' "This is what man did with it.
' "He had, it must be noted, an ally to help him in the misuse of the insect. This was another parasite, one of a somewhat different kind; one that was, indeed, our cousin, in a manner speaking.
' "One thing, however, distinguishes it from us, and from man, and from any other animal on this planet with the exception of some very low species. That is, that from the very first fossil evidence we have of it, it was wholly– " '
Jeannette put the book down. 'I don't know the next word. Hal, do I have to read this? It's so boring.'
'No. Forget it. Read me one of those comics that you and the Gabriel's sailors like so much.'
She smiled, a beautiful sight, and she began reading Volume 1037, Book 56, The Adventures of Leif Magnus, Beloved Disciple of the Forerunner, When He Met the Horror from Arcturus.
He listened to her efforts to translate the American into the vernacular wog until he grew tired of the banalities of the comic and pulled her down to him.
Always, there was the light left on above them.
Yet, they had their misunderstandings, their disagreements, their conflicts.
Jeannette was neither puppet nor slave. When she did not like something Hal did or said, she was often quick to say so. And, if he replied sarcastically or violently, he was likely to find himself attacked verbally.
Not too long after he had hidden Jeannette in his puka, he returned after a long day at the ship with a heavy growth of stubble on his face.
Jeannette, after kissing him, made a face and said, 'That hurts; it is like a file. I'll get your cream and rub off your whiskers myself.'
'No, don't do that,' he said.
'Why not?' she said as she walked toward the unmentionable. 'I love to do things for you. And I especially love to make you look nice.'
She returned with the can of depilatory in her hand.
'Now, you sit down, and I will do all your work for you. You can think of how much I love you while I'm removing those so-scratchy wires on your face.'
'You don't understand, Jeannette. I can't shave. I am a lamedhian now, and lamedhians must wear beards.'
She stopped walking toward him and said, 'You must? You mean that it is the law, that you will be a criminal if you don't?'
'No, not exactly,' he said. 'The Forerunner himself never said a word about it, nor has any law been passed making it compulsory. But – it is the custom. And it is a sign of honor, for only a man worthy to wear a lamedh is allowed to grow a beard,'
'What would happen if a non-lamedhian grew one?'
'I don't know,' he said, annoyance apparent in his voice. 'It has never happened. It's – just one of those things you take for granted. Something only an outsider would think about.'
'But a beard is so ugly,' she said. 'And it scratches my face. I would as soon kiss a pile of bedsprings.'
'Then,' he said angrily, 'you'll either have to learn to kiss bedsprings or learn to get along without kisses. Because I have to have a beard!'
'Listen to me,' she said, going up close to him. 'You don't have to! What is the use of being a lamedhian if you don't have any more freedom than before, if you must do what is expected of you? Why can't you just ignore the custom?'
Hal began to feel both fury and panic. Panic because he might alienate her so far she would leave and because he knew that if he gave in to her he would be regarded suspiciously by the other lamedhians on the Gabriel.
As a result, he accused her of being a stupid fool. She replied with equal heat and harshness. They quarreled; the night was half over before she made the first movement toward a reconciliation. Then, it was dawn before they were through proving they loved each other.
In the morning, he shaved. Nothing happened at the Gabriel for three days, nobody made any remarks, and he put down to guilt and imagination the strange looks he saw – or thought he saw. Finally, he began to think that either nobody had noticed or else they were so busy with their duties that they did not think it worthwhile to comment. He even began wondering if there were other annoyances connected with being a lamedhian which he could do away with.
Then, the morning of the fourth day, he was called to the office of Macneff.
He found the Sandalphon sitting behind his desk and fingering his own beard. Macneff stared with his pale blue eyes at Hal for some time before replying to Hal's greeting.
'Perhaps, Yarrow,' he said, 'you have been too concerned with your researches among the wogs to think about other things. It is true we live in an abnormal environment here, and we are all concentrating on the day we start the project.'
He rose and began pacing back and forth before Hal.
'You surely must know that as a lamedhian, you not only have privileges, you have responsibilities?'
'Shib, abba.'
Macneff suddenly wheeled on Hal and pointed a long bony finger at him.
'Then, why aren't you growing a beard?' he said loudly. And he glared.
Hal felt himself grow cold, as he had so often when he was a child and his gapt, Pornsen, had made this same maneuver toward him. And he felt the same mental confusion.
'Why, I-I-'
'We must strive not only to attain the lamedh, we must strive to continue to be worthy of it. Purity and purity alone will make us succeed, unending effort to be pure!'
'Your pardon abba,' said Hal, his voice quivering. 'But I am making a never-ending effort to be pure.'
He dared to look the Sandalphon in the eyes when he said that, though where he got the courage he did not know. To lie so outrageously, he who was living in unreality, to lie in the presence of the great and pure Sandalphon!
'However,' Hal continued, 'I did not know that shaving would have anything to do with my purity. There is nothing in The Western Talmud or any of the Forerunner's books about the reality or unreality of a beard.'
'Are you telling me what is in the scriptures?' shouted Macneff.
'No, of course not. But, what I said is true, isn't it?'
Macneff resumed his pacing, and he said, 'We must be pure, must be pure. And even the slightest hint of pseudofuture, the smallest departure from reality, may dirty us. Yes, Sigmen never said anything about this. But it has long been recognized that only the pure are worthy to emulate the Forerunner by having a beard. Therefore, to be pure, we must look pure.'
'I agree with you wholeheartedly,' said Hal.
He was beginning to find courage in himself, a firmness. It had suddenly occurred to him that he felt so shaken because he was reacting to Macneff as he had to Pornsen. But Pornsen was dead, defeated, his ashes thrown to the wind. And it had been Hal himself who had scattered them at the ceremony.
'Under ordinary circumstances, I would let my whiskers grow,' he said. 'But I am living among the wogs now so I may do more effective espionage, besides conducting my researches. And I have found out that the wogs regard a beard as an abomination; they have no beards themselves, you know. They do not understand why we let ours grow if we have means to remove them. And they feel uneasy and disgusted when in the presence of a bearded man. I can't gain their confidence if I have one.
'However, I plan to grow one the moment the project is begun.'
'Hmm!' sid Macneff, fingering the hairs on his face. 'You may have something there. After all, these are unusual circumstances. But why didn't you tell me?'
'You are so busy, from morning to bedtime, that I did not want to bother you,' said Hal. He was wondering if Macneff would take the time and trouble to investigate the truth of his statement. For the wogs had never said one word to Hal about beards. He had been inspired to make his excuse when he remembered having read about the initial reactions of the American Indians to the facial growth of white men.
Macneff, after a few more words on the importance of keeping pure, dismissed Hal.
And Hal, shaking from the reaction of the lecture, went home. There, he had a few drinks to calm himself, then a few more to uninhibit himself for the supper with Jeann
ette. He had discovered that if he drank enough, he could overcome the disgust he felt on seeing food go into her naked mouth.
17
One day, Yarrow, returning from the market with a large box, said, 'You've really been putting away the groceries lately. You're not eating for two? Or maybe three?'
She paled. 'Maw choo! Do you know what you're saying?'
He put the box on a table and grabbed her shoulders.
'Shib. I do. Jeannette, I've been thinking about that very thing for a long time, but I haven't said anything. I didn't want to worry you. Tell me, are you?'
She looked him straight in the eye, but her body was shaking. 'Oh, no. It is impossible!'
'Why should it be?'
'Fi. But I know – don't ask me how – that it cannot be. But you must never say things like that. Not even joking. I can't stand it.'
He pulled her close and said over her shoulder, 'Is it because you can't? Because you know you'll never bear my children?'
Her thick, faintly perfumed hair nodded.
T know. Don't ask me how I know.'
He held her at arm's length again.
'Listen, Jeannette. I'll tell you what's been troubling you. You and I are of different species. Your mother and father were, too. Yet they had children. However, you may know that the ass and the mare have young, too, but the mule is sterile. The lion and the tigress may breed, but the liger or tigon can't. Isn't that right? You're afraid you're a mule!'
She put her head on his chest; tears fell on his shirt.
He said, 'Let's be real about this, honey. Maybe you are. So what? Forerunner knows that our situation is bad enough without a baby to complicate it. We'll be lucky if you are... uh... well, we have each other, haven't we? That's all I want. You.'
He couldn't keep from being reflective as he dried her tears and kissed her and helped her put the food in the refrigerator.
The quantities of groceries and milk she had been consuming were more than a normal amount, especially the milk. There had been no telltale change in her superb figure. She could not eat that much without some kind of effect. A month passed. He watched her closely, she ate enormously. Nothing happened.
Yarrow put it down to his ignorance of her alien metabolism.
Another month. Hal was just leaving the ship's library when Turnboy, the historian joat, stopped him.
'The rumor is that the techs have finally made the globin-locking molecule,' the historian said. 'I think that this time the grapevine's right. A conference is called for fifteen hundred.'
'Shib.'
Hal kept his despair out of his voice.
When the meeting broke up at 1650, it left him with sagging shoulders. The virus was already in production. In a week, a large enough supply would be made to fill the disseminators of six prowler torpedoes. The plan was to release them to wipe out the city of Siddo. The prowlers would fly in spirals whose range would expand until a large territory was covered. Eventually, as the prowlers returned for reloading and then went out again, the entire planet of wogs would be slain.
When he got home, he found Jeannette lying in bed, her hair a black corona on the pillow. She smiled weakly.
He forgot his mood in a thrill of concern.
'What's the matter, Jeannette?'
He laid his hand on her forehead. The skin was dry, hot, and rough.
'I don't know. I haven't been feeling really well for two weeks, but I didn't complain. I thought I'd get over it. Today, I felt so bad I just had to go back to bed after breakfast.'
'We'll get you well,'
He sounded confident. Inside himself, he was lost. If she had contracted a serious disease, she could get no doctor, no medicine.
For the next few days she continued to lie in bed. Her temperature fluctuated from 99.5 in the morning to 100.2 at night. Hal attended her as ably as he could. He put wet towels and ice bags on her head and gave her aspirin. She had stopped eating so much food; all she wanted was liquid. She was always asking for milk. Even the beetlejuice and the cigarettes were turned down.
Her illness was bad enough, but her silences stung Yarrow into a frenzy. As long as he had known her, she had chattered lightly, merrily, amusingly. She could be quiet, but it was with an interested wordlessness. Now she let him talk; and when he quit, she did not fill his silence with questions or comments.
In an effort to arouse her, he told her of his plan to steal a gig and take her back to her jungle home. A light came into her dulled eyes; the brown looked shiny for the first time. She even sat up while he put a map of the continent on her lap. She indicated the general area where she had lived, and then she described the mountain range that rose from the jungle and the tableland on its top where her aunts and sisters lived in the ruins of an ancient metropolis.
Hal sat down at the little hexagon-shaped tabletop by the bed and worked out the coordinates from the maps.
Now and then, he glanced up. She was lying on her side, her white and delicate shoulder rising from her nightgown, her eyes large in the shadows around them.
'All I have to do is steal a little key,' he said. 'You see, the meter gauge on a gig is set at zero before every flight from the field. The boat will run fifty kilometers on manual. But, once the tape passes fifty, the gig automatically stops and sends out a location signal. That's to keep anybody from running away. However, the autos can be unlocked and the signal turned off. A little key will do it. I can get it. Don't worry.'
'You must love me very much.'
'You're shib as shib I do!'
He rose and kissed her. Her mouth, once so soft and dewy, felt dry and hard. It was almost as if the skin were turning to horn.
He returned to his calculations. An hour later, a sigh from her made him look up. Her eyes were closed and her lips were slightly open. Sweat ran down her face.
He hoped her fever had broken. No. The mercury had risen to 100.3.
She said something.
He bent down.
'What?'
She was muttering in an unknown language, the speech of her mother's people. Delirious.
Hal swore. He had to act. No matter what the consequences. He ran into the bathroom, shook from a bottle a ten-grain rockabye tablet, returned, and propped Jeannette up. With difficulty he managed to get her to wash the pill down with a glass of water.
After he locked her bedroom door, he put on a hood and cloak and walked fast to the nearest wog pharmacy. There he purchased three 20-gauge needles, three syringes, and some anti-coagulant. Back in his apartment, he tried to insert the needle in her arm vein. The point refused to go in until the fourth attempt when, in a fit of exasperation, he pressed hard.
During none of the jabbings did she open her eyes or jerk her arm.
When the first fluid crept into the glass tube, he gasped with relief. Though he hadn't known it, he had been biting his lip and holding his breath. Suddenly, he knew that he had for the last month been pushing a horrible suspicion back to the outlands of his mind. Now, he realized the thought had been ridiculous.
The blood was red.
He tried to arouse her in order to get a specimen of urine. She twisted her mouth over strange syllables, then lapsed back into sleep or a coma – he didn't know which. In an anguish of despair, he slapped her face, again and again, hoping he could bring her to. He swore once more, for he realized all at once that he should have gotten the specimen before giving her the rockabye. How stupid could he get! He wasn't thinking straight; he was too excited over her condition and what he had to do at the ship.
He made some strong coffee and managed to get part of it down her. The rest dribbled down her chin and soaked her gown.
Either the caffeine or his desperate tone awoke her, for she opened her eyes long enough to look at him while he explained what he wanted her to do and where he was going afterward. After he had gotten the urine into a previously boiled jar, he wrapped the syringes and jar in a‹ handkerchief and dropped them into the cloak pocket.
He had wristphoned the Gabriel for a gig. A horn beeped outside. He took another look at Jeannette, locked the bedroom door, and ran down the stairs. The; gig hovered above the curb. He entered, sat down, and punched the GO button. The boat rose to a thousand feet and then flashed at an 11-degree angle toward the park where the ship squatted.
The medical section was empty, except for one orderly. The fellow dropped his comic and jumped to his feet.
'Take it easy,' said Hal. 'I just want to use the Labtech. And I don't want to be bothered with making out triplicate forms. This is a little personal matter, see?'
Hal had taken off his cloak, so the orderly could see the bright golden lamedh.
'Shib,' the orderly grunted.
Hal gave him two cigarettes.
'Geez, thanks,' The orderly lit a cigarette, sat down, and picked up The Forerunner and Delilah in the Wicked City of Gaza.
Yarrow went around the corner of the Labtech, where the orderly couldn't see him, and set the proper dials. After he inserted his specimens, he sat down. Within a few seconds, he jumped up and began pacing back and forth. Meanwhile, the huge cube of the Labtech purred like a contented cat as it disgested its strange food. A half-hour later, it rumbled once and then flashed a green light: ANALYSIS COMPLETE.
Hal pressed a button. Like a tongue out of a metal mouth, a long tape slid out. He read the code. Urine was normal. No infection there. Also normal were the pH and the blood count.
He hadn't been sure the 'eye' would recognize the cells in her blood. However, the chances had been strong that her red cells would be Terranlike. Why not? Evolution, even on planets separated by light years, follows parallel paths; the biconcave disk is the most efficient form for carrying the maximum of oxygen.
Or at least he'd thought so until he'd seen the corpuscles of an Ozagenian.
The machine chattered. More tape. Unknown hormone! Similar in molecular structure to the parathyroid hormone primarily concerned in the control of calcium metabolism.
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