The Lovers

by Филип Хосе Фармер

  There was only one thing to do.

  He went up to Pornsen and seized his hand. The gapt flinched and said something unintelligible.

  'It's Hal,' said Yarrow.

  Pornsen reached out his free hand and pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. Hal released the other hand. Pornsen wrote on the paper and then handed the notebook to Hal.

  The moonlight was bright enough to read by. The handwriting was a scrawl, but, even blind, Pornsen could write legibly.

  Take me to the Gabriel, son. I swear by the Forerunner I won't say a word about the liquor to anybody. I'll be eternally grateful. But don't leave me here in my pain at the mercy of monsters. I love you.

  Hal patted Pornsen on the shoulder and said, 'Take my hand. I'll lead you.'

  At the same time, he heard a noise from down the street. A group of noisy wogs was heading his way.

  He pulled Pornsen into the nearby park, guiding the stumbling man around the trees and bushes. After they'd walked a hundred yards, they came to an especially thick grouping of trees. Hal halted. Unfamiliar sounds were coming from the center of the grove – clicking and wheezing sounds.

  He peered around a tree and saw the origin of the noise. The bright moonlight fell on the corpse of a wog, or, rather, on what was left of it. The upper part was stripped of flesh. Around it and on it were many silvery-white insects. These resembled ants but were at least a foot high. The clicking came from their mandibles working on the corpse. The wheezing came from the air sacs on their heads breathing in and out.

  Hal had thought he was hidden, but they must have detected him. Suddenly, they had disappeared into the shadows of the trees on the side of the grove opposite him.

  He hesitated, then decided that they were scavengers and would give a healthy person no trouble. Probably, the wog was a drunk who had passed out and been killed by the ants.

  He led Pornsen to the corpse and examined it because this was his first chance to inspect the bone structure of the indigenes. The spinal column of the wog was located in the anterior of the torso. It rose from unhumanly shaped hips in a curve that was the mirror image of the curve of a man's spine. However, two sacs of the intestinal tract lay on each side of the spine, forward of the hips. They made a stomach with a hollow in its center. The stomach of a live wog concealed the depression, for the skin stretched tightly over it.

  Such an internal construction was to be expected in a being that had developed from the ancestors similar to those of the insects. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of the wogs had been unspecialized, wormlike prearthropods. But evolution had intended to make a sentient being from the worm. And, realizing the limitations of true arthropods, evolution had split the wogs' Nth-great-grandfather from the phylum of Arthropoda. When the crustacea, arachnida, and insecta had formed exoskeletons and many legs, Grandfather Wog the Nth had not gone along with them. He had refused to harden his delicate cuticle skin into chitin. Instead, he had erected a skeleton inside the flesh. But his central nervous system was still ventral, and the feat of shifting spinal nerves and spine from front to back was beyond him. So, he had formed the spine where it had to be. And the rest of his skeleton had to go along. The inner parts of a wog were unmistakably different from a mammal's. But if the form was different, the function was similar.

  Hal would have liked to investigate further, but he had work to do.

  Work which he hated.

  Pornsen wrote something in the notebook and handed it to Hal.

  Son, I am in terrible pain. Please don't hesitate about taking me to the ship. I will not betray you. Have I ever broken a promise to you? I love you.

  Hal thought, The only promise you ever made to me was to whip me.

  He looked at the shadows between the trees. The pale bodies of the ants were like a forest of mushrooms. Waiting until he left.

  Pornsen mumbled something and sat down on the grass. His head drooped.

  'Why do I have to do this?' murmured Hal.

  He thought, Idon't have to. Jeannette and I could throw ourselves on the mercy of the wogs. Fobo would be the one to go to. The wogs could hide us. But would they do it? If I could be sure, But I can't. They might surrender us to the Uzzites.

  'No use putting it off,' he murmured.

  He groaned, and he said, 'Why must I do this? Why couldn't he have died back there?

  He drew a long knife from a sheath in his boot.

  At that moment, Pornsen raised his head and looked upward with scarred eyes. His hand groped for Hal. A ghastly caricature of a smile formed on his burned lips.

  Hal raised his knife until its point was about six inches from Pornsen's throat.

  'Jeannette, I am doing this for you!' Hal said loudly.

  But the knifepoint did not move, and, after a few seconds, it dropped.

  'I can't do it,' Hal said. 'Can't.'

  Yet, he must do something, something which would either keep Pornsen from informing on him or would remove him and Jeannette from the scene of danger.

  Moreover, he had to see that Pornsen was given medical care. The suffering of the man was making him sick, making him writhe with empathy. If he could have killed Pornsen, he would have put an end to that suffering. But he could not do it.

  Pornsen, mumbling with burned lips, took a few steps forward, his hands held out at chest level and rotating as he felt for Hal. Hal stepped to one side. He was thinking furiously. There was only one course of action. That was to get Jeannette and make a run for it. His first thought to get a wog to take Pornsen to the ship was discarded. Pornsen would have to be in agony for a while. Hal needed every second of time he could get, and to try to ease the gapt's pain quickly would be treachery to Jeannette – not to mention himself.

  Pornsen had been walking slowly forward, exploring the air with his hands, shuffling his feet across the grass so he wouldn't stumble over an obstacle. Presently, his foot came into contact with the bones of the native. He halted, and he stopped to feel. When he closed his hands around the ribs and pelvis, he froze. For several seconds, he kept his stance, then he began feeling the length of the skeleton. His fingers touched the skull, moved around it, tested the fragments of flesh clinging to it.

  Abruptly, seemingly terrified, perhaps realizing that whatever had stripped the wog of flesh might be close and that he was helpless, he straightened up and ran headlong. A choking scream came from him as he sped across the glade. The high-pitched ululation ended abruptly. He had rammed into a tree trunk and fallen on his back.

  Before he could rise, he was overwhelmed by a wheezing and clicking horde of mushroom-white bodies.

  Hal did not think of the fact that he was not behaving rationally. Instead, giving a cry, he ran toward the ants. Halfway across the glade, Hal saw them disappear into the shadows, but not so far that he could not discern their massed whiteness.

  Reaching Pornsen, Hal sank down to one knee and examined him.

  In those few moments, the man's clothing had been torn to shreds and his flesh bitten in many places.

  His eyes stared straight upward; his jugular vein had been severed.

  Hal, moaning, rose and walked swiftly from the grove. Behind him was a rustling and wheezing as the ants surged forward from the protection of the trees. Hal did not look back.

  And, when he stepped under the light of the street-lamp, the pressure inside him found vent. Tears ran down his cheeks. His shoulders shook with sobs. He staggered like a drunk. His intestines felt as if they were being pulled apart.

  He did not know if it was grief or if it was hate at last finding expression because the cause of his hate could no longer retaliate against him. Perhaps, it was both grief and hate. Whatever it was, it was working out of his body like a poison; his body was expelling it. At the same time, it was boiling him alive.

  Yet, it was coming out. Though he felt he was dying, by the time he had walked to his home, he was rid of the poison. Fatigue leadened his arms and legs, and he could scarcely find the energ
y to walk up the flight of steps to the front door of the building.

  At the same time, his heart felt light. It was strong, pumping unimpeded as if a hand around it had released its clutch.

  13

  A tall ghost in a light blue shroud was waiting for the Terran in the false dawn. It was Fobo, the empathist, standing in the hexagonal-shaped arch that led into his building. He threw back the hood and exposed a face that was scratched on one cheek and blackened around the right eye.

  He chuckled and said, 'Some son-of-a-bug pulled my mask off and plowed me good. But it was fun. It helps if you blow off steam now and then. How did you come out? I was afraid you might have been picked up by the police. Normally, that wouldn't worry me, but I know your colleagues at the ship would frown upon such activities.'

  Hal smiled wanly.

  'Frown misses it by a mile.'

  He wondered how Fobo knew what the hierarch's reactions would be. How much did these wogs know about the Terrestrials? Were they onto the Haijac game and waiting to pounce? If so, with what? Their technology, as far as could be determined, was far behind Earth's. True, they seemed to know more of psychic functions than the Terrans did, but that was understandable. The Sturch had long ago decreed that the proper psychology had been perfected and that further research was unnecessary. The result had been a standstill in the psychical sciences.

  He shrugged mentally. He was too tired to think of such things. All he wanted was to go to bed.

  'I'll tell you later what happened.'

  Fobo replied, 'I can guess. Your hand. You'd better let me fix that burn. Nightlifer venom is nasty.'

  Like a little child, Hal followed him to the wog's apartment and let him put a cooling salve on it.

  'Shib as shib,' Fobo said. 'Go to bed. Tomorrow you can tell me all about it.'

  Hal thanked him and walked down to his floor. His hand fumbled with the key. Finally, after using Sigmen's name in vain, he inserted the key. When he had shut and locked the door, he called Jeannette. She must have been hiding in the closet-within-a-closet in the bedroom, for he heard two doors bang. In a moment she was running to him. She threw her arms around him.

  'Oh, maw пит, maw пит! What has happened? I was so worried. I thought I would scream when the night went by, and you didn't return.'

  Though he was sorry he had caused her pain, he could not help a prickling of pleasure because she cared enough about him to worry. Mary, perhaps, might have been sympathetic, but she would have felt duty-bound to repress it and to lecture him on his unreal thinking and the resulting injury to himself.

  'There was a brawl.'

  He had decided not to say anything about the gapt or the nightlifer. Later, when the strain had passed, he'd talk.

  She untied his cloak and hood and took off his mask. She hung them up in the front room closet, and he sank into a chair and closed his eyes.

  A moment later, they were opened by the sound of liquid pouring into a glass. She was standing in front of him and filling a large glass from the quart. The odor of beetlejuice began to turn his stomach, and the Picture of a beautiful girl about to drink the nauseating stuff spun it all the way around.

  She looked at him. The delicate brackets of her brows rose. 'Kyetil?'

  'Nothing's the matter!' he groaned. 'I'm all right.'

  She put down the glass, picked up his hand, and led him into the bedroom. There she gently sat him down, pressed on his shoulders until he lay down, and then took off his shoes. He didn't resist. After she unbuttoned his shirt, she stroked his hair.

  'You're sure you're all right?'

  'Shib. I could lick the world with one hand tied behind my back.'

  'Good.'

  The bed creaked as she got up and walked out of the room. He began to drift into sleep, but her return awakened him. Again, he opened his eyes. She was standing with a glass in her hand.

  She said, 'Would you like a sip now, Hal?'

  'Great Sigmen, don't you understand?' Fury roused him and he sat up.

  'Why do you think I got sick? I can't stand the stuff! I can't stand to see you drink it. It makes me sick. You make me sick. What's the matter with you? Are you stupid?'

  Jeannette's eyes widened. Blood drained from her face and left the pigment of her lips a crimson moon in a white lake. Her hand shook so that the liquor spilled.

  'Why – why–' she gasped – 'I thought you said you felt fine. I thought you were all right. I thought you wanted to go to bed with me.'

  Yarrow groaned. He shut his eyes and lay back down. Sarcasm was lost on her. She insisted on taking everything literally. She would have to be reeducated. If he weren't so exhausted, he would have been shocked by her open proposal – so much like that of the Scarlet Woman in The Western Talmud when she had tried to seduce the Forerunner.

  But he was past being shocked. Moreover, a voice on the edge of his conscience said that she had merely put into hard and unrecallable words what he had planned in his heart all this time. But when they were spoken!

  A crash of glass shattered his thoughts. He jerked upright. She was standing there, face twisted, lovely red mouth quivering, and tears flowing. Her hand was empty. A large wet patch against the wall, still dripping, showed what had become of the glass.

  'I thought you loved me!' she shouted.

  Unable to think of anything to say, he stared. She spun and walked away. He heard her go into the front room and begin to sob loudly. Unable to endure the sound, he jumped out of bed and walked swiftly after her. These rooms were supposed to be soundproof, but one never knew. What if she were overheard?

  Anyway, she was twisting something inside him, and he had to straighten it out.

  When he entered the front room, he saw she was looking downcast. For a while, he stood silent, wanting to say something but utterly unable to because he had never been forced to solve such a problem before. Haijac women didn't cry often, and if they did, they wept alone in privacy.

  He sat down by her and put his hand on her soft shoulder. 'Jeannette.'

  She turned quickly and laid her dark hair against his chest. She said, between sobs, 'I thought maybe you didn't love me. And I couldn't stand it. Not after all I've been through!'

  'Well, Jeannette, I didn't – I mean – I wasn't...'

  He paused. He had had no intention of saying he loved her. He'd never told any woman he loved her, not even Mary. Nor had any woman ever told him. And here was this woman on a faraway planet, only half-human at that, taking it for granted that he was hers, body and self.

  He began speaking in a soft voice. Words came easily because he was quoting Moral Lecture AT-16:

  ' ". . .all beings with their hearts in the right place are brothers... Man and woman are brother and sister... Love is everywhere... but love... should be on a higher plane... Man and woman should rightly loathe the beastly act as something the Great Mind, the Cosmic Observer, has not yet eliminated in man's evolutionary development... The time will come when children will be produced through thought alone. Meanwhile, we must recognize sex as necessary for only one reason: children..." '

  Slap! His head rang, and points of fire whirled off into the blackness before his eyes.

  It was a moment before he could realize that Jeannette had leaped to her feet and slammed him hard with the palm of her hand. He saw her standing above him with her eyes slitted and her red mouth open and drawn back in a snarl.

  Then, she whirled and ran into the bedroom. He got up and followed her. She was lying on the bed, sobbing.

  'Jeannette, you don't understand!'

  'Fva tuh fe fu!'

  When he understood that, he blushed. Then he became furious. He grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her over so that she faced him.

  Suddenly he was saying, 'But I do love you, Jeannette. I do.'

  He sounded strange, even to himself. The concept of love, as she meant it, was alien to him – rusty, perhaps, if it could be put that way. It would need much polishing. But it would, he kne
w, be polished. Here in his arms was one whose very nature and instinct and education were pointed toward love.

  He had thought he had drained himself of grief earlier that night; but now, as he forgot his resolve not to tell her what had happened, and as he recounted, step by step, the long and terrible night, tears ran down his face. Thirty years made a deep well; it took a long time to pump out all the weeping.

  Jeannette, too, cried, and said that she was sorry that she had gotten angry at him. She promised never again to do so. He said it was all right. They kissed again and again until, like two babies who have wept themselves and loved themselves out of frustration and fury, they passed gently into sleep.

  14

  At 0900 Ship's Time, Yarrow walked into the Gabriel, the scent of morning dew on the grass in his nostrils. As he had a little time before the conference, he looked up Turnboy, the historian joat. Casually, he asked Turnboy if he knew anything of a space flight emigration from France after the Apocalyptic War. Turnboy was delighted to show off his knowledge. Yes, the remnants of the Gallic nation had gathered in the Loire country after the Apocalyptic War and had formed the nucleus of what might have become a new France.

  But the swiftly growing colonies sent from Iceland to the northern part of France, and from Israel to the Southern part, had surrounded the Loire. New France found itself squeezed economically and religiously. Sigmen's disciples invaded the territory in waves of missionaries. High tariffs strangled the little state's trade. Finally, a group of Frenchmen, seeing the inevitable absorption or conquest of their state, religion, and tongue, had left in six rather primitive spaceships to find another Gaul rotating about some far-off star. It was highly improbable that they had succeeded.

  Hal thanked Turnboy and walked to the conference room. He spoke to many. Half of them, like him, had a Mongolian tinge to their features. They were the English-speaking descendants of Hawaiian and Australian survivors of the same war which had decimated France. Their many-times great-grandfathers had repopulated Australia, the Americas, Japan, and China.