The quivering began again, and there was a shift in color values.
“For pity’s sake,” I called out, “what’s happening to you?”
And from the green eyes I suddenly saw tears flowing, flooding over those shimmering cheeks.
“You see, I am doing what you would call crying.”
“Try and control yourself,” I said. “I…understand….It would be hard to discover that you were all alone. You discover that as soon as you meet somebody.”
“Yes.” There was a pause. “As soon as you meet somebody who is not alone, like you.”
“You don’t think I’m alone?” I said.
Again a pause, and the colors returned more or less to normal. “You are, I see from your mind, but not as much as I am.” Again the pause, then the quivering, then the kaleidoscope. It said, “I love you.”
“What?”
The words repeated, and there was less sensory confusion.
“You love me?” I asked. “Why?”
“Because you are a power among your people, you are alone and not alone.”
It was complete confusion, and at the same time I thought I saw.
“That’s…very flattering.”
“Will you love me?”
That brought me up short. I had been feeling all sorts of empathy with this creature, had begun to understand, if not forgive its destruction, but this…?
“I don’t even know what that would mean,” I said. “I don’t want to laugh at you, but I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what loving you would mean.”
“The word is from your mind,” came its answer. “If I give you something that you want very much, will you love me?”
“I still don’t…”
It interrupted me: “More than anything else, you want descendants who will be able to live among the stars, and you know as well that most of your people could not do so now. I will promise you that I will break apart no more of your ships, and that your progeny will be able to live among the stars, as well as communicate with me, throughout all time.”
I guess everybody has a pressure point that you just have to touch to make everything go bang. The colors changed this time because my irises suddenly opened. The quivering was inside me. I don’t know what the emotion was.
It said, “You love me,” and opened its great glittering arms. “Come,” and I started forward.
What happened next — oh, all the powers and audience of the stars, what happened? I don’t know — the colors, the pain, the sensations that caught me up and broke me apart in swirls of metallic ice, that burned me with myriad thoughts, complete and incomplete. The colors? Breaking from white through red, down through cascading green, soaring through gold that glittered and turned to emeralds, emerald as his eyes. The pain? Transparent as pleasure, loosed in my knees and cool in my loins, to surge again and flood the whole column of me, explode and glisten on my fingers, writhe in the center of tension, wave upon wave, on a clean beach. The sensations? They rose, rose, fell, and rose again, mounting till I screamed and laughed and covered my mouth with open fingers, as the whole musculature of my body tensed and flattened against itself, quivering toward a release that came surging forward through my pelvis from the base of my spine to flower there, burn, and bloom….I held all his flickering presence, gentle as mist in my arms, hard as metal.
Next entry:
The Sigma-9 tore apart, heaving, two minutes after my intercity shuttle took off. The radio interference knocked my eyes coal black and something was goofy in the gravity spin, so I drifted all the way back in free fall, feeling as if I had a stiff hangover.
I radioed for entrance, and after the robot went through its little bit, suddenly a voice cut in. “This is Smythers of the judicial office, Captain Lee. Judge Cartrite has told us we are not to allow you entrance to the City.”
“You what?”
“I said Judge Cartrite doesn’t want — ”
“You open that damn lock this instant, or when I get in there I’ll tear you to pieces.”
“I’m sorry — ”
“Put Cartrite on the phone. He’s been waiting for me to jet outside the City, but he’s out of his mind if he thinks he is going to keep me locked up here.”
“We have two others here and the three of us are to examine you. Maybe if you went away and came back some other time, Judge Cartrite — ”
“Have you all gone nuts?”
“No, Captain, but our rituals — ”
“I don’t give a damn about your rituals!”
“Captain,” it was another voice, “can you tell me what note this is?”
Something that sounded for all the world like a trumpet rang through the speaker.
“No, I can’t,” I said. “Why should I?”
“Well, it’s part of the ritualistic examination Judge Cartrite set up for your entrance. The note of the trumpet signifies the call that came to our ancestors — ”
“I’ll kill you,” I said. “When I find out who you are, I’m going to declare you insane and have you put in the Death’s Head. Now let me in. I said I was coming back and I’ve come back. Suppose I told you I’ve found out what caused the wreck of the other cities. Suppose I told you that I can stop it from happening here…if you let me in.”
There was silence.
“You’ve found the green-eyed leader of the rebellious One-Eyes?”
“You haven’t brought him back with you?” demanded the other.
“Of course I haven’t,” I snapped. “And it’s no man, one- or two-eyed.”
“Well, what was it?” asked the third lawyer, the one with the trumpet.
“Why don’t I just sit here and let you guess until you decide time is running out.”
“I’m going to get Judge Cartrite,” I heard one say, and tootle his trumpet.
Two minutes later, before the judge got there, one of them — you could hear him gnashing his nails — said, “I’m going to let her in.”
And the triple lock rolled back. I figured they’d be crying before the judge got through with them, but I didn’t really care.
Twenty minutes later I was talking to Judge Cartrite on the phone, and I told him enough that I think his hair began to singe. But I didn’t let the cat out of the bag. For the next week I kept to my quarters. The first day my feet were sore from the no gravity of the ride back, but after that I was just being careful.
Finally I went down to the Market. “Parks,” I said. His assistant was doodling over at the desk. Behind us the rows on rows of embryo flasks were banked to the ceiling. “Parks, I’ve got a problem; maybe you can help me.”
“What is it, Captain?”
“I’m pregnant, Parks.”
“You’re what?”
“I said I am going to have a baby.”
He sat down on the desk. “But…how?”
“That’s a very good question,” I said. “And I’m not too sure of the answer. But I want you to get it out of me.”
“You mean an abortion?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “I want you to remove it with tender loving care and get it into one of those embryo flasks of yours.”
“I still don’t see….I mean everybody on the ship is kept harmonally sterile. How did you…” Then he said, “Are you sure?”
“Examine me,” I said.
He did and told me, “Well, I guess you are. When do you want it transferred?”
“Right away,” I said. “Keep it alive, Parks. I’d bring it to term myself, but there’s nobody in the whole nation that has the muscle left to go through labor and come out alive.”