Collected Short Fiction, page 747
Seena returned, chastely clad in a soft gray shift that descended from her shoulders to her shins. “Better?” she asked.
“For now.”
They touched glasses. She smiled. They put their drinks to their lips.
“What’s it like, living up here?” he asked.
“Serene. I never imagined that my life could be so calm. I read a good deal. I help the robots tend the garden. Occasionally there are guests—sometimes I travel. Weeks often go by without my seeing another human being.”
“What about your husband?”
“Weeks often go by without my seeing another human being,” she repeated.
“You’re alone here? You and the robots?”
“Quite alone.”
“But the other Company people must come here fairly frequently.”
“Some do. There aren’t many of us left now,” Seena said. “Less than a hundred, I imagine. About six at the Sea of Dust. Van Beneker down by the hotel. Four or five at the old rift station. And so on—little islands of Earthmen widely scattered. There’s a sort of a social circuit but it’s a sparse one.”
“Is this what you wanted when you chose to stay here?”
“I didn’t know what I wanted, except that I wanted to stay. But I’d do it again. Knowing everything I know, I’d do it just the same way.”
He said, “At the station just south of here, below the falls, I saw Harold Dykstra—”
“Henry Dykstra.”
“Henry. And a woman I didn’t know.”
“Pauleen Mazor. She was one of the customs girls in the time of the Company. Henry and Pauleen are my closest neighbors, I guess. But I haven’t seen them in years. I never go south of the falls any more and they haven’t come here.”
“They’re dead, Seena.”
“Oh?”
“It was like stepping into a nightmare. A sulidor led me to them. The station was a wreck—mold and fungoids everywhere—and something was hatching inside them, the larvae of some kind of basket-shaped red sponge that hung on a wall and dripped black oil—”
“Things like that happen,” Seena said, not sounding disturbed. “Sooner or later this planet catches everyone, though always in a different way.”
“Dykstra was unconscious and the woman was begging to be put out of her misery, so you see—”
“You said they were dead.”
“Not when I got there. I told the sulidor to kill them. There was no hope of saving them. He split them open and then I used my torch on them.”
“We had to do that for Gio’ Salamone, too,” Seena said. “He was staying at Fire Point and went out into the Sea of Dust and got some kind of crystalline parasite into a cut. When Kurtz and Ced Cullen found him he was all cubes and prisms, outcroppings of the most beautiful iridescent minerals breaking through his skin everywhere. And he was still alive. For a while. Another drink?”
“Please. Yes.”
She summoned the robot. The night was quite dark now. A third moon had appeared.
In a low voice Seena said, “I’m so happy you came tonight, Edmund. It was such a wonderful surprise.”
“Kurtz isn’t here now?”
“No,” she said. “He’s away and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
“How has it been for him, living here?”
“I think he’s been quite happy, generally speaking. Of course, he’s a very strange man.”
“He is,” Gundersen said.
“He’s got a quality of sainthood about him, I think.”
“He would have been a dark and chilling saint, Seena.”
“Some saints are. They don’t all have to be St. Francis of Assisi.”
“Is cruelty one of the desirable traits of a saint?”
“Kurtz saw cruelty as a dynamic force. He made himself an artist of cruelty.”
“So did the Marquis de Sade. Nobody’s canonized him.”
“You know what I mean,” she said. “You once spoke of Kurtz to me and you called him a fallen angel. That’s exactly right. I saw him out among the nildoror—dancing with hundreds of them—and they came to him and practically worshipped him. There he was, talking to them, caressing them. And yet also doing the most destructive things to them as well, but they loved it.”
“What kind of destructive things?”
“They don’t matter. I doubt that you’d approve. He—gave them drugs, sometimes.”
“The serpent venom?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where is he now? Out playing with the nildoror?”
“He’s been ill for a while.”
THE robot now was serving dinner. Gundersen frowned at the strange vegetables on his plate.
“They’re perfectly safe,” Seena said. “I grow them myself, in back. I’m quite the farmer.”
“I don’t remember any of these.”
“They’re from the plateau.” Gundersen shook his head. “When I think of how disgusted you were by the plateau, how strange and frightening it seemed to you that time we had to crashland there—”
“I was a child then. When was it—eleven years ago? Soon after I met you. I was only twenty years old. But on Belzagor you must defeat what frightens you or you will be defeated. I went back to the plateau. Again and again. It ceased to be strange to me and so it ceased to frighten me—and so I came to love it. And brought many of its plants and animals back here to live with me. It’s so very different from the rest of Belzagor—cut off from everything else, almost alien.”
“You went therewith Kurtz?”
“Sometimes. And sometimes with Ced Cullen. And most often alone.”
“Cullen,” Gundersen said. “Do you see him often?”
“Oh, yes. He and Kurtz and I have been a kind of triumvirate. Cullen’s my other husband—almost.”
“Where is Cullen now?” he asked, looking intently into her harsh and glossy eyes.
Her expression darkened.
“In the north. The mist country.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Why don’t you go ask him?” she suggested.
“I’d like to do just that,” Gundersen said. “I’m on my way up mist country, actually, and this is just a sentimental stop on the way. I’m traveling with five nildoror going for rebirth. They’re camped in the bush out there somewhere.”
She opened a flask of a musky gray-green wine and gave him some.
“Why do you want to go to the mist country?” she asked tautly.
“Curiosity. The same motive that sent Cullen up there, I guess.”
“I don’t think his motive was curiosity.”
“Will you amplify that?”
“I’d rather not,” she said.
The conversation lapsed into silence. Talking to her led only in circles, he thought. This new serenity of hers could be maddening. She told him only what she cared to tell him, playing with him, seemingly relishing the touch of her sweet contralto voice on the night air, communicating no information at all. This was not a Seena he had ever known. The girl he had loved had been resilient and strong, not crafty or secretive—there had been an innocence about her that she seemed to have totally lost now. Kurtz might not be the only fallen angel on this planet.
He said suddenly, “The fourth moon has risen.”
“Yes. Of course. Is that so, amazing?”
“One rarely sees four even in this latitude.”
“It happens at least ten times a year. Why waste your awe? In a little while the fifth one will be up and—”
Gundersen gasped. “Is that what tonight is?”
“The Night of Five Moons, yes.”
“No one told me.”
“Perhaps you never asked.”
“Twice I missed it because I was at Fire Point. One year I was at sea and once I was in the southern mist country, the time the copter went down. And so on and on. I managed to see it only once, Seena, right here, ten years ago, with you. When things were at their best for us. And now, to come in by accident and have it happen—”
“I thought you had arranged to be here deliberately. To commemorate that other time.”
“No. Pure coincidence.”
“Happy coincidence, then.”
“When does it rise?”
“In perhaps an hour.”
He watched the four bright dots swimming through the sky. So much time had gone by that he had forgotten where the fifth moon should be coming from. Its orbit was retrograde. It was the most brilliant of the moons, too, with a high-albedo surface of ice, smooth as a mirror.
Seena filled his glass again. They had finished eating.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”
ALONE, he studied the sky and tried to comprehend this strangely altered Seena, this mysterious woman whose body had grown more voluptuous and whose soul, it seemed, had turned to stone. He saw now that the stone had been in her all along—at their breakup, for example, when he had put in for transfer to Earth and she had absolutely refused to leave Holman’s World. I love you, she had said, and I’ll always love you but this is where I stay. Why? Why? Because I want to stay, she had told him.
And she had stayed; and he had been just as stubborn and had left without her. They had slept together on the beach beneath the hotel on his last night, so that he had boarded the ship that took him away with the warmth of her body still on his skin. She loved him and he loved her but they had broken apart, for he saw no future on this world and she saw all her future on it. And she had married Kurtz. And she had explored the unknown plateau. And she spoke in a rich, deep, new voice and let alien amoebas clasp her loins and she shrugged at the news that two nearby Earth people had died a horrible death. Was she still Seena or some subtle counterfeit?
Nildoror sounds drifted out of the darkness. Gundersen heard another sound, too, closer by, a kind of stifled, snorting grunt that was wholly unfamiliar to him. It seemed like a cry of pain, though perhaps that was his imagination. Probably it was one of Seena’s plateau beasts, snuffling around, searching for tasty roots in the garden. He heard it twice more and then not again.
Time went by and Seena did not return.
Then he saw the fifth moon float placidly into the sky, the size of a large silver coin and so bright that it dazzled the eye. About it the other four danced, two of them mere tiny dots, two slightly more imposing, and the shadows of the moonslight shattered and shattered again as planes of brilliance intersected. The heavens poured light upon the land in icy cascades. He gripped the rail of the veranda and silently begged the moons to hold their pattern. But the moons shifted. He knew that in another hour two of them would be gone and the magic would ebb. Where was Seena?
“Edmund?” she said, from behind him.
She was bare again and once more the slider was on her body, covering her loins, sending a long thin projection up to encompass only the nipple of each ripe breast. The light of the five moons made her tawny skin glitter and shine. Now she did not seem coarse to him—nor overly aggressive. She was perfect in her nudity and the moment was perfect and, unhesitatingly, he went to her. Quickly he dropped his clothing. He put his hands to her hips, touching the slider, and the strange creature understood, flowing obediently from her body, a chastity belt faithless to its task. She leaned toward him, her breasts swaying like fleshy bells and he kissed her, here, here, there, and they sank to the veranda floor, to the cold smooth stone.
Her eyes remained open and colder than the floor, colder than the shifting light of the moons, even at the moment when he physically reasserted his love to her.
But nothing was cold about her embrace. Their bodies thrashed and tangled. Her skin was soft and her kiss hungry. And the years rolled away until it was the old time again, the happy time. At the highest moment he was dimly aware of that strange grunting sound once more. He clasped her fiercely and let his eyes close.
Afterward they lay side by side, wordless in the moonslight until the brilliant fifth moon had completed its voyage across the sky and the Night of the Five Moons had become as any other night.
X
HE slept by himself in one of the guest rooms on the top level of the station. Awakening unexpectedly early, he watched the sunrise coming over the gorge and went down to walk through the gardens, which still were glistening with dew. He strolled as far as the edge of the river, looking for his nildoror companions. They were not to be seen. For a long time he stood beside the river watching the irresistible downward sweep of that immense volume of water.
He went back finally to the station. A robot met him on the first veranda and offered him breakfast.
“I’ll wait for the woman,” Gundersen said.
“She will not appear until much later in the morning.”
“That’s odd. She never used to sleep that much.”
“She is with the man,” the robot volunteered. “She stays with him and comforts him at this hour.”
“What man?”
“The man Kurtz, her husband.”
Gundersen said, amazed, “Kurtz is here at the station?”
“He lies ill in his room.”
She said he was away somewhere. She didn’t know when he’d be coming back.
Gundersen said, “Was he in his room last night?”
“He was.”
“How long has he been back from his last journey away from here?”
“One year at the solstice,” the robot said. “Perhaps you should consult the woman on these matters. She will be with you after a while. Shall I bring breakfast?”
“Yes,” Gundersen said.
But Seena was not long in arriving. Ten minutes after he had finished the juices, fruits and fried fish that the robot had brought him she appeared on the veranda, wearing a filmy white wrap. She seemed to have slept well. Her skin was clear and glowing. Her stride was vigorous. Her dark hair streamed buoyantly in the morning breeze. But the curiously rigid and haunted expression of her eyes was unchanged.
He said, “The robot told me not to wait breakfast for you. It said you wouldn’t be down for a long while.”
“That’s all right. I’m not usually down this early, it’s true. Come for a swim?”
“In the river?”
“No, silly.” She stripped away her wrap and ran down the steps into the garden. He sat frozen a moment, caught up in the rhythms of her swinging arms, her jouncing buttocks—then he followed her. At a twist in the path that he had not noticed before she turned to the left and halted at a circular pool that appeared to have been punched out of the living rock on the river’s flank. As he reached it she launched herself in a fine, arching dive and appeared to hang suspended a moment, floating above the dark water, her breasts drawn into a startling roundness by gravity’s pull. Then she went under. Before she came up for breath, Gundersen was naked and in the pool beside her. Even in the mild climate the water was bitterly cold.
“It comes from an underground spring,” she told him. “Isn’t it wonderful? Like a rite of purification.”
A gray tendril rose from the water behind her, tipped with rubbery claws. Gundersen could find no words to warn her. He pointed with short stabbing motions of two fingers and made hollow chittering noises of horror. A second tendril spiraled out of the depths and hovered over her. Smiling, Seena turned, and seemed to fondle some large creature; there was a thrashing in the water and then the tendrils slipped out of view.
“What was that?”
“The monster of the pool,” she said. “Ced Cullen brought it for me as a birthday present two years ago. It’s a plateau medusa. They live in lakes and sting things.”
“How big is it?”
“Oh, the size of a big octopus, I’d say. Very affectionate. I wanted Ced to catch me a mate for it but he didn’t get around to it before he went north. I suppose I’ll have to do it myself before long. The monster’s lonely.” She pulled herself out of the pool and sprawled out on a slab of smooth black rock to dry in the sun. Gundersen followed her. From this side of the pool, with the light penetrating the water at just the right angle, he was able to see a massive many-limbed shape far below. Seena’s birthday present.
He said, “Can you tell me where I can find Ced now?”
“In the mist country.”
“I know. That’s a big place. Any particular part?”
SHE rolled over onto her back and flexed her knees. Sunlight made prisms of the droplets of water on her breasts.
After a long silence she said, “Why do you want to find him so badly?”
“I’m making a sentimental journey to see old friends. Ced and I were once very close. Isn’t that reason enough for me to go looking for him?”
“It’s no reason to betray him, is it?”
He stared at her. The fiercely frozen eyes now were closed—the heavy mounds of her breasts rose and fell slowly, serenely.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Didn’t the nildoror put you up to going after him?”
“What kind of crazy talk is that?” he blurted, not sounding convincingly indignant even to himself.
“Why must you pretend?” she said, still speaking from within that impregnable core of total assurance. “The nildoror want him brought back from there. By treaty they’re prevented from going up there and getting him themselves. The sulidoror don’t feel like extraditing him. Certainly none of the Earthmen living on this planet will fetch him. Now, as an outsider you need nildoror permission to enter the mist country and since you’re a stickler for the rules you probably applied for such permission. And there’s no special reason why the nildoror should grant favors to you unless you agree to do something for them in return. Q.E.D?”
“Who told you all this?”
“Believe me, I worked it all out for myself.”
He propped his head on his hand and reached out admiringly with the other hand to touch her thigh. Her skin was dry and warm, now. He let his hand rest lightly—and then not so lightly—on the firm flesh. Seena showed no reaction.
