She said the last absent-mindedly, as if repeating a piece of popular wisdom. They ate from wooden dishes, washing the food down with mugs of an unfamiliar hot beverage which tasted sweet and peppery at the same time. Then the children were allowed back in. There were five of them, three girls and two boys ranging in age from about three to about ten or eleven. Laedo’s eye fell on the third eldest. She was a silent, pale-faced girl of six or seven, dressed in a grubby smock. Something about her was different from the others. She was more subdued, more isolated. She came and stood silently by Laedo’s knee, as if seeking to draw comfort from a stranger.
Don’t love the third one. It was an odd saying. But then, rural cultures had many strange sayings drawn from ancient legends, with no particular contemporary meaning.
He put the matter from his mind and watched the young members of the family eat. The scene was refreshingly normal, after everything he had seen on other Erspian worlds.
Once they had eaten the children were allowed to play indoors for a while, and then were packed off upstairs to bed. Laedo thanked his hosts and announced that he and Histrina would return to their spacecraft.
Brio Fong would hear none of it. He explained that the villagers liked to congregate in the evenings, in what sounded like a cross between a community hall and a tavern. Nellie insisted she would stay indoors in case the children needed her. Laedo and Histrina followed Brio through the front door.
Sunset was not a drawn-out process on any of the Erspia worlds. As they left the cottage the little sun slipped rapidly below the nearby horizon and darkness fell like a curtain.
The half-moon was high in the sky and cast a pale silvery light. Laedo had visited Earth, and had seen the moon gazing down from the night sky there. The scene here was uncannily similar; for the moon appeared about the same size in the sky as on Earth, though its surface was without markings.
Brio told them that the moon passed overhead six times a day. Laedo assumed its orbital speed was controlled artificially, rather than dictated by the equally artificial gravity of its primary. The relatively high rate of orbital revolution would make sense if the moon was being used for surveillance of Erspia-5’s surface.
But you wouldn’t need a seven-mile-diameter moon in order to do that.
The community hall was crowded. Everyone was curious about the new arrivals. The hall itself was large and comfortable, provided with alcoves, benches and tables. Illumination was the same as in the Fongs’s cottage: oil lamps which gave out a warm glow and somewhat smelly fumes. At one end stood a counter, from which a mildly alcoholic beverage was dispensed. No currency was exchanged, but the bartender chalked tallies on wooden boards. Laedo congratulated himself on having guessed correctly. This was a no-money economy.
He and Histrina received mugs of the beverage—called ‘beer’—gratis, either on the house or on the tally of some villager or other. Soon they settled into a pleasantly relaxed mood. Laedo let Histrina do most of the talking. This was easy, since the villagers found her the more fascinating of the two. He had to admit that a pretty girl who had dropped out of the sky was more of a draw than a disgruntled middle-aged man, even when he also had dropped out of the sky.
The Erspians were eager to know about the world Histrina came from. A world from beyond their moon was a novel concept. She described it as pretty much like their own, then went on to speak of the worship of the Good Lord.
It was as though she had temporarily forgotten about the evil Ahriman, her master of late. The Good Lord was, she said, the source of everything that was wholesome and pleasant. One only had to follow him to live a happy life.
She might as well have been preaching a sermon by an Ormazdian priest. “Tush, and Brio told us you knew nothing of Voluptus!” exclaimed a plump woman who was the wife of a man called Gollopy.
“That’s Voluptus you are speaking of, surely.”
“No, his name isn’t Voluptus,” Histrina replied doubtfully. “He has a name, a secret name, though it isn’t really secret, which we are told to call upon in times of temptation. I don’t know if I ought to tell it to you, but it’s Ormazd.”
The name mystified them. “I’m sure it must be Voluptus by another name,” Gollopy’s wife said fussily.
“Can you see the Heavenly Mansion from where you live?”
“That big round light in the sky? No, we don’t have one of those, just a sun.” Histrina frowned. “Of course, there’s the other god, Ahriman. He makes you want to do wicked things and tries to turn you against the Good Lord.”
There was a pause. “Then it must have been he who corrupted the people of Molem in olden times,”
someone else said. “But don’t worry, your god of wickedness has no disciples here. Perhaps he wouldn’t be known on your world, either, if you lived closer to the Heavenly Mansion.”
A troubled look came over Histrina. She changed the subject. “Do you know what happens when you die? If you have listened to the Good Lord during your life then your soul goes to paradise and you are given everlasting happiness. But if you gave yourself over to Ahriman then you have everlasting torment.”
She shuddered and seemed to shrivel. Laedo found the spectacle remarkable.
“Oh but you’re wrong there, my dear,” Gollopy’s talkative wife assured her. “Anyone lucky enough to be one of Voluptus’s favourites goes to the Heavenly Mansion, and for them it is the Mansion of Pleasure where they do live forever, that’s true. But as for the rest of us, well, one lifetime of blessings is enough. It would be ungrateful to expect more.”
Histrina only looked confused on hearing this. Laedo thought it unusual for a primitive culture not to have some conception of life after death. Perhaps it went along with the villagers’ contentment, their lack of excitement and absence of anything more than superficial curiosity. Many of them spoke of having walked out to Butterly Meadow to view the projector station. Apart from its awesome size they simply saw it as a dull-coloured lump, its metal surface scored and pitted as it was by micrometeorites. Its stated role as a vehicle for travelling between worlds fell flat in their imaginations.
Laedo sighed to himself. Perhaps a life without change or stress was best after all.
Despite offers of shelter for the night, he persuaded Histrina to return to the station. Saying goodnight to their new friends, they staggered in tipsy fashion across the meadow. The moon was once again lifting itself above the horizon. To Laedo’s surprise Histrina took his hand in hers as they walked along. In the main lounge, she threw off the drab all-covering gown and threw herself on a couch.
“It’s funny,” she said, “I don’t feel the way I have been feeling lately.”
Her voice was subdued, almost plaintive.
“What do you mean?” Laedo asked.
“Well, all that… dreadfulness. The bad things I’ve done. The people I’ve killed. I don’t feel like doing such things any more.”
He looked at her quizzically, recalling his earlier idea that the murder and suicide rays might have burned the badness out of her.
Or maybe she was just exhausted. He couldn’t take anything for granted.
“What about fornication?” he asked her. “Do you still want to do that?”
She blinked. “I don’t see why not.”
“You seemed to think it’s almost as bad as murder before.”
“Did I? I don’t know why. What harm does it do? I wouldn’t like to do the other things any more, though.”
Invitingly she smiled at him.
But he was tired.
And still not sure of Histrina.
He yawned. They slept separately.
He awoke late next day. If Erspia-5 followed the pattern of the other Erspias it had a day of twenty-eight hours. For some still unexplained reason this more accurately represented the natural sleeping and waking cycle of human beings than did the home planet Earth’s day of twenty-four hours. Which meant that Laedo had slept long indeed. He recognised that he was getting tired: a tiredness born of frustration.