Surprisingly she said, “Oh dear. Moonrise.”
Smith did not know why, but for the first time since he had come to the rock, he felt cold. He looked unhappily seaward. A ragged, wistful, handled phrase blew by his consciousness: save her from herself. It made him feel unaccountably noble.
She said faintly, “Are you... have you... I mean, if you don’t mind my asking, you don’t have to tell me...”
“What is it?” he asked gently, moving close to her. She was huddled unhappily on the edge of the shelf. She didn’t turn to him, but she didn’t move away.
“Married, or anything?” she whispered.
“Oh gosh no. Never. I suppose I had hopes once or twice, but no, oh gosh no.”
“Why not?”
“I never met a... well, they all... You remember what I said about a touch of strange?”
“Yes, yes...”
“Nobody had it... Then I got it, and... put it this way, I never met a girl I could tell about the mermaid.”
The remark stretched itself and lay down comfortably across their laps, warm and increasingly audible, while they sat and regarded it. When he was used to it, he bent his head and turned his face toward where he imagined hers must be, hoping for some glint of expression. He found his lips resting on hers. Not pressing, not cowering. He was still, at first from astonishment, and then in bliss. She sat up straight with her arms braced behind her and her eyes wide until his mouth slid away from hers. It was a very gentle thing.
Mermaids love to kiss. They think it excruciatingly funny. So Smith knew what it was like to kiss one. He was thinking about that while his lips lay still and sweetly on those of Jane Dow. He was thinking that the mermaid’s lips were not only cold, but dry and not completely flexible, like the carapace of a soft-shell crab. The mermaid’s tongue, suited to the eviction of whelk and the scything of kelp, could draw blood. (It never had, but it could.) And her breath smelt of fish.
He said, when he could, “What were you thinking?”
She answered, but he could not hear her.
“What?”
She murmured into his shoulder, “His teeth all point inwards.”
Aha, he thought.
“John,” she said suddenly, desperately, “there’s one thing you must know now and forever more. I know just how things were between you and her, but what you have to understand is that it wasn’t the same with me. I want you to know the truth right from the very beginning, and now we don’t need to wonder about it or talk about it ever again.”
“Oh you’re fine,” John Smith choked. “So fine... Let’s go. Let’s get out of here before—before moonrise.”
Strange how she fell into the wrong and would never know it (for they never discussed it again), and forgave him and drew from that a mightiness; for had she not defeated the most lawless, the loveliest of rivals?
Strange how he fell into the wrong and forgave her, and drew from his forgiveness a lasting pride and a deep certainty of her eternal gratitude.
Strange how the moon had risen long before they left, yet the mermaid and the merman never came at all, feeling things as they strangely do.
And John swam in the dark sea slowly, solicitous, and Jane swam, and they separated on the dark beach and dressed, and met again at John’s car, and went to the lights where they saw each other at last; and when it was time, they fell well and truly in love, and surely that is the strangest touch of all.
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Eastward Ho! - William Tenn
Of all the contributors to this book, William Tenn is the only one who also worked on the magazine’s in-house staff—he was our assistant editor in the late 1950s, during which time he gave valuable guidance to his friend and neighbor, Dan Keyes (but that’s another tale for another time—oh, OK, if you must know, look it up in our May 2000 issue). Mr. Tenn—whose real name is Philip Klass—published dozens of short stories, mostly in the 1940s through the ’60s, after which he focused on a career in academia. “Eastward Ho!” is a great example of his imaginative storytelling and his love of history and extrapolation.
The New Jersey Turnpike had been hard on the horses. South of New Brunswick the potholes had been so deep, the scattered boulders so plentiful, that the two men had been forced to move at a slow trot, to avoid crippling their three precious animals. And, of course, this far south, farms were nonexistent: they had been able to eat nothing but the dried provisions in the saddlebags, and last night they had slept in a roadside service station, suspending their hammocks between the tilted, rusty gas pumps.
But it was still the best, the most direct route, Jerry Franklin knew. The Turnpike was a government road: its rubble was cleared semiannually. They had made excellent time and come through without even developing a limp in the pack horse. As they swung out on the last lap, past the riven tree stump with the words TRENTON EXIT carved on its side, Jerry relaxed a bit. His father, his father’s colleagues, would be proud of him. And he was proud of himself.
But the next moment, he was alert again. He roweled his horse, moved up alongside his companion, a young man of his own age.
“Protocol,”. he reminded. “I’m the leader here. You know better than to ride ahead of me this close to Trenton.”
He hated to pull rank. But facts were facts, and if a subordinate got above himself he was asking to be set down. After all, he was the son—and the oldest son, at that—of the Senator from Idaho; Sam Rutherford’s father was a mere Undersecretary of State and Sam’s mother’s family was pure post office clerk all the way back.
Sam nodded apologetically and reined his horse back the proper couple of feet. “Thought I saw something odd,” he explained. “Looked like an advance party on the side of the road—and I could have sworn they were wearing buffalo robes.”
“Seminole don’t wear buffalo robes, Sammy. Don’t you remember your sophomore political science?”
“I never had any political science, Mr. Franklin: I was an engineering major. Digging around in ruins has always been my dish. But, from the little I know, I didn’t think buffalo robes went with the Seminole. That’s why I was—”
“Concentrate on the pack horse,” Jerry advised. “Negotiations are my job.”
As he said this, he was unable to refrain from touching the pouch upon his breast with rippling fingertips. Inside it was his commission, carefully typed on one of the last precious sheets of official government stationery (and it was not one whit less official because the reverse side had been used years ago as a scribbled interoffice memo) and signed by the President himself. In ink!
The existence of such documents was important to a man in later life. He would have to hand it over, in all probability, during the conferences, but the commission to which it attested would be on file in the capitol up north. And, when his father died, and he took over one of the two hallowed Idaho seats, it would give him enough stature to make an attempt at membership on the Appropriations Committee. Or, for that matter, why not go the whole hog— the Rules Committee itself? No Senator Franklin had ever been a member of the Rules Committee....
The two envoys knew they were on the outskirts of Trenton when they passed the first gangs of Jerseyites working to clear the road. Frightened faces glanced at them briefly, and quickly bent again to work. The gangs were working without any visible supervision. Evidently the Seminole felt that simple instructions were sufficient.
But as they rode into the blocks of neat ruins that were the city proper and still came across nobody more important than white men, another explanation began to occur to Jerry Franklin. This all had the look of a town still at war, but where were the combatants? Almost certainly on the other side of Trenton, defending the Delaware River—that was the direction from which the new rulers of Trenton might fear attack—not from the north where there was only the United States of America.
But if that were so, who in the world could they be defending against? Across the Delaware to the south there was nothing but m
ore Seminole. Was it possible—was it possible that the Seminole had at last fallen to fighting among themselves?
Or was it possible that Sam Rutherford had been right? Fantastic. Buffalo robes in Trenton! There should be no buffalo robes closer than a hundred miles westward, in Harrisburg.
But when they turned onto State Street, Jerry bit his lip in chagrin. Sam had seen correctly, which made him one up.
Scattered over the wide lawn of the gutted state capitol were dozens of wigwams. And the tall, dark men who sat impassively, or strode proudly among the wigwams, all wore buffalo robes. There was no need even to associate the paint on their faces with a remembered lecture in political science: these were Sioux.
So the information that had come drifting up to the government about the identity of the invader was totally inaccurate—as usual. Well, you couldn’t expect communication miracles over this long a distance. But that inaccuracy made things difficult. It might invalidate his commission for one thing: his commission was addressed directly to Osceola VII, Ruler of All the Seminoles. And if Sam Rutherford thought this gave him a right to preen himself—
He looked back dangerously. No, Sam would give no trouble. Sam knew better than to dare an I-told-you-so. At his leader’s look, the son of the Undersecretary of State dropped his eyes groundwards to immediate humility.
Satisfied, Jerry searched his memory for relevant data on recent political relationships with the Sioux. He couldn’t recall much—just the provisions of the last two or three treaties. It would have to do.
He drew up before an important-looking warrior and carefully dismounted. You might get away with talking to a Seminole while mounted, but not the Sioux. The Sioux were very tender on matters of protocol with white men.
“We come in peace,” he said to the warrior standing as impassively straight as the spear he held, as stiff and hard as the rifle on his back. “We come with a message of importance and many gifts to your chief. We come from New York, the home of our chief.” He thought a moment, then added: “You know, the Great White Father?”
Immediately, he was sorry for the addition. The warrior chuckled briefly; his eyes lit up with a lightning-stroke of mirth. Then his face was expressionless again, and serenely dignified as befitted a man who had counted coup many times.
“Yes,” he said. “I have heard of him. Who has not heard of the wealth and power and far dominions of the Great White Father? Come. I will take you to our chief. Walk behind me, white man.”
Jerry motioned Sam Rutherford to wait.
At the entrance to a large, expensively decorated tent, the Indian stood aside and casually indicated that Jerry should enter.
It was dim inside, but the illumination was rich enough to take Jerry’s breath away. Oil lamps! Three of them! These people lived well.
A century ago, before the whole world had gone smash in the last big war, his people had owned plenty of oil lamps themselves. Better than oil lamps, perhaps, if one could believe the stories the engineers told around the evening fires. Such stories were pleasant to hear, but they were glories of the distant past. Like the stories of overflowing granaries and chock-full supermarkets, they made you proud of the history of your people, but they did nothing for you now. They made your mouth water, but they didn’t feed you.
The Indians whose tribal organization had been the first to adjust to the new conditions, in the all-important present, the Indians had the granaries, the Indians had the oil lamps. And the Indians...
There were two nervous white men serving food to the group squatting on the floor. An old man, the chief, with a carved, chunky body. Three warriors, one of them surprisingly young for council. And a middle-aged Negro, wearing the same bound-on rags as Franklin, except that they looked a little newer, a little cleaner.
Jerry bowed low before the chief, spreading his arms apart, palms down.
“I come from New York, from our chief,” he mumbled. In spite of himself, he was more than a little frightened. He wished he knew their names so that he could relate them to specific events. Although he knew what their names would be like—approximately. The Sioux, the Seminole, all the Indian tribes renascent in power and numbers, all bore names garlanded with anachronism. That queer mixture of several levels of the past, overlaid always with the cocky, expanding present. Like the rifles and the spears, one for the reality of fighting, the other for the symbol that was more important than reality. Like the use of wigwams on campaign, when, according to the rumors that drifted smokily across country, their slave artisans could now build the meanest Indian noble a damp-free, draft-proof dwelling such as the President of the United States, lying on his special straw pallet, did not dream about. Like paint-spattered faces peering through newly reinvented, crude microscopes. What had microscopes been like? Jerry tried to remember the Engineering Survey Course he’d taken in his freshman year—and drew a blank. All the same, the Indians were so queer, and so awesome. Sometimes you thought that destiny had meant them to be conquerors, with a conqueror’s careless inconsistency. Sometimes...
He noticed that they were waiting for him to continue. “From our chief,” he repeated hurriedly. “I come with a message of importance and many gifts.”
“Eat with us,” the old man said. “Then you will give us your gifts and your message.”
Gratefully, Jerry squatted on the ground a short distance from them. He was hungry, and among the fruit in the bowls he had seen something that must be an orange. He had heard so many arguments about what oranges tasted like!
After a while, the old man said, “I am Chief Three Hydrogen Bombs. This”—pointing to the young man— “is my son, Makes Much Radiation. And this”—pointing to the middle-aged Negro— “is a sort of compatriot of yours.”
At Jerry’s questioning look, and the chiefs raised finger of permission, the Negro explained. “Sylvester Thomas. Ambassador to the Sioux from the Confederate States of America.”
“The Confederacy? She’s still alive? We heard ten years ago—”
“The Confederacy is very much alive, sir. The Western Confederacy, that is, with its capitol at Jackson, Mississippi. The Eastern Confederacy, the one centered at Richmond, Virginia, did go down under the Seminole. We have been more fortunate. The Arapahoe, the Cheyenne, and”—with a nod to the chief—” especially the Sioux, if I may say so, sir, have been very kind to us. They allow us to live in peace, so long as we till the soil quietly and pay our tithes.”
“Then would you know, Mr. Thomas—” Jerry began eagerly. “That is... the Lone Star Republic—Texas—Is it possible that Texas, too... ?”
Mr. Thomas looked at the door of the wigwam unhappily. “Alas, my good sir, the Republic of the Lone Star Flag fell before the Kiowa and the Comanche long years ago when I was still a small boy. I don’t remember the exact date, but I do know it was before even the last of California was annexed by the Apache and the Navajo, and well before the nation of the Mormons under the august leadership of—”
Makes Much Radiation shifted his shoulders back and forth and flexed his arm muscles. “All this talk,” he growled. “Paleface talk. Makes me tired.”
“Mr. Thomas is not a paleface,” his father told him sharply. “Show respect! He’s our guest and an accredited ambassador—you’re not to use a word like paleface in his presence!”
One of the other, older warriors near the chief spoke up. “In the old days, in the days of the heroes, a boy of Makes Much Radiation’s age would not dare raise his voice in council before his father. Certainly not to say the things he just has. I cite as reference, for those interested, Robert Lowie’s definitive volume, The Crow Indians, and Lesser’s fine piece of anthropological insight, Three Types of Siouan Kinship. Now, whereas we have not yet been able to reconstruct a Siouan kinship pattern on the classic model described by Lesser, we have developed a working arrangement that—”
“The trouble with you, Bright Book Jacket,” the warrior on his left broke in, “is that you’re too much of a classi
cist. You’re always trying to live in the Golden Age instead of the present, and a Golden Age that really has little to do with the Sioux. Oh, I’ll admit that we’re as much Dakotan as the Crow, from the linguist’s point of view at any rate, and that, superficially, what applies to the Crow should apply to us. But what happens when we quote Lowie in so many words and try to bring his precepts into daily life?”
“Enough,” the chief announced. “Enough, Hangs A Tale. And you, too, Bright Book Jacket—enough, enough! These are private tribal matters. Though they do serve to remind us that the paleface was once great before he became sick and corrupt and frightened. These men whose holy books teach us the lost art of living like Sioux, men like Lesser, men like Robert H. Lowie, were not these men palefaces? And in memory of them should we not show tolerance?”
“A-ah!” said Makes Much Radiation impatiently. “As far as I’m concerned, the only good palefaces are dead. And that’s that.” He thought a bit. “Except their women. Paleface women are fun when you’re a long way from home and feel like raising a little hell.”
Chief Three Hydrogen Bombs glared his son into silence. Then he turned to Jerry Franklin. “Your message and your gifts. First your message.”
“No, Chief,” Bright Book Jacket told him respectfully but definitely. “First the gifts. Then the message. That’s the way it was done.”
“I’ll have to get them. Be right back.” Jerry walked out of the tent backwards and ran to where Sam Rutherford had tethered the horses. “The presents,” he said urgently. “The presents for the chief.”
The two of them tore at the pack straps. With his arms loaded, Jerry returned through the warriors who had assembled to watch their activity with quiet arrogance. He entered the tent, set the gifts on the ground and bowed low again.
“Bright beads for the chief,” he said, handing over two star sapphires and a large white diamond, the best that the engineers had evacuated from the ruins of New York in the past ten years.
The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 1 Page 6
