The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid (7 page)

VII

The third day after Althea’s arrival at Elysion happened to be Tenday, the last day of the Krishnan “week” and the traditional day of rest. Diogo Kuroki had adopted this tradition for his colony. At breakfast, Althea said, “At least I’ll be able to let my blisters heal.”

Kirwan grunted agreement. “I hear the younger ones have games and dances and things, but I feel more like lying on me back and letting me genius operate.”

Bahr said, “I fear, my friends, that if you expect a day of restful idleness, you are in for an unpleasant surprise.”

“Huh?” said Kirwan.

“Pleasure, I understand, is compulsory here. With a keen eye to the welfare of his flock, Senhor Zeus has arranged a healthful program of games and sports, lest by an excess of leisure anyone be led into temptation.”

“He can’t! Damned if I’ll—” began Kirwan, but the jangle of a bell interrupted him. Diogo Kuroki, looking like an Oriental god of bronze, rose at the head table and announced, “Everybody shall be at the playing field in one hour. You are dismissed.”

Kirwan snorted. “Let them try to find
me
when the hour comes round. It’s far away I’ll be . . .”

When the time arrived, however, Kirwan was there with the rest. Althea sat on the sidelines, on a patch of grasslike plant. Kirwan sat on one side, Bahr on the other, watching naked Roussellians run, wrestle, dance, throw heavy stones, and otherwise exert themselves. Althea found the sight interesting, although she could see that it might become tedious with compulsory repetition.

After breakfast, Kirwan had wandered off, he said to poetize. When Althea and Bahr had taken this place, the poet had at once reappeared, to sit on her other side. At first, Althea had thought that he had changed his mind about defying the leader’s orders. Then something in his manner suggested another motive.

Now that she thought of it, for several days, each of these two had shown a tendency not to let Althea out of his sight in the other’s company. If she had been more observant, she would have noticed this trend sooner.

Althea began to wonder what this rising rivalry portended. The idea that both men were falling in love with her, or at least in lust, had not occurred to her before. While such a thing was flattering, it might result in unpleasant complications, say, if they fell to fighting for her favor. Althea had never had two suitors come to blows over her. The prospect both excited and appalled her. What on earth should one do then?

“What are you lazy people doing?” roared Diomedes-Halevi. “Get up! Everybody must take part. No idle spectators on Zesh!”

“Go soak your head,” said Kirwan. “I’m comfortable here, and I’ll not be moving for any reformed banker on Krishna.”

“Would you prefer to be the bull in the ring?” said Halevi dangerously. “Hey, Pyrrhos! Aias!” A pair of muscular youths hastened over and stood awaiting orders.

“What’s he talking about?” said Kirwan.

Althea explained, “I think he’s threatening to put you in a circle of the young men and let one of them chase you with a paddle while you try to break out.”

“Oh, hell!” groaned Kirwan, getting up. “You’re as crazy over-organized as a Terran factory. Why can’t you let a body be?”

Halevi said, “How about you two?”

Bahr replied, “I am not a member of your organization, my friend. If you should lay hands on either of us, I should consider us to be assaulted and defend us accordingly.”

Halevi grunted but apparently decided not to force the issue. “Come along, Orpheus,” he growled. “Which shall it be: square dances, piggy-back jousting, or wrestling? The races are over.”

Althea missed Kirwan’s mumbled reply. A few minutes later, she saw him stripped and grunting in a tangle of limbs with another wrestler.

“Althea,” said Bahr, “would you not like to go for a walk? We have been sitting here for a long, long time.”

“All right,” said Althea.

As soon as they were out of sight of the game field, Bahr cleared his throat several times, as if trying to start a balky outboard motor. At last he said, “If I may take the liberty, dear Althea, I am telling you that my feelings for you are warmer than those of a scientist for an assistant. In fact, I propose to you that as soon as some legal arrangements can be made, we enter into the matrimonial relationship.”

“Why, thank you, Gottfried, but—”

“It would have considerable advantages. I am a person of regular habits and sober, reliable character. Of course, I admit that to some I might not seem very colorful—a little dull and pedantic, perhaps—but this is simply because I am a diffident man, the schizoid-cerebrotonic type, and I put up this façade of cold competence to conceal the fact. You see, I am a good enough psychologist to recognize my own limitations. What do you think of the idea, my dear?”

“I’m afraid not. I like you, but . . .”

“Please do not think that I am merely trying to save the cost of an assistant. Your salary would continue in any case. I would not apply unfair pressure to you either, knowing that a marriage entered into under those circumstances would not have the optimum, probability of success.”

“That’s decent of you, but . . . no.”

“No or just maybe?”

“Definitely no. I’m sorry.”

Bahr sighed. “My analysis of your emotional tone did not give me much hope, but one must try. You are a very, very beautiful woman.”

“Oh, it’s just that you’ve been away from Earth so long,” said Althea.

“That is not true, but we will argue it some other time. Shall we return to the games?”

They got back to find Kirwan nursing a black eye. He complained that his opponent had fouled him by poking him in the optic with his knee.

“He claims I bit him,” said Kirwan, “but pay no attention to the rascal. He stepped on my face, so it was natural that some of me teeth should scratch his foot, accidental-like.”

“Who won?” asked Althea.

“What a silly question,
a cuisle
! The great Brian Kirwan, o’ course, that was a professional wrestler before he got bit by the poetical bug.”

“Come on, come on!” roared Diomedes-Halevi. “Everybody down to the beach. Don’t lounge around; you’ll catch cold!”

“God, don’t a man ever get five minutes to himself?” muttered Kirwan. He followed the others down the trail to the beach.

The entire village, two hundred-odd people, over a third of them children, swarmed down to the beach on which Althea had landed three days earlier. They made one of their number to climb out on a projecting rock to watch the water for any of the man-eating monsters of the Sadabao Sea, while the rest shed their wrappings and plunged in.

Althea and Bahr sat down on the sand to watch the performance. Althea said, “Do you know what impresses me most? It’s the high proportion of children and pregnant women.”

“That is the natural ratio, when people have short life-expectancies and no methods of limitation.”

“But I thought Kuroki provided his members with longevity doses like other Terrans?”

“He does; that is one product of decadent civilization that they would not forgo. But his medical service is rather crude. He has a lot of mixed-up ideas about nature’s being the best physician. At this rate, in any case, he will soon have an overpopulation problem.”

Althea looked up to see the barrel-bodied Kirwan dripping in front of her. He said, “Well, Althea darling, aren’t you having a bath this day, and you so dirty and all?”

“I suppose I could use one,” said Althea. Up on the plateau, water was not so easily come by that it was used for bathing. She had thought of going down to the beach for a bath the night before, but she had been too tired. “But I haven’t any bathing suit.”

“You’ve got your skin, the same as the rest of us. In a suit, you’d be the conspicuous one.”

“Why not?” said Bahr, rising and beginning to peel off his khaki shirt. “If Brian will his great paunch expose, and I my poor thin skeleton of a physique, why should you to your Terran taboos adhere? You, who could be a sculptor’s model for a statue of Diana?”

Althea compromised by walking down to one extreme end of the beach, out of earshot if not out of sight of the Roussellians, and bathed there. Lacking soap or washrag, she scrubbed herself with sand. Then she waded out to breast depth and swam powerfully out until the lifeguard blew a whistle to warn her back in.

She returned to her companions to find that the bony Bahr had just emerged from the water and was talking with Kirwan. The latter said, “Sit down, Althea, and listen. The mind of the great Brian Kirwan is so superior it’s even willing to admit when it’s made a mistake. I thought getting out and living the natural life would be easier; but I’m finding the simpler it is, the harder it is. This sort of thing may be all right for a vacation, but the idea of spending years grubbing in the muck fair gives me the horrors. No meat, no whiskey, and no tobacco after me present supply’s gone. Nothing but these damned vegetables, all tasting like turnips, morning, noon, and night. And what’s an Irishman without his whiskey and beefsteak?”

“You would at least train off some of that fat,” murmured Bahr.

Kirwan snorted. “I’m not fat, except in comparison with a tottering structure of strings and wires like you. Now, we want to get out of here before the Dasht of Darya comes down on us horse, foot, and artillery. But we can’t just write a letter to Novorecife to come fetch us. In the first place, it’d bring Gorchakov down on our necks; in the second, Kuroki censors all the mail to keep contacts with the decadent Terran civilization down to a minimum.”

“What then?” queried Althea.

“I thought maybe we could do something with Halevi—you know, the one they call Diomedes.” Kirwan pointed to where the patriarchal Israeli was disporting himself like a porpoise.

Bahr shook his head. “I have talked with Mr. Halevi, too, and I fear that he is as much of a fanatic in his way as Mr. Kuroki. He talks a great speech about democracy and leads some sort of underground opposition. But once in power—”

“Mother of God, have they even got politics here?”

“Man is a political animal,” said Bahr.

“Then I might as well go back to Earth; this turns out to be just as crass. What’s your idea?”

Bahr explained. “First, I want to get in touch with the Záva. After all, they are what I came here for.”

“Here now, don’t go joining them! Kuroki’s right about that. If we do get caught here, our only safety lies in absolute neutrality.”

Althea burst out, “I don’t agree, Brian! If the Daryava are going to make an unprovoked attack on Zá to enslave its people, it’s our duty to warn them.”

“Look, darling, if you want to risk your pretty neck for the sake of the monkey-men, that’s one thing; but ours, too, is something else. Gottfried, she’s a fine girl with noble instincts and all, but as a man of science you should take an impartial attitude, now shouldn’t you?”

Bahr frowned. “I fear that I agree with Althea, although not for her reason.”

“What then?”

“I came here to do an important job; but if my subjects are all killed or enslaved, I cannot test them, can I?”

“The Devil take your tests! Don’t tell me that learning whether a monkey can put a dot in the circle and in the triangle but not in the hexagon is worth more than life itself—even life on the Isle of the Free!”

“There is more to it than that,” continued Bahr equably. “You said yourself that Mr. Kuroki will not help us to leave here, and our first chance otherwise would not come until the visit of the next ship bringing mail from Majbur.”

“When’s that?” asked Althea.

“Not for several ten-nights, as I ascertained by inquiry. But if we warned the Záva, we might be in a position to ask that they take us off this island in one of their ships.”

Kirwan said, “But how are you going to get in touch with them?”

“Through the so-called Virgin of Zesh.”

“’Tis against the rules of the club to visit the lady,” said Kirwan.

“That seems unreasonable,” said Althea.

“You don’t know our latter-day Zeus,” said Kirwan. “The more unreasonable a thing is, the better he likes it. He claims the Záva are following in the fatal footsteps of us Terrans, by building up an industrialized, mechanized culture. So they’re as contaminating an influence as Earthmen, and he has tried to stop all contact with them.”

“Well, he can’t stop Gottfried and me from going there,” said Althea. “We don’t belong.”

“Maybe he can’t, but some of his muscle boys could have a lot of fun trying.”

“Oh.” Althea had not until this moment realized the full implications of being where the only law was the whim of the head man. But she scornfully asked, “Are you afraid?”

“Devil a bit. If you and Gottfried go, I’ll go, too. But if you’ll take a bit of advice, you’ll go at night, when the rest of the nature nuts are asleep.”

After dinner, Althea and Bahr managed to avoid the officious heads of the colony. They spend the afternoon in professional work. Bahr taught Althea about psychology in general and psychometry in particular. Although Althea had had a fairly good education, it had been almost entirely in the arts and had barely skimmed the sciences. Now she found new vistas opening.

She began to understand her own repressions, until she could believe that she might really have married Gorchakov willingly, as he claimed, under the control of a wanton, passionate, but normally suppressed part of her nature.

Looking at Bahr’s sleek, dark head, she even wondered if she had been right in turning him down. But no, able teacher and conscientious scientist though he was, he had no more emotional appeal than any other piece of shiny, efficient machinery. Doubtless there was a human spirit struggling to express itself behind that façade, but that did her no good. Furthermore, she could not forget how unwilling he had been to bring her to Zesh until Kirwan had bullied him into it.

Kirwan returned to the hut to wash for supper with clenched fists and grinding teeth. “The fiends!” he howled. “The foul Firbolgs! I’ll tear ’em to bits and dance on the gory remains!”

“What now?” asked Bahr.

“They’re putting on something called a folk drama; some rite of the equinox or some such nonsense, and wanted me to work on it. Well, says I, the great Brian Kirwan turns out as fine a piece of verse as any lad in Ireland, so if they’d like some lyrics—but no! A felly they call Euripides has already written the play. Well then, did they want me to act? Devil a bit. What d’ye think they did want?”