The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage Page 8

  The Terran who first saw the Ozagenians would have been justified in his remark, if he had made it. But it was doubtful if he had. In the first place, the local tongue used the word Ozagen for Mother Earth. In the second place, even if the man on the first expedition had thought this, he would not have uttered it. The Oz books were forbidden in the Haijac Union; he could not have read the term unless he had taken a chance on buying it from a booklegger. It was possible he had. In fact, that was the only explanation. Otherwise, how could the spaceman who told Hal the story have come by the word? The originator of the story may not have cared if the authorities found out he was reading condemned books. Spacemen were famous, or infamous, for their disregard of danger and lax conduct in following the precepts of the Sturch when not on Earth.

  Hal became aware that Fobo was talking to him.

  ‘…this joat that Monsieur Pornsen called you when he was so angry and furious. What does that mean?’

  ‘It means,’ he said, ‘a person who is not a specialist in any of the sciences but who knows much about all of them. Actually, I am a liaison officer between various scientists and government officials. It is my business to summarize and integrate current scientific reports and then present them to the hierarchy.’

  He glanced at the statue.

  The woman was not in sight.

  ‘Science,’ he continued, ‘has become so specialized that intelligible communication even among scientists in the same field is very difficult. Each scientist has a deep vertical knowledge of his own little area but not much horizontal knowledge. The more he knows about his own subject, the less aware he is of what others in allied subjects are doing. He just does not have the time to read even a fraction of the overwhelming mass of articles. It is so bad that of two doctors who specialize in nose dysfunctions, one will treat the left nostril and the other will treat the right.’

  Fobo threw up his hands in horror.

  ‘But science would come to a standstill! Surely you exaggerate!’

  ‘About doctors, yes,’ said Hal, managing to grin a little. ‘But I do not exaggerate much. And it is true that science is not advancing in geometric progression as it once did. There is a lack of time for the scientist and too little communication. He cannot be aided in his own research by a discovery in another field because he just will not hear of it.’

  Hal saw a head stick out from the base of the statue and then withdraw. He began to sweat.

  Fobo questioned Hal about the religion of the Forerunner. Hal was as taciturn as possible and completely ignored some questions, though he felt embarrassed by doing so. The wog was nothing if not logical, and logic was a light that Hal had never turned upon what he had been taught by the Urielites.

  Finally, he said, ‘All I can say to you is that it is absolutely true that most men can travel subjectively in time but that the Forerunner, his evil disciple, the Back-runner, and the Backrunner’s wife are the only people who can travel objectively in time. I know it is true because the Forerunner predicted what would happen in the future, and his every prediction was fulfilled. And—’

  ‘Every prediction?’

  ‘Well, all but one. But that turned out to be an unreal forecast, a pseudofuture somehow inserted by the Back-runner into The Western Talmud.’

  ‘How do you know those predictions which haven’t been fulfilled aren’t also false insertions?’

  ‘Well… we don’t. The only way to tell is to wait until the time for them to happen arrives. Then …’

  Fobo smiled and said, Then you know that that particular prediction was written and inserted by the Back-runner.’

  ‘Of course. But the Urielites have been working for some years now on a method which they say will prove, by internal evidence, whether the future events are real futures or false. When we left Earth, we expected to hear at any time that an infallible method had been discovered. Now, of course, we won’t know until we return to Earth.’

  ‘I feel that this conversation is making you nervous,’ said Fobo. ‘Perhaps, we can pursue it some other time. Tell me, what do you think of the ruins?’

  ‘Very interesting. Of course, I take an almost personal interest in this vanished people because they were mammals, so much like us Terrans. What I cannot imagine is how they could almost die out. If they were like us, and they seem to have been, they would have thrived.’

  ‘They were a very decadent, quarrelsome, greedy, bloody, pernicious breed,’ Fobo said. ‘Though, no doubt, there were many fine people among them. I doubt that they all killed each other off, except for a few dozen or so. I doubt also that a plague killed almost all their kind. Maybe someday we’ll find out. Right now, I’m tired, so I’m going to bed.’

  ‘I’m restless. If you don’t mind, I’ll poke around. These ruins are so beautiful in this bright moonlight.’

  ‘Reminds me of a poem by our great bard Shamero. If I could remember it and could translate it effectively enough into American, I’d recite it to you.’

  Fobo’s V-in-V lips yawned.

  ‘I shall go to bed, retire, wrap the arms of Morpheus around me. However, first, do you have any weapons, firearms, with which to defend yourself against the things that prowl the night?’

  ‘I am allowed to carry a knife in my bootsheath,’ said Hal.

  Fobo reached under his cloak and brought out a pistol. He handed it to Hal and said, ‘Here! I hope you won’t have to use it, but you never know. We live in a savage, predatory world, my friend. Especially out here in the country.’

  Hal looked curiously at the weapon, similar to those he had seen in Siddo. It was crude compared to the small automatics in the Gabriel, but it had all the aura and fascination of an alien weapon. Plus the fact that it resembled very much the early steel pistols of Earth. Its hexagonal barrel was not quite three decimeters long; the caliber looked to be about ten millimeters. A revolving chamber contained five brass cartridges; these were loaded with black gunpowder, lead bullets, and percussion caps containing, he guessed, fulminate of mercury. Strangely, the pistol had no trigger; a strong spring pulled the hammer down against the cartridge when the finger released the hammer.

  Hal would have liked to see the mechanism that turned the revolving cartridge chamber when the hammer was pulled back. But he did not want to keep Fobo around any longer than he could help.

  Nevertheless, he could not refrain from asking him why the Siddo did not use a trigger. Fobo was surprised at the question. When he had heard Hal’s explanation, he blinked his large round eyes (a weird and at first unnerving sight because the lower eyelid made the motion), and he said, ‘I have never thought of it! It does seem to be more efficient and less tiring on the handler of the gun, does it not?’

  ‘Obvious to me,’ said Hal. ‘But then, I am an Earthman and think like one. I have noticed the not unsurprising fact that you Ozagens do not always think as we do.’

  He handed the gun back to Fobo, and he said, ‘I am sorry I can’t take it. But I am forbidden to carry firearms.’

  Fobo looked puzzled, but evidently he did not think it politic to inquire why not. Or else he was too tired.

  He said, ‘Very well. Shalom, aloha, good dreaming, Sigmen visit you.’

  ‘Shalom to you, too,’ said Hal. He watched the broad back of the wog disappear into the shadows, and he felt a strange warmth for the creature. Despite his utterly alien and unhuman appearance, Fobo appealed to Hal.

  Hal turned and walked toward the statue of the Great Mother. When he got to the shadows at its base, he saw the woman slipping into the darkness cast by a three-story heap of rubble. He followed her to the rubble only to see her several stone-throws ahead, leaning against a monolith. Beyond was the lake, silvery and black in the moonlight.

  Hal walked toward her and was about five meters from her when she spoke in a low and throaty voice.

  ‘Baw sfa, soo Yarrow.’

  ‘Baw sfa,’ he echoed, knowing that it must be a greeting in her language.

  ‘Baw sfa,�
� she repeated, and then, obviously translating the phrase for his benefit, she said, in Siddo, ‘Abhu ‘umaigeitsi’i.’

  Which meant, very roughly, ‘Good evening.’

  He gasped.

  8

  Of course! Now he knew why the words had sounded vaguely familiar and the rhythm of her speech reminded him so strongly of a not too unrecent experience. Something about it stirred up a memory of his research in the tiny community of the last of the French speakers in the Hudson Bay Preserve.

  Baw sfa. Baw sfa was bon soir.

  Even though her speech was, linguistically speaking, a very decayed form, it could not disguise its ancestry. Baw sfa. And those other words he had heard through the window. Wuhfvayfvoo. That would be levez-vous, French for ‘get up.’

  Soo Yarrow. Could that be, must be, Monsieur Yarrow? The initial m dropped, the French eu evolved to something resembling the American u sound? Must be. And there were other changes to this degenerate French. Development of aspiration. The abandonment of nasalization. Vowel shift. Replacement of k before a vowel by a glottal stop. Change of d to t; l to w; f shifted to a sound between v and f; w changed to f. What else? There must also be a transmutation in the meanings of some words, and new words replacing old ones.

  Yet, despite its unfamiliarity, it was subtly Gallic.

  ‘Baw sfa,’ he repeated.

  And he thought, How inadequate that greeting! Here were two human beings meeting forty-odd lightyears from Earth, a man who had not seen a woman for one subjective year, a woman obviously hiding and in great fear, perhaps the only woman left on this planet. And he could only say, ‘Good evening.’

  He stepped closer. And he flushed with the heat of embarrassment. Almost, he turned and ran. Her white skin was relieved only by two black narrow strips of cloth, one across her breasts, the other diapered around the hips. It was a sight such as he had never seen in his life except in a forbidden photograph.

  The embarrassment was forgotten almost at once as he saw that she was wearing lipstick. He gasped and felt a shock of fear. Her lips were as scarlet as those of the monstrously evil wife of the Backrunner.

  He forced himself to quit shaking. He must think rationally. This woman could not be Anna Changer, come from the far distant past to this planet to seduce him, to turn him against the real religion. She would not speak this degraded French if she were Anna Changer. Nor would she appear to as insignificant a person as Hal. She would have come to the chief Urielite, Macneff.

  His mind gave the problem of the lipstick a quick flip and considered its other side. Cosmetics had gone out with the coming of the Forerunner. No woman dared … well, that wasn’t true …it was just in the Haijac Union that cosmetics were not used. Israeli, Malay, and Bantu women wore rouge. But then everybody knew what land of women they were.

  Another step, and he was close enough to determine that the scarlet was natural, not paint. He felt an immense relief. She could not be the wife of the Back-runner. She could not even be Earthborn. She had to be an Ozagen humanoid. The murals on the walls of the ruins depicted red-lipped women, and Fobo had told him that these had been born with the flaming labile pigment.

  The answer to one question bore another. Why was she speaking a Terran language, or, rather, a descendant of one? This tongue, he was sure, did not exist on Earth.

  The next moment, he forgot his questions. She was clinging to him, and he had his arms around her, clumsily trying to comfort her. She was weeping and pouring out words, one so fast after the other that even though he knew they came from the French he could only make out a word here and there.

  Hal asked her to slow down and to go over what she had said. She paused, her head cocked slightly to the left, then brushed back her hair. It was a gesture he was to find characteristic of her when she was thinking.

  She began to repeat very slowly. But, as she continued, she speeded up, her full lips working like two bright red creatures independent of her, packed with their own life and purpose.

  Fascinated, Hal watched them.

  Ashamed, he looked away from them, tried to look into her wide dark eyes, could not meet them, and looked to one side of her head.

  She told her story disconnectedly and with much repetition and backtracking. Many of her words he could not understand but had to supply the meaning from the context. But he could understand that her name was Jeannette Rastignac. That she came from a plateau in the central mountains of this continent. That she and her three sisters were, as far as she knew, the only survivors of her kind. That she had been captured by an exploring party of wogs who’d intended to take her to Siddo. That she had escaped and had been hiding in the ruins and in the surrounding forest. That she was frightened because of the terrible things that prowled the forest at night. That she lived on wild fruit and berries or on food stolen from wog farmhouses. That she had seen Hal when his vehicle hit the antelope. Yes, it had been her eyes he had thought were those of the antelope.

  ‘How did you know my name?’ Hal said.

  ‘I followed you and listened to you talk. I could not understand you. But, after a while, I heard you respond to the name of Hal Yarrow. Learning your name was nothing at all. What puzzled me was that you and that other man looked like my father, must be human beings. Yet, because you did not speak my father’s language, you could not have come from his planet.

  Then, I thought, of course! My father had once told me that his people had come to Wuhbopfey from another planet. So, it was a matter of logic. You must be from there, the original world of human beings.’

  ‘I don’t understand at all,’ said Hal. ‘Your father’s ancestors came to this planet, Ozagen? But… but there is no record of that! Fobo told me—’

  ‘No, no, you do not understand, yes! My father, Jean-Jacques Rastignac, was born on another planet. He came to this one from that. His ancestors came to that other planet which revolves around a star far from here from an even more distant star.’

  ‘Oh, then they must have been colonists from Earth. But there is no record of that. At least, none that I have ever seen. They must have been French. But if that is true, they left Earth and went to that other system over two hundred years ago. And they could not have been Canadian French, for there were too few of them left after the Apocalyptic War. They must have been European French. But the last speaker of French in Europe died two and a half centuries ago. So—’

  ‘It is confusing, nespfa? All I know is what my father told me. He said he and some others from Wuhbopfey found Ozagen during an exploration. They landed on this continent, his comrades were killed, he found my mother—’

  ‘Your mother? Worse and worse,’ Hal said, groaning.

  ‘She was an indigene. Her people have always been here. They built this city. They—’

  ‘And your father was an Earthman? And you were born of his union with an Ozagen humanoid? Impossible! The chromosomes of your father and of your mother could not possibly have matched!’

  ‘I do not care about these chromosomes!’ said Jeannette in a quavering voice. ‘You see me before you, do you not? I exist, do I not? My father lay with my mother, and here I am. Deny me if you can.’

  ‘I did not mean … I mean … it seemed …’ He stopped and looked at her, not knowing what to say.

  Suddenly, she began sobbing. She tightened her arms around him, and his hands pressed down on her shoulders. They were soft and smooth, and her breasts pressed against his ribs.

  ‘Save me,’ she said brokenly. ‘I cannot stand this any more. You must take me with you. You must save me.’

  Yarrow thought swiftly. He had to get back to the room in the ruins before Pornsen woke up. And he couldn’t see her tomorrow, because a gig from the ship was picking up the two Haijacs in the morning. Whatever he was going to do would have to be unfolded to her in the next few minutes.

  Suddenly, he had a plan; it germinated from another idea, one he had long carried around buried in his brain. Its seeds had been in him even before the
ship had left Earth. But he hadn’t had the courage to carry it out. Now, this girl had appeared, and she was what he needed to spark his guts, make him step onto a path that could not be retraced.

  ‘Jeannette,’ he said fiercely, ‘listen to me! You’ll have to wait here every night. No matter what things haunt the dark, you’ll have to be here. I can’t tell you just when I’ll be able to get a gig and fly here. Sometime in the next three weeks, I think. If I’m not here by then, keep waiting. Keep waiting! I’ll be here! And when I am, we’ll be safe. Safe for a while, at least. Can you do that? Can you hide here? And wait?’

  She nodded her head and said, ‘Fi.’

  9

  Two weeks later, Yarrow flew from the spaceship Gabriel to the ruins. His needle-shaped gig gleamed in the big moon as it floated over the white marble building and settled to a stop. The city lay silent and bleached, great stone cubes and hexagons and cylinders and pyramids and statues like toys left scattered by a giant child who has gone to bed to sleep forever.

  Hal stepped out, glanced to his left and right, and then strode to an enormous arch. His flashlight probed its darkness; his voice echoed from the faraway roof and walls.

  ‘Jeannette! Sah mfa. Fo tami, Hal Yarrow. Jeannette! Ou eh tu? It’s me. Your friend. Where are you?’

  He walked down the fifty-meter-broad staircase that led to the crypts of the kings. The beam bounced up and down the steps and suddenly splashed against the black and white figure of the girl.

  ‘Hall’ she cried, looking up at him. ‘Thank the Great Stone Mother! I’ve waited every night! But I knew you’d come!’

  Tears trembled on the long lashes; her scarlet mouth was trembling as if she were doing her best to keep from sobbing. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, but it was a terrible thing even to look at an unclothed woman. To embrace her would be unthinkable. Nevertheless, that was what he was thinking.