The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid

THE VIRGIN OF ZESH

I

“To be sure,” said Brian Kirwan, the poet, setting his mug with a bang on the table in the Nova Iorque Bar, “we live on fruits and nuts and dance Greek dances in the nude. As soon as I touch the beach at Zesh, I’ll be dancing like a young goat in the springtime with the rest of them. No crass commercialism here!”

Herculeu Castanhoso, assistant security officer of Novorecife, the Terran spaceport on Krishna, watched his four table companions as they chattered away in a mixture of Brazilo-Portuguese and English. He had seldom, he thought, seen a more ill-assorted lot, even on a planet notorious for collecting tag-ends of humanity. The stout Kirwan could be amusing, but was so self-conceited and unpredictable that nobody could be comfortable with him for long. And the mind reeled at the thought of all that fat, capering about some Arcadian meadow with flowers in its hair.

Gottfried Bahr, the psychologist, smiled as he polished his glasses. He was a tall, dark-haired man, handsome in a pale, thin, gangling way. “But why, my friend? Why not buy an islet off the coast of your native land and perform your dances there? Why come a dozen light-years from Earth?”

Castanhoso unconsciously nodded agreement, but for reasons other than Bahr’s. A dignified, conventional little man, he disapproved of the eccentric Terran cults that had set up shop on Krishna. Such antics, he felt, lowered the human species in the eyes of the touchy and truculent Krishnans.

Kirwan explained:
“N&aTilde;o,
to escape the corrupting influence of decadent human civilization, you have to come away from it entirely. Only on a foreign planet will I find spiritual elbow-room, to allow the full flowering of me natural genius.” He glowered at Bahr’s ironic smile. “Does any man care to make anything of it?”

“N&aTilde;o,
senhor,” said Bahr. Castanhoso found him the least obnoxious of the lot. If the lanky German was a man of arid, pedantic personality, he was at least unlikely to get the Earthmen on Krishna in trouble by some rash antic. It had struck Castanhoso that Bahr looked much more like the conventional idea of a poet than the burly Kirwan. Bahr continued.

“Nobody minds if you tie grapes in your hair and dance the kazatska. I was merely wondering if you could enroll Senhorita Merrick in your Roussellian Society, to solve her problem.”

“No, thank you!” said Althea Merrick. “Even if it weren’t against my principles, I’m too skinny to look good without my clothes. Who runs this society, Mr. Kirwan?”

Castanhoso, whose taste in women ran to the plumply pneumatic, silently agreed with Althea’s statement. He looked upon Miss Merrick more with pity than with censure. She was not unattractive, if one liked dark-blonde beanpoles several centimeters taller than oneself. Or rather, she would have been attractive if fixed up properly, instead of garbed in the somber black-and-white uniform of her sect.

Kirwan said, “Felly by the name of Diogo Kuroki, a Japanese-Brazilian.”

“You’ve never been there?” asked Althea.

“That I have not, but I know all about it. I’ve written making arrangements. Gottfried’s going to Zesh, too, so it’s together we’ll be traveling.”

“What does ‘Roussellian’ mean?”

Kirwan explained. “That’s from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century Swiss philosopher who saw through the shams of so-called civilization.”

“I remember,” said Althea. “The man who wrote about the Noble Savage. But I thought that idea was exploded when people learned about real savages?”

Bahr spoke up. “It was; the savages turned out to be no nobler than anyone else. So far from leading free, uninhibited lives, they were super-conventional, habit-ridden folk, afraid of anything new or unknown. The idea did not stay exploded, however. All the savages became civilized, so that today there is not one real primitive left on Earth, even in the Matto Grosso of Senhor Herculeu’s country. Therefore, people forgot what primitives had really been like and revived the myth of Utopian barbarism.”

“Ah, you don’t have to take the primitive part too seriously,” said Kirwan, taking a big swig of kvad. “Whether it ever existed or not, the free, natural life is still a noble ideal.”

Afanasi Gorchakov, the ursine security officer and Castanhoso’s boss, growled. “Joining this crazy cult might solve the problem of Senhorita Althea, but it would not solve mine. How can I persuade her to marry me if she is dancing around this forsaken island?”

Toward Gorchakov, Castanhoso had a hatred that made Iago’s feeling for Othello seem like a passing pique. As a mere customs inspector, Gorchakov had been a difficult, moody character. Since his promotion over Castanhoso’s head, he had become intolerable.

Castanhoso was puzzled by the fact that the notoriously lusty Gorchakov should pay court to Althea Merrick, with her prim black uniform dress of a missionary of the Ecumenical Monotheists and her narrow, delicately featured, fair-skinned face, innocent of cosmetics. She was not even really young—witness the little crow’s-feet around her eyes—but that did not much matter in these days, when the longevity treatment had stretched people’s thirties and forties out to more than a century. Unattached Earthwomen were so scarce on other planets that men fell over each other in the rush to court them.

But certainly the Senhorita Merrick would always be safe as far as he, Castanhoso, was concerned, even though they were alone on Zesh together for a year . . . well, a ten-night, anyway.

Althea Merrick spoke. “That’s kind of you, Senhor Afanasi, but I’ve already explained why it’s impossible—”

Gorchakov interjected, “Is just that you do not know the Russian love!”

“—and neither,” continued Althea, “can I join Brian’s Roussellians on Zesh. But that still leaves me stranded. Bishop Raman went off on this inspection tour, with no word of when he’d be back and no provision for me.”

Castanhoso said, “If you had known the good bishop as we do, Senhorita Althea, you would not be surprised. He is the most disorderly man in the system.”

“But I still have to eat!” said Althea. “Even missionaries do, you know.”

Gorchakov rumbled, “You look as if you had not been doing that enough!” He bellowed with laughter and slapped Althea on the back, making her spill her glass of water. “Marry me and I fill you with borshcht, put some weight on you. When I go to bed, I like a good
solid
woman—”

Althea raised her voice. “So I thought there might be a school-teaching job open until the bishop gets back.”

Gorchakov took a great gulp of kvad and shook his big, broad head. “Nothing like that. I have checked over our civil service list. There are no openings on the dollar roll, except for one meteorologist and one communications engineer. You are neither of these, are you?”

“N-n&aTilde;o,
but I’d even take one on the kard roll—”

“The only openings on that are for work with the pick and the shovel. Besides, you couldn’t spend your pay here. You would have to move outside the wall and live in the Hamda’. And considering the class of people who live there, I don’t think you would like it.”

Castanhoso had a pitiful mental picture of Althea living among the debauchees of the Hamda’ by night and bending her spare form over a shovel by day. She would probably try to reform the Hamda’, albeit that task had already baffled experts.

Kirwan spoke. “That’s the trouble with these damned Earthmen. Too systematic; everything’s according to lists and procedures and authorizations. You’d best come to Zesh with me, darlin’, where there’s no crass regulations. Better than staying here to starve, and you so young and all.”

“No.” She shook her delicate head.

“Well, then,” Kirwan persisted, “why not ask Doctor Bahr to sign you on as assistant? He’ll be going to Zesh the same as me, only for different reasons.”

“No grapes in the hair?”

“No indeed. He’s got some daft idea of measuring the intelligence of the tailed Krishnans—assuming they’ve got any.”

“Oh, they have,” said Bahr. “The question is, have they too much?”

“I did not know that one could have too much,” Castanhoso said.

Althea asked, “What is all this business about Zá?”

Bahr explained. “We have been receiving reports of the appearance on Zá of a strain or mutation with a phenomenally high intelligence. The Advisory Committee on Social Psychology, which is one of the boards of the World Federation, has sent me to look into the matter.”

“That’s where our taxes go,” said Kirwan, “financing damn-fool boards and committees. All those tests are fakery and swindling; you can’t measure the soul.” Ignoring the angry retort from Bahr, Kirwan turned again to Althea. “But ’twill be worthwhile if it saves you from destitution. Just blink those beautiful gray eyes at the silly omadhaun, and he’ll hire you to make marks on paper, which is an aisy way to make a living. How about it, Gottfried me lad?”

Bahr frowned, looking doubtfully at Althea Merrick. “I do not think that she has the necessary qualifications.”

Althea shook her head. “Even if I had, I’m afraid there’s too wide a difference between Doctor Professor Bahr’s views and mine. Besides, I have to be here when the bishop gets back.”

Bahr looked relieved. “You see, my friend? It would not be practical. I am scientist; she is theologist. Besides, this news, if indeed it turns out to be true, is too important to be interpreted by amateurs. It might change the whole Interplanetary Council policies toward Krishna.”

Althea sighed. “Well, then . . .”

Castanhoso, unable longer to bear the sight of femininity in distress, burst out, “You need not starve, Senhorita, nor need you try to swing the pick. The
Comandante
has a loan fund for the emergency relief of stranded Terrans—”

“Who asked you to interfere?” roared Gorchakov. At the bellow, the whole bar fell silent. “Keep your ugly little face out of this!”

Stung to defiance, Castanhoso snapped back, “I merely tell her what she could have found out by asking in the proper quarters. I have a right—”

“You have what rights I say! I, Afanasi Vasilyitch Gorchakov!” The security officer turned his small, porcine eyes on Althea Merrick. “Don’t let him lead you astray, Senhorita. Is true the
Comandante
has this fund, but he is Boris Glumelin, a very good friend of mine. He would follow my recommendation—”

“Hey!” said Brian Kirwan. “So it’s forcing your loathsome attentions on the lady by dirty politics you are?”

“I am boss here,” rumbled Gorchakov. “You shut up, see?” He glared from man to man.

Bahr, the scientist, shifted his eyes and pulled nervously at his lower lip. Castanhoso, his moment of heroism past, also remained silent. But Kirwan shouted, “Be damned to you! Any time I let a crass bureaucrat tell me to shut up—”

Kirwan and Gorchakov both rose like a pair of breaching whales. As he got to his feet, the security officer picked up an empty mug.

“Please!” cried Althea Merrick, starting to rise and to extend her hands in a peacemaking gesture. “I wouldn’t have—”

Amid the general scraping of chair legs, Gorchakov swung his right arm back to throw the mug at Kirwan. The latter leaned across the table and shot out a fist in a long straight left for Gorchakov’s face.

At that moment, Althea Merrick thrust her head into the line of his punch, which connected with a meaty sound below her left ear.

The blow hurled the girl to the floor. At the same instant, there sounded the crash of the earthenware mug, thrown by Gorchakov, as it shattered on Kirwan’s head. Clutching his head, Kirwan staggered back.

Gorchakov seized the edge of the table and overturned it with a crash of drinking vessels. Then he smashed the poet back against the wall with a one-two punch, followed by a kick in the paunch that curled Kirwan into a half-conscious huddle.

Castanhoso, who had watched with open mouth, started around the fallen table to succor Miss Merrick.

“Get away!” screamed Gorchakov, stepping between his assistant and the girl. “Get out, all of you!”

The other patrons of the Nova Iorque shuffled out, glowering and muttering, but not openly rebelling.

“Take this along!” Gorchakov commanded, indicating Kirwan, “Before I kill the dog!”

He turned to Althea Merrick and tenderly lifted her into a chair. “My poor little
byednyashka!
Yang, give me a bottle of kvad!”

As he staggered out of the Nova Iorque with one of Kirwan’s hairy arms about his neck, Castanhoso glanced back into the bar, now empty but for Gorchakov, Althea, and Yang, the bartender. His boss was pouring kvad into the reviving Althea, despite the fact that, as she had explained earlier, she had not touched a drop since embarking upon her missionary career.

The results, however deplorable, should be interesting.