Redworld, page 12
She shuddered. Once. Twice. Her loins began to convulse in great spasms. The bed creaked and shook. I began to heave with her. We tried to synchronize. I dug my fingers into her backside and held her tight against me. I drove into her, and we moved together.
And finally the storm passed, the seas stopped crashing, and she collapsed on top of me. We were both breathing hard.
I stared up at the ceiling as I ran my fingers slowly through her curls. I was thinking. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to tell her about Gil, and Mother, and Dean Gard. I wanted her to talk to me. I wanted to know all about her. I wanted to know why she was interested in immortality. I wanted to know about that man in the portrait, and her books, and that page marker, what lay beyond that door into the Tower, and how she came to meet Squire Vys. And above all, that Guild receipt. But I wasn’t sure of how to start.
And there were probably words of endearment I was supposed to use now. Perhaps I needed an entirely new vocabulary. But it was all too new, too soon. I hadn’t the faintest idea what names I was supposed to use. Dear? Darling? Beloved?
“Josi,” I said.
“Yes?”
“You and the squire … you’re not married, are you?”
She rose on an elbow and looked down at me. She grinned. It was a sparkling, scintillating thing. I think she suppressed a momentary urge to throw her head back and laugh. Instead she dangled her curls in my face, back and forth, brushing my nose and mouth and eyes.
“Are you, Josi?”
“That’s a most curious afterthought, young man. No, we are not married.”
I looked up into the intelligent gray eyes. “How did you meet him?”
She pulled away and frowned a little. I could see that she wanted to think about that. “Not much to tell,” she said. Her answer was evasive, yet final.
Fair enough. I could wait.
“Would you like some brew?” she asked.
“Yes. That would be nice.”
She got up, went to the closet, and pulled on a light pink wrapper. Then she puttered with a can of ground koffs and got the percolator going on a little oxien burner on her table.
I sat on the edge of the bed and began to dress.
She disappeared into the bathroom a moment. As she came out she passed by the door that led into the Tower and closed it. There was a ringing click from somewhere on the other side of the Tower wall.
The perk was bubbling merrily.
I looked over at the side wall, toward the framed portrait. Somehow, in a deft unobtrusive flick of her wrist, she had turned the picture to the wall. Interesting. Had the Guild receipt disappeared? I resisted an urge to look.
She walked over to the table and poured two cups. “I don’t have any bovalait. Just powdered pinko.”
“Pinko is fine.” I pulled my pants on up under my tunic and walked over to the table.
She sipped at her cup, and it rattled in her saucer as she put it down.
I finished my cup quickly and slipped into my shoes. “I have to go.”
She was silent.
I knew my next several statements had to be worked very carefully. “I will see you again.”
We looked each other squarely in the eye. The right side of her mouth came down in her characteristic crooked smile. “What for? Kertor has already certified you.”
But I knew she was teasing me. I put my hands on her shoulders. “I have wanted to … to do this with you ever since I first saw you.”
She was forcing her voice to be low and controlled. “Siris, what lies. And so young.”
“A few sextiles ago I passed the Tower on my first day at work. You were in this same wrapper, over your nightgown. You had just stepped out on the porch to get the newssheet and the grocer’s basket. The sun was behind your curls. Black curls. You looked like the Madonna, in the poem. We stared at each other. You knew I would pass on my way to work. You paid my Guild fee. Why, Josi?”
She frowned uneasily, then looked away. “I can’t tell you.”
I sighed. So be it. I took my hands from her shoulders. “I will be back day after tomorrow: Firstday afternoon.”
She laughed, and I smiled. She got up. We embraced. Not long enough to start anything. “Bye,” I said hurriedly.
So the door closes behind me. I am on the landing, looking down. I hear the noises. Vys’s music box is going. The lyrichord is going, too, with a totally different tune. And somebody’s singing. The voice doesn’t match anything. Motion. People walking around. One couple dancing. No, it’s two of the girls. Myria and Nana.
Very good. No one is going to pay the slightest attention to me. Nobody has noticed that I’ve been in Josi’s room for three hori. With Josi, the Queen, the Duchess, the Madonna. Josi the Untouchable. One of the customers once said to me, “I offered her douzaine-cubed solati. She just smiled at me.”
As I stepped farther down the stairs I saw a group of fellows and two of the girls seated at the jaq table. Boogi was setting out aele and glasses in front of them. He and I exchanged glances. No sky-knife in sight. Squire Vys was no longer around. No, there he was, tending bar.
I was going to reach the bottom of the stairs unnoticed. And then the easy matter of melting through the Main Room to the door, and out. I felt a tiny touch of disappointment. Surely my extraordinary accomplishment deserved at least passing recognition.
But just then, Myria saw me, and she and Nana stopped dead in their tracks, and they stared. And then, one by one, everyone else in the room turned and looked at me. The sheltering music box chose that moment to finish its cacophony. The man at the lyrichord turned to see what it was all about. He skipped a couple of bars, then quit.
There was a dead silence.
Actually I didn’t need all this. A solitary knowing wink from Myria would have sufficed.
I ignored them. I was through the door, and out.
THAT MORNING I had intended to go on down to the Public Library after work and read some theochymistry. But it hadn’t worked out that way. I had walked through Josi’s door into another world, and I had never returned.
She had let me into her room, and into her body, and into her life, and it was all very strange. I kept wondering, why? Why had she consented? Consent? Wrong word! By the dark hole, she had planned it all. I was the consenter. The Madonna had cast her glamoring net, and I had been caught. Why, Josi? The explanation lay somewhere in that page marker with my picture and pedigree. And that was just the start. The Tower itself was involved, and Jehanne-Mar, and the five-fingered man in the picture. And finally, perhaps basic to everything, was Josi’s question, “Have you had any experience with immortality?”
Josi, you are going to have to give me some answers.
But even as I thought of her, the questions evaporated, and I was in her room again.
I played it all out again in my mind. My hands were all over her body. We clutched each other, and my fingertips ran lightly up and down her spine. We lay apart, and I bent over her and stroked her belly with my palm. She straddled me … Did that really happen? Or am I imagining some of this?
As the sensory echoes formed, surged, died away, reformed … and finally faded to memory traces, I began to catch my breath. I was able to think almost coherently. And I began to recall certain oddities, and to consider certain logical possibilities—things that had never occurred to me as I walked up her stairs, nor even while I was in her room.
Josi, how old are you? Your face and body are, say, about thirty. Yet you were Vys’s woman during the Negotiations; and that was thirty years ago. Your body has not aged. It does not age.
And Josi, I remember faint scar lines along your cheeks, and along your hips and legs. Another oddity: those thin pink gloves. I’ve never seen you without them. You wore them even during our lovemaking. What are you hiding, Josi? That picture on the wall, the man with the five-fingered hand. You wear those gloves to hide the fact that you, too, have five fingers. Your sixth “finger” is false, probably wood, or hardened cloth.
Josi, is your blood black, like mine, or is it red, transfused into you straight from the unholy veins of siriS?
I began to perspire; then to tremble. I hurried along. Now I was shaking. To stop shaking, I began to jog down the sidewalk, bumping uncaring into a startled citizenry. It didn’t really take my mind off my problem. Nothing could.
I was in love with a lamia.
18
Science!
ONE DAY LATER, Sextday.
The congregation stands on the temple steps, awaiting the holy man.
It is the Day of Humiliation; for on this day years ago during the War, science-soldiers spead glowing oxien coals on the steps and porch of the temple, and tied a braided borch-hair rope around the reluctant neck of the predecessor of Dean Gard, and forced him to walk barefoot over the coals and into his own temple, where he was persuaded to confess that he was a duly begotten son of siriS. The occasion had entered the honored chronicles of the temple, and was now repeated annually, except that nowadays the incumbent prelate walked in fine sandals on a carpet of scented ciela strewn by his worshipful flock, and he himself held the noose around his neck, this item now being a jewel-crusted berylin-hardened necklace, a gift to him from his parishoners.
(Perhaps I should mention here that, in a fine spirit of reciprocity, the acolytes at Dervil threw an astronomer from the balcony of his own observatory. That event is now celebrated by tossing a great bag of baked sweets from the same place to hungry children far below. Thus is honest precedent blunted and corrupted. But back to Dean Gard.)
He passes, giving us one and all a mournful glance to show that he has forgiven ancient excesses.
Inside the temple he strides to the lectern, and after due preliminaries, begins his message for this templeday. Something about the two aspects of Siris, the eternal, the all encompassing. In the beginning SiriS purged himself of all evil, leaving himself pure and holy. The purged evil coalesced into a horrid caricature of its creator, and took on the form of siriS. So there then existed Siris and siriS. All good flows from Siris, all evil from siriS.
I wasn’t paying the slightest attention. I was thinking only of my lamia-love. Josi the sorceress. Josi of the incomparable body. I was in temple, and I could think only of this daughter of siriS. But I didn’t feel evil at all. In fact I felt pretty good about it. I stole a look at Mother. She was totally unaware of my unholy introspection. She had fixed an adoring gaze on the man at the pulpit and was oblivious to all else.
I look toward the pulpit. The speaker fades. I see a face encased in sparkling black ringlets. I sit up. For once I have no trouble staying awake during the sermon. Now what is the old windbreaker talking about? Lamiae and wizards … spawn of siriS. Ah! Your cue, Josi. You’re Exhibit A. Step right up, my beloved. Up on the dais. There, beside the son of Siris. Show him everything you have, my gorgeous darling. Now, start taking your clothes off. Blouse, tunic, slip. Walk around a little in your brassiere and smallclothes. No, leave your slippers on. Fine. Now the brassiere. There we go. Hang it on the lectern. And last, the underwear. Just stuff them in Gard’s robe pocket. Show Gard your lamia-scars on your cheeks, your hips, your rib cage. Ah, one more thing. Your gloves. Take your gloves off and wiggle your five fingers before his bewildered eyes. Well now, Gard, what do you think of her? How do you find my soft-skinned beauty? Josi, lay your hands gently on his pious robed arm. Lift an arm, show him those seductive black ringlets in the armpit. Let him smell you, weird-heart!
What—? Rustles, scrapings. The sounds of motion. Mother is standing, and she is punching me with her fingertips. Everybody is standing. Prayer and benediction. As I get up I search the dais. Josi? Where did you go?
IT IS FIRSTDAY, and I am on my way to work.
As I walked down Vys Street I looked up toward the Tower porch. No newssheet. No basket. Was she up already? Somewhere in that house, was she moving and talking? Were she and the squire having brew and toast at the jaq table? What were they talking about? Has she already forgotten about me? Not likely. We had a date for this afternoon.
I walked up the dock steps one at a time and on past the office. Squire Gearing looked at me curiously when I bade him good morning. “You have an express message. I left it for you on the order table.”
It was from the coronel, of course. It simply said: “Your application has been reviewed and accepted. Report to work here next Firstday morning.”
An end, and a beginning.
Money. Four hundred solati a sextile. Beyond the dreams of avarice. Josi and I could go out. We could go to restaurants, the theatre. I could buy her little gifts.
I told Gearing right away. He didn’t seem surprised. “I’d sure like to keep you, but we can’t match the militia pay scale. Meanwhile, can you go up to Josi’s and get me a cup of brew.”
As I walked into the Main Room I saw Squire Vys and Captain Kertor leaning like intent cramped statues over the jaq table. I walked over. “I got the job,” I said. “I want to think you both.”
Kertor grunted in vague approval.
The squire was silent. He seemed troubled.
“When do you go to work down there?” asked Kertor.
“Next Firstday.”
“Why that’s fine,” he said. His eyes had not left the board. I could see he had a kill in three. He probably saw the same thing, but it involved sacrificing both cavaliers, and that would violate all his military principles.
I turned away from the board and started toward the magic stairway.
“She’s not there,” called Squire Vys, finally looking up. “She’s downtown.”
“Oh. All right.” It was plain that the squire did not like this thing between Josi and me. But why should he care? I thought I knew why. He knew she was a lamia, and now he suspected that I knew, and perhaps he feared that I would expose her. Well, he needn’t worry.
The squire turned back to the board. “Kertor,” he observed mildly, “you may be interested to know that a small raqne has spun a complete web on your left sleeve, caught a vlie, eaten it, and has now hibernated for the winter. Move.”
The cavalry officer groaned and shifted a little in his chair. “Well, dammit, squire, give a fellow a chance to breathe.” His hand hovered over his flank cavalier.
It was the wrong piece. For his kill in three he should first sac the front cavalier. I couldn’t bear to watch. I went over to the counter, where Boogi had the brews waiting. I plunked down the coin, got the order, and hurried out. As I passed through the door I heard mingled cries of anguish and glee from the direction of the jaq table.
THE FIFTH HORI finally chimed in the temple carillon. I cleaned up hurriedly and dashed back to the Tower.
I CLOSED HER door behind me and took her in my arms. For the first time I noticed how her body molded into mine, from top to bottom, as though we were adjoining pieces in some erotic jigsaw puzzle. As our lips pressed together my right hand crawled into her blouse. Her flesh was warm and soft. I couldn’t reach the nipple because her brassiere was too tight.
“My period has started,” she whispered. “We can’t do anything. You would get all bloody.” But she held me with gloved hands. She seemed to hesitate. “Maybe we can have some music,” she suggested in a strained monotone.
Damn. I wasn’t sure what to do. Music? What was she talking about? Did she mean she was going to play something on the lyrichord? To sisiS with that! I picked her up and carried her to the bed. I pulled her skirt and slip up about her hips. Ah, those marvelous lamia legs. Yes, there, under the smallclothes, the pad, strapped to her crotch with some sort of elastic belt. I could see a trace of blood—red blood. Genuine lamia blood. So what? Of course it was red. On with the drama. In my mind I saw what needed to be done. I got a kerchief from my pants pocket, then I stripped to my socks, got on the bed, lay beside her, and pulled her leg over mine. She helped me adjust the kerchief in the right place. With my upper thigh dividing her crotch, I began moving my body against her in slow rhythm. She joined me. I could feel her pad, now beginning to crumple against my leg. She pulled my mouth down to hers, and our tongues began their thrusting search.
With her eyes closed, she began making strange sounds. Gasps. Moans. Faster and louder. But I couldn’t pay any attention. I grabbed her posterior with my free hand and crushed her against me. Then—
We convulsed together. A great pendulum. Swinging in short resplendent arcs. And then we collapsed, and all time stopped.
A d-douzaine years later I woke up. She was in her filmy pink wrapper, bending over me, still wearing gloves, rubbing at my stomach with a warm damp towel. She grinned. “You can tell your mother I washed out your kerchief, and it’s drying on my towel rack.”
Ah, Mother. How long before I have to tell you something?
And now I suddenly realized there was music in the room. I looked around. No music box. Where was it coming from? It wasn’t localized. It was coming from everywhere at once.
It was electrifying. I sat up suddenly. “Josi! What is it? Where is it coming from?”
She smiled a mysterious smile. “It’s a, well, sort of a new invention. Imported, you might say. There are a douzaine sound boxes in the walls. The music comes from them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just listen, dear. It’s sort of a new music form, called an ‘opera.’ “
“It has a name?”
“Of course. Tristan und I solde, all about a cavalier and his lady, in the olden days. Tristan lies, mortally wounded, on a bleak seashore. Only Isolde can save him now. We’re listening to a shepherd, nearby, playing on his pipes.” She looked down at my naked arm, then at my cheeks. “You have skinbumps. Are you cold?”
“No. It’s the music. It makes me afraid.”
“You’re weird.”
There was a pause in the sound.
