Redworld, page 13
“Is that all?” I asked. “The end?”
“That’s all of that. Now comes the Liebestod.”
“The what?”
“The Liebestod. That’s a foreign word. It means ‘love-death.’ But don’t talk. Just listen.”
I listened. With grave interest Josi watched my skinbumps begin to flicker again. “Isolde didn’t reach her lover in time,” she whispered. “She hovers over the dead hero.”
As Mother hovered over Gil, dying, dying, dead.
“Isolde,” murmured Josi. “That was Tristan’s last word. Pol? Pol?”
I was staring up at her. Her face was wreathed in concern. Then she was half smiling, but not entirely. “Were you in a coma? Don’t do that, ever again. You scared me.”
I sat up on the edge of the bed and started dressing. “It was the music,” I said. “I sort of drifted away into it.”
“Well, then, no more for you.”
It was over.
I looked around the room. The portrait was gone. Some sort of drape hung over the door that opened into the Tower. And she had apparently rearranged all the books. The Guild receipt had vanished.
As I finished dressing I studied her face and her half-covered body. I wanted to ask, “Josi, who are you? What strange country are you from? Why the page marker, with my picture?” And a d-douzaine other questions. And I wanted to say, “I know you are a lamia, and it doesn’t matter.”
She said, “Where now?”
“To the collegia.”
“Your class with Gard?”
“No. He threw me out. I’m switching to science. I sign up for theochym tonight. Come here.”
She walked across the bed on her knees and we embraced at the bed-edge.
“I love you, Josi.”
She let me go, and simply smiled.
THAT NIGHT I walked into the collegia office, and signed up for Professor Rollo Fels and his course in theochymistry.
Just from the looks of Fels I knew I was going to like him. His chestless rotundity reached its maximum at his waistline, and from there narrowed down rapidly to his groin, like a separatory funnel. He wore a belt to hold his trousers up in apparent defiance of Trok’s laws of gravity. A closer inspection showed this engineering feat was accomplished by extending his trousers upward over the bulge of his belly, to a narrower section of his torso. This looked a little odd, and perhaps to hide the oddity he wore a vest, which, however, was generally unbuttoned most of the year owing to the heat. Actually, I don’t think he cared what he looked like.
His abdominal sphericity was offset by spindly arms and legs. If you looked only at that part of him, you wondered if he was getting enough to eat. His hands and feet were delicate, avela-like. They seemed to reflect some ascetic facet in his personality. In fact (so it was rumored) he fasted (or nearly so) once a day. This was at breakfast, when he wrenched himself from bed and got himself into his little kitchen, where he had only brew and a box of one douzaine nutbreads. At lunch and supper he did better.
To complete the ascetic image, Fels’ hair looked as though it had been cut by a monastery barber. He had a most peculiar bald spot. It was large, and had taken the entire top of his head by eminent domain. The end result was a hirsute circlet set down on his skull in approved monkish fashion. All he had to do was keep the bottom edge in trim. As he strode down the hall in his dirty pink all enveloping tunic, headed, say for the lab or lecture room, he looked like Fra Jon on his way to vespers.
But Fels was not a monk. He had taken no vows. On the other hand, he was not an atheist. “I’m not smart enough to be an atheist,” he once said. (Wistfully?) What was he, then? Nobody knew. Or cared.
MOTHER TOOK IT like a true sportswoman. She had recovered from Gil and science. Now she had to do it all over again with me. Another of life’s bitter pills. This pill, however, was sweet-coated with four hundred solati, and it eased her pain.
19
Dactylography
TO START, the coronel turned me over to Fret Daon (“call me Day”) for instruction in the science of dactylography. Day showed me around the print room.
“We have several douzaine mille prints,” he explained. “It sounds like a lot, but actually it doesn’t compare to a really big collection, such as they have at Dervil. But even our little collection has to be kept in exact order. Because once something is misclassified, it’s gone. It’s as though that person had never been in here. I guess you haven’t been exposed to any of this before?”
“No,” I said.
Day picked up a fingerprint card. “If you’ll look at your fingers, you’ll see parallel ridges running across the tips. We simply make a ridge count. Six fingers, each hand. Douzaine counts. Each finger has its allotted space here on the card. Simple, hey? But you have to get the count exact. Not one ridge more, not one ridge less. The counts are coded and entered here, on the top of the card.”
I was impressed. It sounded like a very scientific system.
And so I began.
I fingerprinted vagrants. Then I would wash up, set type for arrest cards, and write letters and reports.
Then the turnkey would bring in another bunch.
CINQUEDAY MORNING.
I caught Mother’s liquid trusting eyes over the breakfast table. I said: “Did I tell you I have to work every day at my new job, except alternate Sextdays?”
“Yes, you mentioned that.”
“I’m off next Sextday. Not tomorrow. The one after that.”
She waited in silence. But her hands began to flutter. She folded them tightly together. The fingers still trembled.
I said, “You and I can go to temple, as usual. After services, I have a date with a girl.”
Well, there it was. Out in the open. We could both relax. A little.
“Ah.” She cleared her throat and twisted her head to one side. “Why, that’s fine. You’re a young man. You should certainly be going out, dating …” She waited, wondering how deep she dared probe. “Have you been seeing … this girl … for quite a while?”
“Yes.”
She tried hard not to let her lips compress. “I hope you’ll bring her home soon. I’d like to meet her.” She managed a smile. “She’s a nice girl, of course.”
What would you do if I told you she was a lamia? “She’s a very nice girl,” I said.
She hesitated again, trying to sort out the ground rules. She had never had to do this with Gil. “It doesn’t bother you, if we talk about her?”
Oh Mother, don’t do this. “No, of course not. Do you want to know all about her?”
Her eyes brightened. “Yes, of course.”
“She works in a, ah, sort of lunch counter, near the paper mill. That’s where I met her. She has beautiful black curls, gray eyes, marvelous skin. She loves music. She likes to read.” I shrugged.
“She goes to temple, I assume.”
You would, Mother. Dammit. “I don’t really know.”
“Sounds a little vague. Now that’s what you can do with her on your next Sextday off! Bring her to our temple. She’s sure to enjoy Dean Gard. He always has a Message! (And we could all see what she looks like!)”
I did not crack a smile. “That’s a great idea, Mother. But we’ll have to save it for another time. She and I have already made other plans for Sextday.”
“Oh. I see.” Her anticipation slowly collapsed. “Another time, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“You don’t even want me to know her name?” Deep reproach.
“Josi.”
“And almost everyone has a last name?”
Touché, Mother. Josi wasn’t actually Lady Vys. “I don’t know her last name,” I said.
Mother didn’t know what to make of that. She seemed to review the major possibilities. Aleph. The affair was so trivial, so superficial, that the matter of surnames hadn’t really came up. Betha. The affair was so impassioned, they hadn’t bothered with names at all. Colo. The old values, the old customs and traditions, are gone. It’s another generation.
She gave up. She rose from the table and carried her plate to the kitchen sink. “You really ought to find out her last name,” she observed mildly. “Perhaps you should get someone to introduce you properly.”
20
The Face
THE “DACTYLO” office was in the basement of the City Building and the floor was somewhat below outside ground level. Windows spaced around the walls looked out on flower beds and grass. There was one such window by my work desk. The lower sill was wide, about chest high (as I sat there), and made a fine place to put my finished work. Depending on the hori when I looked out the window I might see the stars. Or in the early morning I might see (and hear) borch-wagons on early deliveries.
Now, on this particular morning (about the second hori after midnight) I was busily setting type for arrest cards from part of the current arrest sheet. As I listened idly to the type characters clattering into line, I chanced to look up and out my window.
Someone was standing there, looking in and down at me.
Now, people had come up to my window before and looked in, but that had been purely out of curiosity. Some had even given a friendly wave.
This was different. And confusing. Was this a man or a woman? The figure had unusually wide hips. And look at the way one knee dips in front of the other. A woman? No. The creature was wearing a brim hat. This was a man.
We made eye contact for a long moment.
The only light on his face was from the oxien lamp over my work desk. It lit his cheeks from below, and so cast shadows on his eyes.
Half-light, half-dark, this was the face of hate.
I was stunned. I could not look away, not even when I heard footsteps behind me.
Those eyes … that face … I was thinking, or rather, asking myself, have I seen you before, when the figure whirled away and strode away from the building and out of view.
Barely breathing, I turned. It was the kemadar, “Kumbo,” we called him. He had brought the second and final arrest sheet. He looked at me and I looked at him. My first reaction was a feeling of guilt—guilt beyond any possible explanation or excuse. I didn’t know what I had done to the stranger, but I must have done something. Else, why all that hate?
Kumbo smiled, but it was a grim smile. It seemed to say, you haven’t done anything horrible … but be careful. He handed me the sheet. “Know him?” he asked.
“Maybe. I’m not sure. Do you know him?”
“That was Rone, Uri Rone.”
And now I knew him. He was one of the two young men Gard had caught in the pad room and had chased out of the gym. He was the one who had looked back at me. He knew I had witnessed his humiliation. Besides which, I now had his old job, at this very desk. And so he was mad at me. But it was his own fault he got fired. Why blame me? Siris, what a messed up busht. “Oh,” I said softly. I wanted to ask Kumbo what Uri was doing now. Where he worked. Why he was out at this hour.
But the kemadar had already disappeared. There was just me. Nobody else in view, inside or outside.
I put the arrest sheet in the carrier, cranked up the eye leveler to the first entry, and began to set type.
Ro, oJn.
Damn. A typo with the very first word. My hands were sweating. It was going to be a bad night. I looked over my shoulder out the window.
21
An Anatomical Anomaly
JOSI’S ROOM AGAIN. We clutched each other, then she pushed me away and began taking off her clothes. I watched her as I kicked off my shoes. Then we raced to see who could strip first. She had fewer buttons, and she won. Even the gloves came off. Yes, five. She didn’t care and I didn’t care.
Standing, burning, we held each other.
Behind her was her door that led out to the stair landing. On that door, a part of her anti-noise campaign, hung a thick brownish tapestry. It portrayed a scantily clad woman lying by a fountain. Half asleep? Half awake? Above her fluttered a winged xelix, taking dead aim at her right heart with a tiny bow and arrow. I hesitated a bare fraction of a breath. Arrows made me uneasy. I thought of Jehanne-Mar, pointing, and I thought of the Revenant. It passed as quickly as it came.
I led Josi to the tapestry. I bent down, put my arms between her legs, and lifted her. She closed her eyes, locked her legs around my waist, and after a couple of false starts, xelix’s arrow found its mark.
She shuddered. The door shuddered. Thrust. Grind. Thrust. I was doing this to her, and she was urging me on with noises in her throat. And then the final synchronized convulsions, and together we were spent.
My hands relaxed their sky-metal clutch. She slipped down a little, between me and the door. I noticed then she was standing on the tapestry. It too had yielded to passion and lay exhausted beneath us.
We left it there and walked over to her bed. I watched the marvelous gentle see-saw of her buttocks. There were hints of red spots, where I had pressed her to the door. The marks of love, already fading. Love filters away from the body. In the end, it is in the mind, in memory. The door is always ajar for reverenced recall.
And now she pressed a button on her night table, and from somewhere, nowhere, the music flowed out to us. We sat on the bed together. I put my arm around her waist, and we listened.
“Tell me about the music,” I whispered.
“It is called, ‘None but the Lonely Heart.’ A man named Tchaikovsky wrote it, long ago, far away.” She began to sing in a barely audible contralto … “ ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiss was ich leide …”
“What does that mean?”
She thought a moment. “Only he who understands longing, knows what I suffer.”
I looked at her. And as I watched, her face changed. She tried to control it, but she couldn’t. Vada began trickling from her eyes down her cheeks. She put her hands over her face. Her shoulders began to shake.
I was alarmed. “Josi! What’s wrong?”
She wiped the wetness away with the palms of her hands. Her face became beautiful again, except that her eyes were strangely red. She smiled faintly. “It is nothing. Sometimes I am sad.”
“But—the vada on your face. What caused that?”
“Tears, dear Pol. I was crying.”
“I do not understand … crying.”
“It’s an anatomical anomaly. It’s … like sadness.”
Well, that at least I could understand. I was sad when I thought about Gil. And there was supposed to be a moment of sadness after the act of love. Why, I don’t know.
But this was different.
Josi was sad because of a distant almost forgotten life, somewhere, somewhen.
“Have you ever been away from home?” she asked.
The question stung me, and kept stinging, like a borch-whip laid across my back. She was saying to me, your world is not my world, and although I have been here for thirty years, your ways are still strange. There is no one here I can talk to, not even you, Pol.
“No,” I said gently, “I have never been away from home.” I wanted to add that I knew she lived among strangers, that none of us spoke her native tongue, and that I knew she was homesick. But I couldn’t bring myself to say these things. “I’m sorry, Josi,” I said. For what? I wasn’t sure.
I noted now that the music was over. We sat there, listening, as though it were still alive.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“That you have the loveliest thighs of any girl in the province.” I began to massage the leg nearest me.
She pulled me down on her.
ON ANOTHER EVENING she was playing at the lyrichord when I entered her room. The music was most unusual. I had never heard anything like it before. (She nodded to acknowledge my entry, but kept playing.)
I sat on the edge of the bed and listened. Whose incomparable tragedies? Hers? Mine? The composer’s? What unspeakable sorrows did she mourn? Ripples of bounce-flesh played along my arms and neck. The music was taking over my brain. I began to skip breaths. I gasped, trying to break out. Oh Josi, please don’t do this thing you call crying. I don’t think I could stand it. As if she read my mind the music changed. It became lively, almost happy. And then it shifted again, this time mounting into sublime heights. Sometime later she must have stopped, but I didn’t know exactly when. As I emerged from her enchantment I saw that she had turned around and was studying me somberly.
“That last,” I said. “Bock?”
“Bach.” She slurred the “k” sound. “ ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.’ “She sighed and got up, as though closing the subject.
22
The Explosion
THEOCHYM MET first in a little classroom just outside the big laboratory. Rollo Fels explained the routine. “Your bench assignments are alphabetical, and they’re on the bulletin board inside the lab. Under your bench is a cabinet. In it you’ll find certain glassware, oxien burners, and so on. Standard equipment. You can draw additional items from the stockroom.”
I looked absently around the little room.
I caught a face toward the back, staring at me. Glaring would be more like it. The eyes glowed. By the clipped wings of Siris! Uri Rone.
I shivered, and turned back uneasily. Uri was going to be in my lab. So what? He was certainly entitled to return to school. I didn’t intend to become paranoid on the subject of this strange character. And even if Kumbo was right in defining Uri’s hostility to me, there wasn’t much damage the ex-clerk could do to me in a chym lab with a douzaine fellow students looking on.
We followed the professor dutifully out of the classroom into the hall and through the swinging doors into the lab bay. Here we clustered briefly around the bulletin board to get our locker assignments.
I had Locker Number Twelve. Rone had Number Thirteen. Should I ask for another space? No, dammit. He wasn’t going to scare me. Let him move. Which he wasn’t about to do. As we filed around to the benches, I saw him smile grimly. Well, smile away, Uri. Just you mind your business, and I’ll mind mine.
I stooped down, opened the door to Locker Number Twelve, and looked inside. There was a little shelf, toward the top. But nearly all the glassware sat on the floor, in the bottom section. Everything looked faintly dusty, as though it hadn’t been touched in several years. I noted then the two beakers on the little shelf. Each was covered with a glass plate. Each was half full of a cloudy liquid. I lifted them out gingerly, first one, then the other. Each carried a mark on its labeling spot. One was labeled A, the other B.
