HARM

by Brian W Aldiss

  “Come on, rouse yourself, love! You’re a man, aren’t you? What’s this you’ve got here? Dearie, I could suck it! Just do me, will you? I’m dying for it. What harm can come of it?” She pulled him back against her, coaxing one of her ample breasts into his face, while rubbing her body against his.

  He felt himself getting interested. “Rather than argue…”

  “Ohhh, that’s more like it.” She opened her legs. “Much more like…ohhh, I’d forgotten…ohhh…”

  He gave in to his senses and entered her.

  And so the night passed, not unpleasantly.

  The repercussions of that night, however, proved difficult to deal with. When Fremant looked at Bellamia by daylight, he thought her old and frumpy, and wondered how he had enjoyed so greatly what they’d done. He felt himself tainted. And yet…He breathed in her teasing aromas. She herself was subtly changed. Her face was dreamy on the pillow, and held the beauty of satiety.

  “Oh, my sunny sugar stick…” she breathed. He loved her as a human being. He had yet properly to value closeness.

  Not only did he love Bellamia, he became something of her slave because of those lips that could not speak, that mouth without a tongue, which yet in its enfolding ecstasy met him in an exulted state of feeling. No sooner did he slide his hand down to touch its rough, hairy coating than the secret lure in all women cast its spell upon him, making him mindless with desire.

  In the following days, Bellamia did her hair differently. She seemed to tread more lightly. She wore a mysterious smile. He knew from her embrace how womanly she was. He felt again the pervasive healing power of a woman’s satisfaction. She had ceased her continuous chewing of the herb salack. She slept in his bed as a matter of course.

  She clung to him, even when he didn’t want it.

  He fended her off. “You make me feel human, dearest,” Bellamia said. “I somehow never felt this human before, never before.”

  “Don’t be silly!”

  “Can’t you say nothing more loving than that, you poor fool?”

  He thought she was right. He was a poor fool.

  “Is love a silliness?” She kissed him smackingly. “Then silliness is sub—surblime. Tell me again how we came to be on the starship. So little do I know…”

  Fremant confessed he did not know the scientific details. He said that the great ship, the New Worlds, had traveled for many years, at first through a wormhole and then at near-light speeds. In all that time, the starship was empty, empty of human life. Only a few androids worked on its decks, maintaining services.

  DNA patterns of many people were filed away in a vitaputer. There were also what were popularly known as “flesh banks,” which contained a slurry of stem cells, biochemicals, proteins, and fats. In the last few years of the long voyage, as the ship was decelerating on its approach to the Stygia sun, individual DNA codes were imprinted into the life-matter of the flesh banks. LPR made them alive again, reconstituted. Humans of various ages were produced, new-minted, and trained to be ready for landing on the new planet.

  “So I can’t really grasp it all, but I was right not to feel human,” Bellamia said. “Oh, kiss me again, do! Again a kiss…Let me linger, linger ever…”

  He kissed her. As he turned on his heel to go, he said, “We’re human right enough. We brought that from the planet Earth. What we did not bring were all the various organizations, the web of relationships which had been built up between groups of people and nations.”

  Bellamia called after him, “Where did you get all that wisdom? It explains a lot!”

  He could have admitted that he had heard Astaroth say those very words; but why give the bastard any credit?

  He had asked her why she was away so much. He felt he wanted her near him. Bellamia said she worked for a man who made clothes, a hermit who lived above the potter’s shop in the square.

  “What do you do there?” Fremant asked, with a touch of jealousy.

  “I make clothes, of course.”

  “Oh? What else?”

  She told him she had contrived a way to weave the wool of goats and sheep-things into a mat. She smiled proudly as she explained, but he was not really interested.

  While Fremant labored over his gun stocks in the forge, sweating in the heat of the fire, another fire burned within him, as he conjured up his intimacies with Bellamia.

  If the gunsmith noticed these subtle changes, he said nothing. He was a simple and closed man—for which Fremant was grateful.

  But more hostile eyes spied on the new intimacy and chose to mock.

  “You’re shagging that fat lump, aren’t you?” said Ragundy with a snicker.

  Fremant threw a punch at his face, but Ragundy dodged and struck back, landing a glancing blow. Fremant flung himself at the other, punching savagely. Ragundy coiled an arm about Fremant’s neck and they fell struggling to the ground, snarling and fighting.

  “Oh no!” cried Bellamia. “My darling, stop, you’ll get hurt!”

  They were outside, on rough ground. Utrersin came out from the forge with a tub of dirty water. He flung it over the two fighters.

  “No brawling! Get up, the pair of you!”

  They stood up, sheepish now.

  “You started it,” said Ragundy, with a sulky glare at his opponent.

  “Never mind that,” said Utrersin sharply. His eyes gleamed below his overhanging hair. “Clear out, you!”—to Ragundy, who slouched away. “I know a troublemaker when I sees one.”

  He said to Fremant, “Get inside, you ruffian. There’s someone coming. Visitor.”

  He pointed into the distance.

  In the thin sunlight, about a mile distant, a horseman could be seen. Man and horse were moving slowly up an incline. Their figures were sometimes obscured by stubby trees. Yet they came on, steadily approaching Haven.

  “Get a gun, load it, stand ready,” said Utrersin.

  “There’s only one of them. Could be it’s another of those mirages.”

  The smith repeated the order. “Get a gun, load it, stand ready.”

  Fremant did as he was told.

  Bellamia had been standing by. “A woman’s never wanted. It’s a man’s world, I fear, a man’s world. But I love you so, dear Free. You’ve changed my life. You’ll get yourself hurt, that much I know, and then I’ll die. Absolutely die!”

  He gave her an affectionate glance. “Quiet, my dear. It’s all right.”

  “Oh no, it’s not all right, not at all all right.”

  Utrersin was looking over the sights of the gun at the approaching horseman.

  “Bluggeration!” he exclaimed. “It’s a woman!”

  Bellamia clutched Fremant’s bare arm, sinking her nails into his flesh. “Damn her—she’s coming for you, you rat!” Tears stood in her eyes.

  Now the rider and her steed were on level ground and moving faster. This was no illusion. The woman had a scarf over the lower part of her face as a protection against dust. Fremant could not recognize her; nevertheless, he had a guess as to who it might be. He breathed faster, with a mixture of excitement and unease.

  “Put your gun down,” he told Utrersin. Shaking off Bellamia’s hold on him, he went forward to meet the rider. Bellamia lumbered off and climbed the steps to their room.

  As he suspected, it was Aster, Aster riding a black horse. She entered Haven at a canter. After bringing her mare to a halt, she dismounted, patted the creature, then clutched Fremant’s hand.

  Although she was out of breath, she began talking rapidly, gazing into his eyes. Her hood and veil had been abandoned.

  “I hope you are half as glad to see me as I am to see you. I dreamed one night you were dead, and took it as an omen. I feared for you as I feared for myself. Everything has gone wrong.”

  “Aster, why are you here?”

  Without answering him directly, she continued: “Things are very bad in the city, and getting worse day by day. There’s bound to be an uprising. The Clandestines, various factions…Amee
thira is dead. People got to hear of it. Astaroth beat her to death in an insane rage. I was imprisoned. One of the guards helped me escape—”

  “Hold on!” said Fremant. “I can see you are exhausted, Aster. Come inside and sit down. Wellmod will look after your steed.”

  Meanwhile, Bellamia was coming down their steps, wearing a colorful garment over her shoulders.

  Aster took a closer look at Fremant, waving her hands in gestures of rejection.

  “You’re ill. Filthy. What’s happened to you?”

  “Never mind that. I have been in a fight.”

  She threw up her hands. “Ever violent…The guard was young and kind. I gave myself to him. When I found Ameethira was dead, I cried and cried. She may really have been my mother for all I know…”

  Aster took Fremant’s arm and, chattering on, began to walk with him toward the cottage. But Bellamia seized her other arm and stopped her. The older woman’s face was pale. She loomed over the new visitor.

  “You cannot come here and possess him,” she said. “We are of different generations, but I cleave to this man. He means much to me. You must understand that clearly.”

  Aster was disconcerted, as she was meant to be—not least by the colorful woven garment Bellamia wore draped over her shoulders. Bellamia had woven it herself from the wool of goats, and dyed it.

  “But—” began Aster.

  “Oh, look here—” began Fremant.

  But Bellamia was speaking. “It’s a sorry place, this Haven is. Those of us of the older generation, who were made up in the ship’s factories—PR’d, did they call it?—none of us have any relatives. Old and lonely, we are. No family. No relations—no sisters, mothers, daughters, brothers, fathers. No parents, imagine! So we cling like to a straw to what—to who we love. You can’t come over here and just take him from me!”

  She glanced at Fremant to see if she had his support. He gave no sign.

  Suddenly weary, Aster faced her. She spoke without rancor. “Let me tell you this, woman—there’s no great—what’s the word?—there’s often pain in having relations. No one would wish for a father such as I have had. He has wounded my life. That’s why I need Fremant—brute though he has been to me, in the past now gone.”

  “Oh, Jupers!” exclaimed Fremant. “Must we be at odds? What is it? Can’t you two women be friendly? The miseries of life—the miseries—” He could not find the words.

  “There’s a room over the pottery where you can sleep,” Bellamia told Aster. “You will be safe there. The potter man’s not much of a male.”

  Clouds meanwhile had begun to gather. A heavy rain started to fall.

  “Come inside, all of you!” bellowed Utrersin. “You’ll drown standing there.”

  ASTER WASHED AND RESTED. Finally, when she had eaten some bread and a shred of meat, she spoke of what was happening in Stygia City. Fremant and Bellamia sat and listened, with Utrersin and Wellmod restless in the background.

  First Aster spoke of the uprising of the Clandestines under Habander. Under cover of Dimoff, they had assembled outside the Center, had killed two guards and set fire to the building. A new Clandestine leader—Habander having been deposed—had led a contingent into the offices. His party was armed with swords. They met opposition and a desperate struggle took place on the stairs and an upper landing. The leader was badly wounded before the opposing force was overcome. Astaroth, meanwhile, made his escape from the burning building by way of a back stair. He had not been seen since. A search was in progress when Aster escaped and made for Haven.

  Essanits had taken charge and was trying to bring order back to the city as Aster left.

  “As you know, I had little respect for the Clandestines,” said Fremant. “What caused them to act so boldly?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you!” said Aster, flapping her hands. “This is really the most important thing: A message came by light-drone from Earth. Seems things are better there now, at last. I mean, things are less unlawful, I think. The Earth government—it, what?—oh, it rejects the philosophy of the WAA. That’s the philosophy which guided it for so long.”

  Fremant was listening with interest, while taking in Aster’s body language. She spoke hurriedly, continually waving her hands. Those hands waved uselessly before her, stressing no points, illustrating nothing, a mere nervous gesturing. “Her fluttering emotional life,” he thought to himself.

  Aster continued: “According to this message, Earth government now claims that the wiping out of the Dogovers on Stygia was illegal. Not lawful. It is pronounced to be—what is that word they used? Juice? Cider? No, got it—genocide.” The hands fluttered like captive doves. “Under Astaroth, my father, as you know, under him genocide was committed. So he had to be arrested. But he has disappeared. Disappeared. No one knows where to…”

  “How could a message come from Earth?” asked Utrersin, the gunsmith. “That’s all bunkum.”

  “It’s true, it may have been a forgery. Why was it sent to the Clandestine group?” Aster asked.

  Fremant commented, “You remember Captain Calex on the ship? A good man. Some said he was a cyborg or an android. He wished Stygia to be a peaceful and happy planet—unlike the hellhole it has become. As bad as Earth…”

  The others discussed the new turn of events for a while.

  “This could mean better times for all,” said Bellamia.

  Fremant said, “But now Essanits is in command? Essanits was the leader who finished off the last of the Dogovers. Why isn’t he under arrest—him and all his men?”

  Aster said, “Unless the situation has changed since I left, Essanits was pardoned because he has become very holy. He confessed his sins and has vowed to make a rest—no, arrest—no, a restitution.”

  Utrersin butted in. “What’s that word mean? Never heard it before. Will it bring back to life all the Dogovers we killed?”

  WORD SOON SPREAD THROUGH HAVEN that the harsh regime in Stygia City had collapsed. With Essanits in command, conditions would undoubtedly improve everywhere. Celebrations began. Women started to dance in the little square, and one of them sang a song of rejoicing.

  Cry no more, ladies, no reason to mourn!

  Cry no more, ladies, a new day will dawn.

  Liddley did not dance or sing. She stood apart, arms akimbo. Fremant stared at her with some remorse. She had no child at her breast. Evidently the baby with the fixed and dreadful grin he had seen her nursing had died.

  A rumor circulated that Essanits would soon return to Haven, and some even said that he would bring with him more men to work in the fields.

  Elder Deselden appeared, walking with a staff and escorted by two imposing young men. He cried out, stopping the dancing and singing.

  “Be ashamed, all of you! There is no cause for rejoicing. Violence has broken out in the city, good men have died. Now Essanits is in control, we hear. One bad man has gone and another has taken his place—that’s all. Do you not remember that when Essanits was here he preached a poisonous creed? Let us hope and pray he never comes back and leaves us in peace! Return to your homes, good people.”

  So the day’s routine was resumed, a struggle for many, who perforce went into the fields, bending their backs, straining their sinews. Old men died. Babies cried to be fed. Rain came down. The six fragmentary Brothers streamed overhead through the night, going somewhere, getting nowhere.

  Fremant still lay with Bellamia. He felt her smooth skin and the contrasting rough texture of her woven shawl.

  “It reminds me of something.”

  “What can it remind you of?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell…Something we’ve lost.”

  She would have none of it. “Be grateful for what you’ve got. You’ve got me.”

  One man brought in the skull of a dog-thing. His spade had struck it, together with another skull in less good condition.

  Some looked at the skull with idle interest, not inquiring. Some went out to the laborers’ field and found there a verit
able cemetery choked with dog-thing skeletons which a recent flood had revealed. These were the remains of exoskeletons, punctuated here and there by small oblong holes along their sides.

  “Them Dogovers was mighty fond of their old dogs, I’d say,” said a gatherer. His remark was received by the others as significant. Work had to go on. No more inquiry was made. The skeletons were broken up.

  Then came a wondrous day when a pervasive humming was heard.

  Nobody was keen on new things. They looked to the sky in dread. A flimsy bird made of canvas and string and wire circled high above the roofs of Haven, uttering its throaty noise.

  Workers in the fields straightened their backs to gaze upward. In wonder, men who had never left their village since they left their ship gazed upward. Small boys minding goats shielded their eyes and gazed upward. Utrersin left his forge and gazed upward.

  “This can’t be good,” he muttered.

  The strange machine came lower. So low that the wind could be heard whistling in the wires, above the engine noise. The watchers on the ground could plainly see a man, a pilot, crouching in the wooden body, and propellers front and back, moving the artificial bird through the air. Now the bird was near to land, no longer rushing, seeming almost to hesitate before descending to a stretch of level ground. There it ran a little way, slowing, and the onlooking boys began to cheer and run toward the strange machine—when it struck a boulder and overturned. Almost gracefully, the canvas wings arced above the body, hit the ground, and folded, while the tail and body seemed to disintegrate and fell into the field.

  A roar rose from the villagers. Now they had a part to play in the drama and ran to the wreckage to see what had happened to its pilot.

  Fremant was among those who discovered the body sprawled in the long grass below a section of crumpled canvas. He helped to drag the man free.

  “He’s dead!” the cry went up. Together with “He’s black!”—this in a different key.

  They carried him to the nearest cottage, laying him reverently in the shade under the steps. Whereupon he sighed, gulped, and sat up. Women in the crowd clapped. Some cried.