The Lovers

'That is as shib as the Forerunner's left hand,' said Hal. 'But, my beloved gapt, you forgot one thing in that little lecture of yours.'

Now, his voice had a sarcasm to match that in Pornsen's.

Pornsen, shrilly, said, 'What do you mean?'

'I mean,' said Hal triumphantly, 'that you were in the accident, too! Therefore, you caused it just as much as I did!'

Pornsen goggled at him. He said, whining, 'But – but, you were driving the car!'

'Makes no difference according to what you have always told me!' said Hal. He was grinning smugly. 'You agreed to be in the collision. If you had not, we would have missed the beast.'

Pornsen stopped to puff on the cigarette. His hand shook. Yarrow watched the hand that hung free by Pornsen's side, its fingers twisting the seven leather lashes of the whip handle stuck in his belt.

Pornsen said, 'You have always shown signs of a regrettable pride and independence. That smacks of behavior that does not conform to the structure of the universe as revealed to mankind by the Forerunner, real be his name.

'I have [puff] – may the Forerunner forgive them! – sent two dozen men and women to H. I did not like to do that, for I loved them with all my heart and self. I wept when I reported them to the holy hierarchy, for I am a tender – hearted man. [Puff!] But it was my duty as a Guardian Angel Pro Tempore to watch out for the loathsome disease of self that may spread and infect the followers of Sigmen. Unreality must not be tolerated. The self is too weak and precious to be subjected to temptation.

'I have been your gapt since you were born. [Puff!] You always were a disobedient child. But you could be loved into submissiveness and contrition; you felt my love often. [Puff!]'

Yarrow felt his back tingle. He watched the gapt's hand tighten around the handle of the 'lover' projecting from the belt.

'However, not until you were eighteen did you really depart from the true future and show your weakness for pseudofutures. That was when you decided to become a joat instead of a specialist. I warned you that as a joat you'd get only so far in our society. But you persisted. And since we do have need of joats, and since I was overruled by my superiors, I allowed you to become one.

'That was [puff] unshib enough. But when I picked out the woman most suitable to be your wife – as was my duty and right – for who but your loving gapt knows the type of woman best suited for you? – I saw just how proud and unreal you were. You argued and protested and tried to go over my head and held out for a year before you consented to marry her. In that year of unreal behavior, you cost the Sturch one self...'

Hal's face paled, revealing seven thin red marks that raved out from the left corner of his lips and across his cheek to his ear.

'I cost the Sturch nothing!' Hal growled. 'Mary and I were married nine years, but we had no children. Tests showed that neither of us was physically sterile. Therefore, one or both was not thinking fertile. I petitioned for a divorce, even though I knew I might end up in H. Why didn't you insist on our divorce, as your duty required, instead of pigeonholing my petition?'

Pornsen blew out smoke nonchalantly enough, but he dropped one shoulder lower than the other as if something had caved inside him. Yarrow, seeing this, knew that he had his gapt on the defensive.

Pornsen said, 'When I first realized you were on the Gabriel, I was sure that you were not on it because of a desire to serve the Sturch. I [puff] thought at the time that you signed up for one reason. And now I am shib, shib to the bone, that your reason was your wicked desire to get away from your wife. And, since barrenness, adultery, and interstellar travel are the only legal grounds for divorce, and adultery means going to H, you [puff] took the only way out. You became legally dead by becoming a crewman of the Gabriel. You–'

'Don't talk about anything legal to me!' shouted Hal. He shook with rage and, at the same time, hated himself because he could not hide his emotion.

'You know you were not carrying out the proper functions of a gapt when you sidetracked my request! I had to sign up–'

'Ah, I thought so!' said Pornsen. He smiled and puffed out smoke and said, 'I turned it down because I thought it would be unreal. You see, I had a dream, a very vivid dream, in which I saw Mary bearing your child at the end of two years. It was not a false dream but one that had the unmistakable signs of a revelation sent by the Forerunner. I knew after that dream that your desire for a divorce was a desire for a pseudofuture. I knew that the true future was in my hands and that only by guiding your conduct could I bring it about. I recorded this dream the day after I had it, which was only a week after I reviewed your petition, and–'

'You proved that you were betrayed by a dream sent by the Backrunner and did not see a revelation sent by the Forerunner!' shouted Hal again. 'Pornsen, I am going to report this! Out of your own mouth you have convicted yourself!'

Pornsen turned pale; his mouth hung open so the cigarette dropped to the ground; his jowls quivered with fright. 'Wha – what do you mean?'

'How could she have my child at the end of two years when I am not on Earth to father it? So, what you say you dreamed can't possibly become a real future! Therefore, you allowed yourself to be deceived by the Backrunner. And you know what that means! That you are a candidate for H!'

The gapt stiffened. His lower left shoulder drew level with the other. His right hand shot to the handle of the whip, closed around the crux ansata on its end, and he pulled it from his belt. It cracked in the air, a few inches from Hal's face.

'See this?' shrieked Pornsen. 'Seven lashes! One for each of the Seven Deadly Unrealities! You've felt them before; you'll feel them again!'

Harshly, Hal said, 'Shut up!'

Again, Pornsen's jaw dropped. Whining, he said, 'How, how dare you? I, your beloved gapt, am–'

'I told you to shut up!' said Hal, less loudly but just as bitingly. 'I'm sick of your whine. I've been sick of it for years, my whole life.'

Even as he spoke, he watched Fobo walking toward them. Behind Fobo, the antelope lay dead on the road.

The animal is dead, Hal thought. I thought it had managed to get away. Those eyes staring through the bush at me. Antelope eyes? But if it is dead, whose eyes did I see?

Pornsen's voice recalled Hal to the present.

'I think, my son, that we spoke in anger, not in premeditated evil. Let us forgive one another, and we'll say nothing to the Uzzites when we get back to the ship.'

'Shib with me if it's with you,' said Hal.

Hal was surprised to see tears welling in Pornsen's eyes. And he was even more surprised, almost shocked, when Pornsen made an attempt to put his arm around Hal's shoulder.

'Ah, my boy, if you only knew how much I loved you, how much it has hurt me when I've had to punish you.'

'I find that rather hard to believe,' said Hal, and he walked away from Pornsen and toward Fobo.

Fobo, too, had large tears in his unhumanly large and round eyes. But they were from another cause. He was weeping because of sympathy for the beast and shock from the accident. However, with every step toward Hal, his expression became less grieved, and tears dried. He was making a circular sign over himself with his right index finger.

It was, Hal knew, a religious sign which the wogs used in many different situations. Now, Fobo seemed to be using it to relieve his tension. Suddenly, he smiled the ghastly V-in-V smile of a wogglebug. And he was in good spirits. Though supersensitive, his nervous system was hit and run. Charge and discharge came easily.

Fobo stopped before them and said, 'A clash of personalities, gentlemen? A disagreement, an argument, a dispute?'

'No,' replied Hal. 'We were just a little shaken up. Tell me, how far will we have to walk to get to the humanoid ruins? Your car's wrecked. Tell Zugu I'm sorry.'

'Do not bother your skulls... heads. Zugu was ready to build a new and better vehicle. As for the walk, it will be pleasant and stimulating. It is only a... kilometer? Or thereabouts.'

Hal threw his mask and goggles into the car, where the Ozagenians had put theirs. He picked up his suitcase from the floor in the compartment back of the rear seat. He left the gapt's on the floor. Not without a slight pang of guilt, however, for he knew that as Pornsen's ward, he should have offered to carry it.

'To H with him,' he muttered.

He said to Fobo, 'Aren't you afraid the driving clothes will be stolen?'

'Pardon?' said Fobo, eager to learn a new word. 'Stolen means what?'

'To take an article of property from someone by stealth, without their permission, and keep it for yourself. It is a crime, punishable by law.'

'A crime?'

Hal gave up and began walking swiftly up the road. Behind him the gapt, angry because he had been rejected and because his ward was breaking etiquette by forcing him to carry his own case, shouted, 'Don't presume too far, you – you joat!'

Hal didn't turn back but plunged on ahead. The angry retort he had been phrasing beneath his breath fizzed away. Out of the corner of his eye, he had glimpsed white skin in the green foliage.

It was only a flash, gone as quickly as it had come. And he could not be sure that it was not a bird's white wing opening. Yes, he could be. There were no birds on Ozagen.

7

'Soo Yarrow. Soo Yarrow. Wuhfvayfvoo, soo Yarrow.'

Hal woke up. For a moment, he had trouble placing himself. Then, as he became wider awake, he recalled that he was sleeping in one of the marble rooms of the ruins. The moonlight, brighter than Earth's, poured in through the doorway. It shone on a small shape clinging upside down to the arch of the doorway. It glittered briefly on a flying insect that passed below the shape. Something long and thin flickered down and caught the flier and pulled it into a suddenly gaping mouth.