He was walking unaided now and each day he spent more time taking exercise. First with her, then by himself, he explored the jungle trails, moving cautiously at the beginning but soon striding along with only a slight limp. Swimming seemed to further the healing process, and for hours at a time he paddled around Thesme’s little pond, annoying the gromwark that lived in a muddy burrow at its edge; the slow-moving old creature crept from its hiding-place and sprawled out at the pond’s rim like some bedraggled bristly sack that had been discarded there. It eyed the Ghayrog glumly and would not return to the water until he was done with his swim. Thesme consoled it with tender green shoots that she plucked upstream, far beyond the reach of the gromwark’s little sucker-feet.
“When will you take me to Narabal?” Vismaan asked her one rainy evening.
“Why not tomorrow?” she replied.
That night she felt unusual excitement, and pressed herself insistently against him.
They set out at dawn in light rainshowers that soon gave way to brilliant sunshine. Thesme adopted a careful pace, but soon it was apparent that the Ghayrog was fully healed, and before long she was walking swiftly. Vismaan had no difficulty keeping up. She found herself chattering—telling him the names of every plant or animal they encountered, giving him bits of Narabal’s history, talking about her brothers and sisters and people she knew in town. She was desperately eager to be seen by them with him—look, this is my alien lover, this is the Ghayrog I’ve been sleeping with—and when they came to the outskirts she began looking around intently, hoping to find someone familiar; but scarcely anyone seemed to be visible on the outer farms, and she did not recognize those who were. “Do you see how they’re staring at us?” she whispered to Vismaan, as they passed into a more thickly inhabited district. “They’re afraid of you. They think you’re the vanguard of some sort of alien invasion. And they’re wondering what I’m doing with you, why I’m being so civil to you.”
“I see none of that,” said Vismaan. “They appear curious about me, yes. But I detect no fear, no hostility. Is it because I am unfamiliar with human facial expressions? I thought I had learned to interpret them quite well.”
“Wait and see,” Thesme told him. But she had to admit to herself that she might be exaggerating things a little, or even more than a little. They were nearly in the heart of Narabal, now, and some people had glanced at the Ghayrog in surprise and curiosity, yes, but they had quickly softened their stares, while others had merely nodded and smiled as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world to have some kind of offworld creature walking through the streets. Of actual hostility she could find none. That angered her. These mild sweet people, these bland amiable people, were not at all reacting as she had expected. Even when she finally met familiar people—Khanidor, her oldest brother’s best friend, and Hennimont Sibroy who ran the little inn near the waterfront, and the woman from the flower-shop—they were nothing other than cordial as Thesme said, “This is Vismaan, who has been living with me lately.” Khanidor smiled as though he had always known Thesme to be the sort of person who would set up housekeeping with an alien, and spoke of the new towns for Ghayrogs and Hjorts that Mirifaine’s husband was planning to build. The innkeeper reached out jovially to shake Vismaan’s hand and invited him down for some wine on the house, and the flower-shop woman said over and over, “How interesting, how interesting! We hope you like our little town!” Thesme felt patronized by their cheerfulness. It was as if they were going out of their way not to let her shock them—as if they had already taken all the wildness from Thesme that they were going to take, and now would accept anything; anything at all from her, without caring, without surprise, without comment. Perhaps they misunderstood the nature of her relationship with the Ghayrog and thought he was merely boarding with her. Would they give her the reaction she wanted if she came right out and said they were lovers, that his body had been inside hers, that they had done that which was unthinkable between human and alien? Probably not. Probably even if she and the Ghayrog lay down and coupled in Pontifex Square it would cause no stir in this town, she thought, scowling.
And did Vismaan like their little town? It was, as always, difficult to detect emotional response in him. They walked up one street and dawn another, past the haphazardly planned plazas and the flat-faced scruffy shops and the little lopsided houses with their overgrown gardens, and he said very little. She sensed disappointment and disapproval in his silence, and for all her own dislike of Narabal she began to feel defensive about the place. It was, after all, a young settlement, an isolated outpost in an obscure corner of a second-class continent, just a few generations old. “What do you think?” she asked. finally. “You aren’t very impressed by Narabal, are you?”
“You warned me not to expect much.”
“But it’s even more dismal than I led you to expect, isn’t it?”
“I do find it small and crude,” he said. “After one has seen Pidruid, or even—”
“Pidruid’s thousands of years old.”
“—Dulorn,” he went on. “Dulorn is extraordinarily beautiful even now, when it is just being built. But of course the white stone they use there is—”
“Yes,” she said. “Narabal ought to be built out of stone too, because this climate is so damp that wooden buildings fall apart, but there hasn’t been time yet. Once the population’s big enough, we can quarry in the mountains and put together something marvelous here. Fifty years from now, a hundred, when we have a proper labor force. Maybe if we got some of those giant four-armed aliens to work here—”
“Skandars,” said Vismaan.
“Skandars, yes. Why doesn’t the Coronal send us ten thousand Skandars?”
“Their bodies are covered with thick hair. They will find this climate difficult. But doubtless Skandars will settle here, and Vroons, and Su-Suheris, and many, many wet-country Ghayrogs like me. It is a very bold thing your government is doing, encouraging offworld settlers in such numbers. Other planets are not so generous with their land.”
“Other planets are not so large,” Thesme said. “I think I’ve heard that even with all the huge oceans we have, Majipoor’s land mass is still three or four times the size of any other, settled planet. Or something like that. We’re very lucky, being such a big world, and yet having such gentle gravity, so that humans and humanoids can live comfortably here. Of course, we pay a high price for that, not having anything much in the way of heavy elements, but still—oh. Hello.” The tone of her voice changed abruptly, dropping off to a startled blurt. A slim young man, very tall, with pale wavy hair, had nearly collided with her as he emerged from the bank on the corner, and now he stood gaping at her, and she at him. He was Ruskelorn Yulvan, Thesme’s lover for the four months just prior to her withdrawal into the jungle, and the person in Narabal she was least eager to see. But if there had to be a confrontation with him, she intended to make the most of it; and, seizing the initiative after her first moment of confusion, she said, “You look well, Ruskelorn.”
“And you. Jungle life must agree with you.”
“Very much. It’s been the happiest seven months of my life. Ruskelorn, this is my friend Vismaan, who’s been living with me the past few weeks. He had an accident while scouting for farmland near my place—broke his leg falling out of a tree—and I’ve been looking after him.”
“Very capably, I imagine,” Ruskelorn Yulvan said evenly. “He seems to be in excellent condition.” To the Ghayrog he said, “Pleased to meet you,” in a way that made it seem as though he might actually mean it.
Thesme said, “He comes from a part of his planet where the climate is a lot like Narabal’s. He tells me that there’ll be plenty of his country-people settling down here in the tropics in the next few years.”
“So I’ve heard.” Ruskelorn Yulvan grinned and said, “You’ll find it amazingly fertile territory. Eat a berry at breakfast time and toss the seed away, you’ll have a vine as tall as a house by nightfall. That’s what
everyone says, so it must be true.”
The light and casual manner of his speaking infuriated her. Did he not realize that this scaly alien creature, this offworlder, this Ghayrog, was his replacement in her bed? Was he immune to jealousy, or did he simply not understand the real situation? With a ferocious silent intensity she attempted to convey the truth of things to Ruskelorn Yulvan in the most graphic possible way, thinking fierce images of herself in Vismaan’s arms, showing Ruskelorn Yulvan the alien hands of Vismaan caressing her breasts and thighs and flicking his little scarlet two-pronged tongue lightly over her closed eyelids, her nipples, her loins. But it was useless. Ruskelorn was no more of a mind-reader than she. He is my lover, she thought, he enters me, he makes me come again and again, I can’t wait to get back to the jungle and tumble into bed with him, and all the while Ruskelorn Yulvan stood there smiling, chatting politely with the Ghayrog, discussing the potential for raising niyk and glein and stajja in these parts, or perhaps lusavender-seed in the swampier districts, and only after a good deal of that did he turn his glance back toward Thesme and ask, as placidly as though he were asking the day of the week, whether she intended to live in the jungle indefinitely.
She glared. “So far I prefer it to life in town. Why?”
“I wondered if you missed the comforts of our splendid metropolis, that’s all.”
“Not yet, not for a moment. I’ve never been happier.”
“Good. I’m so pleased for you, Thesme.” Another serene smile. “How nice to have run into you. How good to have met you,” he said to the Ghayrog, and then he was gone.
Thesme smouldered with rage. He had not cared, he had not cared in the slightest, she could be coupling with Ghayrogs or Skandars or the gromwark in the pond for all it mattered to him! She had wanted him to be wounded or at least shocked, and instead he had simply been polite. Polite! It must be that he, like all the others, failed to comprehend the real state of affairs between her and Vismaan—that it was simply inconceivable to them that a woman of human stock would offer her body to a reptilian off-worlder, and so they did not consider—they did not even suspect—
“Have you seen enough of Narabal now?” she asked the Ghayrog.
“Enough to realize that there is little to see.”
“How does your leg feel? Are you ready to begin the journey back?”
“Have you no errands to perform in town?”
“Nothing important,” she said. “I’d like to go.”
“Then let us go,” he answered.
His leg did seem to be giving him some trouble—the muscles stiffening, probably; that was a taxing hike even for someone in prime condition, and he had traveled only much shorter distances since his recovery—but in his usual uncomplaining way he followed her toward the jungle road. This was the worst time of day to be making the trip, with the sun almost straight overhead and the air moist and heavy from the first gatherings of what would be this afternoon’s rainfall. They walked slowly, pausing often, though never once did he say he was tired; it was Thesme herself who was tiring, and she pretended that she wanted to show him some geological formation here, some unusual plant there, in order to manufacture occasions to rest. She did not want to admit fatigue. She had suffered enough mortification today.
The venture into Narabal had been a disaster for her. Proud, defiant, rebellious, scornful of Narabal’s conventional ways, she had hauled her Ghayrog lover to town to flaunt him before the tame city-dwellers, and they had not cared. Were they such puddings that they could not guess at the truth? Or had they seen instantly through her pretensions, and were determined to give her no satisfaction? Either way she felt outraged, humiliated, defeated—and very foolish. And what about the bigotry she imagined she had found earlier among the Narabal folk? Were they not threatened by the influx of these aliens? They had all been so charming to Vismaan, so friendly. Perhaps, Thesme thought gloomily, the prejudice was in her mind alone and she had misinterpreted the remarks of others, and in that case it had been stupid to give herself to the Ghayrog, it had accomplished nothing, flouted no Narabal decorum, served no purpose at all in the private war she had been fighting against those people. It had only been a strange and willful and grotesque event.
Neither she nor the Ghayrog spoke during the long slow uncomfortable return to the jungle. When they reached her hut he went inside and she bustled about ineffectually in the clearing, checking traps, puffing berries from vines, setting things down and forgetting what she had done with them.
After a while she entered the hut and said to Vismaan, “I think you may as well leave.”
“Very well. It is time for me to be on my way.”
“You can stay here tonight, of course. But in the morning—”
“Why not leave now?”
“It’ll be dark soon. You’ve already walked so many miles today—”
“I have no wish to trouble you. I will go now, I think.”
Even now she found it impossible to read his feelings. Was he surprised? Hurt? Angry? He showed her nothing. He offered no gestures of farewell, either, but simply turned and began walking at a steady pace toward the interior of the jungle. Thesme watched him, throat dry, heart pounding, until he disappeared beyond the low-hanging vines. It was all she could do to keep herself from running after him. But then he was gone, and soon the tropical night descended.
She rummaged together a sort of dinner for herself, but she ate very little, thinking, He is out there sitting in the darkness, waiting for the morning to come. They had not even said goodbye. She could have made some little joke, warning him to stay out of sijaneel trees, or he could have thanked her for all she had done on his behalf, but instead there had been nothing, just her dismissal of him and his calm uncomplaining departure. An alien, she thought, and his ways were alien. And yet, when they had been together in bed, and he had touched her and held her and drawn her body down on top of his—
It was a long bleak night for her. She lay huddled in the crudely sewn zanja-down bed that they had so lately shared, listening to the night rain hammering on the vast blue leaves that were her roof, and for the first time since she had entered the jungle she felt the pain of loneliness. Until this moment she had not realized how much she had valued the bizarre parody of domesticity that she and the Ghayrog had enacted here; but now that was over, and she was alone again, somehow more alone than she had been before, and far more cut off from her old life in Narabal than before, also, and he was out there, unsleeping in the darkness, unsheltered from the rain. I am in love with an alien, she told herself in wonderment, I am in love with a scaly thing that speaks no words of endearment and asks hardly any questions and leaves without saying thank you or goodbye. She lay awake for hours, crying now and then. Her body felt tense and clenched from the long walk and the day’s frustrations; she drew her knees to her breasts and stayed that way a long while, and then put her hands between her legs and stroked herself, and finally there came a moment of release, a gasp and a little soft moan, and sleep after that.
7
IN THE MORNING she bathed and checked her traps and assembled a breakfast and wandered over all the familiar trails near her hut. There was no sign of the Ghayrog. By midday her mood seemed to be lifting, and the afternoon was almost cheerful for her; only as nightfall approached, the time of solitary dinner, did she begin to feel the bleakness descending again. But she endured it. She played the cubes she had brought from home for him, and eventually dropped into sleep, and the next day was a better day, and the next, and the one after that.
Gradually Thesme’s life returned to normal. She saw nothing of the Ghayrog and he started to slip from her mind. As the solitary weeks went by she rediscovered the joy of solitude, or so it seemed to her, but then at odd moments she speared herself on some sharp and painful memory of him—the sight of a bilantoon in a thicket or the sijaneel tree with the broken branch or the gromwark sitting sullenly at the edge of the pond—and she realized that she still missed him. She r
oved the jungle in wider and wider circles, not quite knowing why, until at last she admitted to herself that she was looking for him.
It took her three more months to find him. She began seeing indications of settlement off to the southeast—an apparent clearing, visible two or three hilltops away, with what looked like traces of new trails radiating from it—and in time she made her way in that direction and across a considerable river previously unknown to her, to a zone of felled trees, beyond which was a newly established farm. She skulked along its perimeter and caught sight of a Ghayrog—it was Vismaan, she was certain of that—tilling a field of rich black soil. Fear swept her spirit and left her weak and trembling. Could it be some other Ghayrog? No, no, no, she was sure it was he, she even imagined she detected a little limp. She ducked down out of sight, afraid to approach him. What could she say to him? How could she justify having come this far to seek him out, after having so coolly dismissed him from her life? She drew back into the underbrush and came close to turning away altogether. But then she found her courage and called his name.