Four for Tomorrow Part 25

And oh, the feasts we have! The Trimalchio's, the Emory's we dissect!

We finish you with the soup, Morton!

I turned and settled at my desk, I wanted to write something. Ecclestiastes could take a night off. I wanted to write a poem, a poem about the one hundred-seven- teenth dance of Locar; about a rose following the light, traced by the wind, sick, like Blake's rose, dying. . . .

I found a pencil and began.

When I had finished I was pleased. It wasn't great-at 188.

least, it was no greater than it needed to be-High Mar- tian not being my strongest tongue. I groped and put it into English, with partial rhymes. Maybe I'd stick it in my next book. I called it Braxa; In a land of wind and red, where the icy evening of Time freezes milk in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Life, as two moons overhead-cat and dog in alleyways of dream-scratch and scramble agelessly my flight . . .

This final flower turns a burning head.

I put it away and found some phen.o.bartibal. I was suddenly tired.

When I showed my poems to M'Cwyie the next day, she read it through several times, very slowly.

"It is lovely," she said. "But you used three words from your own language. 'Cat' and 'dog,' I a.s.sume, are two small animals with a hereditary hatred for one an- other. But what is 'flower?'"

142 "Oh," I said. "I've never come across your word for 'flower,' but I was actually thinking of an Earth flower, the rose."

"What is it like?"

"Well, its petals are generally bright red. That's what I meant, on one level, by 'burning heads.' I also wanted it to imply fever, though, and red hair, and the fire of life. The rose, itself, has a th.o.r.n.y stem, green leaves and a distinct, pleasing aroma,"

"I wish I could see one."

"I suppose it could be arranged. I'll check."

"Do it, please. You are a-" She used the word for "prophet," or religious poet, like Isaish or Locar. "-and your poem is inspired. I shall tell Braxa of it."

I declined the nomination, but felt flattered.

189.

This, then, I decided, was the strategic day, the day- on which to ask whether I might bring in the microfilm machine and the camera. I wanted to copy all their texts, I explained, and I couldn't write fast enough to do it.

She surprised me by agreeing immediately. But she bowled me over with her invitation.

"Would you like to come and stay here while you do this thing? Then you can work night and day, any time you want-except when the Temple is being used, of course."

I bowed.

"I should be honored."

"Good. Bring your machines when you want, and I will show you a room."

"Will this afternoon be all right?"

"Certainly."

"Then I will go now and get-things ready. Until this afternoon . .."

"Good-bye."

I antic.i.p.ated a little trouble from Emory, but not much. Everyone back at the s.h.i.+p was anxious to see the Martians, poke needles in the Martians, ask them about Martian climate, diseases, soil chemistry, politics, and mushroomsour botanist was a fungus nut, but a rea- sonably good guy)-and only four or five had actually gotten to see them. The crew had been spending most of its time excavating dead cities and their acropolises. We played the game by strict rules, and the natives were as fiercely insular as the nineteenth-century j.a.panese. I fig- 143 ured I would meet with little resistance, and I figured right.

In fact, I got the distinct impression that everyone was happy to see me move out.

190.

I stopped in the hydroponics room to speak with our mushroom master.

"Hi, Kane. Grow any toadstools in the sand yet?"

He sniffed. He always sniffs. Maybe he's allergic to plants.

"h.e.l.lo, Gallinger. No, I haven't had any success with toadstools, but look behind the car barn next time you're out there. I've got a few cacti going."

"Great," I observed. Doc Kane was about my only friend aboard, not counting Betty.

"Say, I came down to ask you a favor."

"Name it."

"I want a rose."

"A what?"

"A rose. You know, a nice red American Beauty job- thorns, pretty smelling-"

"I don't think it will take in this soil. Sniff, sniff."

"No, you don't understand. I don't want to plant it, I just want the flowers."

"I'd have to use the tanks." He scratched his hairless dome. "It would take at least three months to get you flowers, even under forced growth."

"Will you do it?"

"Sure, if you don't mind the wait."

"Not at all. In fact, three months will just make it be- fore we leave." I looked about at the pools of crawling slime, at the trays of shoots. "-I'm moving up to Tirellian today, but I'll be in and out all the time. I'll be here when it blooms."

"Moving up there, eh? Moore said they're an in-group."

"I guess I'm 'in' then."

"Looks that way-1 still don't see how you learned their language, though. Of course, I had trouble with French and German for my Ph.D, but last week I heard Betty demonstrate it at lunch. It just sounds like a lot of 191.

144 weird noises. She says speaking it is like working a Times crossword and trying to imitate birdcalls at the same time."

I laughed, and took the cigarette he offered me.

"It's complicated," I acknowledged. "But, well, it's as if you suddenly came across a whole new cla.s.s of myce- tae here-you'd dream about it at night."

His eyes were gleaming.

"Wouldn't that be something! I might, yet, you know."

"Maybe you will."

He chuckled as we walked to the door.

"I'll start your roses tonight. Take it easy down there/'

"You bet. Thanks."

Like I said, a fungus nut, but a fairly good guy.

My quarters in the Citadel of Tirellian were directly adjacent to the Temple, on the inward side and slightly to the left. They were a considerable improvement over my cramped cabin, and I was pleased that Martian cul- ture had progressed sufficiently to discover the desirabil- ity of the mattress over the pallet. Also, the bed was long enough to accommodate me, which was surprising.

So I unpacked and took sixteen 35 mm. shots of the Temple, before starting on the books.

I took 'stats until I was sick of turning pages without knowing what they said. So I started translating a work of history.

"Lo. In the thirty-seventh year of the Process of Cillen the rains came, which gave rise to rejoicing, for it was a rare and untoward occurrence, and commonly construed a blessing.

"But it was not the life-giving s.e.m.e.n of Malann which fell from the heavens. It was the blood of the universe, spurting from an artery. And the last days were upon us. The final dance was to begin.

192.

"The rains brought the plague that does not kill, and the last pa.s.ses of Locar began with their drumming. . . ."

I asked myself what the h.e.l.l Tamur meant, for he was an historian and supposedly committed to fact. This was not their Apocalypse.

Unless they could be one and the same . . . ?

Why not? I mused. Tirellian's handful of people were the remnant of what had obviously once been a highly developed culture. They had had wars, but no holo- causts; science, but little technology. A plague, a plague 145 that did not kill . . . ? Could that have done it? How, if it wasn't fatal?

I read on, but the nature of the plague was not dis- cussed. I turned pages, skipped ahead, and drew a blank.

M'Cwyie! M'Cwyie! When I want to question you most, you are not around!

Would it be a faux pas to go looking for her? Yes, I decided. I was restricted to the rooms I had been shown, that had been an implicit understanding. I would have to wait to find out.

So I cursed long and loud, in many languages, doubt- less burning Malann's sacred ears, there in his Temple.

He did not see fit to strike me dead, so I decided to call it a day and hit the sack.

I must have been asleep for several hours when Braxa entered my room with a tiny lamp. She dragged me awake by tugging at my pajama sleeve.

I said h.e.l.lo. Thinking back, there is not much else I could have said.

"h.e.l.lo."

"I have come," she said, "to hear the poem."

"What poem?"

"Yours."

"Oh."

I yawned, sat up, and did things people usually do when awakened in the middle of the night to read poetry.

"That is very kind of you, but isn't the hour a trifle awkward?"

"I don't mind," she said.

Someday I am going to write an article for the Journal of Semantics, called "Tone of Voice: An Insufficient Ve- hicle for Irony."

However, I was awake, so I grabbed my robe.

"What sort of animal is that?" she asked, pointing at the silk dragon on my lapel.

"Mythical," I replied. "Now look, it's late. I am tired. I have much to do in the morning. And M'Cwyie just might get the wrong idea if she learns you were here."

"Wrong idea?"

"You know d.a.m.ned well what I mean!" It was the first time I had had an opportunity to use Martian profanity, and it failed.

146 "No," she said, "I do not know."

She seemed frightened, like a puppy being scolded without knowing what it has done wrong.

I softened. Her red cloak matched her hair and lips so perfectly, and those lips were trembling.

"Here now, I didn't mean to upset you. On my word there are certain, uh, mores, concerning people of differ- ent s.e.x alone together in bedrooms, and not allied by marriage.. . . Urn, I mean, you see what I mean?"

"No."

They were jade, her eyes.

"Well, it's sort of . . . Well, it's s.e.x, that's what it is."

A light switched on in those jade lamps.

"Oh, you mean having childreni"