The Dark Design

"What are you talking about?'' she said. "You sound as weird as those Chancers."

"We shall see-if you care to see,'' he said. He excused himself and walked to the big table, where he started talking to a man who had just entered.

Jill sauntered toward Jea

"Ah, Ms. Gulbirra! I must beg your pardon for that unfortunate incident again! It was the liquor which caused me to behave so unforgivably, well not unforgivably I hope, but so barbarically! It is seldom that I drink more than an ounce or two, since I abominate the dulling of my senses. Alcohol makes one a swine, and I do not care for the beast on the hoof, though I adore him sliced and fried in a pan or roasted on a spit. But that night we were fishing..."

"I didn't see any fishing equipment," she said.

"It was on the other side of the grailstone. And the fog was thick, remember, mademoiselle ?"'

"Ms."

"And we got to talking of things on Earth, places, people we had known, friends who had come to a bad end, children who had died, how our parents had misunderstood us, enemies, why we were here, and so on, understand? I became depressed, thinking of what might have been on Earth, especially what my cousin Madeleine and I might have done if I had been more mature or had not been so naive at that time. And so..."

"And so you got drunk," she said, her face grave.

"And offended you, Ms., though I swear that I did not believe that you were a woman. The fog, the baggy clothing, my own addled wits ..."

"Forget it," she said. "Only ... I believed you would never forgive me, since you would have lost face after a woman punched you out. Your ego ..."

"You must not stereotype!" Cyrano cried.

"And you are right," she said. "That is a failing I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often... well, most people are living stereotypes, aren't they?"

They stood there, talking for a long time. Jill sipped on the purple passion, feeling her belly slowly warm up. The marijuana fumes became thicker, and she added to their intensity by drawing on the burning joint between her fingers. The voices were becoming loud­er, and there was much more laughter. Some couples were dancing now, their arms around each other's necks, shuffling languorously.

Piscator and Jugan seemed to be the only ones who were not drinking. Piscator was smoking a cigarette now, the first, she believed, that he had lit up since she had entered.

The combination of liquor and pot had given her a pleasant halo now. She felt as if her flesh must be leaking a red-colored light. The smoke clouds were forming into almost-shapes. Sometimes, out of the corners of her eyes, she would glimpse a definite figure, a dragon, a smokefish, once, a dirigible. But when she turned her head toward them, she could see only amorphous masses.

When she saw a metal tub float by to one side, she knew that she had had it. No more booze and grass the rest of the night. The reason for the appearance of the tub was apparent, since Cyrano had been telling her about crime and its punishments in the France of his day. A counterfeiter, for instance, was stretched out upon a large wheel. The executioner then broke his arms and legs with an iron bar, sometimes pounding them to a pulp. Executed criminals were hung in chains in marketplaces and left to rot until the bodies fell through the chains. The guts of others were left in big open tubs so that they could remind the citizens of what happened to transgressors.

"And the streets ran with sewage, Ms. Gulbirra. No wonder that those who had the money drenched themselves with perfume."

"I thought it was because you seldom bathed then."

"True," the Frenchman said. "I mean, true that we did not bathe often. It was thought to be unhealthy, un-Christian. But one can get used to the stench of unwashed bodies. I was not often aware of it since I was, as you might say, immersed in it, as unconscious of it as a fish is of water. But here, helas! Where so few clothes are worn and where ru

"You can't mean Sam Clemens' wife?"

"But yes. Though of course that meant nothing to me when I first met her and still does not. I understood that he was the great writer of the New World-she told me much about what happened since I had died on Earth-but I do not think much about it. And then Olivia and I wandered down The River and suddenly we were confronted with that classical situation which so many people dread. We met the former, the Terrestrial, spouse, of one's hut mate.

"By then, though I was still fond of her, my passion had cooled off. Each of us did so many things to a

"Livy and I were far up The River when I heard about the boat that was being built. I had heard of the meteorite that fell here, but I did not know that it was Sam Clemens who had seized the meteorite. I wanted to be one of the crew, and especially I wanted to feel a steel rapier in my hand again.

"And so, my dear Ms. Gulbirra, we came to this place. The shock was powerful indeed for Sam. I felt sorry for him, for a while, and regretted having forced this reunion that was not a reunion. Olivia showed no inclination to leave me for Clemens even though our passion was not quite what it had been. She did feel guilt about not feeling love for him. This was all the stranger when it is considered that they were deeply in love on Earth.

"But there had been many frictions, deeply hidden hostilities. She said that when she was in her terminal illness she did not want to see him. This hurt him very much, but she could not help it. And why, I asked her, had she not cared to admit him into her sickroom? She replied that she did not know. Perhaps it was because their only son had died because of Sam's negligence. Criminal negligence, she called it, though she had never used, or even thought of, that word on Earth.

"I said that that was a long time ago and on another planet. Why did she still hold that fierce grievance within her breast? Did it matter now? Was not little ... I forget his name ..."

"Langdon," Jill said.

"... risen from the dead now? And she said, yes, but she would never see Langdon. He had died when he was two, and no one under five years of age at death had been resurrected. At least not here. Maybe on another world. In any event, even if he had been raised here, what chance would she have of ru

Jill gri

Cyrano gri