Skylark DuQuesne

“Oh? Right away, Tamm,” and in about half a minute a young woman came striding in.

DuQuesne stared, for she was a living shield-maiden — a veritable Valkyrie of flesh and blood. If she had had wings and if her pale blonde hair had been flying loose instead of being piled high on her head in thick, heavy braids, DuQuesne thought, she could have stepped right out of Wagenhorst’s immortal painting Ragnarok.

Tammon introduced them. “Seeker Sevance of Xylmny, Savant Se

“I’m happy that we are to become friends,” the girl said, in English, extending her hands. DuQuesne took them, bowed over them; and said, “May our friendship ripen and deepen.”

She examined him minutely, from the top of his head down to his toenails, in silence; then, turning to Tammon, she uttered a long sentence of which DuQuesne could not understand a word.

“You should speak English, my dear,” Tammon said. “It is inurbane to exclude a guest from a conversation concerning him.”

“It is twice as inurbane,” she countered in English, “to insult a guest, even by implication, who does not deserve it.”

“That is true,” Tammon agreed, “but I have studied him to some little depth and it is virtually certain that the matter lies in your province rather than mine. The decision is, of course, yours. Caps-on with him, please, and decide.”

She do

Eyes sparkling, she tossed both helmets onto a bench and seized both his hands in a grip very different from the casual clasp she had used a few minutes before. “I am glad — very, very glad, friend Seeker Sevance, that we are friends!”

Although DuQuesne was amazed at this remarkable change, he played up. He bowed over her hands and, this time, kissed each of them. “I think you, Lady Se

She returned his smile as warmly. Neither of them was paying any attention at all to anyone else in the room. “And I accept your invitation with joyous thanks. We go out that mine call me Se

They walked slowly toward the indicated exit; side by side and so close together that hip touched hip at almost every step. In the corridor, however, Se

“I do indeed. I would not have suggested it but I’m very much in favor of it.”

“Splendid! We’ll go to my room first, then. This way,” and she steered him into and along, a corridor whose blankly featureless walls were opaque instead of transparent.

Was this his cue? DuQuesne wondered. No, he decided. She wasn’t the type to rush things. She was civilized… more so than he was. If he didn’t play it just about right with this girl, who was very evidently a big wheel, she could and very probably would queer his whole deal.

As they strolled along DuQuesne saw that the walls were not quite featureless. At about head height, every twentyfive feet or so, there was inset a disk of optical plastic perhaps an inch in diameter. Stopping, and turning to face one of these disks, Se

There was an almost inaudible hiss of compressed air and a micrometrically fitted door — a good seven feet high and three feet wide — moved an inch out into the hall and slid smoothly aside upon tracks that certainly had not been there an instant before.

DuQuesne never did find out how the thing worked. He was too busy staring into the room and watching and hearing what the girl was doing and saying.

She stepped back a half-step, bowed gracefully from the waist, and with a sweeping gesture of both hands invited him to precede her into the room. She started to say something in her own language — Allondaxian — but after a couple of words changed effortlessly to English. “Friend Seeker Sevance, it is in earnest of our friendship that I welcome you into the privacy of my home” — and her ma

And DuQuesne felt it; felt it so strongly that he did not bluff or coin a responsive phrase.

Instead: “Thank you, Lady Se

Inside the room, DuQuesne stared. He had wondered what this girl’s private quarters would be like. She was a master scientist, true. But she was warmly human, not bookishly aloof. And what would seventy thousand years of evolution do to feminine vanity? Especially to a vanity that apparently had never been afflicted by false modesty? Or by any sexual taboos?

The furniture — heavy, solid, plain, and built of what looked like golden oak — looked ordinary and utilitarian enough. Much of it was designed for, and was completely filled with and devoted to, the tools and equipment and tapes and sca

Three of the walls were ordinary enough. DuQuesne scarcely glanced at them because of the fourth, which was a single canvas eight feet high and over thirty feet long. One painting. What a painting! A painting of life itself; a painting that seemed actually to writhe and to crawl and to vibrate with the very essence of life itself!

One-celled life, striving fiercely upward in the primordial sea toward the light. Fiercely striving young fishes, walking determinedly ashore on their fins. Striving young mammals developing tails and climbing up into trees — losing tails, with the development of true thumbs, and coming down to earth again out of the trees — the ever-enlarging brain resulting in the appearance of true man. And finally, the development and the progress and the history of man himself.

And every being, from unicell to man, was striving with all its might upward; toward THE LIGHT. Upward! Upward!! UPWARD!!!

At almost the end of that heart-stopping painting there was a portrait of Se

Beyond those two climactic figures the painting became a pure abstract of form and of line and color; an abstract, however, that was crammed full of invisible but very apparent question marks. It asked more, it demanded and it yelled — “What is coming next?”

DuQuesne, who had been holding his breath, let it out and breathed deeply. “And you painted that yourself,” he marveled. “Milady Se

She blushed to the breasts. “Thanks, friend Vance. I’m very glad you like it: I was sure you would.”

“It’s so terrific that words fail,” he said, and meant. Then, nodding at the portrait, he went on, “Your husband?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. He has not the genes the Llurdi wish to propagate, so we could not marry and he had to stay on Allondax instead of becoming one of this group.