“Well, I had figured out most of that.”
“Oscar, by your standards—the way you have been raised—I am a bitch.”
“Oh, never! A princess.”
“A bitch. But I am not of your country and I was reared by another code. By my standards, and they seem good to me, I am a moral woman. Now…am I still ‘your darling’?”
“My darling!”
“My darling Hero. My champion. Lean close and kiss me. If we die, I would my mouth be warm with your lips. The entrance is just around this bend.”
“I know.”
A few moments later we rode, swords sheathed and bows unstrung, proudly into the target area.
TEN
Three days later we rode out again.
This time breakfast was sumptuous. This time musicians lined our exit. This time the Doral rode with us.
This time Rufo reeled to his mount, each arm around a wench, a bottle in each hand, then, after busses from a dozen more, was lifted into his seat and belted in the reclining position. He fell asleep, snoring before we set out.
I was kissed good-bye more times than I could count and by some who had no reason to do it so thoroughly—for I was only an apprentice hero, still learning the trade.
It’s not a bad trade, despite long hours, occupational hazards, and utter lack of security; it has fringe benefits, with many openings and rapid advancement for a man with push and willingness to learn. The Doral seemed well pleased with me.
At breakfast he had sung my prowess up to date in a thousand intricate lines. But I was sober and did not let his praises impress me with my own greatness; I knew better. Obviously a little bird had reported to him regularly—but that bird was a liar. John Henry the Steel-Drivin’ Man couldn’t have done what Jocko’s ode said I did.
But I took it with my heroic features noble and impassive, then I stood up and gave them “Casey at the Bat,” putting heart and soul into “Mighty Casey has struck OUT!”
Star gave it a free interpretation. I had (so she sang) praised the ladies of Doral, the ideas being ones associated with Madame Pompadour, Nell Gwyn, Theodora, Ninon de l’Enclos, and Rangy Lil. She didn’t name those famous ladies; instead she was specific, in Nevian eulogy that would have startled Francois Villon.
So I had to come up with an encore. I gave them “Reilly’s Daughter,” then “Jabberwocky,” with gestures.
Star had interpreted me in spirit; she had said what I would have said had I been capable of extemporizing poetry. Late on the second day I had chanced on Star in the steam room of the manor’s baths. For an hour we lay wrapped in sheets on adjacent slabs, sweating it out and restoring the tissues. Presently I blurted out to her how surprised—and delighted—I was. I did it sheepishly but Star was one to whom I dared bare my soul.
She had listened gravely. When I ran down, she said quietly, “My Hero, as you know, I do not know America. But from what Rufo tells me your culture is unique, among all the Universes.”
“Well, I realize that the USA is not sophisticated in such things, not the way France is.”
“‘France!’” She shrugged, beautifully. “‘Latins are lousy lovers.’ I heard that somewhere, I testify that it is true. Oscar, so far as I know, your culture is the only semicivilized one in which love is not recognized as the highest art and given the serious study it deserves.”
“You mean the way they treat it here. Whew! ‘Much too good for the common people!’”
“No, I do not mean the way it is treated here.” She spoke in English. “Much as I love our friends here, this is a barbarous culture and their arts are barbaric. Oh, good art of its sort, very good; their approach is honest. But—if we live through this, after our troubles are over—I want you to travel among the Universes. You’ll see what I mean.” She got up, folding her sheet into a toga. I’m glad you are pleased, my Hero. I’m proud of you.”
I lay there a while longer, thinking about what she had said. The “highest art”—and back home we didn’t even study it, much less make any attempt to teach it. Ballet takes years and years. Nor do they hire you to sing at the Met just because you have a loud voice.
Why should “love” be classed as an “instinct”?
Certainly the appetite for sex is an instinct—but did another appetite make every glutton a gourmet, every fry cook a Cordon Bleu? Hell, you had to learn even to be a fry cook.
I walked out of the steam room whistling “The Best Things in Life Are Free”—then chopped it off in sudden sorrow for all my poor, unhappy compatriots cheated of their birthright by the most mammoth hoax in history.
A mile out the Doral bade us good-bye, embracing me, kissing Star and mussing her hair; then he and his escort drew swords and remained at salute until we passed over the next rise. Star and I rode knee to knee while Rufo snored behind us.
I looked at her and her mouth twitched. She caught my eye and said demurely, “Good morning, milord.”
“Good morning, milady. You slept well?”
“Very well, thank you, milord. And you?”
“The same, thank you.”
“So? ‘What was the strange thing the dog did in the night?’”
“‘The dog did nothing in the night, that was the strange thing,’” I answered with a straight face.
“Really? So gay a dog? Then who was that knight I last saw with a lady?”
“’Twasn’t night, ’twas brillig.”
“And your vorpal blade went snicker-snack! My beamish boy!”
“Don’t try to pin your jabberwocking on me, you frolicsome wench,” I said severely. “I’ve got friends, I have—I can prove an alibi. Besides, ‘my strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.’”
“And the line before that one. Yes, I know; your friends told me about it, milord.” Suddenly she grinned and slapped me on the thigh and started bellowing the chorus of “Reilly’s Daughter.” Vita Brevis snorted; Ars Longa pricked up her ears and looked around reprovingly.
“Stop it,” I said. “You’re shocking the horses.”
“They aren’t horses and you can’t shock them. Have you seen how they do it, milord? In spite of all those legs? First—”
“Hold your tongue! Ars Longa is a lady, even if you aren’t.”
“I warned you I was a bitch. First she sidles up—”
“I’ve seen it. Muri thought it would amuse me. Instead it gave me an inferiority complex that lasted all afternoon.”
“I venture to disbelieve that it was all afternoon, milord Hero. Let’s sing about Reilly then. You lead, I’ll harmonize.”
“Well—Not too loud, we’ll wake Rufo.”
“Not him, he’s embalmed.”
“Then you’ll wake me, which is worse. Star darling, when and where was Rufo an undertaker? And how did he get from that into this business? Did they run him out of town?”
She looked puzzled. “Undertaker? Rufo? Not Rufo.”
“He was most circumstantial.”
“So? Milord, Rufo has many faults. But telling the truth is not one of them. Moreover, our people do not have undertakers.”
“You don’t? Then what do you do with leftover carcasses? Can’t leave them cluttering the parlor. Untidy.”
“I think so, too, but our people do just that: keep them in the parlor. For a few years at least. An overly sentimental custom but we are a sentimental people. Even so, it can be overdone. One of my great aunts kept all her former husbands in her bedchamber—a dreadful clutter and boring, too, because she talked about them, repeating herself and exaggerating. I quit going to see her.”
“Well. Did she dust them?”
“Oh, yes. She was a fussy housekeeper.”
“Uh—How many were there?”
“Seven or eight, I never counted.”
“I see. Star? Is there black-widow blood in your family?”
“What? Oh! But, darling, there is black-widow blood in every woman.” She dimpled, reached over and patted my knee. “But Auntie d
idn’t kill them. Believe me, my Hero, the women in my family are much too fond of men to waste them. No, Auntie just hated to let them go. I think that is foolish. Look forward, not back.”
“‘And let the dead past bury its dead.’ Look, if your people keep dead homes around the house, you must have undertakers. Embalmers at least. Or doesn’t the air get thick?”
“Embalming? Oh, no! Just place a stasis on them once you’re sure they are dead. Or dying. Any schoolboy can do that.” She added, “Perhaps I wronged Rufo. He has spent much time on your Earth—he likes the place, it fascinates him—and he may have tried undertaking. But it seems to me an occupation too honest and straightforward to attract him.”
“You never did tell me what your people eventually do with a cadaver.”
“Not bury it. That would shock them silly.” Star shivered. “Even myself and I’ve traveled the Universes, learned to be indifferent to almost any custom.”
“But what?”
“Much what you did to Igli. Apply a geometrical option and get rid of it.”
“Oh. Star, where did Igli go?”
“I couldn’t guess, milord. I had no chance to calculate it. Perhaps the ones who made him know. But I think they were even more taken by surprise than I was.”
“I guess I’m dense. Star. You call it geometry; Jocko referred to me as a ‘mathematician.’ But I did what was forced on me by circumstances; I didn’t understand it.”
“Forced on Igli, you should say, milord Hero. What happens when you place an insupportable strain on a mass, such that it cannot remain where it is? While leaving it nowhere to go? This is a schoolboy problem in metaphysical geometry and the eldest proto-paradox, the one about the irresistible force and the immovable body. The mass implodes. It is squeezed out of its own world into some other. This is often the way the people of a universe discover the Universes—but usually as disastrously as you forced it on Igli; it may take millennia before they control it. It may hover around the fringes as ‘magic’ for a long time, sometimes working, sometimes failing, sometimes backfiring on the magician.”
“And you call this ‘mathematics’?”
“How else?”
“I’d call it magic.”
“Yes, surely. As I told Jocko, you have a natural genius. You could be a great warlock.”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t believe in magic.”
“Nor do I,” she answered, “the way you put it. I believe in what is.”
“That’s what I mean, Star. I don’t believe in hocus-pocus. What happened to Igli—I mean, ‘what appeared to happen to Igli’—could not have happened because it would violate the law of conservation of mass-energy. There must be some other explanation.”
She was politely silent.
So I brought to bear the sturdy common sense of ignorance and prejudice. “Look, Star, I’m not going to believe the impossible simply because I was there. A natural law is a natural law. You have to admit that.”
We rode a few rods before she answered, “May it please milord Hero, the world is not what we wish it to be. It is what it is. No, I have over-assumed. Perhaps it is indeed what we wish it to be. Either way, it is what it is. Le voila! Behold it, self-demonstrating. Das Ding an sich. Bite it. It is. Ai-je raison? Do I speak truly?”
“That’s what I was saying! The universe is what it is and can’t be changed by jiggery-pokery. It works by exact rules, like a machine.” (I hesitated, remembering a car we had had that was a hypochondriac. It would “fall sick,” then “get well” as soon as a mechanic tried to touch it.) I went on firmly, “Natural law never takes a holiday. The invariability of natural law is the cornerstone of science.”
“So it is.”
“Well?” I demanded.
“So much the worse for science.”
“But—” I shut up and rode in huffy silence.
Presently a slender hand touched my forearm, caressed it. “Such a strong sword arm,” she said softly. “Milord Hero, may I explain?”
“Talk ahead,” I said. “If you can sell me, you can convert the Pope to Mormonism. I’m stubborn.”
“Would I have picked you out of hundreds of billions to be my champion were you not?”
“‘Hundreds of billions?’ You mean millions, don’t you?”
“Hear me, milord. Indulge me. Let us be Socratic. I’ll frame the trick questions and you make the stupid answers—and we’ll learn who shaved the barber. Then it will be your turn and I’ll be the silly stooge. Okay?”
“All right, put a nickel in.”
“Very well. Question: Are the customs at house Doral the customs you used at home?”
“What? You know they aren’t. I’ve never been so flabbergasted since the time the preacher’s daughter took me up into the steeple to show me the Holy Ghost.” I chuckled sheepishly. “I’d be blushing yet but I’ve burned out my fuses.”
“Yet the basic difference between Nevian customs and yours lies in only one postulate. Milord, there axe worlds in which males kill females as soon as eggs are laid—and others in which females eat males even as they are being fructified—like that black widow you made cousin to me.”
“I didn’t mean that, Star.”
“I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey; I have none. Oscar, would you find such worlds stranger than this one?”
“You’re talking about spiders or some such. Not people.”
“I speak of people, the dominant race of each its world. Highly civilized.”
“Ugh!”
“You will not say ‘ugh’ when you see them. They are so different from us that their home life cannot matter to us. Contrariwise, this planet is very like your Earth—yet your customs would shock old Jocko out of song. Darling, your world has a custom unique in the Universes. That is, the Twenty Universes known to me, out of thousands or millions or googols of universes. In the known Twenty Universes only Earth has this astounding custom.”
“Do you mean ‘War’?”
“Oh, no! Most worlds have warfare. This planet Nevia is one of the few where killing is retail, rather than wholesale. Here there be Heroes, killing is done with passion. This is a world of love and slaughter, both with gay abandon. No, I mean something much more shocking. Can you guess?”
“Uh…television commercials?”
“Close in spirit, but wide of the mark. You have an expression ‘the oldest profession.’ Here—and in all other known worlds—it isn’t even the youngest. Nobody has heard of it and wouldn’t believe it if he did. We few who visit Earth don’t talk about it. Not that it would matter; most people don’t believe travelers’ tales.”
“Star, are you telling me that there is no prostitution elsewhere in the Universe?”
“The Universes, my darling. None.”
“You know,” I said thoughtfully, “that’s going to be a shock to my first sergeant. None at all?”
“I mean,” she said bluntly, “that whoring seems to have been invented by Earth people and no others—and the idea would shock old Jocko into impotence. He’s a straitlaced moralist.”
“I’ll be damned! We must be a bunch of slobs.”
“I did not mean to offend, Oscar; I was reciting facts. But this oddity of Earth is not odd in its own context. Any commodity is certain to be sold—bought, sold, leased, rented, bartered, traded, discounted, price-stabilized, inflated, bootlegged, and legislated—and a woman’s ‘commodity’ as it was called on Earth in franker days is no exception. The only wonder is the wild notion of thinking of it as a commodity. Why, it so surprised me that once I even—Never mind. Anything can be made a commodity. Someday I will show you cultures living in spaces, not on planets—nor on fundaments of any sort; not all universes have planets—cultures where the breath of life is sold like a kilo of butter in Provence. Other places so crowded that the privilege of staying alive is subject to tax—and delinquents are killed out of hand
by the Department of Eternal Revenue and neighbors not only do not interfere, they are pleased.”
“Good God! Why?”
“They solved death, milord, and most of them won’t emigrate despite endless roomier planets. But we were speaking of Earth. Not only is whoring unknown elsewhere, but its permutations are unknown—dower, bridal price, alimony, separate maintenance, all the variations that color all Earth’s institutions—every custom related even remotely to the incredible notion that what all women have an endless supply of is nevertheless merchandise, to be hoarded and auctioned.”
Ars Longa gave a snort of disgust. No, I don’t think she understood. She understands some Nevian but Star spoke English; Nevian lacks the vocabulary.
“Even your secondary customs,” she went on, “are shaped by this unique institution. Clothing—you’ve noticed that there is no real difference here in how the two sexes dress. I’m in tights this morning and you are in shorts but had it been the other way around no one would have noticed.”
“The hell they wouldn’t! Your tights wouldn’t fit me.”
“They stretch. And body shyness, which is an aspect of sex-specialized clothing. Here nakedness is as unnoteworthy as on that pretty little island where I found you. All hairless peoples sometimes wear clothing and all peoples no matter how hirsute wear ornaments—but nakedness taboo is found only where flesh is merchandise to be packaged or displayed…that is to say, on Earth. It parallels ‘Don’t pinch the grapefruit’ and putting false bottoms in berry boxes. If something is never haggled over, there is no need to make a mystery of it.”
“So if we get rid of clothes we get rid of prostitution?”
“Heavens, no! You’ve got it backwards.” She frowned. “I don’t see how Earth could ever get rid of whoring; it’s too much a part of everything you do.”
“Star, you’ve got your facts wrong. There is almost no prostitution in America.”
She looked startled. “Really? But—Isn’t ‘alimony’ an American word? And ‘gold digger’? And ‘coming-out party’?”