Ardor on Aros (13 page)

“So, Thoris. There it is. I plead guilty by reason of stupidity—ignorance of a custom
my
people would find barbaric.”

He nodded, either ignoring or swallowing the turning back on him of his favorite word. “I see. And I will explain. Dejah will be pleased, or at least mollified. You gave her a tremendous blow right in the self-respect.

“As a matter of fact she lost nine pounds while on the journey—but she told me a few minutes ago that she’s going to diet. Thinks her body was too lush for your tastes.”

I had talked before with fathers about their daughters—but never this way! “You know better than that,” I said. “But—“

“Of course I do. And I told her, too!”

“All right, you’re her father. Tell me what to do now.”

“Get up and get out of here,” he said without cogitation. “She will be home in a few minutes; she’s out transacting some business for me. Aside from saving her silly head, you also saved the nice profit I turned on this caravan. Go! Get out. I’ll tell her; I will explain.”

“But—uh—I—” I finally put a check on my stammering and nodding, and I headed for the door. Back through studio and shop, and through the door to the street, dizzy, disappointed.

But as I was leaving he called with humor in his voice: “And come back for dinner!”

I walked stupidly, dazedly down the street, wondering. Was the Julan custom deferrable?

On the street a half-hour or so later, I met a Guildsman. There were plenty about. I stopped him to ask about lodgings, explain who I was and why I was lost in his city. He accepted it; I was, after all, wearing the uniform, and the penalty for impersonating a Guildsman was too severe for anyone to dream of doing it. He directed me to Mama Selapah’s, and Mama Selapah was delighted to see me. She had two vacant rooms. Since one of them had been permanently vacated due to the demise of its former tenant in a caravan returned only today, she was happy to give me my choice. She specialized in renting to Guildsmen; four others lived in her old house, and she was careful to lay the word on me that she still had a vacancy and could sure use the money.

She mentioned something that two others had mentioned: my hair. Naturally the WGPD barber had given me a Guild scalplock hairdo, but it would be months before I had that thin mane hanging down my back. Telling her I was from elsewhere and had only just joined the Guild, I got her out of my room, wondering if she had a couple of homely daughters she was anxious to shove at nice young Guildsmen. No, probably not. She was just one more kittenish old landlady, widowed and surviving handily and vicariously by renting rooms to single men.

I stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Aros. Monsters (tame ones and otherwise: slooks and Vardors). Talking parrots—
conversing
parrots. Witches. Julan. Liz Taylor, Sophia Loren, and Dejah Thoris. And me. I knew far too little, still, but here I was in Brynda, a certified scalplock-carrying Guild warrior. With uniform, and sword and even some money: sort of an insurance dividend.

I thought about the stories I’d read. The two from that West Coast publishing company, by Nuetzel: standard gambit. Lowly hero winds up someplace else and gets the princess—after a suitable time of her treating him like dirt. The Burroughs pastiches by Edward Bradbury—too bad his middle initl wasn’t “
R!
” Same bit: first person hero sees upon dropping onto Mars is the friendly neighborhood princess. Odd: she wasn’t in danger. But she got that way fast, and he had to rescue her. Terrible problem: the jackass, just like John Carter and Carson Napier and all the others, falls in love at first sight but learns he can’t marry her—until the last chapter. And all of those heroes rubbed shoulders with kinds and princes and even emperors.

I
rubbed shoulders with a mercenary officer and a silversmith.
I
saved a girl—and rather than insulting her by immediately laying sword and self at her feet, I put her down by turning down her “Bed me” offer! There seemed no standard problem between us, otherwise. She wasn’t betrothed to any wicked prince somewhere, and she wasn’t a few miles up the social scale. Her daddy would explain my ignorance, and I was invited to dinner.

I remembered conversation Evelyn and I had had back on Earth; it seemed years ago, even then.

“Well,” Evenly had said, talking about her book (which is all anyone who rites wants to talk about anyhow), “first there’ll be a universal language. Oh, there’ll be dialects, but the langue stems from one root, and this planet (she’d named it Afrodyte: Greek goddess plus tokenism) is young, so the language hasn’t changed all that much yet. And of course there’ll be monsters, and—“

“Are the inhabitants egg-layers—with breasts?”

A withering glance: “No, they’re just like we are. But all darker, with black or brown hair and brown eyes, of course; darker races are the vast majority, and this is a very warm planet. They will ride on odd creatures—either dragon-descendants or enormous dogs, I haven’t decided.”

“How many legs?” I asked, studying hers.

“Oh, six or eight or ten. Certainly nothing standard. After all—“

“Evelyn, four legs seem sufficient. I mean, perfect balance. And for the matter of that
two,
if your backbone and pelvis are build that way, like ours.”

She gazed at me a minute. Then she shrugged. “Readers expect extra legs, and different-colored races, too. I mean, here we have red, and copper, and bronze, and yellow, and brown and black, and white—hm?”

I was shaking my head. “Ain’t no white folks on earth, except albinos. We ‘white’ folks are pink, or tan, some of each or take your choice. And we spend lots of money and time trying to get darker to look more like people we’ve been kicking around ever since some ass ran onto Africa. Why not postulate really white people? I mean
white.
”

She shrugged, jerking her head. “On a warm young planet? Nonsense. Green or blue, I think. That’s about all we don’t have on Earth.”

“They sound either necrotic or putrid to me,” I said. “Besides, they’ve both been used, over and over. Cater even put giant blue men on ancient earth—identical with those Bradbury put on Mars as substitutes for ERB’s unjolly green giants.”

She regarded me awhile, then said, “You sure do try to make it hard for a girl to write a simple s&s story, Henry Ardor!”

“Sorry. I was just trying to get you to do something different, for a change. What about the ladies—what we talked about before. Chattel?”

She sighed. “I guess they’ll have to be. I mean, having them treated the way we like to think Arthur’s knights did is ridiculous. But—I won’t send much time on that, and I will show that it’s perfectly normal for women to be as lusty as men, and to heck with St. Paul!”

I laughed. “Attagirl!”

“Well, it won’t be all that easy for my hero, though,” Evelyn said, watching her swinging foot. Any mention of sexuality always had her swinging her foot. I wondered if her toes were curling in those business-like flats she wore. “None of this dropping down, finding a beautiful doll menaced by beasties or baddies, and handily killing them with his mighty blade and increased agility—although I
am
going to have AFrodyte lighter; he needs
some
help. Anyhow, none of that coincidence stuff, and none of this princesses-running-around-getting-kidnapped-but-never-raped-and-rescued-and-reresuced, either. My hero has to
think,
and create his own darned kingdom.”

I grinned. “Ah. He IS going to have a kingdom?”

“Oh yes. Eventually…in about the second or third book, I guess. Anyhow, it’s all always just to ridiculously convenient for the lone Earthman on the where-have-you and
I’m
going to be
different.
”

“Why don’t you try writing one from the female viewpoint, Ev? I mean—with a female protagonist. A heroine, rather than a hero.”

“Dullsville,” she answered at once, thereby giving me some psychological insight into Evelyn Shay. “Besides—what would she
do?
Run around getting raped all the time? I’m not writing THAT kind of story!”

“Someone should,” I muttered, looking at the ceiling. “I bet it would sell like crazy! Joanna Carter, maybe, sort of a tomboy, and she gets raped a lot, and captured and all that, but finally finds a bunch of amazons and becomes boss—“

Again she shrugged. “See? Same old plot.”

“I guess,” I said, and I reached for a cigarette. “You going to make the hero think a little, huh? That’ll be unique. A mystery or two?”

“Oh yes! I’m working on that part now—as soon as my hero Achilles Caxton arrives, he gets some cryptic stuff laid on him. And—“

The scene faded from my mind. On Aros, in Brynda, in Mama Selapah’s, I sat up on the strawticked bed. I stared at the wall opposite.

The hero would have to think—like wondering what the hell was going on all the time, and trying to dope out things rather than plunging in. Things would be tougher for the hero—like finding a local citizen—a dying one. Like rescuing a girl—who vanished. There would be monsters, colored ones: like gray-blue, six-legged slooks and blue-gray, basketball-dunker Vardors. There would be the rape to be expected in a barbar society—but the ladies would like it. As the Jadiriyah Solah had, broadcasting her orgasmic ecstasy, as Dejah Thoris apparently would, hurt and shook because I hadn’t accepted Julan. An easily-learned universal language—ridiculous, but necessary to a wandering hero, unless he picked up languages in a few hours, like Tarzan. And a cryptic message: such as
Hai azul thade cor zorveli nas!

“My god! Is that it?
Am I a character in Evelyn’s novel?
”

And a few minutes later:

“My god! What if I’m not the hero? Or what if Evelyn never finishes it—will I just—freeze?”

And a few minutes after that:

“But if I
am
the hero—is the plot all worked out? Can I be killed? Am I a
person,
freewilled ole Hank Ardor, or am I just a character, a chessman manipulated by Evelyn Shay? And if she
does
finish it, will I just freeze then? Or live happily ever after?—Or dear god, will I have to spend the rest of my life chasing around after every bad guy who kidnaps my wife once a month and twice in leap year?”

I groaned. I snarled. I cursed. My heart speeded to a run. I began to get wet and prickly. It all fitted too damned well. Things weren’t too easy: sure, I ran onto a native right away, and learned the language (fairly well). But he died, and there I was. Sure, I found a damsel in distress—but AFTER she’d been distressed even more by both Vardors, while I lay there helplessly—the perverse slapping down of the “hero” by a female writer: Evelyn Shay. Sure, I rescued said damsel (who, come to think, looked like the woman Evelyn Shay thought was the best looking in the world; was Sola Evelyn Shay herself—as she’d LIKE to be?). But then she took off, leaving me stranded—which was a bitchy, evelynshay thing to do: again, complicating things for the hero, switching the standard plot around.

I pushed the thoughts on:

Yeah, I’d found people, and they’d accepted me, and I had been the hero of the attack on the caravan—I guess. At least I’d got the insurance money as reward. And I’d rescued still another demoiselle—again, not a princess. None of that stuff, Evenly had said. And instead of horrifying here, turning her off with my forwardness—I had insulted and hurt her by just the opposite! Carter called Dejah Thoris “My princess,” (as well as I remember) and thus insulted her. How was he to know that meant “darling-sweetheart-mine” on Mars? He was entirely too forward; boorish. The word “boor” appeared in any such novel worth its advance.

Me? The opposite; Evelyn’s perversity! SHE had written the script for this story—and I hadn’t read it. As a matter of fact I had read all the wrong ones!

Etc. But there were still the holes. So I was a character in a novel being written by Evelyn Shay (and if I catch up, will tomorrow be delayed or called on account of rain or something?) So…how come poor Kro Kodres looked like someone
I
’d known; it wasn’t likely that Evelyn had. And how come Dejah Thoris (unimaginative scientist-type female!) looked like Sophia Loren…when I
knew
the number two woman Evelyn would most rather look like was Brigitte Bardot? (“Those are the two, Hank,” she’d said. “Sure, I know they’re almost opposites in color and build. But they’re both beautiful, and don’t make any moralistic connections. I said LOOK LIKE them not BE or BE LIKE them!”)

And what about the latest development—her father and the invitation to dinner? Come to think, Pro Thoris looked like a man I once knew. I hadn’t got to
know
him—I was messing around in a tiny motor boat on Jennie Wiley’s Lake, and all of a sudden this kingsize houseboat looked as if it were about to run us down. About the time I muttered “Stand by to repel boarders” (getting scared, I admit; that thing was BIG) a voice bellowed. Upshot was the gregarious M.D. on board wanted some drinking company, and I would up drinking his gin ’n’ tonic and sitting at the wheel of his boat. Anyhow—Evelyn
couldn’t
have known him.

Too, there was the matter of the parrot, the jungle, the parrot-dominated men:
that
part of my picaresque Arone adventure was as if in a story written by a parrot, specifically Pope Borgia Bighead. And the disappearing-reappearing jungle—what about that?

I’d had the thought before; maybe you have. It is the absolute height of egoism. Suppose you are the only person, the only creature in the world. Suppose everything else was put here for you. There’s been no history; just books and artifacts. There’s no New York (unless you live there). Just maps and newspapers and so on. There is
nothing
—except what’s right around you. Sure, if you decide to go to New York, it’s there. THEY put it there. (Who? I don’t know. God. The Secret Masters. The Nine.) If you could somehow disguise your intent and spin around fast enough—there wouldn’t be anything behind you. It would snap right into existence, of course, because you were looking. And you’d rub your eyes and think you were going over the edge, maybe. But you wouldn’t worry about it—
unless you suspected.

Anyhow, that way once you emerged from a jungle it wouldn’t be there anymore, and if you looked back over your shoulder it would be gone. That was a hole in the Evelyn-Shay-novel theory, and there was a hole in the hole.

True, the jungle hadn’t been there when I looked back. But the desert had. And if this were
that
sort of thing, just me, and a lot of window dressing, then there wouldn’t have been
anything
there, would there?

“Maybe I’m dreaming,” I muttered, staring at the floor of Mama Selapah’s. “Maybe I’m on an LSD trip. Maybe—”

No more maybes came. I thought sure I had the answer; the character-in-a-novel theory explained many of the puzzles, the inconsistencies. But—not all of them.

I lay back, wishing the Excedrin people had got to Aros (I think I had Headache Number ΦΖ, in Arone numerals). I did some more ceiling-staring.

Then I heard someone come up the steps and go down the hall, and a door closed, and I went down the hall to meet one of my fellow Guildsmen. I had a few questions. As it turned out we had two more in the room by late afternoon, all offering advice and answering questions both asked and unasked. One knew about me; the told the others; they wanted a demonstration; I jumped and hit my head on the ten-foot ceiling on the way over the bed and sprawled. Everybody laughed, then looked nervous, and I laughed, and I had three friends. They gave me more advice and answered more unasked queries.