O’Neill tried to focus his attention. He had matched the other guests drink for drink. They apparently were able to drink a good Taran under the table. Not that la-ir, a pink ice cream concoction, was all that weak a drink; it reminded Seamus of a twenty-third—century beverage he once consumed called a stinger. “To tell you the truth, lovely lady, I’m not sure what to think just at the moment.”
His eyes followed the curve of her throat and the slope of her shoulders to the top of the thin blue wraparound that was evening dress for Zylongi women. He fantasized about the corsetlike affair that was presumably under it. The garment, he had learned, was called a lentat, the same name as for his undergarment, but presumably of rather different structure and purpose, given the strapless gowns and flowing but disciplined charms of the Zylongi women.
How would one go about removing it? Ah well, you can figure out anything if you have to. Who cares about Mozart?
“Your Guardians permit complete license in music, Honored Guest O’Neill?” Niora asked, seductively caressing her goblet.
“They don’t see any harm in it. We let men like Music Director Ornigon compose their own music and interpret other composers any way they want.”
“But that is very strange, Honored Poet. Does it not make for great competition?” Her lovely brow furrowed.
Are all the Zylongi women so sumptuously beautiful? And are there others around like Marjetta?
That would be something terrible altogether.
He paused before answering. Why had there been only a few polite queries about his trip, his background? Maybe they weren’t interested, or maybe courtesy or orders forbade them to ask. Finally he replied cautiously, “We believe that competition makes for excellence.” Niora began to say something but then sipped her drink instead.
He tried to concentrate on the creamy food, of which he was eating too much. It puzzled him—the extremely formal talk combined with the disconcerting sensual atmosphere.
Niora interrupted his thoughts. “Was not the Honored Music Director’s recording of Mozart that we heard before the nourishment excellent? There are many paths to excellence within the official interpretation.” Seamus shifted his weight to put a little more distance between his lips and her shoulders.
He thought it had been a clever but stilted and wooden Haffner symphony, but one that fit the atmosphere perfectly. He dug into the cream thing again. You’re making a pig out of yourself, O’Neill.
Niora moved her body closer than ever. “Do you not find me attractive, Poet O’Neill?”
He choked on the cream. “Sure, I’d have to be a hunk of stone not to think you’re one of the most lovely women in the cosmos.”
“Now you exaggerate, Honored Poet,” she scolded him. “But you often do not look at me. During formal nourishment we are to enjoy one another’s bodies. It does not mean violation. Does it in your culture? I find your body very attractive.”
Brigid, Patrick, and Columcile, what have I gotten into? Here she is sitting next to her husband, Secondary Principal Gemmoff! “I’ve been wandering through space alone for such a long time, I guess I’m numb,” he said weakly.
“But please enjoy me while we eat. It is good to be admired by an Honored Guest.” She lowered her eyes, smiled shyly, and began eating again. “Is admiration a prelude to violence in your world?”
“Uh … no, of course not. I guess we … well, we are a little more restrained in the way we do it.”
“And less restrained in your violence.”
“We don’t believe in violence to women,” he said firmly, noting to himself that practice didn’t always follow theory.
“How unusual. Does admiration mean that you will enter a woman’s body?”
“Of course not!”
“Well then, neither does it for us.” He took another strong drink of their poteen and decided that he wouldn’t do anything until someone else did. What if they were all waiting for him? He slopped up some more of the thick black cream.
“I see you like our dark cream, Poet O’Neill,” said the Music Director, a thin man with iron-gray hair and a warm, lovely smile.
“’Tis wonderful altogether. I suppose it comes from your heathenish furry cattle.”
“Heathenish?”
“Ah, just a manner of speaking.” O’Neill turned his attention away from the languid form of State Painter Reena.
“All our food comes from the same common crops and from the milk of our cattle. Our scientists, like my Honored Mate, have developed many ways of synthesizing these simple staples into a variety of foods.” He talked briskly, like a gombeen man trying to make a sale. O’Neill didn’t think his heart was in it, though.
“And of combining them into delicious meals.” A wee compliment for the cook never hurts.
His host smiled proudly. “Ah, my mate has many gifts.”
It wasn’t what one would expect from a man contemplating swapping wives for an evening. O’Neill turned back to his own dinner companion, lying quietly next to him, delicately chewing on a small piece of pastry. “Am I supposed to pay compliments or would that be rude? You’re so pretty that my voice gets caught in my throat when I try to talk with you.”
A pleased rose glow spread over her dark skin. Her smile accepted him. “That in itself is a very nice compliment. To look is all that is required—really all that is proper.”
“I wouldn’t want to be improper. But I won’t take back the compliment,” he insisted.
“Certain exceptions are made for visitors, especially if they are poets.” She lowered her eyes modestly, now very satisfied indeed with her dinner companion. O’Neill relaxed. He was relieved altogether. No orgy.
Well, it might have been fun. No telling what I could have learned.
Looking was all that was expected. The guests reclined in intimate and proximate positions, but none of them touched. You had to be very observing of your partner’s moves to maintain the few inches of space that separated you. When her gorgeous little ass shifted too close to your thigh, you simply moved a fraction of an inch. Skillful, but what a waste of energy.
He managed once to “accidentally” brush his shoulder against Samaritha’s thigh as she leaned over to serve him what seemed to be the tenth or eleventh course. She jumped back, a look of anger and horror on her face. Seamus mumbled an apology about Tarans being a clumsy people. It was graciously, if formally, accepted.
To distract himself from Niora, he asked about the hordi. The subject was one on which everyone had an opinion—all of it spoken much the way children recite memory work at school. The hordi, Samaritha told him, were obviously not hominid; probably they were not even related to hominid ancestors. Their evolutionary progress was very slow, if it had not ceased altogether. They were quite savage in their native habitat but could be domesticated if captured early enough or born in captivity. They made pleasant pets and useful if dull servants. Some of Samaritha’s most important work was the selective breeding of the hordi to upgrade the strain of the domesticated type. It was a difficult and frustrating task, as there was so little in the hordi gene pool with which one could work.
Now all of this was patent nonsense. The tiny female hordi—four feet high—who waited on them clearly had a hominid body under her plain brown wrap. She was not anything like an ape. Her speech was rudimentary, clicks and grunts, but her hands were almost human. She was made for upright rather than quadruped movement; furthermore, one look at their pointed teeth showed where the Zylongi had acquired their “interesting difference” from the Tarans. The hordi could crossbreed with humanoids; at one time in the history of the Zylong planet, they had done so. Presumably such breeding was stopped, and now there was a cultural need to deny its possibility. O’Neill wondered how a scientist like Samaritha could talk such nonsense. He also found that the little creature could smile back at him, with a kind of knowing complacency: We both know they’re pious frauds, the servant girl seemed to be hinting. And we both survive by exploiting thei
r fraud.
Was the domestic hordi attractive when she smiled, a young body, tiny but neat breasts, quick appealing motions? Sure she is attractive. O’Neill revised his opinion of the aborigines upward. Men without women could easily be tempted to make love to such creatures. Had it been that way with parallel species on Earth?
Once we evolved beyond the monthly “heat” phase, why the hell not?
So that’s what our ancestors were up to. The dirty things.
The last course finally came. Ornigon suggested that they must not keep the contestants waiting. The sensuality of the dinner ended. Niora’s gloriously relaxed charm became formal again—to both the relief and sorrow of O’Neill. Even the room temperature, which had risen to almost jungle heat during the meal, seemed to fall abruptly. Party’s over, kids, O’Neill thought. Off to the “contest”—whatever that is.
The arena was in the same quarter of the City as the apartment building in which his hosts lived. They descended in an elevator and walked across a brilliantly lighted and crowded plaza. Once more O’Neill felt like a bumpkin come to the big city—which of course was precisely what he was.
I wonder how long you can sustain this cosmopolitan pace, Seamus me boy. Soon they’ll smell the aroma of cattle on you and know what you really are. The descendant of a people whose great epics are about stealing bulls from one another.
Outside, the night air was balmy and pleasant. Thousands of people crowded toward a tall pink tower located at the end of a short street that angled off the plaza. They entered the building, took an elevator down, and emerged at the edge of a vast arena that appeared to be part gymnasium and part swimming pool. The audience sat on tiers made up of deeply cushioned contour chairs. You watch your sports in comfort on this planet, O’Neill observed to himself.
The contest was between the Northeast Quarter—where Samaritha and Ornigon lived—and the South Central Quarter. His hosts had pinned small red and white ribbons to their coats; the other side wore yellow and blue. There was no attempt to segregate the supporters of the two teams.
The contest began with a formal ritual that made him think of the Japanese No plays he had seen on the Iona’s video screens. Then the contest began in earnest: a combination of volleyball, water polo, and field hockey, played by superbly conditioned young men and women with grace and skill—almost like an elaborate ballet—their strong young bodies covered only by lentats, the minimal undergarments worn by Zylongi of both sexes. (I still don’t see how you get them off a woman without tugging, he thought.)
It was a vicious and violent ballet. O’Neill never cringed from working mayhem with a hurling stick on the Iona’s playing field, but he knew he could never slash at a woman with the stick. The young Zylongi males had no such compunctions, and the young women were not reluctant to fight back.
Even worse, it seemed to O’Neill, was the contrast between the destructiveness of the contest and the demeanor of the audience. Calm and controlled to the point of blandness, they applauded skillful play and showed no reaction at all at the sight of a broken limb or lacerated face. The whole wild enterprise seemed only faintly amusing to them. It was hard to tell if they even cared about whether their team won or not.
He tried his best to remember his anthropological manners, but when a tiny girl was carried off the floor with a broken arm hanging limply, blood pouring from a wound in her forehead, he gasped in disgust. Leaning in his direction, Samaritha quietly reassured him. “Do not worry about her, Honored Poet Guest. The contest surgeons are very skillful. In a day or two there will be no trace of injury. She will play in the next contest.”
“But how does she feel now?”
“Perhaps pleased that she has played well. Much worse happened to me when I was in the contest. I was proud to have played well.” She drew back into her couch.
The bloodshed ended with a victory for the home team. Secondary Principal Gemmoff was congratulated—it was his school’s team. The glory of the Northeast Quarter was preserved. The other two couples, who lived in another tower, went home. O’Neill and his hosts returned to the family living space for yet more refreshment and more music.
“Do you have anything like the contest on Tara, Poet Guest?” the Music Director asked formally, as though it were now time to begin the “serious conversation” again.
O’Neill tried to describe hurley and Gaelic football. He was not at all sure, though, that the interest his hosts indicated meant either comprehension or appreciation. Both wild games were apparently too tame for their tastes. Samaritha was offended that young women were not permitted in the same contests as men. She seemed not to understand Seamus’s explanation of fear of injury.
He changed the subject. He asked whether the Music Director had played in the contest when he was in secondary school.
“Alas, it is not permitted to us who are programmed for the arts to participate in the contest. The Research Director brought glory to both of us. In the quarter there was much pride in her skill.” There was a curious melancholy in his voice.
“Well, when she gets mad at you, you must be careful to avoid letting her get hold of a stick.” The joke, which he would not have tried had it not been for the poteen, fell flat.
“But the Research Director does not grow angry with me. We are mates,” said Ornigon, obviously astonished and perhaps a little pained.
Samaritha’s blush was fiery red. “One does not hit another with the stick, save in the contest!” she exploded. “To use the stick outside the contest would be savage. I do not understand what you are saying.”
So there it was. Stylized but rigidly controlled violence and stylized but rigidly controlled sensuality were both enjoyed by the Zylongi in the lower depths of their personalities but kept under rigid social controls in their conscious lives.
It’s a way to live, thought Seamus O’Neill as he drifted off into a sleep crowded with voluptuous brown bodies and bloody sticks.
5
The back of his neck twitched again. Seamus O’Neill whirled around. There was nothing behind him, the bridge was empty, the winding street behind it dark and deserted. There was no sign of life in the buildings on the other side of the bridge. Yet someone had been watching him. All day long they had been spying on him … spying on the spy. Well, that’s fair enough.
It was, he had concluded earlier in the day, a planet that had been dominated by terror for centuries—the terror imposed by those determined to do good and to constrain others to do the same. Fanatics. No one worse than a good person, herself had often said, than a good person who knows he’s good.
“Or she,” he had added.
“Ay,” the Cardinal touched her ruby ring of office, “we women are superior even in fanaticism.”
And now the terror of the fanatic was right behind him. He rubbed his neck and turned back to the stream. There was a network of such streams running through the City toward the great river. They were part of the City’s sanitation and water supply system, with bottoms and banks made of the same rocklike substance out of which the buildings were constructed.
Once more he felt like an ignorant bumpkin. He had thought that the system of waste management and recycling on the Iona was sophisticated. It was a primary-grade student’s childish drawing compared to the immense and sophisticated Zylongian scheme for recycling waste so that it could be used again and again and generate energy in the process. Moreover, the abundance of natural resources on the planet seemed to make this recycling system unnecessary. The natural process of the swift-flowing river would have cleaned the City’s waste in an hour or two. And the river itself could easily have been channeled to provide hydroelectric power. The Zylongi knew about such things because they had power plants up in the foothills of the mountains; you respected the forces of nature and did not violate them, as the First Ones and the Founder had taught, but you made up the rules as you went along about what constituted such respect. In the mountains the River was not sacred. Near the City it was. If yo
u began with such definitions, it was all easy.
He began to spell “River” in his own mind with a capital R because it was obviously sacred by the time it reached the City. You did not pollute the River either with waste or dams and generators. Why not? Because the First Ones had taught that you must respect the great powers of nature. They contained the Most High.
Fair enough, except they were not a religious people, as far as he could tell. And recycling waste was interfering with the processes of nature too.
But his task was to observe, not to argue. Nor to look for consistency. A visitor would doubtless find Tarans inconsistent too—though, he hoped, more honest with themselves and others about their inconsistency. When caught in a seeming contradiction, the locals here would either argue passionately, like the good Sammy, or sneer like the good Margie. Tarans would simply laugh and say, “Ah well, we never did claim to be logical, now did we?”
He had spent most of the last two days in the “Resource Center” of Zylong, leafing through their various historical documents. The Resource Center apparently had a large staff (which had been instructed to bring him everything he wanted, no questions asked) but almost no clients. For all the piety in references to the Founder and the First Ones, there was little interest in their lives or the time of their “Arrival.”
Earlier that day, his library search mostly complete, Seamus had slumped over his terminal in the Resource Center, head in hands. He had seen evil during the years of his pilgrimage on the Iona, but he could not have imagined the barbarism of Zylong’s millennium of history. And he probably didn’t know the half of it. No great psychic, Seamus Finnbar Diarmuid Brendan O’Neill, he still felt the terror of Zylong in every nerve ending of his body. He had to get out of here and bring his woman with him as quickly as possible.
Still, he told himself, if this place can produce someone like Margie it’s not all bad.
He uncrumpled his notes on Sayings of the Founder and considered them again. “I hope to hell you folks up there are keeping track of this cow dung,” he whispered to the readers on the monastery.
The Final Planet Page 7