When he protested that she thought it was shib for her to report him, he was answered with more tears. Or would be if he continued to fall into her trap. But he swore again and told himself that he would not.
Hal Yarrow walked through the living room, five-by-three meters, into the only other room—except the unmentionable—the kitchen. In the three-by two-and- a-half-meter room, he swung the stove down from the wall near the ceiling, dialed the proper code on its instrument panel, and walked back into the living room. Here he took off his jacket, crushed it into a ball, and stuffed it under a chair. He knew that Mary might find it and scold him for it, but he did not care. He was, at the moment, too tired to reach up to the ceiling and pull down a hook.
A low pinging sound came from the kitchen. Supper was ready.
Hal decided to leave the correspondence until after he had eaten. He went into the unmentionable to wash his face and hands. Automatically, he murmured the ablution prayer, ‘May I wash off unreality as easily as water removes this dirt, so Sigmen wills it.’
After cleaning himself, he pressed the button by the portrait of Sigmen above the washbasin. For a second, the face of the Forerunner stared at him, the long, lean face with a shock of bright red hair, big projecting ears, straw-colored and very thick eyebrows that met above the huge hooked nose with flaring nostrils, the pale blue eyes, the long orange-red beard, the lips thin as a knife’s edge. Then, the face began to dim, to fade out. Another second, and the Forerunner was gone, replaced by a mirror.
Hal was allowed to look into this mirror just long enough to assure himself his face was clean and to comb his hair. There was nothing to keep him from standing before it past the allotted time, but he had never transgressed on himself. Whatever his faults, vanity was not one of them. Or so he had always told himself.
Yet, he lingered perhaps a little too long. And he saw the broad shoulders of a tall man, the face of a man thirty years old. His hair, like the Forerunner’s, was red, but darker, almost bronze. His forehead was high and broad, his eyebrows were a dark brown, his widely-spaced eyes were a dark gray, his nose was straight and of normal size, his upper lip was a trifle too long, his lips were full, his chin a shade too prominent.
Hal pressed the button again. The silver of the mirror darkened, broke into streaks of brightness. Then it darkened again and firmed into the portrait of Sigmen. For the flicker of an eyelid, Hal saw his image superimposed on Sigmen’s; then, his features faded, were absorbed by the Forerunner, the mirror was gone, and the portrait was there.
Hal left the unmentionable and went to the kitchen. He made sure the door was locked (the kitchen door and unmentionable door were the only ones capable of being locked), for he did not want to be surprised by Mary while eating. He opened the stove door, removed the warm box, placed the box on a table swung down from the wall, and pushed the stove back up to the ceiling. Then, he opened the box and ate his meal. After dropping the plastic container down the recovery-chute opening in the wall, he went back to the unmentionable and washed his hands.
While he was doing so, he heard Mary call his name.
2
Hal hesitated for a moment before answering, though he did not know why or even think of it. Then, he said, ‘In here, Mary.’
Mary said, ‘Oh! of course, I knew you’d be there, if you were home. Where else could you be?’
Unsmiling, he walked into the living room. ‘Must you be so sarcastic, even after I’ve been gone so long?’
Mary was a tall woman, only half a head shorter than Hal. Her hair was pale blond and drawn tightly back from her forehead to a heavy coil at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were light blue. Her features were regular and petite but were marred by very thin lips. The baggy high-necked shirt and loose floor-length skirt she wore prevented any observer from knowing what kind of figure she had. Hal himself did not know.
Mary said, ‘I wasn’t being sarcastic, Hal. Just realistic. Where else could you be? All you had to do was say, “Yes.” And you would have to be in there’—she pointed at the door to the unmentionable—‘when I come home. You seem to spend all your time in there or at your studies. Almost as if you were trying to hide from me.’
‘A fine homecoming,’ he said.
‘You haven’t kissed me,’ she said.
‘Ah, yes,’ he replied. ‘That’s my duty. I forgot.’
‘It shouldn’t be a duty,’ she said. ‘It should be a joy.’
‘It’s hard to enjoy kissing lips that snarl,’ he said.
To his surprise, Mary, instead of replying angrily, began to weep. At once, he felt ashamed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to admit you weren’t in a very good mood when you came in.’
He went to her and tried to put his arms around her, but she turned away from him. Nevertheless, he kissed her on the side of her mouth as she turned her head.
‘I don’t want you to do that because you feel sorry for me or because it’s your duty,’ she said. ‘I want you to do it because you love me.’
‘But I do love you,’ he said for what seemed like the thousandth time since they had married. Even to himself, he sounded unconvincing. Yet—he told himself—he did love her. He had to.
‘You have a very nice way of showing it,’ she said.
‘Let’s forget what happened and start all over again,’ he said. ‘Here.’
And he started to kiss her, but she backed away.
‘What in H is the matter with you? he said.
‘You have given me my greeting kiss,’ she said. ‘You must not start getting sensual. This is not the time or place.’
He threw his hands up in the air.
‘Who’s getting sensual? I wanted to act as if you had just come in the door. Is it worse to have one more kiss than prescribed than it is to quarrel? The trouble with you, Mary, is that you’re absolutely literal-minded. Don’t you know the Forerunner himself didn’t demand that his prescriptions be taken literally? He himself said that circumstances sometimes warranted modifications!’
‘Yes, and he also said that we must beware of rationalizing ourselves into departing from his law. We must first confer with a gapt about the reality of our behavior.’
‘Oh, of course!’ he said. ‘I’ll phone our good guardian angel pro tempore and ask him if it’s all right if I kiss you again!’
‘That’s the only safe thing to do,’ she said.
‘Great Sigmen!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! But I do know that I don’t understand you! I never will!’
‘Say a prayer to Sigmen,’ she said. ‘Ask him to give you reality. Then, we will have no difficulty.’
‘Say a prayer yourself,’ he said. ‘It takes two to make a quarrel. You’re just as responsible as I am.’
‘I’ll talk to you later when you’re not so angry,’ she said. ‘I have to wash and eat.’
‘Never mind me,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be busy until bedtime. I have to catch up on my Sturch business before I report to Olvegssen.’
‘And I’ll bet you’re happy you have to,’ she said. ‘I was looking forward to a nice talk. After all, you haven’t said a word of your trip to the Preserve.’
He did not reply.
She said, ‘You needn’t bite your lip at me!’
He took a portrait of Sigmen down from the wall and unfolded it on a chair. Then he swung down his projector-magnifier from the wall, inserted the letter in it, and set the controls. After putting on his unscrambling goggles and sticking the phone in his ear, he sat down in the chair. He grinned as he did so. Mary must have seen the grin, and she probably wondered what caused it, but she did not ask. If she had, she would not have been answered. He could not tell her that he got a certain amusement from sitting on the Forerunner’s portrait. She would have been shocked or would have pretended to be, he was never sure about her reactions. In any event, she had no sense of humor worth considering, and he did not intend to tell her anything that would down-ra
te his M.R.
Hal pressed the button that activated the projector and then sat back, though not relaxedly. Immediately, the magnification of the film sprang up on the wall opposite him. Mary, not having goggles on, could see nothing except a blank wall. At the same time, he heard the voice recorded on the film.
First, as always with an official letter, the face of the Forerunner appeared on the wall. The voice said ‘Praise to Isaac Sigmen, in whom reality resides and from whom all truth flows! May he bless us, his followers, and confound his enemies, the disciples of the unshib Back-runner!’
There was a pause in the voice and a break in the projection for the viewer to send forth a prayer of his own. Then, a single word—woggle—flashed on the wall, and the speaker continued. ‘Devout believer Hal Yarrow:
‘Here is the first of a list of words that have appeared recently in the vocabulary of the American-speaking population of the Union. This word—woggle—originated in the Department of Polynesia and spread radially to all the American-speaking peoples of the departments of North America, Australia, Japan and China. Strangely, it has not yet made an appearance in the Department of South America, which, as you doubtless know, is contiguous to North America.’
Hal Yarrow smiled, though there was a time when statements of this type had enraged him. When would the senders of these letters ever realize that he was not only a highly educated man but a broadly educated one, too? In this particular case, even the semiliterates of the lower classes should know where South America was, for the reason that the Forerunner had many times mentioned that continent in his The Western Talmud and The Real World and Time. It was true, however, that the schoolteachers of the unpros might never have thought to point out the location of South America to their pupils, even if they themselves knew.
‘Woggle,’ continued the speaker, ‘was first reported on the island of Tahiti. This island lies in the center of the Polynesian Department and is inhabited by people descended from Australians who colonized it after the Apocalyptic War. Tahiti is, at present, used as a military spaceship base.
‘Woggle apparently spread from there, but its use has been confined mainly to unprofessional. The exception is the professional space personnel. We feel there is some connection between the appearance of the word and the fact that spacefarers were the first to use it—as far as we know.
‘Truecasters have asked permission to use his word on the air, but this has been denied until further study.
‘The word itself, as far as can be determined at this date, is used as adjective, noun, and verb. It contains a basically derogatory meaning close to, but not equivalent to, the linguistically acceptable words fouled-up and jinxed. In addition, it contains the meaning of something strange, otherworldly; in a word, unrealistic.
‘You are hereby ordered to investigate the word woggle, following Plan No. ST-LIN-476 unless you have received an order with a higher priority number. In either case, you will reply to this letter not later than 12th Fertility, 550 B.S.’
Hal ran the letter to the end. Fortunately, the other three words had lower priority. He did not have to accomplish the impossible: investigate all four at once.
But he would have to leave in the morning after reporting to Olvegssen. Which meant not even bothering to unpack his stuff, living for days in the clothes he was wearing, perhaps not having time to have them cleaned.
Not that he did not wish to get away. It was just that he was tired and wished to rest before going on this trip.
What rest? he asked himself after removing the goggles and looking at Mary.
Mary was just getting up from her chair after turning off the tridi. She was now bending over to pull a drawer from the wall. He saw that she was getting out their nightclothes. And, as he had for many a night now, he felt sick in his stomach.
Mary turned and saw his face.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
She walked across the room (only a few steps to traverse the length of the chamber, reminding him of how many steps he could take when he was on the Preserve). She handed him a crumpled-up mass of tissue-thin garments and said, ‘I don’t think Olaf had them cleaned. It’s not his fault, though. The deionizer isn’t working. He left a note saying he called a technician. But you know how long it takes them to fix anything.’
‘I’ll fix it myself, when I get time,’ he said. He sniffed at the nightclothes. ‘Great Sigmen! How long has the cleaner been out?’
‘Ever since you left,’ she said.
‘How that man does sweat!’ Hal said. ‘He must be in a perpetual state of terror. No wonder! Old Olvegssen scares me, too.’
Mary’s face became red. ‘I have prayed and prayed that you wouldn’t curse,’ she said. ‘When are you going to quit that unreal habit? Don’t you know? …’
‘Yes,’ he said, interrupting harshly, ‘I know that every time I take the Forerunner’s name in vain, I delay Time-stop just that much more. So what?’
Mary stepped back from the loudness of his voice and the curl of his lip.
‘ “So what?” ‘ she repeated incredulously. ‘Hal, you can’t mean it?’
‘No, of course I don’t mean it!’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Of course I don’t! How could I? It’s just that I get so mad at your continual reminding me of my faults.’
‘The Forerunner himself said we must always remind our brother of his unrealities.’
‘I’m not your brother. I’m your husband,’ he said. ‘Though there are plenty of times, such as now, when I wish I weren’t.’
Mary lost the prim and reproving look, tears filled her eyes, and her lips and chin shook.
‘For Sigmen’s sake,’ he said ‘Don’t cry.’
‘How can I help it,’ she sobbed, ‘when my own husband, my own flesh and blood, united to me by the Real Sturch, heaps abuse on my head? And I have done nothing to deserve it.’
‘Nothing except turn me in to the gapt every chance you get,’ he said. He turned away from her and pulled the bed down from the wall.
‘I suppose the bedclothes will stink of Olaf and his fat wife, too,’ he said.
He picked up a sheet, smelled it, and said, ‘Augh!’ He tore off the other sheets and threw them on the floor. With them went his nightclothes.
‘To H with them! I’m sleeping in my clothes. You call yourself a wife? Why didn’t you take our stuff to our neighbor’s and get them cleaned there?’
‘You know why,’ she said. ‘We don’t have the money to pay them for the use of their cleaner. If you’d get a higher M.R., then we could afford it.’
‘How can I get a higher M.R. when you babble to the gapt every time I commit a little indiscretion?’
‘Why, that’s not my fault!’ she said indignantly. ‘What kind of Sigmenite would I be if I lied to the good abba and told him you deserved a better M.R.? I couldn’t live with myself after that, knowing that I had been so grossly unreal and that the Forerunner was watching me. Why, when I’m with the gapt, I can feel the invisible eyes of Isaac Sigmen burning into me, reading my every thought. I couldn’t! And you should be ashamed because you want me to!’
‘H with you!’ he said. He walked away and went into the unmentionable.
Inside the tiny room, he shed his clothes and stepped into the shower for the thirty-second fall of water allowed him. Then he stood in front of the blower until he was dried. Afterward, he brushed his teeth vigorously, as if he were trying to scour out the terrible words he had uttered. As usual, he was beginning to feel the shame of what he had said. And with it the fear of what Mary would tell the gapt, what he would tell the gapt, and what would happen afterward. It was possible that his M.R. would be so devaluated that he would be fined. If that happened, then his budget, strained as it was, would burst. And he would be more in debt than ever, not to mention that he would be passed over when the next promotion time came.
Thinking this, he put his clothes back on and left the little room. Mary brushe
d by him on her way into the unmentionable. She looked surprised on seeing him dressed, then she stopped and said, ‘Oh, that’s right! You did throw the night-things on the floor! Hal, you can’t mean it!’
‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘I’m not sleeping in those sweaty things of Olaf s.’
‘Please, Hal,’ she said. ‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word. You know that I can’t stand vulgarity.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Would you rather I used the Icelandic or Hebrew word for it? In either language, the word stands for the same vile human excretion: sweat!’
Mary put her hands to her ears, ran into the unmentionable, and slammed the door behind her.
He threw himself down on the thin mattress and put his arm over his eyes so the light would not get into them. In five minutes, he heard the door open (it was beginning to need oiling but would not get it until their budget and that of the Olaf Marconis could afford to buy the lubricant). And if his M.R. went down, the Marconis might petition to move into another apartment. If they could find one, then another, even more objectionable couple (probably one that had just been elevated from a lower professional class) would move in with them.
Oh, Sigmen! he thought. Why can’t I be content with things as they are? Why can’t I accept reality fully? Why must I have so much of the Backrunner in me? Tell me, tell me!
It was Mary’s voice he heard as she settled into bed beside him. ‘Hal, surely you aren’t going to stick to this unshib?’
‘What unshib?’ he said, though he knew what she meant.
‘Sleeping in your dayclothes.’
‘Why not?’
‘Hal!’ she said. ‘You know very well why not!’
‘No, I don’t,’ he replied. He removed his arm from his eyes and stared into total blackness. She had, as prescribed, turned off the light before getting into bed.
Her body, if unclothed, would gleam white in the light of lamp or moon, he thought. Yet, I have never seen her body, never seen her even half-undressed. Never seen any woman’s body except for that picture that man in Berlin showed me. And I, after one half-hungry, half-horrified look, ran as swiftly as I could. I wonder if the Uzzites found him soon after and did to him whatever they do to men who pervert reality so hideously.