Three of the walls were ordinary enough. DuQuesne scarcely glanced at them because of the fourth, which was a single canvas eight feet high and over thirty feet long. One painting. What a painting! A painting of life itself; a painting that seemed actually to writhe and to crawl and to vibrate with the very essence of life itself!
One-celled life, striving fiercely upward in the primordial sea toward the light. Fiercely striving young fishes, walking determinedly ashore on their fins. Striving young mammals developing tails and climbing up into trees — losing tails, with the development of true thumbs, and coming down to earth again out of the trees — the ever-enlarging brain resulting in the appearance of true man. And finally, the development and the progress and the history of man himself.
And every being, from unicell to man, was striving with all its might upward; toward THE LIGHT. Upward! Upward!! UPWARD!!!
At almost the end of that heart-stopping painting there was a portrait of Sennlloy herself in the arms of a man; a yellow-haired, smooth-shaven Hercules so fantastically welldrawn, so incredibly alive-seeming, that DuQuesne stared in awe.
Beyond those two climactic figures the painting became a pure abstract of form and of line and color; an abstract, however, that was crammed full of invisible but very apparent question marks. It asked more, it demanded and it yelled — “What is coming next?”
DuQuesne, who had been holding his breath, let it out and breathed deeply. “And you painted that yourself,” he marveled. “Milady Sennlloy, if you never do anything else as long as you live, you will have achieved immortality.”
She blushed to the breasts. “Thanks, friend Vance. I’m very glad you like it: I was sure you would.”
“It’s so terrific that words fail,” he said, and meant. Then, nodding at the portrait, he went on, “Your husband?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. He has not the genes the Llurdi wish to propagate, so we could not marry and he had to stay on Allondax instead of becoming one of this group.
But he and I love each other more than life. When we Jelmi aboard this Mallidaxian have taught those accursed Llurdi their lesson, we will marry and we’ll never be parted again. But time presses, friend Vance; we must consider our formalities.”
Walking around the foot of her bed — the satin coverlet of which bore, in red and gold, a motif that almost made even DuQuesne blush — she went to a bureau-like piece of furniture and began to pull open its bottom drawer. Then, changing her mind, she closed it sharply; but not before the man got a glimpse of its contents that made him catch his breath. That drawer contained at least two bushels of the most fantastic jewelry DuQuesne had ever seen!
Shaking her head, Sennlloy went on, “No. My formality should not influence yours. The fact that you appreciate and employ formality implies, does it not, that you do not materialize and dematerialize its material symbols, but cherish them?”
“Yes; you and I think very much alike on that,” DuQuesne agreed. He was still feeling his way. This hadn’t been a cue; that was now abundantly certain. In fact, with Sennlloy so deeply in love with one man, she probably wouldn’t be in the business herself at all… or would she? Were these people advanced enough — if you could call it advancement — different enough, anyway — to regard sex for-love and sex-for-improvement-of-race as two entirely different matters; so completely unrelated as not to affect each other? He simply didn’t know. Data insufficient. However the thing was to go, he’d played along so far; he’d still play along. Wherefore, without any noticeable pause, he went on:
“I intended to comply with your conventions, but I’ll be glad to use my own if you prefer. So I’ll ask Tammon to flip me over to my own ship to put on my high-formal gear.”
“Oh, no; I’ll do it.” Donning the helmet that had been lying on the beautifully grained oak-like top of the bureau, she took his left hand and compared his wristwatch briefly with the timepiece on the wall. “I’ll bring you back here in… in how many of your minutes?”
“Ten minutes will be time enough.”
“In exactly ten minutes from—” She waited until the sweep hand of his watch was exactly at the dot of twelve o’clock. “Mark,” she said then, and DuQuesne found himself standing in his own private cabin aboard the Capital D.
He picked up shaving cream and brush; then, asking aloud, “How stupid can you get, fool?” he tossed them back onto the shelf, put on his helmet, and thought his whiskers off flush with the surface of his skin. Then, partly from habit but mostly by design — its richly masculine, heady scent was supposed to “wow the women” — he rubbed on a couple of squirts of after-shave lotion.
Opening closet doors, he looked at the just-nicely-broken-in trappings he had made such a short time before. How should he do it, jeweled or plain? She was going to be gussied up like a Christmas tree, so he’d better go plain. Showy, plenty; but no jewels.
And, judging by that spectacular coverlet and other items in her room, she liked fire-engine red and gold. Okay.
Taking off his watch and donning one exactly like it except for the fact that it kept purely imaginary Xylmnian time — that had been a slip; if she’d noticed it, she’d have wondered why he was running on Tellurian time — he dressed himself in full panoply of Xylmnian finery and examined himself carefully in a full-length mirror.
He now wore a winged and crested headpiece of interlaced platinum strips; the front of the crest ridging up into a three-inch platinum disk emblazoned with an intricate heraldic design in deeply inlaid massive gold. A heavy collar, two armbands, and two wristlets, all made of woven and braided platinum strands, each bore the same symbolic disk. He wore a sleeveless shirt and legless shorts of gleaming, glaringly-red silk, with knee-length hose to match — and red-leather-lined buskins of solid-gold chain mail. And lastly, a crossed-strap belt, also of massive but supple gold link, with three platinum comets on each shoulder, supported a solid-platinum scabbard containing an extremely practical knife.
He drew the blade. Basket-hilted and with fifteen inches of heavy, wickedly curved, peculiarly shaped, razor-edged and needle-pointed stainless-steel blade, it was in fact an atrocious weapon indeed — and completely unlike any item of formal dress that DuQuesne had ever heard of.
All this had taken nine and one half minutes by his watch — by his Earth-watch, lying now upon his dresser. The time was now zero minus exactly twenty-eight seconds.
14. SEEKER SEVANCE OF XYLMNY
PRECISELY On the tick of time DuQuesne stood again in Sennlloy’s room. He glanced at her; then stood flat-footed and simply goggled. He had expected a display, but this was something that had to be seen to be believed — and then but barely. She was literally ablaze with every kind of gem he had ever seen and a dozen kinds completely new to him. Just as she stood, she could have supplied Tiffany and Carrier both for five years.
Yet she did not look barbaric. Blue-eyed, with an incredible cascade of pale blonde hair cut squarely across well below her hips, she looked both regal and virginal.
“Wow!” he exclaimed finally. “The English has-not a word for it, but a sound,” and he executed a long-drawn-out wolf-whistle.
She laughed delightedly. “Oh? I did not hear that on Tellus; but it sounds… appreciative.”
“It is, Milady. Very.” He took her hands and bowed over them. “May I say, Lady Senny, that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen?”
“Milady.”
“ ‘Lady.’ I have not told you how much I like those terms, friend Vance. I’m wonderfully pleased that you find me so. You’re magnificently handsome yourself… and you smell nice, too.” She came squarely up to him and sniffed approvingly. “But the… the blade of formality. May I look at it, please?”