“Speak.”
“Sverlani. World—” (Name and code—I had never heard of it.) “Student food designer, mathematicosybaritic.”
“Oscar Gordon. Earth. Soldier.” I omitted the I.D. for Earth; she knew who I was.
“Questions?”
“Ask.”
“Is sword?”
“Is.”
She looked at it and her pupils dilated, “Is-was sword destroy construct guard Egg?” (“Is this sword now present the direct successor in space-time sequential change, aside from theoretical anomalies involved in between-universe transitions, of the sword used to kill the Never-Born?” The double tense of the verb, present-past, stipulates and brushes aside the concept that identity is a meaningless abstraction—is this the sword you actually used, in the everyday meaning, and don’t kid me, soldier. I’m no child.)
“Was-is,” I agreed. (“I was there and I guarantee that I followed it all the way here, so it still is.”)
She gave a little gasp and her nipples stood up. Around each was painted, or perhaps tattooed, the multi-universal design we call “Wall of Troy”—and so strong was her reaction that Ilium’s ramparts crumbled again.
“Touch?” she said pleadingly.
“Touch.”
“Touch twice?” (“Please, may I handle it enough to get the feel of it? Pretty please, with sugar on it! I ask too much and it is your right to refuse, but I guarantee not to hurt it”—they get mileage out of words, but the flavor is in the manner.)
I didn’t want to, not the Lady Vivamus. But I’m a sucker for pretty girls. “Touch…twice,” I grudged. I drew it and handed it to her guard foremost, alert to grab it before she put somebody’s eye out or stabbed herself in the foot.
She accepted it gingerly, eyes and mouth big, grasping it by the guard instead of the grip. I had to show her. Her hand was far too small for it; her hands and feet, like her waist, were ultra slender.
She spotted the inscription. “Means?”
Dum vivimus, vivamus doesn’t translate well, not because they can’t understand the idea but because it’s water to a fish. How else would one live? But I tried. “Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.”
She nodded thoughtfully, then poked the air, wrist bent and elbow out. I couldn’t stand it, so I took it from her, dropped slowly into a foil guard, lunged in high line, recovered—a move so graceful that big hairy men look good in it. It’s why ballerinas study fencing.
I saluted and gave it back to her, then adjusted her right elbow and wrist and left arm—this is why ballerinas get half rates, it’s fun for the swordmaster. She lunged, almost pinking a guest in his starboard ham.
I took it back, wiped the blade, sheathed it. We had gathered a solid gallery. I picked up my Dagwood from the buffet, but she wasn’t done with me. “Self jump sword?”
I choked. If she understood the meaning—or if I did—I was being propositioned the most gently I had ever been, in Center. Usually it’s blunt. But surely Star hadn’t spread the details of our wedding ceremony? Rufo? I hadn’t told him but Star might have.
When I didn’t answer, she made herself clear and did not keep her voice down. “Self unvirgin unmother unpregnant fertile.”
I explained as politely as the language permits, which isn’t very, that I was dated up. She dropped the subject, looked at the Dagwood. “Bite touch taste?”
That was another matter; I passed it over. She took a hearty bite, chewed thoughtfully, looked pleased. “Xenic. Primitive. Robust. Strong dissonance. Good art.” Then she drifted away, leaving me wondering.
Inside of ten minutes the question was put to me again. I received more propositions than at any other party in Center and I’m sure the sword accounted for the bull market. To be sure, propositions came my way at every social event; I was Her Wisdom’s consort. I could have been an orangutan and offers still would have been made. Some hirsutes looked like orangutans and were socially acceptable but I could have smelled like one. And behaved worse. The truth was that many ladies were curious about what the Empress took to bed, and the fact that I was a savage, or at best a barbarian, made them more curious. There wasn’t any taboo against laying it on the line and quite a few did.
But I was still on my honeymoon. Anyhow, if I had accepted all those offers, I would have gone up with the window shade. But I enjoyed hearing them once I quit cringing at the “Soda?—or ginger ale?” bluntness; it’s good for anybody’s morale to be asked.
As we were undressing that night I said, “Have fun, pretty things?”
Star yawned and grinned. “I certainly did. And so did you, old Eagle Scout. Why didn’t you bring that kitten home?”
“What kitten?”
“You know what kitten. The one you were teaching to fence.”
“Meeow!”
“No, no, dear. You should send for her. I heard her state her profession, and there is a strong connection between good cooking and good—”
“Woman, you talk too much!”
She switched from English to Nevian. “Yes, milord husband. No sound I shall utter that does not break unbidden from love-anguished lips.”
“Milady wife beloved…sprite elemental of the Singing Waters—”
Nevian is more useful than the jargon they talk on Center.
Center is a fun place and a Wisdom’s consort has a cushy time. After our first visit to Star’s fishing lodge, I mentioned how nice it would be to go back someday and tickle a few trout at that lovely place, the Gate where we had entered Nevia. “I wish it were on Center.”
“It shall be.”
“Star. You would move it? I know that some Gates, commercial ones, can handle real mass, but, even so—”
“No, no. But just as good. Let me see. It will take a day or so to have it stereoed and measured and air-typed and so forth. Water flow, those things. But meanwhile—there’s nothing much beyond this wall, just a power plant and such. Say a door here and the place where we broiled the fish a hundred yards beyond. Be finished in a week, or we’ll have a new architect. Suits?”
“Star, you’ll do no such thing.”
“Why not, darling?”
“Tear up the whole house to give me a trout stream? Fantastic!”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, it is. Anyhow, sweet, the idea is not to move that stream here, but to go there. A vacation.”
She sighed. “How I would love a vacation.”
“You took an imprint today. Your voice is different.”
“It wears off, Oscar.”
“Star, you’re taking them too fast. You’re wearing yourself out.”
“Perhaps. But I must be the judge of that, as you know.”
“As I don’t know! You can judge the whole goddamn creation—as you do and I know it—but I, your husband, must judge whether you are overworking—and stop it.”
“Darling, darling!”
There were too many incidents like that.
I was not jealous of her. That ghost of my savage past had been laid in Nevia, I was not haunted by it again.
Nor is Center a place such ghost is likely to walk. Center has as many marriage customs as it has cultures—thousands. They cancel out. Some humans there are monogamous by instinct, as swans are said to be. So it can’t be classed as “virtue.” As courage is bravery in the face of fear, virtue is right conduct in the face of temptation. If there is no temptation, there can be no virtue. But these inflexible monogamists were no hazard. If someone, through ignorance, propositioned one of these chaste ladies, he risked neither a slap nor a knife; she would turn him down and go right on talking. Nor would it matter if her husband overheard; jealousy is never learned in a race automatically monogamous. Not that I ever tested it; to me they looked—and smelled—like spoiled bread dough. Where there is no temptation there is no virtue.
But I had chances to show “virtue.” That kitten with the wasp waist tempted me—and I learned that she was of a culture in which females may not marr
y until they prove themselves pregnable, as in parts of the South Seas and certain places in Europe; she was breaking no taboos of her tribe. I was tempted more by another gal, a sweetie with a lovely figure, a delightful sense of humor, and one of the best dancers in any universe. She didn’t write it on the sidewalk; she just let me know that she was neither too busy nor uninterested, using that argot with skillful indirection.
This was refreshing. Downright “American.” I did inquire (elsewhere) into the customs of her tribe and found that, while they were rigid as to marriage, they were permissive otherwise. I would never do as a son-in-law but the window was open even though the door was locked.
So I chickened. I gave myself a soul-searching and admitted curiosity as morbid as that of any female who propositioned me simply because I was Star’s consort. Sweet little Zhai-ee-van was one of those who didn’t wear clothes. She grew them on the spot; from tip of her nose to her tiny toes she was covered in soft, sleek, gray fur, remarkably like chinchilla. Gorgeous!
I didn’t have the heart, she was too nice a kid.
But this temptation I admitted to Star—and Star implied gently that I must have muscles between my ears; Zhai-ee-van was an outstanding artiste even among her own people, who were esteemed as most talented devotees of Eros.
I stayed chicken. A romp with a kid that sweet should involve love, some at least, and it wasn’t love, just that beautiful fur—along with a fear that a romp with Zhai-ee-van could turn into love and she couldn’t marry me even if Star turned me loose.
Or didn’t turn me loose—Center has no rule against polygamy. Some religions there have rules for and against this and that but this mixture of cultures has endless religions and they cancel each other the way conflicting customs do. Culturologists state a “law” of religious freedom which they say is invariant: Religious freedom in a cultural complex is inversely proportional to the strength of the strongest religion. This is supposed to be one case of a general invariant, that all freedoms arise from cultural conflicts because a custom which is not opposed by its negative is mandatory and always regarded as a “law of nature.”
Rufo didn’t agree; he said his colleagues stated as equations things which are not mensurate and not definable—holes in their heads!—and that freedom was never more than a happy accident because the common jerk, all human races, hates and fears all freedom, not only for his neighbors but for himself, and stamps it out whenever possible.
Back to Topic “A”—Centrists use every sort of marriage contract. Or none. They practice domestic partnership, coition, propagation, friendship, and love—but not necessarily all at once nor with the same person. Contracts could be as complex as a corporate merger, specifying duration, purposes, duties, responsibilities, number and sex of children, genetic selection methods, whether host mothers were to be hired, conditions for canceling and options for extension—anything but “marital fidelity.” It is axiomatic there that this is unenforceable and therefore not contractual.
But marital fidelity is commoner there than it is on Earth; it simply is not legislated. They have an ancient proverb reading Women and Cats. It means: “Women and Cats do as they please, and men and dogs might as well relax to it.” It has its opposite: Men and Weather which is blunter and at least as old, since the weather has long been under control.
The usual contract is no contract; he moves his clothes into her home and stays—until she dumps them outside the door. This form is highly thought of because of its stability: A woman who “tosses his shoes” has a tough time finding another man brave enough to risk her temper.
My “contract” with Star was no more than that if contracts, laws, and customs applied to the Empress, which they did not and could not. But that was not the source of my increasing unease.
Believe me, I was not jealous.
But I was increasingly fretted by those dead men crowding her mind.
One evening as we were dressing for some whing-ding she snapped at me. I had been prattling about how I had spent my day, being tutored in mathematics, and no doubt had been as entertaining as a child reporting a day in kindergarten. But I was enthusiastic, a new world was opening to me—and Star was always patient.
But she snapped at me in a baritone voice.
I stopped cold. “You were imprinted today!”
I could feel her shift gears. “Oh, forgive me, darling! No, I’m not myself, I’m His Wisdom CLXXXII.”
I did a fast sum. “That’s fourteen you’ve taken since the Quest—and you took only seven in all the years before that. What the hell are you trying to do? Burn yourself out? Become an idiot?”
She started to scorch me. Then she answered gently, “No, I am not risking anything of the sort.”
“That isn’t what I near.”
“What you may have heard has no weight, Oscar, as no one else can judge—either my capacity, or what it means to accept an imprint. Unless you have been talking to my heir?”
“No.” I knew she had selected him and I assumed that he had taken a print or two—a standard precaution against assassination. But I hadn’t met him, didn’t want to, and didn’t know who he was.
“Then forget what you’ve been told. It is meaningless.” She sighed. “But, darling, if you don’t mind, I won’t go tonight; best I go to bed and sleep. Old Stinky CLXXXII is the nastiest person I’ve ever been—a brilliant success in a critical age, you must read about him. But inside he was a bad-tempered beast who hated the very people he helped. He’s fresh in me now, I must keep him chained.”
“Okay, let’s go to bed.”
Star shook her head. “‘Sleep,’ I said. I’ll use autosuggestion and by morning you won’t know he’s been here. You go to the party. Find an adventure and forget that you have a difficult wife.”
I went but I was too bad-tempered even to consider “adventures.”
Old Nasty wasn’t the worst. I can hold my own in a row—and Star, Amazon though she is, is not big enough to handle me. If she got rough, she would at last get that spanking. Nor would I fear interference from guards; that had been settled from scratch: When we two were alone together, we were private. Any third person changed that, nor did Star have privacy alone, even in her bath. Whether her guards were male or female I don’t know, nor would she have cared. Guards were never in sight. So our spats were private and perhaps did us both good, as temporary relief.
But “the Saint” was harder to take than Old Nasty. He was His Wisdom CXLI and was so goddam noble and spiritual and holier-than-thou that I went fishing for three days. Star herself was robust and full of ginger and joy in life; this bloke didn’t drink, smoke, chew gum, nor utter an unkind word. You could almost see Star’s halo while she was under his influence.
Worse, he had renounced sex when he consecrated himself to the Universes and this had a shocking effect on Star; sweet submissiveness wasn’t her style. So I went fishing.
I’ve one good thing to say for the Saint. Star says that he was the most unsuccessful emperor in all that long line, with genius for doing the wrong thing from pious motives, so she learned more from him than any other; he made every mistake in the book. He was assassinated by disgusted customers after only fifteen years, which isn’t long enough to louse up anything as ponderous as a multi-universe empire.
His Wisdom CXXXVII was a Her—and Star was absent two days. When she came home she explained. “Had to, dear. I’ve always thought I was a rowdy bitch—but she shocked even me.”
“How?”
“I ain’t talkin’, Guv’nor. I gave myself intensive treatment to bury her where you’ll never meet her.”
“I’m curious.”
“I know you are and that’s why I drove a stake through her heart—rough job, she’s my direct ancestor. But I was afraid you might like her better than you do me. That unspeakable trull!”
I’m still curious.
Most of them weren’t bad Joes. But our marriage would have been smoother if I had never known they were there. It?
??s easier to have a wife who is a touch batty than one who is several platoons—most of them men. To be aware of their ghostly presence even when Star’s own personality was in charge did my libido no good. But I must concede that Star knew the male viewpoint better than any other woman in any history. She didn’t have to guess what would please a man; she knew more about it than I did, from “experience”—and was explosively uninhibited about sharing her unique knowledge.
I shouldn’t complain.
But I did, I blamed her for being those other people. She endured my unjust complaints better than I endured what I felt to be the injustice in my situation vis-à-vis all that mob of ghosts.
Those ghosts weren’t the worst fly in the soup.
I did not have a job. I don’t mean nine-to-five and cut the grass on Saturdays and get drunk at the country club that night; I mean I didn’t have any purpose. Ever look at a male lion in a zoo? Fresh meat on time, females supplied, no hunters to worry about—He’s got it made, hasn’t he?
Then why does he look bored!
I didn’t know I had a problem, at first. I had a beautiful and loving wife; I was so wealthy that there was no way to count it; I lived in a most luxurious home in a city more lovely than any on Earth; everybody I met was nice to me; and best second only to my wonderful wife, I had endless chance to “go to college” in a marvelous and un-Earthly sense, with no need to chase a pigskin. Nor a sheepskin. I need never stop and had any conceivable help. I mean, suppose Albert Einstein drops everything to help with your algebra, pal, or Rand Corporation and General Electric team up to devise visual aids to make something easier for you.
This is luxury greater than riches.
I soon found that I could not drink the ocean even held to my lips. Knowledge on Earth alone has grown so out of hand that no man can grasp it—so guess what the bulk is in Twenty Universes, each with its laws, its histories, and Star alone knows how many civilizations.
In a candy factory, employees are urged to eat all they want. They soon stop.
I never stopped entirely; knowledge has more variety. But my studies lacked purpose. The Secret Name of God is no more to be found in twenty universes than in one—and all other subjects are the same size unless you have a natural bent.