"Thirty years!"
"I could force it to twenty-five, I think."
I sighed. "Star, do you know how old I am?"
"Yes. Not yet twenty-five. But you will get no older!"
"But right now I'm still that age. That's all the time there has ever been for me. Twenty-five years as a pet poodle and I won't be a hero, nor anything. I'll be out of my silly mind."
She thought about it. "Yes. That is true."
She turned over, we made a spoon and pretended to sleep.
Later I felt her shoulders shaking and knew that she was sobbing. "Star?"
She didn't turn her head. All I heard was a choking voice, "Oh, my dear, my very dear! If I were even a hundred years younger!"
Chapter 20
I let the precious, useless gems dribble through my fingers, listlessly pushed them aside. If I were only a hundred years older—
But Star was right. She could not leave her post without relief. Her notion of proper relief, not mine nor anyone else's. And I couldn't stay in this upholstered jail much longer without beating my head on the bars.
Yet both of us wanted to stay together.
The real nasty hell of it was that I knew—just as she knew—that each of us would forget. Some, anyhow. Enough so that there would be other shoes, other men, and she would laugh again.
And so would I—She had seen that and had gravely, gently, with subtle consideration for another's feelings, told me indirectly that I need not feel guilty when next I courted some other girl, in some other land, somewhere.
Then why did I feel like a heel?
How did I get trapped with no way to turn without being forced to choose between hurting my beloved and going clean off my rocker?
I read somewhere about a man who lived on a high mountain, because of asthma, the choking, killing land, while his wife lived on the coast below him, because of heart trouble that could not stand altitude. Sometimes they looked at each other through telescopes.
In the morning there had been no talk of Stars retiring. The unstated quid-pro-quo was that, if she planned to retire, I would hang around (thirty years!) until she did. Her Wisdom had concluded that I could not, and did not speak of it. We had a luxurious breakfast and were cheerful, each with his secret thoughts.
Nor were children mentioned. Oh, I would find that clinic, do what was needed. If she wanted to mix her star line with my common blood, she could, tomorrow or a hundred years hence. Or smile tenderly and have it cleaned out with the rest of the trash. None of my people had even been mayor of Podunk and a plow horse isn't groomed for the Irish Sweepstakes. If Star put a child together from our genes, it would be sentiment, a living valentine—a younger poodle she could pet before she let it run free. But sentiment only, as sticky if not as morbid as that of her aunt with the dead husbands, for the Imperium could not use my bend sinister.
I looked up at my sword, hanging opposite me. I hadn't touched it since the party, long past, when Star chose to dress for the Glory Road. I took it down, buckled it on and drew it—felt that surge of liveness and had a sudden vision of a long road and a castle on a hill.
What does a champion owe his lady when the quest is done?
Quit dodging, Gordon! What does a husband owe his wife? This very sword—"Jump Rogue and Princess leap. My wife art thou and mine to keep." "—for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse...to love and to cherish, till death do us part." That was what I meant by that doggerel and Star had known it and I had known it and knew it now.
When we vowed, it had seemed likely that we would be parted by death that same day. But that didn't reduce the vow nor the deepness with which I had meant it. I hadn't jumped the sword to catch a tumble on the grass before I died; I could have had that free. No, I had wanted "—to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death do us part"!
Star had kept her vow to the letter. Why did I have itchy feet?
Scratch a hero and find a bum.
And a retired hero was as silly as those out-of-work kings that clutter Europe.
I slammed out of our "flat," wearing sword and not giving a damn about stares, apported to our therapists, found where I should go, went there, did what was necessary, told the boss biotechnician that Her Wisdom must be told, and jumped down his throat when he asked questions.
Then back to the nearest apport booth and hesitated—I needed companionship the way an Alcoholics-Anonymous needs his hand held. But I had no intimates, just hundreds of acquaintances. It isn't easy for the Empress's consort to have friends.
Rufo it had to be. But in all the months I had been on Center I had never been in Rufo's home. Center does not practice the barbarous custom of dropping in on people and I had seen Rufo only at the Residence, or on parties; Rufo had never invited me to his home. No, no coldness there; we saw him often, but always he had come to us.
I looked for him in apport listings—no luck. Then as little with see-speak lists. I called the Residence, got the communication officer. He said that "Rufo" was not a surname and tried to brush me off. I said, "Hold it, you overpaid clerk! Switch me off and you'll be in charge of smoke signals in Timbuktu an hour from now. Now listen. This bloke is elderly, baldheaded, one of his names is ‘Rufo' I think, and he is a distinguished comparative culturologist. And he is a grandson of Her Wisdom. I think you know who he is and have been dragging your feet from bureaucratic arrogance. You have five minutes. Then I talk to Her Wisdom and ask her, while you pack!"
("Stop! Danger you! Other old bald Rufo (?) top compculturist. Wisdom egg-sperm-egg. Five-minutes. Liar and/or fool. Wisdom? Catastrophe!")
In less than five minutes Rufo's image filled the tank. "Well!" he said. "I wondered who had enough weight to crash my shutoff."
"Rufo, may I come see you?"
His scalp wrinkled. "Mice in the pantry, son? Your face reminds me of the time my uncle—"
"Please, Rufo!"
"Yes, son," he said gently. "I'll send the dancing girls home. Or shall I keep them?"
"I don't care. How do I find you?"
He told me, I punched his code, added my charge number, and I was there, a thousand miles around the horizon. Rufo's place was a mansion as lavish as Jocko's and thousands of years more sophisticated. I gathered an impression that Rufo had the biggest household on Center, all female. I was wrong. But all female servants, visitors, cousins, daughters, made themselves a reception committee—to look at Her Wisdom's bedmate. Rufo shooed them away and took me to his study. A dancing girl (evidently a secretary) was fussing over papers and tapes. Rufo slapped her fanny out, gave me a comfortable chair, a drink, put cigarettes near me, sat down and said nothing.
Smoking isn't popular on Center, what they use as tobacco is the reason. I picked up a cigarette. "Chesterfields! Good God!"
"Have ‘em smuggled," he said. "But they don't make anything like Sweet Caps anymore. Bridge sweepings and chopped hay."
I hadn't smoked in months. But Star had told me that cancer and such I could now forget. So I lit it—and coughed like a Nevian dragon. Vice requires constant practice.
" ‘What news on the Rialto?' " Rufo inquired. He glanced at my sword.
"Oh, nothing." Having interrupted Rufo's work, I now shied at baring my domestic troubles.
Rufo sat and smoked and waited. I needed to say something and the American cigarette reminded me of an incident, one that had added to my unstable condition. At a party a week earlier, I had met a man thirty-five in appearance, smooth, polite, but with that supercilious air that says: "Your fly is unzipped, old man, but I'm too urbane to mention it."
But I had been delighted to meet him, he had spoken English!
I had thought that Star, Rufo, and myself were the only ones on Center who spoke English. We often spoke it. Star on my account, Rufo because he liked to practice. He spoke Cockney like a costermonger, Bostonese like Beacon Hill, Aussie like a kangaroo; Rufo knew all English languages.