“A couple of days ago you said you were almost finished.”
“Almost, but not quite.”
“You also said they’re be holding a service in the Temple tonight.”
“That’s right. I’m going to work in my room.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
Finally, he said, “Gallinger,” and I looked up because my name means trouble.
“It shouldn’t be any of my business,” he said, “but it is. Betty says you have a girl down there.”
There was no question mark. It was a statement hanging in the air. Waiting.
Betty, you’re a bitch. You’re a cow and a bitch. And a jealous one, at that.
Why didn’t you keep your nose where it belonged, shut your eyes? You mouth?
“So?” I said, a statement with a question mark.
“So,” he answered it, “it is my duty, as head of this expedition, to see that relations with the natives are carried on in a friendly, and diplomatic, manner.”
“You speak of them,” I said, “as though they are aborigines. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
I rose.
“When my papers are published everyone on Earth will know that truth. I’ll tell them things Doctor Moore never even guessed at. I’ll tell the tragedy of a doomed race, waiting for death, resigned and disinterested. I’ll write about it, and they will give me more prizes, and this time I won’t want them.
“My God!” I exclaimed. “They had a culture when our ancestors were clubbing the saber-tooth and finding out how fire works!”
“Do you have a girl down there?”
“Yes!” I said. Yes, Claudius! Yes, Daddy! Yes, Emory! “I do. but I’m going to let you in on a scholarly scoop now. They’re already dead. They’re sterile. In one more generation there won’t be any Martians.”
I paused, then added, “Except in my papers, except on a few pieces of microfilm and tape. And in some poems, about a girl who did give a damn and could only bitch about the unfairness of it all by dancing.”
“Oh,” he said.
After awhile: “You have been behaving differently these past couple months. You’ve even been downright civil on occasion, you know. I couldn’t help wondering what was happening. I didn’t know anything mattered that strongly to you.”
I bowed my head.
“Is she the reason you were racing around the desert?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
I looked up.
“Because she’s out there, somewhere. I don’t know where, or why. And I’ve got to find her before we go.”
“Oh,” he said again.
Then he leaned back, opened a drawer, and took out something wrapped in a towel.
He unwound it. A framed photo of a woman lay on the table.
“My wife,” he said.
It was an attractive face, with big, almond eyes.
“I’m a Navy man, you know,” he began. “Young officer once. Met her in Japan.”
“Where I come from it wasn’t considered right to marry into another race, so we never did. But she was my wife. When she died I was on the other side of the world. They took my children, and I’ve never seen them since. I couldn’t learn what orphanage, what home, they were put into. That was long ago. Very few people know about it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be. Forget it. But”—he shifted in his chair and looked at me—”if you do want to take her back with you—do it. It’ll mean my neck, but I’m too old to ever head another expedition like this one. So go ahead.”
He gulped cold coffee.
“Get your jeepster.”
He swiveled the chair around.
I tried to say “thank you” twice, but I couldn’t. So I got up and walked out.
“Sayonara, and all that,” he muttered behind me.
“Here it is, Gallinger!” I heard a shout.
I turned on my heel and looked back up the ramp.
“Kane!”
He was limned in the port, shadow against light, but I had heard him sniff.
I returned the few steps.
“Here what is?”
“Your rose.”
He produced a plastic container, divided internally. The lower half was filled with liquid. The stem ran down into it. The other half, a glass of claret in this horrible night, was a large, newly opened rose.
“Thank you,” I said, tucking it in my jacket.
“Going back to Tirellian, eh?”
“Yes.”
“I saw you come aboard, so I got it ready. Just missed you at the Captain’s cabin. He was busy. Hollered out that I could catch you at the barns.”
“Thanks again.”
“It’s chemically treated. It will stay in bloom for weeks.”
I nodded. I was gone.
Up into the mountains now. Far. Far. The sky was a bucket of ice in which no moons floated. The going became steeper, and the little donkey protested. I whipped him with the throttle and went on. Up.
Up. I spotted a green, unwinking star, and felt a lump in my throat.
The encased rose beat against my chest like an extra heart. The donkey brayed, long and loudly, then began to cough. I lashed him some more and he died.
I threw the emergency brake on and got out. I began to walk.
So cold, so cold it grows. Up here. At night? Why? Why did she do it? Why flee the campfire when night comes on?
And I was up, down, around, and through every chasm, gorge, and pass, with my long-legged strides and an ease of movement never known on Earth.
Barely two days remain, my love, and thou hast forsaken me. Why?
I crawled under overhangs. I leaped over ridges. I scraped my knees, an elbow. I heard my jacket tear.
No answer, Malann? Do you really hate your people this much?
Then I’ll try someone else. Vishnu, you’re the Preserver. Preserve her, please!
Let me find her.
Jehovah?
Adonis? Osiris? Thammuz? Manitou? Legba? Where is she?
I ranged far and high, and I slipped.
Stones ground underfoot and I dangled over an edge. My fingers so cold. It was hard to grip the rock.
I looked down.
Twelve feet or so. I let go and dropped, landed rolling.
Then I heard her scream.
I lay there, not moving, looking up. Against the night, above, she called.
“Gallinger!”
I lay still.
“Gallinger!”
And she was gone.
I heard stones rattle and knew she was coming down some path to the right of me.
I jumped up and ducked into the shadow of a boulder.
She rounded a cut-off, and picked her way, uncertainly, through the stones.
“Gallinger?”
I stepped out and seized her by the shoulders.
“Braxa.”
She screamed again, then began to cry, crowding against me. It was the first time I had ever heard her cry.
“Why?” I asked. “Why?”
But she only clung to me and sobbed.
Finally, “I thought you had killed yourself.”
“Maybe I would have,” I said. “Why did you leave Tirellian? And me?”
“Didn’t M’Cwyie tell you? Didn’t you guess?”
“I didn’t guess, and M’Cwyie said she didn’t know.”
“Then she lied. She knows.”
“What? What is it she knows?”
She shook all over, then was silent for a long time. I realized suddenly that she was wearing only her flimsy dancer’s costume. I pushed her from me, took off my jacket, and put it about her shoulders.
“Great Malann!” I cried. “You’ll freeze to death!”
“No,” she said, “I won’t.”
I was transferring the rose-case to my pocket.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A rose,” I answered. “You can’t make it out in the dark. I once compared you to one. Remember?”