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In fact, I got the distinct impression that everyone was happy to see me move out.
I stopped in the hydroponics room to speak with our mushroom master.
"Hi, Kane. Grow any toadstools in the sand yet?"
He sniffed. He always sniffs. Maybe he's allergic to plants.
"Hello, Gallinger. No, I haven't had any success with toadstools, but look behind the car barn next time you're out there. I've got a few cacti going."
"Great," I observed. Doc Kane was about my only friend aboard, not counting Betty.
"Say, I came down to ask you a favor."
"Name it."
"I want a rose."
"A what?"
"A rose. You know, a nice red American Beauty job--thorns, pretty smelling--"
"I don't think it will take in this soil. Sniff, sniff."
"No, you don't understand. I don't want to plant it, I just want the flower."
"I'd have to use the tanks." He scratched his hairless dome. "It would take at least three months to get you flowers, even under forced growth."
"Will you do it?"
"Sure, if you don't mind the wait."
"Not at all. In fact, three months will just make it before we leave." I looked about at the pools of crawling slime, at the trays of shoots. "--I'm moving up to Tirellian today, but I'll be in and out all the time. I'll be here when it blooms."
"Moving up there, eh? Moore said they're an in-group."
"I guess I'm `in' then."
"Looks that way--I still don't see how you learned their language, though. Of course, I had trouble with French and German for my Ph.D, but last week I heard Betty demonstrate it at lunch. It just sounds like a lot of weird noises. She says speaking it is like working a Times crossword and trying to imitate birdcalls at the same time."
I laughed, and took the cigarette he offered me.
"It's complicated," I acknowledged. "But, well, it's as if you suddenly came across a whole new class of mycetae here--you'd dream about it at night."
His eyes were gleaming.
"Wouldn't that be something! I might, yet, you know."
"Maybe you will."
He chuckled as we walked to the door.
"I'll start your roses tonight. Take it easy down there."
"You bet. Thanks."
Like I said, a fungus nut, but a fairly good guy.
My quarters in the Citadel of Tirellian were directly adjacent to the Temple, on the inward side and slightly to the left. They were a considerable improvement over my cramped cabin, and I was pleased that Martian culture had progressed sufficiently to discover the desirability of the mattress over the pallet. Also, the bed was long enough to accommodate me, which was surprising.
So I unpacked and took sixteen 35 mm. shots of the Temple, before starting on the books.
I took 'stats until I was sick of turning pages without knowing what they said. So I started translating a work of history.
"Lo. In the thirty-seventh year of the Process of Cillen the rains came, which gave way to rejoicing, for it was a rare and untoward occurrence, and commonly construed a blessing.
"But it was not the life-giving semen of Mala
"The rains brought the plague that does not kill, and the last passes of Locar began with their drumming...."
I asked myself what the hell Tamur meant, for he was an historian and supposedly committed to fact. This was not their Apocalypse.
Unless they could be one and the same...?
Why not? I mused. Tirellian's handful of people were the remnant of what had obviously once been a highly developed culture. They had had wars, but no holocausts; science, but little technology. A plague, a plague that did not kill...? Could that have done it? How, if it wasn't fatal?
I read on, but the nature of the plague was not discussed. I turned pages, skipped ahead, and drew a blank.
M'Cwyie! M'Cwyie! When I want to question you most, you are not around!
Would it be a faux pas to go looking for her? Yes, I decided. I was restricted to the rooms I had been shown, that had been an implicit understanding. I would have to wait to find out.
So I cursed long and loud, in many languages, doubtless burning Mala
He did not see fit to strike me dead, so I decided to call it a day and hit the sack.
I must have been asleep for several hours when Braxa entered my room with a tiny lamp. She dragged me awake by tugging at my pajama sleeve.
I said hello. Thinking back, there is not much else I could have said.
"Hello."
"I have come," she said, "to hear the poem."
"What poem?"
"Yours."
"Oh."
I yawned, sat up, and did things people usually do when awakened in the middle of the night to read poetry.
"That is very kind of you, but isn't the hour a trifle awkward?"
"I don't mind," she said.
Someday I am going to write an article for the Journal of Semantics, called "Tone of Voice: An Insufficient Vehicle for Irony."
However, I was awake, so I grabbed my robe.
"What sort of animal is that? she asked, pointing at the silk dragon on my lapel.
"Mythical," I replied. "Now look, it's late. I am tired. I have much to do in the morning. And M'Cwyie just might get the wrong idea if she learns you were here."
"Wrong idea?"
"You know damned well what I mean!" It was the first time I had had an opportunity to use Martian profanity, and it failed.
"No," she said, "I do not know."
She seemed frightened, like a puppy dog being scolded without knowing what it has done wrong.
I softened. Her red cloak matched her hair and lips so perfectly, and those lips were trembling.
"Here now, I didn't mean to upset you. On my world there are certain, uh, mores, concerning people of different sex alone together in bedrooms, and not allied by marriage....Um, I mean, you see what I mean?"
They were jade, her eyes.
"Well, it's sort of...Well, it's sex, that's what it is."
A light was switched on in those jade eyes.
"Oh, you mean having children!"
"Yes. That's it! Exactly!"
She laughed. It was the first time I had heard laughter in Tirellian. It sounded like a violinist striking his high strings with the bow, in short little chops. It was not an altogether pleasant thing to hear, especially because she laughed too long.
When she had finished she moved closer.
"I remember, now," she said. "We used to have such rules. Half a Process ago, when I was a child, we had such rules. But--" she looked as if she were ready to laugh again--"there is no need for them now."
My mind moved like a tape recorder playing at triple speed.
Half a Process! HalfaProcessa--ProcessaProcess! No! Yes! Half a Process was two hundred-forty-three years, roughly speaking!
--Time enough to learn the 2224 dances of Locar.
--Time enough to grow old, if you were human.
--Earth-style human, I mean.
I looked at her again, pale as the white queen in an ivory chess set.
She was human, I'd stake my soul--alive, normal, healthy. I'd stake my life--woman, my body...
But she was two and a half centuries old, which made M'Cwyie Methusala's grandma. It flattered me to think of their repeated complimenting of my skills, as linguist, as poet. These superior beings!
But what did she mean "there is no such need for them now"? Why the near-hysteria? Why all those fu
I suddenly knew I was close to something important, besides a beautiful girl.
"Tell me," I said, in my Casual Voice, "did it have anything to do with `the plague that does not kill,' of which Tamur wrote?"
"Yes," she replied, "the children born after the Rains could have no children of their own, and--"