Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (21 page)

“Hmm! All right.”

The door closed behind them with a faint hiss, shutting out the perfume of the gardens, and she suddenly realized that the rustic appearance of Jack’s house was a sham. The place was a stronghold, made not of wood, glass, and stone but of artfully textured cerametal, clear sheets of laserproof boron perboride, and indestructible high-molecular plass. The air was cool, filtered, and humidity-controlled. In the tiny front hallway was a wall control station for programming aerial and terrestrial alarm systems and a double-ply sigma shield.

“Good heavens,” she murmured, “Is all this for Fury and Hydra?”

“Among others. I’d prefer to talk about it later … This is the living room.” He stood aside politely so she could enter first.

She did, and stood speechless.

Table lamps and standards had switched on automatically, giving soft illumination. The place was about nine meters square, with tall windows along the side overlooking the back garden. Hung on the walls in museum-style shadow boxes were a precious tapa cloth from Tonga, a nineteenth-century Hawaiian quilt, and an intricate featherwork cloak of modern vintage. Carvings, masks, bowls, fiber-art constructions, and framed collections of shells from all over the South Pacific were wall-mounted, displayed in niches, or scattered about on tables or on the polished
teakwood floor. There were scores of paintings, including one by Paul Gauguin, three by Madge Tennent, and a set of exquisite native bird studies by Marian Berger. In the place of honor above the fireplace, subtly lit, was a James Goldenberg portrait of Teresa Kaulana Kendall costumed as the Queen of the Night in
The Magic Flute
.

Several old Chinese rosewood cabinets had been modified to hold a stereo, a Tri-D, and impressive communications and reference equipment. There was also a tall case full of paged books. Near the room’s center a crystal container that resembled a globular fishbowl rested on a lau-hala floor mat. The furnishings, of native woods, rattan, and quietly colored hand-screened fabric, looked brand new and rather homely, considering the awesome collection of artwork surrounding them.

“This room and the lab in the basement used to be all there was to the house,” Jack said. “But I’ve made some additions. Kitchen and indoor dining area through there in the south wing.”

She nodded. It went without saying that a naked brain had no need of the usual domestic amenities. They inspected the new rooms briefly. Both were small and cheerfully appointed. The kitchen was equipped with every conceivable laborsaving device, including an automatic food-delivery system. As they returned to the living room she pointed to the mysterious empty fishbowl.

“I hope that’s not the bedroom.”

“Not while you’re in residence,” he said, grinning. “I think we’ll use it for a flower vase instead. The new sleeping chamber is across the hall. Let’s see if it meets Madam Dirigent’s requirements.”

The room was large, with an adjoining lanai and bathroom. The walls were white-painted, adorned with a few pieces of artwork. In one corner hung a little old crucifix carved of koawood. At its foot was a bracket with a tiny red light. The bed was of fancifully wrought brass, covered with an intricate green-and-white patchwork quilt in the classic Hawaiian style that had been Malama’s wedding present. Gauzy draperies hung at the tall jalousied windows in the French doors leading to the lanai. The other furniture was sparse: a lovely old mahogany chest of drawers and a framed mirror, a couple of ladder-back chairs, and a pair of pickled-pine nightstands with glass-shaded lamps.

“These things are only temporary,” he said. “I wanted you to decorate this room in your own way. And the rest of the house as well, if you like.”

“It’s quite lovely the way it is. I’ll just add a few things here
and there. We can play turnabout when we fix up our house on Caledonia.”

He hesitated. “Would you like to see the laboratory?”

“Tomorrow,” she said gently. “It’s been a very long day.”

He opened the sliding doors to a walk-in closet. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got us some special things to wear. And then my surprise!” He turned, his face composed but his mind radiating nervous hope. “The weather is going to be perfect. I thought we might spend our first night in a grass shack I’ve built out on Pu’u Kiloia, one of the promontories beside the bay. It’s … very pretty there. The air is cool and you can hear surf beating on the rocks, and there are special flowers.”

He shook out a folded piece of soft golden cloth imprinted with a scarlet pattern. “I know how you love to make clothing. I thought I’d try it, too. This is a pa’u, a kind of Hawaiian sarong, the traditional women’s garment of the old islands. I made it from the bark of the wauke, the paper mulberry tree.”

Her eyes lit up as she took it. “It’s marvelous! As soft as silk. Thank you, Jack.”

“I have a malo for myself, cut from the same length of kapa cloth.” He gestured toward the bathroom door. “If you’d like to get ready, I’ll see to a few things and then come back and take you to the shack.”

She nodded.

He scanned her masked face anxiously. “It’s all right, isn’t it, Diamond? I mean … in traditional human sex, the male is the initiator. But if you’d rather—”

She placed two fingers against his lips to silence him and her mind suffused him with warm approval. “I’d like to be a traditional bride. I think your idea of spending our honeymoon night in a grass shack is incredibly romantic and I love you.”

He smiled his relief. “I’ll be right back.”

She went into the bathroom, taking both the native garment and her wedding lei of maile. They had brought the garlands of sacred Hawaiian leaves with them from New Hampshire. She stripped off her traveling clothes, took a quick shower, and prepared her body. There were many jewel-bright flagons of tropical oils lined up on a tiled shelf, but she seemed irresistibly drawn to the delicately scented pikake jasmine. After the anointing, she wound the pa’u around herself in the way that Jack’s mind had indicated and studied the effect in the full-length mirror.

My hair should be longer, she thought.

Well—why not? On this night above all they could defy the
conventions of “correct” operant behavior and please themselves. She made the hair grow until it cascaded down nearly to her hips, brown and shining and slightly waved, concealing the sides of the diamond mask. For good measure, she augmented her small breasts just a bit and enhanced her eyelashes. Then she was ready.

When she went out into the bedroom Jack had not yet returned. She dimmed the night-lights almost to extinction and stood for a moment before the crucifix, where the tiny votive light cast eerie shadows on the carved face of Christ.

Help us, she prayed. Send a real angel to watch over Jack and me and bless our marriage. It’s going to be so hard, Lord, being separated for so much of the time. Our minds can bridge interstellar space, but not our bodies. We’re human and we need to be more than soul-mates. Both of us …

They would be together only when the Concilium was in session, or on the rare occasions when their duties otherwise permitted it. From this bright beginning they would learn more and more about each other while their devotion either grew stronger or faded: Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask, two grotesquely atypical human persons who had improbably found love.

They would have no children. Even though Jack’s male organs were functional, not even his paramount creativity was capable of fashioning the intricate DNA strands that would make his sperm germinal. Nor could such DNA be derived from his brain cells for a quasi-clonal nuclear transfer through artificial means. Not without having their baby share the “bodiless” fate of its mutant father.

They had discussed this and other intimate matters during the voyage from Caledonia to Earth. Jack had also informed her then that he lacked the self-redacting “immortality” gene complex that characterized other members of his famous family. His naked, self-sustaining brain, favored as it was with near-godlike mental capabilities, was nevertheless genetically programmed to age and eventually die, just as a normal human body would. No one held out much hope that genetic engineering would provide a way to rejuvenate him, any more than it could provide him with germ plasm. He was unique, a being less evolved than the insubstantial Lylmik but more advanced than the human race.

If he dies, so will I, she thought. Without him I have no real life. His love is the stronger, but I need him more …

The bedroom door opened.

He came in, wearing the golden kapa loincloth and his own maile garland. Draped over his left arm were dozens of fragile leis
made of pikake buds, while his right arm bore heavier chains of white dendrobium orchids. Before she could question him he hung the ivory jasmine solemnly about her neck, lifting her hair to let the scented flowers touch her skin.

“I wed thee again, my sweet Diamond,” he said, “in the old way of these islands.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She took the orchid leis and adorned him. “And I wed thee, dear Jack. Forever.”

At a gesture of his hand the doors leading to the lanai flew open. He drew her outside into the open air, onto a patio surrounded by pale-flowering shrubs. Overhead the sky was black, scattered with uncountable stars.

“ ‘You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride. You have pierced my soul with a single glance … My sister, my spouse is a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up. The rarest of perfumes are hers, and the well of living water.’ ”

She whispered, “ ‘Awake, north wind; come, wind of the south. Breathe over my garden and scatter its fragrance, welcome my Beloved and let him taste its precious fruits.’ ”

Hand in hand, they went up and out. The stars were so many that they silvered the leaves of the trees, reflected in the lily-pools, and caused the poinciana trees to cast faint shadows on the frosted grass. The trees’ blossoms, which would be flame-bright in sunlight, were the color, of polished jet under the stars. A wind from the sea rattled the leaves of the halas and coco palms down along the beach. Waves, surging under the invisible moon’s pull of the tide, hissed as they lapped the sand.

He drew her higher into the air, up the bluff on the western side of the bay, above a dark lava reef where the surf creamed, past ravines with liana-hung trees. She smelled a new fragrance borne on the rising wind, saw a great tangle of heavy stems scattered with huge white blossoms. The thicket covered the entire tip of the promontory except for an open space at its center, where the land was highest. A small thatched hut stood on the eminence within the living curtain wall.

They drifted down, their feet touching the ground near the seaward mass of tangled plants, which reached to nearly twice Jack’s height. She saw now that the thick twining stems were studded with sharp spines. Spectacular white flowers, nearly as wide as dinner plates and intricate in form, seemed to open wider even as she looked at them.

Her mind posed a wordless question and Jack replied: Night-blooming cereus. They last only twelve hours.

And they have thorns, she said. To guard us and to remind us …

He lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the little hut. It stood on low stilts, with a crude door made of framed matting and wide window openings that could be closed by unrolling lengths of woven dried grass. A fat candle in a hurricane lantern burned on a bamboo table that held food and drink. The bed was a simple platform covered with a thick kapa pad. It had coverings of the same soft natural fabric.

They undressed each other slowly, carefully setting aside the leis. He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, and the adamant gems sealing off her lower face. She guided his hands to her tender breasts, reaching down to caress him, feeling him grow.

Their minds opened to each other and she saw the aching pleasure glowing within him, matching her own melting neural fires. His arousal was more than mere physical stimulation. The desire for her, fully nurtured by imagination, swelled into an urgent hunger. He lifted her onto the bed, speaking her name.

“Diamond. I want you. I want your dear self more than anything in the world.” And the wanting is real my darling finally real just as we hoped. I’m human. I’m a man.”

He began to kiss her entire body.

“You did find it—the part of you that was missing! Oh, Jack. Thank God. Thank God …”

As his lips and tongue savored the sweet anointing, her mind cried out in pure ecstasy. Then he was in her, breaking the maidenhead with a delicious brief stab of pain, filling her, moving slowly so they could first know the simple ignition of their human flesh. Then would come the special things they had planned for each other, the lovemaking fantasies that nonoperant couples could only dream about.

Tendrils of her long hair awakened the nerves in his skin. Her small form molded to his in perfect rhythm, breasts crushed against his pectorals. Their nipples had become erect conduits of vital energy. She let hers expand and seek his smaller mammillae like creatures with minds of their own, intent on some outrageous conjunction. Yes—the breast-to-breast merging was possible. It happened and they shouted together as the fresh source of sexual pleasure fed their passion.

He kissed the hollow of her throat, the lobes of her ears. “The mask,” she said, her voice strangely muffled. “Darling, take it off. Now.”

It never occurred to him to hesitate. With a single powerful
movement he pulled the thing from the anchor-studs embedded in the bones of her face and flung it away. Its faceted gems caught the candlelight and sprayed the ceiling thatch with tiny rainbows.

She smiled.

“I knew it.” His whisper was triumphant. “I knew it!”

“Only for you. Kiss me, my dearest love.”

Your lips, my wife, drip wild honey. Honey and milk are beneath your tongue. I am come into my garden, my sister, my bride. I gather myrrh and balsam and drink sweet wine …

The third neural pathway formed as their mouths united. They fell away together into thundering incandescence, complete.