‘I know that,” said Hal slowly. ‘But it’s not a gross betrayal, not a real betrayal at all. How am I hurting them by having you?’
‘I don’t worry at all about what you may be doing to them. I do worry about what you may be doing to yourself.’
To myself? I am doing the best thing I ever did!’
She laughed delightedly and gave him a light kiss on the lips.
But he frowned, and he said, ‘Jeannette, it’s serious. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, we have to do something definite. By that, I mean find a hiding place deep underground. Later, after it’s all over, we can come out. And we’ll have at least eighty years to ourselves, which will be more than enough. Because it will take that long for the Gabriel to return to Earth and for the colonizing ships to come back. We’ll be like Adam and Eve, just us two and the beasts.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said, her eyes widening.
‘This. Our specialists are working night and day on samples of blood the wogs gave us. They hope to make an artificial semivirus that will attach itself to the copper in the wog’s blood cells and change the cells’ electrophoretic properties.’
‘ ’Ama?’
‘I’ll try to explain even if I have to use a mixture of American, French, and Siddo to get it across.
‘A form of this artificial semivirus is what killed most of Earth’s people during the Apocalyptic War. I won’t go into the historical details; it’s enough to say that the virus was desseminated secretly from outside the Earth’s atmosphere by the ships of Martian colonists. The descendants of Earthmen on Mars, who considered themselves true Martians, were led by Sigfried Russ, as evil a man as ever lived. Or so say the history books.’
‘I do not know what you are talking about,’ she said.
Her face was grave, her eyes fixed upon his face.
‘You can pick up the gist of it. The four Martian ships, pretending to be merchant vessels orbiting before entry, dropped billions of these viruses. Invisible knots of protein molecules that drifted through the atmosphere, spreading throughout the world, covering it in a very tenuous mist. These molecules, once they penetrated a human being’s skin, locked onto the hemoglobin in the red blood cells and gave them a positive charge. This charge caused one end of a globin molecule to bind with the end of the other. And the molecule would go into a land of crystallization. This would twist the doughnut-shaped cells into scimitars and thus cause an artificial sickle-cell anemia.
The lab-created anemia was much swifter and more certain than the natural anemia, because every blood cell in the body would be affected, not just a small percentage. Every cell would soon break down. No oxygen would be carried through the human organism; the body died.
‘The body did die, Jeannette—the body of humanity. Almost an entire planet of human beings perished from lack of oxygen.’
‘I think I understand most of what you have told me,’ said Jeannette. ‘But everybody, they did not die?’
‘No. And at the beginning, the governments of Earth found out what was going on. They launched missiles toward Mars; and the missiles, designed to cause earthquakes, destroyed most of the Martian underground colonies.
‘On Earth, perhaps a million survived on each continent. With the exception of certain areas where almost the entire population was untouched. Why? We don’t really know. But something, perhaps favorable wind currents, bent the fall of virus away until the virus had fallen to the ground. After a certain time outside of a human body, the virus died.
‘Anyway, the islands of Hawaii and Iceland were left with organized governments and a full population. Israel, too, was left untouched, as if the hand of God had covered it during the deadly fall. And southern Australia and the Caucasus Mountains were spared.
‘These groups spread out afterward, resettling the world, absorbing the survivors in the areas which they took over. In the jungles of Africa and the Malayan peninsula, enough were left alive to venture out. These reestablished themselves in their native lands before colonies from the islands and Australia could take over.
‘And what happened to Earth is destined to happen here on this planet. When the order is given, missiles will leave the Gabriel, missiles laden with the same deadly cargo. Only, the viruses will be fitted for the blood cells of the Ozagen. And the missiles will circle and circle and drop their invisible rain of death. And … everywhere … the skulls—’
‘Hush!’ Jeannette put her finger on his quivering lips. ‘I don’t know what you mean by proteins and molecules and those—those electrofrenetic charges! They’re way above my head. But I do know that the longer you’ve been talking, the more scared you’ve been getting. Your voice was getting higher, and your eyes were growing wider.
‘Somebody has frightened you in the past. No! Don’t interrupt! They’ve scared you, and you’ve been man enough to hide most of your fear. But they’ve done such a horribly efficient job that you haven’t been able to get over it.
‘Well—’ and she put her soft lips to his ear and whispered—’I’m going to wipe that fear out. I’m going to lead you out of that valley of fright. No! Don’t protest! I know it hurts your ego to think that a woman could know you’re afraid. But I don’t think any the less of you. I admire you all the more because you’ve conquered so much of it. I know what courage it took to face the ’Meter. I know you did it because of me. I’m proud that you did. I love you for it. And I know what courage it takes to keep me here, when at any time a slip would send you to certain disgrace and death. I know what it all means. It’s my nature and instinct and business and love to know.
‘Now! Drink with me. We’re not outside these walls where we have to worry ourselves about such things and be scared. We’re in here. Away from everything except ourselves. Drink. And love me. I’ll love you, Hal, and we’ll not see the world outside nor need to. For the time being. Forget in my arms.’
They kissed and ran their hands over each other and said the things lovers have always said.
Between kisses, Jeannette poured more of the purplish liquor, and they drank this. Hal had no trouble swallowing it. He decided that it wasn’t the idea of drinking alcohol so much as it was the odor that sickened him. When his nose was deceived, his stomach was also. And every drink made it easier for the next one.
He downed three tall glasses and then rose and lifted Jeannette in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. She was kissing the side of his neck, and it seemed to him that an electric charge was passing from her lips to his skin and on up to his brain and on down through his beating chest and warming stomach and swelling genital and on down through the soles of his feet, which, strangely, had become ice. Certainly, holding her did not make him want to withdraw as when he had carried out his duty toward Mary and the Sturch.
Yet, even in his ecstasy of anticipation, there was a stronghold of retreat. It was small, but it was there, dark in the middle of the fire. He could not completely forget himself, and he doubted, wondering if he would fail as he had sometimes when he had crawled into bed in the dark and reached out for Mary.
There was also a black seed of panic, dropped by the doubt. If he failed, he would kill himself. He would be done forever.
Yet, he told himself, it could not possibly happen, must not. Not when he had his arms around her and her lips were on his.
He put her on the bed and then turned off the ceiling light. But she turned on the lamp over the bed.
‘Why are you doing that?’ he said, standing at the foot of the bed, feeling the rise of panic and the fall of his passion. At the same time he wondered how she could so swiftly, unseen by him, have unclothed herself.
She smiled and said, ‘Remember what you told me the other day? That beautiful passage: God said, Let there be light.’
‘We do not need it.’
‘I do. I must see you at every moment. The dark would take away half of the pleasure. I want to see you in love.’
She reached upward to adjust the angle of th
e bedlamp, her breasts rising with the movement and sending an almost intolerable pang through him.
‘There. Now I can see your face. Especially, at the moment when I will know best that you love me.’
She extended a foot and touched his knee with her toe. Skin upon skin … it drew him forward as if it were the finger of an angel gently directing him toward destiny. He knelt upon the bed, and she drew back her leg with her toe still placed upon his leg as if it had grown roots into his flesh and could not be dislodged.
‘Hal, Hal,’ she murmured. ‘What have they done to you? What have they done to all your men? I know from what you have told me that they are like you. What have they done? Made you hate instead of love, though they call hate love. Made you half-men so you will turn your drive into yourself and then outward against the enemy. So you will become fierce warriors because you are such timid lovers.’
‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘Not true.’
‘I can see you. It is true.’
She removed her foot and placed it beside his knee and said, ‘Come closer,’ and when he had moved closer, still on his knees, she reached up and pulled him down against her breasts.
‘Place your mouth here. Become a baby again. And I will raise you so you forget your hate and know only love. And become a man.’
‘Jeannette, Jeannette,’ he said hoarsely. He put out his hand to pull the cord of the bedlamp and said, ‘Not the light.’
But she put her hand on his and said, ‘Yes, the light.’
Then she took her hand away and said, ‘All right, Hal. Turn it off. For a little while. If you must go back into the darkness, go far back. Far back. And then be reborn … for a little while. Then, the light.’
‘No! let it stay on!’ he snarled. ‘I am not in my mother’s womb. I do not want to go back there; I do not need to. And I will take you as an army takes a city.’
‘Don’t be a soldier, Hal. Be a lover. You must love me, not rape me. You can’t take me, because I will surround you.’
Her hand closed gently on him, and she arched her back slightly, and suddenly he was surrounded, A shock ran through him, comparable to that he had felt when she kissed his neck, but comparable only in kind and not in intensity.
He started to bury his face against her shoulder, but she put both hands on his chest and with surprising strength, half-raised him.
‘No. I must see your face. Especially at the time I must, for I want to see you lose yourself in me.’
And she kept her eyes wide open throughout as if she were trying to impress forever upon every cell of her body her lover’s face.
Hal was not disconcerted, for he would not have paid attention to the Archurielite himself knocking on the door. But he noticed, though he did not think of it, that the pupils of her eyes had contracted to a pencil point.
16
The Alcoholics in the Haijac Union were sent to H. Therefore, no psychological or narcotic therapies had been worked out for addicts. Hal, frustrated by this fact in his desire to wipe out Jeannette’s weakness, went for medicine to the very people who had given her the disease. But he pretended that the cure was for himself.
Fobo said, There is widespread drinking on Ozagen, but it is light. Our few alcoholics are empathized into normality with the help of medicine, of course. Why don’t you let me empathize you?’
‘Sorry. My government forbids that.’
He had given Fobo the same excuse for not inviting the wog into his apartment.
‘You have the most forbidding government,’ said Fobo and went into one of his long, howling laughs.
When he recovered, he said, ‘You’re forbidden to touch liquor, too, but that doesn’t hold you back. Well, there’s no accounting for inconsistency. Seriously, though, I have just the thing for you. It’s called Easyglow. We put it into the daily ration of liquor, slowly-increasing the Easyglow and diminishing the alcohol. In two or three weeks, the patient is drinking from a fluid ninety-six percent Easyglow. The taste is much the same; the drinker seldom suspects. Continued treatment eases the patient from his dependence on the alcohol. There is only one drawback.’
He paused and said, ‘The drinker is now addicted to Easyglow!’
He whooped and slapped his thigh and shook his head until his long cartilaginous nose vibrated, and laughed until the tears came.
When he managed to quit laughing and had dried his tears with a starfish-shaped handkerchief, he said, ‘Really, the perculiar effect of Easyglow is that it opens the patient for discharge of the strains that have driven him to drink. He may then be empathized and at the same time weaned from the stimulant. Since I have no opportunity to slip the stuff to you secretly, I’m taking the chance that you are seriously interested in curing yourself. When you’re ready for therapy, tell me.’
Hal took the bottle to his apartment. Every day, its contents went quietly and carefully into the beetlejuice he got for Jeannette. He hoped that he was psychologist enough to cure her once the Easyglow took effect.
Although he didn’t know it, he was himself being ‘cured’ by Fobo. His almost daily talks with the empathist instilled doubts about the religion and science of the Haijacs. Fobo read the biographies of Isaac Sigmen and the Works: the Pre-Torah, The Western Talmud, the Revised Scriptures, the Foundations of Serialism, Time and Theology, The Self and the World Line. Calmly sitting at his table with a glass of juice in his hand, the wog challenged the mathematics of the dunno-logists. Hal proved; Fobo disproved. He pointed out that the mathematics was based mainly on false-to-fact assumptions; that Dunne’s and Sigmen’s reasoning was buttressed by too many false analogies, metaphors, and strained interpretations. Remove the buttresses, and the structure fell.
‘Moreover and to continue,’ Fobo said, ‘allow and permit me to point out one more in a score of contradictions embodied in your theology. You Sigmenites believe that every person is responsible for any event happening to him, that no one else but the self may be blamed. If you, Hal Yarrow, stumbled on a toy left by some careless child—happy, happy infant with no responsibilities!—and skinned your elbow, you did so because you really wanted to hurt yourself. If you are seriously hurt in an ‘accident,’ it was no accident; it was you agreeing to actualize a potentiality. Contrarily, you could have agreed with your self not to be involved, and so actualized a different future.
‘If you commit a crime, you wish to do so. If you get caught, it is not because you were stupid in the commission of the crime or because the Uzzites were more clever or because circumstances worked out to make you fall into the hands of—what is your vernacular for them, the uzz? No, it was because you wished to be caught; you, somehow, controlled the circumstances.
‘If you die, it is because you wanted to die, not because someone pointed a gun at you and pulled the trigger. You died because you willed to intercept the bullet; you agreed with the killer that you could be killed.
‘Of course, this philosophy, this belief, is very shib for the Sturch, for it relieves them of any blame if they have to chastise or execute or unjustly tax you or in any way take uncivil liberties with you. Obviously, if you did not wish to be chastised or executed or taxed or dealt with in an unfair way, you would not permit it.
‘Of course, if you do disagree with the Sturch or try to defy it, you do so because you are trying to realize a pseudofuture, one condemned by the Sturch. You, the individual, can’t win.
‘Yet, hear and listen to this: You also believe that you yourself have perfect free will to determine the future. But the future has been determined because Sigmen had gone ahead in time and arranged it. Sigmen’s brother, Jude Changer, may temporarily disarrange the future and the past, but Sigmen will eventually restore the desired equilibrium.
‘Let me ask and question you, how can you yourself determine the future when the future has been determined and forecast by Sigmen? One state or the other may be correct, but not both.’
‘Well,’ Hal said, his face hot, his chest feeling as if a he
avy weight were on it, his hands shaking, ‘I have thought of that very question.’
‘Did you ask anyone?’
‘No,’ Hal said, feeling trapped. ‘We were allowed to ask questions, of course, of our teachers. But that question was not on the list.’
‘You mean to tell me that your questions were written out for you and you were confined to those?’
‘Well, why not?’ Hal said angrily. ‘Those questions were for our benefit. The Sturch knew from long experience what questions students ask, so it listed them for the less bright.’
‘Less bright is right,’ said Fobo. ‘And I suppose that any questions not on the list were considered too dangerous, too conducive to unrealistic thinking?’
Hal nodded miserably.
Fobo went on in his relentless dissection. Worse, far worse than anything he had said were his next words, for they were a personal attack on the sacrosanct self of Sigmen himself.
He said that the Forerunner’s biographies and theological writings revealed him to an objective reader as a sexually frigid and woman-hating man with a Messiah complex and paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies which burst through his icy shell from time to time in religious-scientific frenzies and fantasies.
‘Other men,’ Fobo said, ‘must have stamped their personalities and ideas upon their times. But Sigmen had and advantage over those great leaders who came before him. Because of Earth’s rejuvenation serums, he lived long enough, not only to set up his kind of society, but also to consolidate it and weed out its weaknesses. He didn’t die until the cement of his social form had hardened.’
‘But the Forerunner didn’t die,’ Yarrow protested. ‘He left in time. He is still with us, traveling down the fields of presentation, skipping here and there, now to the past, now to the future. Always, whereever he is needed to turn pseudotime into real time, he is there.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Fobo smiled. ‘That was the reason you went to the ruins, was it not? To check up on a mural which hinted that the Ozagen humans had once been visited by a man from another star? You thought it might have been the Forerunner, didn’t you?’