The Last Starship From Earth (7 page)

“Then you know who the three Weird Sisters are?” Her voice was fiat and unemotional.

“Yes,” he answered.

“I was worried for you,” she said, relaxing. “They condition you so strongly.”

She had been protecting him.

Suddenly her manner changed, and she was brisk, business—like. “So the biography gives no hint of Pope Leo’s reasons for attempting Fairweather’s excommunication?”

“It doesn’t even call it excommunication. It says he was threatened with possible censure. Semantically, the statement’s true. Excommunication is a form of censure, a very final form.

“However, it does say, ‘for reasons of alleged moral turpitude.’ ”

“Another one of those phrases,” she said, impatiently, “but tell me, how long after this censure did he complete the pope?”

“He was censured in 1850, and the pope was placed in the new Holy See in 1881.”

“Thirty years he labored in the vineyards of Our Lord even though the pope had tried to eject him.”

“This will interest you. He was married to a proletarian.”

“When?” she asked.

“1822. They had a son. The biography doesn’t mention him except to say he was entered as a professional in the department of mathematics. Obviously, the dynasty ended with the son.”

“That doesn’t interest me as much as the thirty years he spent in the service of the Church, although that proletarian marriage suggests an individualism which might have led to deviationism.”

“Not a chance,” Haldane said. “Soc and Psych would have never sided with a deviationist against the Church.”

“But why should he give his loyalties to the very department which attempted to destroy him?”

“Maybe the pope was out to get him, so he got the pope, the living one, I mean.”

“Hate isn’t strong enough to drive a man for thirty years to do what he did. Only love could do that, or remorse.

“Haldane, let me read the book. Perhaps, reasoning together, we might be able to find the answer.”

“If we find the wrong answer,” he said, “the project might be blocked You mentioned a subsidiary project on the phone. What was your idea?”

“My idea doesn’t have to be considered now that you’ve got a copy of the biography, but I thought I might prepare a paper on the techniques and emotional reactions of an eighteenth-century lover. Since you’re in love with me, you would have made an ideal subject-partner.”

“You mean, I was to act out the role?”

“That was the general idea… I wanted to test some of the techniques that the coquettes used—‘flirting,’ they called it—to heighten the excitement of their lovers.”

If he had known that was her plan, he swore inwardly, he would never have brought the book!

Calmly he said, “That plan is still valid. In writing the poem, I could have helped you little except in the research. And the subject can still thwart us. We can’t reveal state secrets we aren’t supposed to know about, even in a symbol, without alerting the triumvirate, but I could have given you a great deal of first-hand information about the techniques and reactions of eighteenth-century lovers. As a matter of fact, I’m a gold mine of original material on that subject.”

“Demonstrate.”

“To begin with, there was the romantic kiss, like this.”

He embraced her and shoved her back on the divan, not kissing her lips, but moving from her clavicle toward her chin, mincing his lips rapidly in the manner of a saxophonist triple-tongueing his instrument. She grabbed his hair in her hand, twisted his head around, and nibbled on his ear.

He felt chagrin because she had stolen his next move from him. He stood up, relaxed, nonchalant, walked over to his tunic, and pulled out a cigarette. “Do you smoke?” he asked.

“No, but if you do, the filter goes in your mouth.”

She was giggling, and as he flipped the cigarette, he knew, inexpert as he was at this type of experiment, that she would never be in the right mood if she was laughing. To call her attention to the barometer reading, he said, “The old romantics practiced a form of self-control which was called ‘yoga.’ In a way it was a religion. I picked up a little of it in my studies on the subject.”

He doused the cigarette after one slow puff, snubbed it in the tray, and sat down beside her, one arm casually draped over the back of the divan behind her. “Interesting religion, yoga.”

“Did they put their arm around a girl and talk about religion?”

“Of course. They called it ‘small talk.’ Sometimes it was politics, sometimes it was world affairs. Most often it was religion.”

“Your research doesn’t jibe with mine.”

“Straighten your legs out so I can see the dimples on your knees.”

“I didn’t read about that, either.”

“Your knee caps are very pretty. Kick your sandals off so I can see your toes That’s right. Five and five, ten pretty little pinkies… This is flattery I’m giving you now.”

He reached down and put his hand over the kneecap closest to him. “I’m just checking to see if it’s all yours… That’s a remark they used to make to get to touch what they called secondary erogenous zones…”

“Now, that’s what I call small talk,” she said.

His fingers tapped her kneecaps.

“You’re built along the lines of a Gothic arch,” he said, “with the perspective of your limbs drawing the attention upward…”

“Limbs?” She interrupted.

“Archaic for legs Back to the Gothic arch: its lines were designed to draw one’s attention toward heaven.”

“Now is this flattery,” she asked, “or is it a lecture on Gothic architecture?”

“Helix!” He patted her knee reprovingly. “You’re supposed to be a poet. That’s symbolism. I’m telling you, old-style, that your sacrolumbar area is heavenly.”

She shook her head. “Either you’re a poor poet or I’m poor at understanding symbols. Give me another example.”

“Very well. We’ll consider your limbs as monads. This right one is strong, well muscled. You must do a lot of running.”

“Is that supposed to be flattery?”

“In a manner,” he explained. “Actually, it’s what they called a veiled compliment. When a girl does a lot of running, that means she’s usually being chased.”

Her rigid arm around his shoulder relaxed slightly and she smiled. “Some primitive instinct tells me you’re getting closer to the general area of courtship.”

Encouraged, he stroked the underside of her knee and felt Gothic compulsions grasp his fingertips. “Your skin is as satiny as silk.”

“Is silk satiny, or silky?” she asked, alert as always to mixed figures of speech. But he noticed a quickened tempo to her breathing which inspired him to improvisations.

“Keep your satin-fingered silkiness below the skirtline,” she said and added, “Don’t. Stop.”

Her word-order confused him. He wondered if she meant “Don’t” and “Stop” or “Don’t stop.” If she wanted him to stop, he reasoned, she could always push him away; instead, she was clinging more firmly than ever, almost hysterically.

“Oh, Haldane, please stop.”

She was weeping, and he hadn’t wished to make her cry. Besides, she was definitely asking him to stop, so he disengaged himself and arose to light another cigarette, carefully lighting the nonfiltered end. He noticed that his hand trembled slightly, and he laid the cigarette down to remove his handkerchief from his tunic. Strangely, a simple exercise in ancient courtship had given him an insight into history—he could understand the population explosion. Bending to dab her eyes, he knew that, had she been even slightly receptive, he might have committed miscegenation, despite his self-promises.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him with hostility. “Were you at one of those houses before you came here?”

Perplexed by her irrelevancy, he answered bluntly. “I haven’t since Point Sur.”

She must have believed him. “We were saved by yoga,” she said. “I challenged your yoga, and I would have lost.”

It was Haldane’s turn to feel hysteria. Sitting beside her, he said, “But, Helix, there wasn’t any yoga. I’m wearing an athletic supporter. I’m under restraint.”

He was sliding an arm around her waist when she doubled up her fist and began to pound him on the chest, weeping again. “You beast! You crude, deceitful beast. All the time, you let me think it was I. All the time, I was trying to beat yoga…”

She quit pounding him and dropped her face to her hands, sobbing. Gently he reached over, placed an arm over her shoulders, and reassured her, “Helix, you whipped him to a frazzle.”

She threw his arm away and jumped to her feet, walked over to a chair, sat down, and glared at him. “Don’t you ever touch me again, you beast.”

His mind whirled. She was genuinely angry with him because he had obeyed her a moment before, and once he had explained why, she had become angry with him for doing what she had formerly been angry with him for not doing. He threw up his hands in despair. “Helix, let’s look at this matter rationally,” he said, “and forget the eighteenth century. Come back and let me hold your hand, and I’ll apologize for my deceit and my irrational behavior. There are a few other refinements of the ritual which might enlighten you when it comes to writing…”

She shook her head stubbornly. “No, if it happened once, it would happen again. You’re in love, you nut. Here”—she reached down, picked up the Fairweather biography, and tossed it toward him—“read about your god, you saint of mathematics.”

“I have no gods. I’m a born loser, and the gods were all triumphant. Jesus, Fairweather, Jehovah, they’re all winners. The only ball team I cheer is the Baltimore Orioles. Only one moment of my life was granted me to look on the face of beauty, and beauty thumbed her nose.”

She was not listening. Her eyes were looking away and fuming. Her kneecaps, primly touching, pointed away from him.

He sat mute, Fairweather forgotten on his aching lap.

Finally, she rose and went into the foyer, looking down on him with haughty coolness, holding herself primly erect and more than an arm’s length from him as she passed, her hips not swaying half an inch from the perpendicular. As she passed into the foyer, her hands swooped over the vase of roses, touching them lightly with a caress of infinite grace.

She came back into the room carrying a guitar, moving with wariness past the couch where he sat. She resumed her seat in the chair, and the lines of her body relaxed in soft arcs around the instrument. As she hummed a note and struck the strings, she reminded him of a painting, madonna and child, until she looked over at him and her lips curled silently around the word, “Beast!”

He watched her tune the instrument, her deft fingers flicking over the bridge, her ears cocked for the sounds. Every movement seemed impressed with her own peculiar grace, and it was delightful to sit and watch her even though she was pouting and angry.

Finally, she turned to him. “I wanted to sing you some old English and Scottish ballads to demonstrate a very simple meter in the same context as the ancient epic poems, that is, oral. Originally, poetry was written to be chanted. I planned to do this to give you some flavor of the preromantic verse, but now I’m doing it to collect your wits.”

At the moment, nothing could have appealed to him less than a ballad, but he did not wish to arouse the anger of this half-vixen, half-goddess, so he pretended an interest.

His interest wasn’t pretended for long.

Her voice was weak and its range limited, but its enunciation was clear and its timbre low-pitched and vibrant.

As all else about her, it was a wedding of opposites, husky yet plaintive.

She played the guitar well, and her voice was adequate for the songs she sang. Obviously, the ballads were not written for virtuosi of the voice.

Though sentimental and sad, the songs were unabashedly sentimental, and there was little morbidity in their sadness. They delighted in death and partings. “Barbry Allen” told of two who died for love, and rose trees, growing from each grave, climbed a church wall to tie themselves into a lovers’ knot, a highly improbable phenomenon but charming to think about. Another spoke of a gentleman by the name of Tom Dooley who murdered a female and had to hang. With rare good humor, the crowd at the foot of his gallows exhorted him to hang down his head and cry.

Listening to her and watching her, it seemed impossible that this girl was the same who had pounded him in rage and frustration only minutes before. Mated to her, a man would know contrasts; after being emotionally tossed about by the gales of her beauty and wit, he could always enter the quiet harbors of her gentleness and her arts.

At that moment, he caught the first glimmerings of an idea which he knew was shot through with peril to himself, to her, and to their dynasties. But the idea was before him, and he had to consider it. The idea considered was a resolution made.

He would stake a legal claim on the territory of her heart. Some way, somehow, though it meant circumventing the sociologists, deluding the geneticists, and subverting the State, he was going to be legally mated to Helix.

Slowly, he lifted the official biography of Fairweather from his lap and kissed the book.

Christmas came early that year, or so it seemed to the student with the vast problem. He was surprised to land that secret batches of eggnog had been prepared in the dormitories. Absently, he hummed a carol now and then, merely to keep up pretenses, as his mind probed at his problem with the fearfulness of an octopus approaching the sinking bulk of a killer whale.

To jump genetic barriers was an impossible feat. To jump them and land in a predetermined spot, out of five hundred million spots on the North American continent alone, was an impossibility cubed. Even the attempt to subvert state policies to personal ends could result in an S.O.S. at least, and in exile to the planet Hell at most.

Insanity was a relative state, and he, at least, knew he was insane. Other factors were in his favor—his father’s knowledge and his growing awareness that the omniscient state was not an abstraction but an agglomeration of sociologists, psychologists, and priests, professions which ranked far lower on the Kraft-Stanford Scale of Comparative Intelligence than theoretical mathematicians.