Margaret St. Clair (6 page)

“It’s nothing,” George replied modestly, recalling his thoughts. “The cerberus got after my ankle a bit.”

“Oh, my!” Frowning, Blixa made him stop and roll up his trouser leg. She drew in her breath at the sight of th e raw, bloody blotch the cerberus’ digestive juices had left. Deftly she plastered the wound with unguent from a tiny jar and slapped a bandijeon on it. “There,” she said, “that’ll do until a doctor can look at it. Say, do you still feel like somebody’s f o llowing us?”

George considered. They had reached the Grand Canal by now and were walking out slowly on one of its foot bridges. There was no noise anywhere except the quiet lapping of the dark, slow-flowing water. The streets were utterly empty. Marsport ‘s gigantic heart had almost ceased to beat. It was the quietest hour of the twenty-four, the one time when the whole city slept.

“A little,” he replied. “But I don’t see anyone. It must be nervous imagination. We’ve had a good deal tonight to put us on edge.”

“I suppose so,” Blixa answered. “Pharol, but it’s quiet!” She rested her elbows on the parapet and leaned over, looking down at the black water. “Give me the pig.”

George handed the case to her. She opened it, saw that the pig was intact, and sh ut the case again. Then she dropped it deliberately into the water of the canal.

For a second George stood and stared at her. Then he jumped in after the pig.

There was a second almost simultaneous splash. Blixa had jumped in beside him. “You let that pig alone!” she said furiously. George grabbed at the case which, bobbing from the disturbance of the water, was beginning to move slowly downstream. Blixa slapped at his hands. “You let it alone!” she repeated. “What business is it of yours? It’s my pig.”

“I –”

“Well, it is. Let it alone.” The case was moving gradually out of reach. George eyed it wistfully, and then turned to Blixa. He had always known she was unreliable, but he had never thought it would reach this pitch.

“What’s the idea?” he said.

“About two kilos down the canal,” Blixa said, “there’s an island. Some friends of mine are waiting there, watching for the pig. When it comes past they’ll wade out and get it. And then they’ll make soup out of it. Pharol grant it won’t disagree with th em.”

Blixa turned and began walking upstream, toward the flight of stairs that was built into the canal wall. The water was not much more than waist deep. Utterly befogged, George followed her.

She climbed the steps with George in the rear. She had a g raceful, swaying walk, and in her thin, drenched shari she looked nuder than nude. George found it hard to keep his mind on her hocus-pocus with the pig. Nonetheless, he came to a decision.

“Listen, Blixa,” he said when they were standing on dry land aga in beside a warehouse, “don’t you think you owe me an explanation? You Martians talk a lot about reasonableness. Do you think it’s reasonable to treat me like this?”

Blixa looked at him steadily. After a moment she nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll explain it.” Yet she hesitated and lowered her eyes as if she found it hard to begin.

“I’m a Martian patriot, George,” she said at last. “You Earth people don’t understand how Martians feel about Mars.” Blixa was speaking slowly; and, for the first time since George had known her, she made on him an impression of deep and complete sincerity. “Because we don’t drink toasts to our planet or sing songs about its green hills, because we never brag about how fine it is, you think we have no love for it. Some t imes, I know, you laugh at us because Mars is so poor and there is so much you have without thinking on your planet that we can never have. I have heard that your planet was far richer once, that before it came under a planet council much was wasted and w a shed away. That may be, but even so, Earth in our eyes is rich —rich! —and Mars —” Blixa threw out her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Well! We Martians do not wear our hearts upon our sleeves; and if Mars is poor, it may be we love out planet only t he more dearly because of that.

“Once before I told you a little about the pig. Most Martians learn about its worship —its service —while they are children, and grow up without ever thinking about it again. That is a bad thing, for if they thought abou t it, it would disgust and sicken them. The worship of the pig —the worship of the pig —”

Blixa paused and clenched her hand. “I can’t talk about it,” she confessed, as if the confession were somehow disgraceful. “It makes me ashamed. Every thirty-one d ays, for example, we —no, I can’t tell you. It is unreasonable, but I can’t. The pig’s worship, George, is like something invented by a feeble-minded child. A nasty, nasty child with a feeble mind. A child who catches flies and swallows them. It makes me ashamed.

“Four of us — two inside the cult and two outside —decided to try to stop the service of the pig. The pig had been sent to Terra as a part of the ritual of the Great Year. When we heard it was coming back, it seemed like a good time. The cult m essenger was detained on the island, and I was sent to get the pig in his stead. But the Plutonians got there first.

“Now the pig is on its way to the island. It should get there about dawn. When it does, there will be a ritual meal, with Daror partaking on behalf of the actual members of the cult, and Rhidion and Gleer on behalf of all the people of Mars. And that will be the end of t h e pig.”

There was a short pause. George was trying to assimilate what he had heard. “They —will there be trouble about your having killed the pig?” he asked at last.

Blixa shrugged. “Possibly. On the other hand, many of our cults have as their central feature a ritual meal in which the cult object is eaten, symbolically, by its worshipers. It isn’t far from that to actually eating the object’s flesh. Gleer is a publicist who specializes in word-of-mouth rumors. He plans to circulate accounts of the me a l which present it as a pious act, a necessary sacrifice for Mars’ prosperity. People will hiss us for a while, but —who knows? —we might end up as heroes of a sort.”

“I should think so,” George said. He was feeling somewhat impressed.

Blixa laughed. “The really heroic part,” she confided, “will be eating that awful pig. I do wish it weren’t necessary. It isn’t really alive, you know —I’m sure it came from Vulcan’s workshop originally —and only Pharol knows what it will taste like. I hope it won’t p oison them.

“Our work, of course, will only be beginning when the pig’s out of the way. It’s too bad there aren’t more of us. We’ll try to replace the pig’s service with something better —a Pharol cult, perhaps, or something from Earth. Something that i s —well! —not too unworthy of Mars.”

Blixa’s voice died away. George, regarding her faintly-smiling profile, felt that he was seeing her for the first time.

“In the canal?” a high voice said from around the corner of the warehouse.

“N-n-n-n-no.” It was not stuttering, but a vibrato caused by an incessant trembling of the tongue and lips. “N-no-t u-un-t-til w-w-e ha-a-ve s-o-me f-f-un wi-th t-t-them.”

George’s heart gave a lunge. He’d heard a voice like that once before, when one of the Cyniscus’ p assengers had turned out to be a glassy-eyed homicidal maniac. He whirled around.

The men who held the sliver guns looked more like badly-stuffed, half-rotting burlap bags than human beings. The hands on the guns were black with scabs and scaling flesh; they looked like burned and blistered rubber gloves. The hands alone would have identified the men to half the inhabitants of the Martian planet as last-stage alaphronein addicts.

“You see,” the one who could still talk normally said, “you birded Louey a bout the groot. Poor Louey! He’s got very little groot left. And you birded us. Can’t have that. Louey sent us to correct you. Have some fun.”

“T-t-the la-ad-y,” the shorter addict said. “En-j-joy using the g-gu-un. O-on h-er.” He coughed, and spat somet hing thick and blackish on the pavement.

George felt an apprehension that physically sickened him. The dart from a sliver gun is instantly fatal to human beings in a few spots; but over most of the body area, puncture with it produces a horrible tetany. In the agonized tonic spasm victims not infrequently snap their spines or fracture their own jaws. He and Blixa would wind up dead in the canal; but before that, Louey’s men (Louey must be the person to whom Farnsworth had told George to deliver the alaph r onein) would enjoy themselves. Would enjoy themselves with their sliver guns. And Blixa’s smooth, soft skin …

George pushed the nausea and the fear deep down inside himself and got ready to jump.

Blixa touched him lightly on the arm. “Wait,” she breathed. She stepped forward, pulling the shari from her head.

“Careful
!
” the taller addict warned, waving his gun. He was wearing a hard, bright, happy grin.

“Ando djar,” Blixa said. She raised one hand and swept the red curls back from her forehead.

“D-d-dai?” the shorter addict asked.

“Andor,” Blixa replied. George, peering at her obliquely, saw that on her forehead shone, in pale blue fire, the interwined symbols of the full and crescent moon.

There was a moment of intolerable tension. George realized that he was so keyed up that the smallest unexpected noise would have sent him charging into the two sliver guns. Then the taller of Louey’s emissaries put down his hand. “Par don, lalania,” he said to Blixa. “—Come along, Mnint.”

“B-b-u-ut L-l-lou-ey s-sa —”

“Bird Louey! He’s got hardly any groot. Let’s go have fun with him.” A glance of understanding passed between the two. Then they slouched away.

Blixa leaned back against the wall of the warehouse. She was looking quite white. “Pharol,” she said weakly, “but I was afraid! I hope I never have to do that again.”

George put out an arm to steady her. He was feeling a little shaky himself. “What did you tell them?” he ask ed after a moment.

“Why, that I —here comes an abrotanon car! We’d better hide!”

She whirled about, but the driver of the car had already seen them. The car circled, returned, and hovered. Its passenger peered intently down at them through the lucitra ns bubble that formed the underside of the car. Then the port opened, the stair shot out, and the passenger hopped down.

“Is that you, George?” he said. “I thought I recognized the top of your head. Yes, it is. Where the devil have you been? They let me out of the hospital last night, and I’ve been looking for you ever since. I’ve been worried sick. Did you deliver the Pig?”

George looked at his cousin Bill for a moment before answering. “Not exacdy, ” he said at last.

“Not exactly? What do you mean by that?”

George indicated Blixa, who was standing beside him. “This lady took charge of it,” he answered.

Bill regarded Blixa dubiously for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Why, that’s perfectly all right,” he said happily. “She’s the Idris of the cult —I recognize the marks on her forehead. Legally, she can sign anything. Why didn’t you tell me you knew her? It would have saved a lot of trouble.”

George said nothing. Bill produced a receipt book from an inner tunic pocket and extended it and a brush toward Blixa. “If you don’t mind signing here, lalania,” he murmured. “An acknowledgement of the delivery of the pig …”

“Not at all.” Blixa took the brush from him and drew her name quickly in the proper place. She handed the book back to him.

Bill examined the receipt carefully before he thrust the book back in his pocket. He gave a satisfied nod. “That’s fine,” he said, “just fine. Thanks a lot for helping out, George. Don’t forget, I’ll give yo u half my bonus when it comes. You’ve really earned it by delivering the pig. And then you can marry Darleen.”

He slapped George on the shoulder, nodded with more formal politeness to Blixa, and hopped into the abrotanon car. It drove away.

There was a silence. Bill’s last words, “marry Darleen,” seemed to be floating in the air. Blixa looked at George and George, alternately, looked at her and then down at the ground. What was the matter with him? Why wasn’t he happy, now that he could marry Darleen?

“Who’s Darleen?” Blixa asked at last in a colorless voice.

“I … Girl I know on Earth,” George mumbled.

There was an even longer silence. It was still quiet beside the canal, but all around came the thousand noises of a great city waking to life. The polar mail went arching through the sky with a long scream of rockets. George kept looking down at the ground.

“Was that why you helped me get the pig?” Blixa said finally. Her voice was even more impersonal than it had been. “So you could have enough m oney to marry this Darleen?”

“…
I …
I .
.. guess so.”

“Are you quite sure?” Blixa asked. Her voice was as toneless as ever, but something in it made George look up quickly. Blixa’s eyes were still fixed on him, but she had begun to smile. “Are yo u quite sure?” she said again.

Something in the words ran down George’s spine like a drizzle of melted honey. It reached the base of his vertebral column and stayed there, circling in a warm, sweet flood. For a moment he looked at Blixa unbelievingly. Th en he advanced on her with the determination of a male rhyoorg in spring.

Blixa gave a slight scream. “Be reasonable!” she said. “Ooooh, oooh! Not here, George! It’s too public! Be reasonable!”

1949.
Startling Stories

-

The Gardener

Traffic cops have been known to disregard “No Parking” signs. Policemen filch apples from fruit stands under the proprietor’s very eye. Even a little authority makes its possessor feel that the rules don’t apply to him. Thus it was that Tig lath Hobbs, acting chief of the Bureau of Extra-Systemic Plant Conservation, cut down a sacred Butandra tree.

It must have been sheer bravado which impelled him to the act. Certainly the grove where the Butandra trees grow (there are only fifty trees on all Cassid, which means that there are only fifty in the universe) is well protected by signs.

Besides warnings in the principal planetary tongues, there is a full set of the realistic and expressive Cassidan pictographs. These announce, in shapes which even the dullest intellect could not misunderstand, that cutting or mutilating the trees is a crime of the gravest nature. That persons committing it will be punished. And that after punishment full atonement must be made.