The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage

by Philip José Farmer

  ‘You must have noticed during your intercourse with her, for I’m sure she insisted you keep your eyes open, that her pupils contracted to a pinpoint. That contraction was an involuntary reflex which would narrow her field of vision to your face. Why? So the photokinetic nerves could receive data from only your face. Thus, the information about the specific color of your hair could be passed on to the bank of photogenes. We don’t know the exact manner in which the photokinetic nerves transmit this data. But they do it.

  ‘Your hair is auburn. Somehow, this information becomes known to the bank. The bank then rejects the other genes controlling other colors of hair. The ‘auburn’ gene is duplicated and attached to the zygote’s genetic makeup. And so with the other genes that fix the other features of the face-to-be. The shape of the nose—modified to be feminine—is selected by choosing the correct combination of genes in the bank. This is duplicated, and the duplicates are then incorporated into the zygote—’

  ‘You hear that?’ shouted Macneff in an exultant voice. ‘You have begat larvae! Monsters of an unholy unreal union! Insect children! And they will have your face as witness of this revolting carnality—’

  ‘Of course, I am no connoisseur of human features, Fobo interrupted. ‘But the young man’s strike me as vigorous and handsome. lira human way, you understand.’

  He turned to Hal. ‘Now you see why Jeannette desired light. And why she pretended alcoholism. As long as she had enough liquor before copulation, the photokinetic nerve—very susceptible to alcohol—would be anesthetized. Thus, orgasm but-no pregnancy. No death from the life within her. But when you diluted the beetlejuice with Easyglow … unknowing, of course—’

  Macneff burst into a high-pitched laughter. ‘What irony! Truly it has been said that the wages of unrealism are death!’

  20

  Fobo spoke loudly. ‘Go ahead, Hal. Cry, if you like. You’ll feel better. You can’t, eh? I wish you could.

  ‘Very well, I continue. The lalitha, no matter how human she looks, cannot escape her arthropod heritage. The nymphs that develop from the larvae can easily pass for babies, but it would pain you to see the larvae themselves. Though they are not any uglier than a five months’ human embryo. Not to me, anyway.

  ‘It is a sad thing that the lalitha mother must die. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when a primitive pseudoarthropod was ready to hatch the eggs in her womb, a hormone was released in her body. It calcified the skin and turned her into a womb-tomb. She became a shell. Her larvae ate the organs and the bones, which were softened by the draining away of their calcium. When the young had fulfilled the function of the larva, which is to eat and grow, they rested and became nymphs. Then they broke the shell in its weak place in the belly.

  ‘That weak point is the navel. It alone does not calcify with the epidermis but remains soft. By the time the nymphs are ready to come out, the soft flesh of the navel has decayed. Its dissolution lets loose a chemical which decalcifies an area that takes in most of the abdomen. The nymphs, though weak as human babies and much smaller, are activated by instinct to kick out the thin and brittle covering.

  ‘You must understand, Hal, that the navel itself is both functional and mimetic. Since the larvae are not connected to the mother by an umbilical cord, they would have no navel. But they grow an excrescence that resembles one.

  ‘The breasts of the adult also have two functions. Like the human female’s, they are both sexual and reproductive. They never produce milk, of course, but they are glands. At the time the larvae are ready to hatch from the eggs, the breasts act as two powerful pumps of the hormone which carries out the hardening of the skin.

  ‘Nothing wasted, you see—Nature’s economy. The things that enable her to survive in human society also carry out the death process.’

  ‘I can understand the need for photogenes in the humanoid stage of evolution,’ Hal said. ‘But when the lalitha were in the animal stage of evolution, why should they need to reproduce the characteristics of the father’s face? There isn’t much difference between the face of a male animal and a female animal of the same species.’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Fobo. ‘Perhaps, the prehuman lalitha did not utilize the photokinetic nerves. Perhaps, those nerves are an evolutionary adaptation of an existing structure which, had a different function. Or a vestigial function. There is some evidence that photo-kinesis was the means by which the lalitha changed her body to conform with the change in the human body as it passed up the evolutionary ladder. It seems reasonable to suppose that the lalitha needed such a biological device. If the photokinetic nerves were not involved, some other organ may have been. It is unfortunate that by the time we were advanced enough to scientifically study the lalitha, we had no specimens available. Finding Jeannette was pure luck. We did discover in her several organs whose functions remain a mystery to us. We need many of her kind for fruitful research.’

  ‘One more question,’ said Hal. ‘What if a lalitha had more than one lover? Whose features would her baby have?’

  ‘If a lalitha were raped by a gang, she would not have an orgasm because the negative emotions of fear and disgust would bar it. If she had more than one lover—and she weren’t drinking alcohol—she would reproduce young whose features would be those of the first lover. By the time she lay with her second lover—even if it were immediately afterward—the complete fertilization would have already been initiated.’

  Sorrowfully, Fobo shook his head.

  ‘It is a sad thing, but it has not changed in all these epochs. The mothers must give their lives for their young. Yet Nature, as a sort of recompense, has given them a gift. On the analogy of reptiles, which, it is said, do not stop growing larger as long as they are alive, the lalitha will not die if they remain unpregnant. And so—’

  Hal leaped to his feet and shouted, ‘Stop it!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Fobo said softly. ‘I’m just trying to make you see why Jeannette felt that she couldn’t tell you what she truly was. She must have loved you, Hal. She possessed the three factors that make love: a genuine passion, a deep affection, and the feeling of being one flesh with you, male and female so inseparable it would be hard to tell where one began and the other ended. I know she did, believe me, for we empathists can put ourselves into somebody else’s nervous system and think and feel as they do.

  ‘Yet, Jeannette must have had a bitter leaven in her love. The belief that if you knew she was of an utterly alien branch of the animal kingdom, separated by millions of years of evolution, barred by her ancestry and anatomy from the true completion of marriage—children—you would turn from her with horror. That belief must have shot with darkness even her brightest moments—’

  ‘No! I would have loved her anyway! It might have been a shock. But I’d have gotten over it. Why, she was human; she was more human than any woman I’ve known!’

  Macneff sounded as if he were going to retch. When he had recovered himself, he howled, ‘You abysmal thing! How can you stand yourself now that you know what utterly filthy monster you have lain with! Why don’t you try to tear out your eyes, which have seen that vile filth! Why don’t you bite off your lips, which have kissed that insect mouth! Why don’t you cut off your hands, which have pawed with loathsome lust that mockery of a body! Why don’t you tear out by the roots those organs of carnal—’

  Fobo spoke through the storm of wrath. ‘Macneff! Macneff!’

  The gaunt head swiveled toward the empathist. His eyes stared, and his lips had drawn back into what seemed to be an impossibly large smile; a smile of absolute fury.

  ‘What? What?’ he muttered, like a man waking from sleep.

  ‘Macneff, I know your type well. Are you sure you weren’t planning on taking the lalitha alive and using her for your own sensual purposes? Doesn’t most of your fury and disgust result from being balked in your desires? After all, you’ve not had a woman for a year, and …’

  The Sandalphon’s jaw fell. Red flooded his face and became purp
le. The violent color faded, and a corpselike white replaced it.

  He screeched like an owl.

  ‘Enough] Uzzites, take this—this thing that calls itself a man to the gig!’

  The two men in black circled to come at the joat from front and back. Their approach was based on training, not caution. Years of taking prisoners had taught them to expect no resistance. The arrested always stood cowed and numb before the representatives of the Sturch. Now, despite the unusual circumstances and the knowledge that Hal carried a gun, they saw nothing different in him.

  He stood with bowed head and hunched shoulders and dangling arms, the typical arrestee.

  That was one second; the next, he was a tiger striking.

  The agent in front of him reeled back, blood flowing from his mouth and spilling on his black jacket. When he bumped into the wall, he paused to spit out teeth.

  By then, Yarrow had whirled and rammed a fist into the big soft belly of the man behind him.

  ‘Whoof!’ went the Uzzite.

  He folded. As he did so, Hal brought his knee up against the unguarded chin. There was a crack of bone breaking, and the agent fell to the floor.

  ‘Watch him!’ Macneff yelled. ‘He’s got a gun!’

  The Uzzite by the wall shoved his hand under his jacket, feeling for the weapon in his armpit holster. Simultaneously, a heavy bronze bookend, thrown by Fobo, struck his temple. He crumpled.

  Macneff screamed, ‘You are resisting, Yarrow! You are resisting!’

  Hal bellowed, ‘You’re damn shib I am!’

  Head down, he plunged at the Sandalphon.

  Macneff slashed with his whip at his attacker. The seven lashes wrapped themselves around Hal’s face, but he rammed into the purple-clad form and knocked it down on the floor.

  Macneff got to his knees; Hal, also on his knees, seized Macneff by the throat and squeezed.

  Macneff’s face turned blue, and he grabbed Hal’s wrists and tried to tear them away. But Hal squeezed harder.

  ‘You … can’t do … this!’ said Macneff, wheezing. ‘Can’t… impossi—’

  ‘I can! I can!’ screamed Hal. ‘I’ve always wanted to do this, Pornsen! I mean … Macneff!’

  At that moment, the floors shook, the windows rattled. Almost immediately, a tremendous boom blew in the windows. Glass flew; Hal was hurled to the floor.

  Outside, the night became day. Then, night again.

  Hal rose to his feet. Macneff lay on the floor, his hands feeling his neck.

  ‘What was that?’ Hal said to Fobo.

  Fobo went to the broken window and looked out. He was bleeding from a cut on his neck, but he did not seem to notice it.

  ‘It’s what I’ve been waiting for,’ Fobo said.

  He turned to face Hal.

  ‘From the moment the Gabriel landed, we’ve been digging under it, and-—’

  ‘Our sound-detection equipment—’

  ‘—caught the noise of the underground trains directly below the ship. But we dug only when the trains were moving through so the digging would be covered up. Normally, a train would go through the tunnels every ten minutes. But we routed them through every two minutes or so and made sure that they were long freight trains.

  ‘Only a few days ago we completed filling the hole under the Gabriel with gunpowder. Believe me, we all breathed easier after it was done, for we’d feared we might be heard despite our precautions or that our shorings might break under the great weight of the ship. Or that, for some reason, the captain might decide to move the ship.’

  ‘Then you blew it up?’ Hal said dazedly.

  Things were going too fast for him.

  ‘I doubt that. Even with the tons of explosives we set off, they could not damage too much a vessel built as solidly as the Gabriel. As a matter of fact, we did not wish to damage it, for we want to study it.

  ‘But our calculations showed that the shock waves going through the metal plates of the ship would kill every man in the ship.’

  Hal went to the window and looked out. Against the moon-bright sky was a pillar of smoke; soon, the entire city would be covered with it.

  ‘You had better get your men aboard at once,’ Hal said. ‘If the explosion only knocked out the officers on the bridge, and they regain consciousness before you reach them, they will press a button that will trigger an H-bomb.

  This will blow everything up for miles around. Its explosion will make your powder charge seem a baby’s breath. Far worse, it will release a deadly radioactivity that will kill millions more—if the winds go inland.’

  Fobo turned pale, though he tried to smile.

  ‘I imagine our soldiers are on board by now. But I’ll phone them just to make sure.’

  He returned after a minute. Now, he did not have to make an effort to smile.

  ‘Everyone on board the Gabriel died instantly, including the personnel on the bridge. I’ve told the captain of the boarding party not to tamper with any mechanisms or controls.’

  ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ Hal said.

  Fobo shrugged, and he said, ‘We are fairly peaceful. But, unlike you Terrans, we are really ‘realists.’ If we have to take action against vermin, we do our best to exterminate them. On this insect-ridden planet we have had a long history of battling killers.’

  He looked at Macneff, who was on all fours, eyes glazed, shaking his head like a wounded bear.

  Fobo said, ‘I do not include you in the vermin, Hal. You are free to go where you want, do what you want.’

  Hal sat down in a chair. He said, in a grief-husked voice, ‘I think that all my life I’ve wanted just that. Freedom to go where I wanted, do what I wanted. But, now, what is there left for me? I have no one—’

  ‘There is much for you, Hal,’ said Fobo. Tears ran down his nose and collected at the end.

  ‘You have your daughters to care for, to love. In a short time, they will be through with their feeding in the incubator—they survived the premature removal quite well—and will be beautiful babies. They will be yours as much as any human infants could be.

  ‘After all, they look like you—in a modified feminine way, of course. Your genes are theirs. What’s the difference whether genes act by cellular or photonic means?

  ‘Nor will you be without women. You forget that she has aunts and sisters. All young and beautiful. I’m sure that we can locate them.’

  Hal buried his face in his hands, and he said, ‘Thanks, Fobo, but that’s not for me.’

  ‘Not now,’ Fobo said softly. ‘But your grief will soften; you will think life worth living again.’

  Someone came into the room. Hal looked up to see a nurse.

  ‘Doctor Fobo, we are bringing the body out. Does the man care for one last look?’

  Hal shook his head. Fobo walked over to him and put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You look faint,’ he said. ‘Nurse, do you have some smelling salts?’

  Hal said, ‘No, I won’t need them.’

  Two nurses wheeled a carrier out. A white sheet was draped over the shell. Black hair cascaded from beneath the sheet and fell over the pillow.

  Hal did not rise. He sat in the chair, and he moaned, ‘Jeannette! Jeannette! If you had only loved me enough to tell me …’

  THE END

  Dark Is the Sun

  1

  Black was the sun; bright, the sky.

  Under the arc packed with dead and living stars, dark or blazing gas clouds and galaxies, on an Earth in which lay the bones or over which blew the dust of seven hundred and fifty-four million or so generations, Deyv walked towards his destiny.

  ‘Look for a mate and find a dragon’ was a proverb of the tribe.

  If you were a pessimist, it sounded ominous. If you were an optimist, it sounded rewarding. There were good dragons and there were evil. Or so Deyv understood. He’d never seen one.

  Like most people, Deyv’s attitude depended upon the circumstances. At the moment, he was scared and
so pessimistic.

  Deyv of the Red Egg walked away from the Turtle Tribe of the Upside-Down House. Towering behind him was the House, a cylinder three hundred feet in diameter, made of indestructible metal. Its red, green and white checked walls slanted slightly so that the round base, ten storeys above the ground, afforded an unimpeded view of the earth directly below. The conical tip was buried ten storeys deep. Once, according to what the old women said, the House had been entirely under the ground. But erosion and numerous earthquakes had pushed it up ten generations ago.

  To Deyv’s left, in the centre of the clearing, stood the soul-egg tree. Its gnarled trunk was bare of branches for twenty feet, and then the branches that formed a cone standing on its apex began. The bark gleamed red, white, green, blue and purple, so heavily impregnated with quartz that it was as hard as rock. From the branches dangled the fruit, the soul eggs, each as big as Deyv’s fist. Around the tree was a circle of dry pale earth a hundred feet in diameter, and outside the circle marched four bowmen. Up in the tower, near the base of the tree, were four watchers, each ready to beat on a drum if an enemy human or a predator beast was sighted.

  Behind Deyv came the rest of the tribe – men, women, children, dogs and cats. All the people were shouting the ritual encouragement, except for the appointed insulter.

  ‘Yaaa, Deyv of the Red Egg! See how he has to be driven forth into the jungle! Does he go bravely like our heroic foreparents or like his own great-souled father? Naaah! He goes trembling, legs shaking, his bowels ready to loose themselves with fear, and that red egg…! Ha! That red egg! It betrays the colour of his soul! It’s green, green with fear! Rabbit! Mouse! March like a man, like a warrior of the Turtles. Don’t slink like a coyote!’