One day my landlady’s daughter, young Mary Benton, wore a red and tear-swollen face as she tidied my chambers. I chided her and soon the whole story came out. It was sickeningly familiar. As I looked at Mary, a sweet, innocent creature who worked hard from crack of dawn until well into the night, and heard her broken words, her shame, and contrasted her life with the elegant, luxurious, feckless life of this lord and his cronies, I fancied I might assist her. Money, of course, was immediately forthcoming. Probably I would have left it at that. Mrs. Benton was grateful; I shushed her and Mary was packed off to reappear subsequently with a new sister or brother, niece or nephew. I would have done what I could and left it, but this young lord could not leave well alone. On a night before the meeting that, however much I considered Doctor Quinney to be a fraud, yet excited me with its possibilities, the young lord was boasting and laughing, elegantly waving his hand, his blue pop-eyes very bright, his pink tongue tip licking the spittle on his lips.
My chambers were filled with Victorian shadows, the oil lamps casting their separated pools of light, the old furniture highly polished to mirror-gleams, the smell of cigar smoke and distant cooking in the air; through the curtained windows the clip-clop of passing horses and the grind of iron-rimmed wheels reminded me I was in London and not in Valkanium.
The hot words were spoken, words that might have been: "Damned impertinence! D’you forget who I am?" And: "I know what you are, and no gentleman would tolerate your presence." And: I’ll horsewhip you, you guttersnipe!" And: "You are perfectly at liberty to try." And the blows and the bleeding nose and the challenge, the hostility, brittle and bitter, and the hushed-up scandal. It would have to be in Boulogne.
"I shall meet you at the place and time you choose."
"My seconds will call."
Well, as I recall it all went as the copybook said it should.
The sobering aspect of this struck me as we waited for Doctor Quinney. Something had happened to stir the sluggish blood. I didn’t give a damn if this puppy spitted me or shot me through the heart. I’d do it for him, if I could. He had brought his own downfall on his head, through his folly and his damned superior ways and his unthinking selfishness. Had he eyes in his head he could read — and see! — information on the state of the poor. There was no excuse for the rich to plead ignorance. Pure selfishness, allied to a grotesque assumption of superiority led the people of his class to act the way they did. I looked forward to Boulogne with grim and unpleasant relish, Zair forgive me. For wasn’t I, Dray Prescot, acting in just such a selfish way?
Well, for those of you who have followed my story so far, perhaps you will understand what I only vaguely grasped of my character.
Of all the incidents of my stay on Earth, that evening in the oil lamps’ glow, with the sounds of London muted through the windows and the circle sitting around the polished mahogany table, remains most vividly with me. Doctor Quinney arrived, his snuffbox under firm control, ushering in a tall cloaked figure. When the cloak’s hood was thrown back everyone in the room sat up. We all felt the magnetic presence, the consciousness of power allied with understanding, the sheer authority of this lady.
"Madam Ivanovna!" cried Quinney, his voice near to cracking with pride and emotion. The woman seated herself after a slight inclination of her head that embraced the company and seemed to take us all into her confidence. I saw a mass of gleaming dark hair and a face, white and unlined, of a purity of outline quite remarkable. Her eyes were brown, large, finely set, dominating. Her mouth puzzled me, being firm and yet softly full, suggesting a complex character. She wore long loose garments of somber black. This was quite usual, yet she wore the garments in a way suggesting mystery and excitement and great peril — quite alarming and yet amusing, charming, and I sat forward, ready to take part in the evening’s charade.
As I moved I observed that Quinney still stood there, an idiotic grin on his face, his hand outstretched. The others of the circle sat perfectly still. Sounds stretched and became muted. The ticking of the ormolu clock sounded like lead weights dropped slowly into a bottomless pool. I stared at Madam Ivanovna, feeling the tensions, the excitements, feeling that, perhaps, my staked ponsho had brought a leem. .
"Mr. Prescot," said this enigmatic Madam Ivanovna. "You will disregard the people here, even Doctor Quinney. You have been causing trouble and I am here because it seems meet to us that you should work again."
I remained mute. There was no doubt about it. The other people in the room remained silent, static, unmoving — frozen.
"Mr. Prescot, you do not appear surprised."
I had to speak. "I have been trying-"
"You have been successful."
I swallowed. Now that it had happened I could not believe it. I licked my lips. "Perhaps, then, I should not say, ’Good evening’ to you, Madam Ivanovna. "Perhaps I should say ’Happy Swinging.’"
"You may say ’Happy Swinging’ and you may say ’Lahal.’ Neither would be correct." Through the roar of blood in my head — for she had said "Lahal," which is the Kregish form for greeting new acquaintances — I wondered what on Kregen she could mean by saying neither would be correct.
"You are from the Savanti?"
"No."
"The Everoinye?"
"No."
If this was madness, a phantom conjured from my own sick longings, then I would press on. I recall every minute, every second, as we two sat and talked in a Victorian room stuffed with mummified people who saw and heard nothing.
"You know me, Madam Ivanovna. You know who I am. Why have you sought me out?"
"First, I use the name Ivanovna because it is exotic, foreign. It will soon be fashionable to have a Russian name in psychic matters. It helps belief when you found a society. But you may know my use-name. It is Zena Iztar."
I knew about use-names. My comrade Inch from Ng’groga was called Inch; his real name was different, secret, something, I then thought, he would share with no one.
"You are from Kregen?"
"Well, yes and no."
The blood in my head pained. I thumped the table. "Damn it!" I burst out. "You’ll pardon my manner, Madam Ivanovna, or Madam Zena Iztar, but, by Zair! I wish you’d-" She smiled.
That smile could have launched a million ships.
"Yes, Pur Dray."
I felt numb.
"You call me Pur Dray," I whispered. I swallowed. "You must know I hold only being a Krozair of Zy as of importance. Tell me, Madam Zena Iztar, tell me, for the sweet sake of Zair!" She placed both white hands on the table. Her fingers were long and slender and white, as they should be, and she wore no rings. She wore no jewelry of any kind that I could see.
"Now," she said, and her voice in its hard practicality made me sit up. "The Savanti have set their hands to the work they consider proper for Kregen, for they are of that world and are a last faint remnant of a once mighty race. You have heard of them as the Sunset People or the Sunrise People. The Savanti have at heart the well-being of apims, Homo sapiens like yourself. As for the Star Lords, their plans are different, wider and more universe-embracing, and I shall tell you only that you will have to make a choice one day, and the choice will be the hardest thing you have ever done."
"Put me back on Kregen and I will choose!"
"Oh, yes, Pur Dray! You would promise anything now, just to return. I know."
"Can you-?"
Her look made me hold my foolish tongue.