s bow.

  Then came another tailed Krishnan, different from the rest. Evidently a creature of distinction, he wore a great black cloak with a scarlet lining and a kind of soft-leather legging on his shins. A band of gold cloth encircled his head. His tail was shorter than the others’ tails, his pelt was less, and his features were more human. In fact, had his head sat on human shoulders, Althea would have described him as “attractively ugly.” He had hawk-nosed, wide-cheeked features, like those of some American Indians. He moved with abundant vitality, and Althea found him attractive in a satyrlike, non-human way.

  “Good morning, senhores,” said the newcomer in perfect Portuguese. “We are on our way to consult the Virgin.”

  “Good morning, chefe,” said Kuroki-Zeus. “Is that all? You do not wish to see us about anything else?”

  “N&aTilde;o. But thank you for your courtesy in welcoming us.”

  With a shake of his cloak, Yuruzh strode across the beach. Followed by his minions, he disappeared up the trail. Kuroki called out, “Back to the village, my children. We have work to do. No fooling around on the beach just because our landlord has paid us a visit!”

  The Roussellians started up the trail, too. They left the galley stranded, with her hairy crew climbing down into the water and splashing about. Althea and Bahr trailed after. Kirwan had not appeared.

  Althea was just finishing breakfast in the Hall when a Roussellian touched her arm. “Excuse me, but are you Senhorita Althea Merrick?”

  “Sim.”

  “Will you step outside, please?”

  Althea stood up. Bahr hastily wiped his mouth to follow her. Outside the Hall, she found Yuruzh and his guards facing Kuroki and several other Roussellians, including Halevi-Diomedes. As soon as Althea appeared, Diogo Kuroki swung on her.