“But why shouldn’t somebody buy Earth if he corners the Norstrilian stroon market?”
“Who ever cornered it in the first place? I tell you, Rod McBan is just an invention. Have you ever seen a picturebox of him?”
“No.”
“Did you ever know anybody who met him?”
“I heard that the Lord Jestocost was mixed up in it, and that expensive girlygirl What’s-her-name — you know — the redhead — C’mell.”
“That’s what you heard. Malarkey, pure genuine ancient malarkey. There was no such boy, ever. It’s all propaganda.”
“You’re always that way. Grumbling. Doubting. I’m glad I’m not you.”
“Pal, that’s real, real reciprocal. ‘Better dead than gullible,’ that’s my motto.”
The Stop-captain, talking to a passenger, female:
“I’m glad to see, ma’am, that you didn’t buy any of those Earth fashions. Back home, the air would take them off you in half minute.”
“I’m old-fashioned,” she smiled. Then a thought crossed her mind, and she added a question: “You’re in the space business, Sir and Stop-captain. Did you ever hear the story of Rod McBan? I think it’s thrilling.”
“You mean, the boy who bought Earth?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Is it true?”
“Completely true,” he said, “except for one little detail. This ‘Rod McBan’ wasn’t named that at all. He wasn’t a Norstrilian. He was a hominid from some other world, and he was buying the Earth with pirate money. They wanted to get his credits away from him, but he may have been a Wet Stinker from Amazonas Triste or he may have been one of those little tiny men, about the size of a walnut, from the Solid Planet. That’s why he bought Earth and left it so suddenly. You see, Ma’am and Dame, no Old North Australian ever thinks about anything except his money. They even have one of the ancient forms of government still left on that planet, and they would never let one of their own boys buy Earth. They’d all sit around and talk him into putting it in a savings account, instead. They’re clannish people. That’s why I don’t think it was a Norstrilian at all.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re spoiling a lovely story for me, Mister and Stop-captain.”
“Don’t call me ‘mister,’ ma’am. That’s a Norstrilian title. I’m just a plain ‘Sir.’”
They both stared at the little imaginary waterfall, on the wall.
Before the Stop-captain went back to his work, he added, “For my money, it must have been one of those little tiny men from the Solid Planet. Only a fool like that would buy the dower rights to a million women. We’re both grown up, Ma’am. I ask you, what would an itty-bitty man from the Solid Planet do with one Earth woman, let along a million of them?”
She giggled and blushed as the Stop-captain stamped triumphantly away, having gotten in his last masculine word.
“Father, give me hope.”
The E’telekeli was gentle. “I can give you almost anything from this world, but you are talking about the world of the sign of the Fish, which none of us controls. You had better go back into the everyday life of our cavern and not spend so much time on your devotional exercises, if they make you unhappy.”
She stared at him. “It’s not that. It’s not that at all. It’s just that I know that the robot, the rat and the Copt all agreed that the Promised One would come here to Earth.” A desperate note entered her voice. “Father, could it have been Rod McBan?”
“What do you mean?”
“Could he have been the Promised One, without my knowing it? Could he have come and gone just to test my faith?”
The bird-giant rarely laughed; he had never laughed at his own daughter before. But this was too absurd: he laughed at her, but a wise part of his mind told him that the laughter, though cruel now, would be good for her later on.
“Rod? A promised speaker of the truth? Oh, no. Ho — ho — ho. Rod McBan is one of the nicest human beings I ever met. A good young man, almost like a bird. But he’s no messenger from eternity.”
The daughter bowed and turned away.
She had already composed a tragedy about herself, the mistaken one, who had met “the prince of the word,” whom the worlds awaited, and had failed to know him because her faith was too weak. The strain of waiting for something that might happen now or a million years from now was too much. It was easier to accept failure and self-reproach than to endure the timeless torment of undated hope.
She had a little nook in the wall where she spent many of her eating hours. She took but a little stringed instrument which her father had made for her. It emitted ancient, weeping sounds, and she sang her own little song to it, the song of E’lamelanie who was trying to give up waiting for Rod McBan.
She looked out into the room.
A little girl, wearing nothing but panties, stared at her with fixed eyes. E’lamelanie looked back at the child. It had no expression; it just stared at her. She wondered if it might be one of the turtle-children whom her father had rescued several years earlier.
She looked away from the child and sang her song anyhow:
When she finished, the turtle-child was still watching. Almost angrily, E’lamelanie put away her little violin.
I know a lot even if I don’t feel like talking about it and I know that the most wonderful real man in all the planets came right down here into this big room and talked to these people because he is the man that the long silly girl is singing about because she does not have him but why should she anyhow and I am really the one who is going to get him because I am a turtle child and I will be right here waiting when all these people are dead and pushed down into the dissolution vats and someday he will come back to Earth and I will be all grown up and I will be a turtle woman, more beautiful than any human woman ever was, and he is going to marry me and take me off to his planet and I will always be happy with him because I will not argue all the time, the way that bird-people and cat-people and dog-people do, so that when Rod McBan is my husband and I push dinner out of the wall for him, if he tries to argue with me I will just be shy and sweet and I won’t say anything, nothing at all, to him for one hundred years and for two hundred years, and nobody could get mad at a beautiful turtle woman who never talked back…
The herald called,
“His audacity, the Chief of Thieves, is pleased to report to the Council of Thieves!”
An old man stood, very ceremoniously, “You bring us wealth, Sir and Chief, we trust — from the gullible — from the weak — from the heartless among mankind?”
The Chief of Thieves proclaimed,
“It is the matter of Rod McBan.”
A visible stir went through the Council.
The Chief of Thieves went on, with equal formality: “We never did intercept him in space, though we monitored every vehicle which came out of the sticky, sparky space around Norstrilia. Naturally, we did not send anyone down to meet Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons, may the mild-men find them! whatever those ‘kittons’ may be. There was a coffin with a woman in it and a small box with a head. Never mind. He got past us. But when he got to Earth, we caught four of him.”