It was one more element to add to his confusion, his sense of utter helplessness, of being in the grip of forces he couldn't control. An animal. A pawn in some game. A nobody. Until Milly led him back to her piano and sat him there.
"Poor man," she said, wryly. "You're lost, aren't you, with all this business? But this is where you shine. This you can do."
He ran his fingers over the keys, detecting the dissonances, feeling for his tuning-key, setting to work to correct the jangles. On a different level, there was quite a lot in his own mind which needed remedying. His fingers found and began to play, softly, an intricately delicate piece, the while he seemed to stand a long way off and look at himself, curiously. He had been shocked, shaken, terrified . . . purged. What was left? The fear was almost gone, and most of the anger with it. He had gained a kind of numbness. Was there anything else, under that apathy? He thought there was. There was a smouldering resistance, a stubborn conviction that he was not to be broken. Somehow, he didn't know how,
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he was going to hit back, he was going to be something more than just a freak talent, a hired performer.
"What's that you're playing?" Milly asked, and he came back to the presently real with a rush. "Bach, isn't it?"
"That's right. A partita, in B flat major. You know it?"
"Never like that. Bach, to me, has always been a perversely difficult and complicated exercise-maker . . . but that, like that, is music. It sings." A distant chime caught her ear, and she clicked her tongue in irritation, went away. In moments she was back, and he hushed his playing at sight of her face. She was angry, and looked all Japanese.
"Harper is going to throw you to the wolves," she said. "He has laid on a snap concert, in half an hour, in the Central. All three of you."
"So?" Anthony failed to see her reason for anger, yet.
"Don't you see? The others have been getting at him. They won't have it that they are inferior, that their standards have slipped. I know how they feel. I didn't like it, either, but I'm a bit more of a realist than most. I know that we have become a sick, perverted in-group, living in a sugary illusion. I didn't know just how bad we were until I heard you, III admit that. But the rest of them aren't going to admit it at all. They want to put you three on a platform, and ask you to perform. They'll toss requests at you, at random . . . and God help you if you fail to identify the pieces, and perform them perfecdy."
"Violence?" he asked, and she snorted.
"Nothing so crude. But they'll call you out on stuff you've never even heard of, and then laugh you off the platform."
"I don't know whether you're pleased or sorry," he said, studying her. It was hard to tell. She was bubbling with excitement of some kind, but he had no idea just what. For a moment he had the clear conviction that any drastic, dramatic event would attract these strangely out-of-touch people. "Anyway," he got up, towering over her, "I doubt they'll be able to trip me, and if the others have had experiences like mine, the same goes for them." Behind his statement lay miserable years of playing old broken-down pianos in all kinds of hole-and-comer dives, where there were always two or three bleary-eyed individuals who could recall happier days. "I've been asked for some pretty rare pieces, at times. I'm ready, when you like."
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"You're a strange man, Anthony," she stared up into his face. 'Tou seem dazed and lost, most of the time, as if you were afraid, almost, but as soon as it's music, you change."
"It's the one thing I know. Are you ready?"
The sense of desperate confidence remained with him all the way to the Central Assembly Palace, not wavering even when he saw the incredibly motley throng which was rapidly gathering. The one thing they had in common, apart from lean health, was the urge to be different. Less than half of them had troubled to wear any clothing at all, and those who had were only half-clothed, or less. His eyes saw, but did not believe. A top-hat, there . . . and another. Scarf and sandals. A fez. A loincloth. Sweatshirt and slacks. An embroidered cloak and high boots alongside bare feet. A nun's habit in shrieking scarlet nodded to a high-school tunic in paper-white transparent veiling. A baby-faced blonde in long black gloves and lorgnette, and nothing else, alongside a man in a violently checked shirt and bowler.
"It could be that Harper's therapy is more effective than mine." He whirled as M'Grath boomed in his ear. "It is sometimes better to cut the knot than to save the string by carefully unraveling it. The cup which cheers is not for you I believe, Mr. Taylor?"
Anthony caught the blast of his breath and shook his head. "No ... I don't need it," he said. M'Grath took a hearty pull at the pot he held.
"Quite right," he said. "I do. I know what can happen, very soon. It is my duty to bear the slings and arrows of the outraged less-fortunate, but never before have I gone in actual fear. We have anarchy here, Taylor, and there is but a hair-line between that and insanity. Man needs the prop and comfort of others of like mind. You are about to kick that prop away."
"The trouble with this lot," Harper had come up from the other side and was leaning across the piano, "is that they started in at the top, and never had anywhere to go but down."
"I knew it!" M'Grath growled. "You're a saboteur, Borden. You're a self-made man. You hate those who have always had what you had to work for. So you want to smash it all, and just before Harvest, too."
"How close?" Harper demanded. "I've lost track."
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"You'll be lucky to last out the hour with your concert."
"Harvest?" Anthony asked, and M'Grath swung on him, waving the pot.
"The gathering of the bean-crop.The time when we justify our existence, Mr. Taylor. A form of catharsis on which we have been relying to preserve our sanity, so far. It has been all the medicine we ever needed."
"You're a kind of doctor, aren't you?" Anthony asked, as his itch nudged him. "You would know . . ." but he had lost M'Grath, now. The big man was waving to Willers and Martha as they made their way down to the central arena. Aside, he said, "Those in brown coveralls, out to the edges, are the off-duty technioians. I had hoped we would be spared humiliation before them. Ah well, we might as well begin." He put up a massive palm for quiet.
"There is no prepared programme. You call it, our guests will try to deliver. What do I hear?"
Anthony sat himself, and Willers came close, to bend over, calling Martha with a jerk of his head. "This is a snap," he whispered. "I've done this a million times. You get a lot of shouting, and you pick out the ones you know. Nothing to it. All right?"
Anthony looked up at him, saw that his anxious look was completely gone, now. For the first time, he felt a kinship with this gangling American. Martha, too, looked ready for anything. The mood was catching. He smiled back at them. "Ill start, then," he said, and stood up to move and stand beside M'Grath. Out of the crowd came a shout of "Scriabin," and he pin-pointed the source, fingered the man who had called, asked him to specify. A tall man in a wild red robe.
"Flammes Sombre ... if you've ever heard of it!"
Anthony nodded, bowed cordially, moved back to the keyboard. It was good start. Tension came into the audience, and utter silence, as he used a moment to think himself into the mood for this darkly exciting piece of complex polymetric polyrhythm . . . allegretto, with the treble in six-eight, against the bass in two-four . . . and he began, carefully, confidently and with jewel-like precision. His conclusion brought an explosive "Bravo!" from the rapt audience. M'Grath was wrong, Anthony thought. It is primitive rhythm which drives men mad. Music, real music, has
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charms above the primitive. He wondered if it was an original thought. Martha stepped forward, managed to catch a request for something from Lucia di Lammermoor, and he nodded, gave her the introduction. She had absorbed the magic of the moment, too. All her life went into her creation of the woman driven mad by the knowledge that she was expected to marry a man she didn't love . . . and that she had just come from stabbing him to death rather than agree.
Moved as he was by her performance, Anthony couldn't help noticing the sheen of sweat on her face and arms, the more than fervor she put into the music, and a horrible suspicion sneaked into his mind. It festered while Willers felt for and got a demand to produce ... it would be Ricco Milano, of course . . . the famous lament from Pagliacci. Then, as the lanky American was tearing at their heart-strings, a strange rustle spread through the throng, a whisper, and then a mass exodus, on shuffling feet.
"Well I'm damned!" Willers gasped, as he finished. "I never had an audience do that to me before." M'Grath surged forward, heavily unsteady.
"No criticism of you, sir," he mumbled. "The Harvest came sooner than expected. This is the time when we sally forth and gamer the products of our industry. This is the one moment not one of us would miss."
"I see. You collect the beans, eh? I'd like to witness that. It will be something to brag about. Can I?"
"Of course, but be quick. Join up with anyone."
"Aren't you going?" Anthony demanded, reaching for Martha's arm, but his question was for M'Grath. "Do you, too, need this catharsis?"
"More than any. Yes, I shall go, as soon as I can shake off this bleariness. I have methods. Excuse me . . ."
"Just a minute," Anthony still held Martha's wrist. "You're the doctor, the medicine man. Can you do something for me?" M'Grath looked a heavy-eyed question at him, and he gathered his courage. "I have an itch . . . very bad ... all over." He felt the sudden twitch in Martha's arm, and knew he had guessed right. "It's nothing to worry about. I know what will fix it, if you can get it for me."
"I have a fairly well stocked medicine chest," M'Grath
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nodded, heavily. "I may be able, if it's not too unusual. You know the cause, you say?"
"No, I didn't say that. I know what will fix it. Anti-tan. Can you get me some?" Again Martha's wrist jerked, and she pulled loose. Anthony did not dare look her in the face. He kept his eyes on M'Grath, who was dully silent for a long moment. Alcohol warred with his intelligence.
"Anti-tan? You want me to supply you with anti-tan? I'm afraid that's one drug we neither keep nor have any use for, here. It is all we can do to maintain pinkness, with artificial ultraviolet. We don't need it, you see . . ." His thick voice faded away into mumbling as his wits began to churn. He stared at Anthony, and the light of comprehension grew. With it came an unpleasant hardness. "You—you need anti-tan? You're—"
"Never mind what I am. You won't give us any, then?"
"Both of you? Indeed!" M'Grath drew himself up, unsteadily, to his full height. "We have none, and that is the truth. I'm sorry . . . sorry for the pair of you. You hear me? I say I'm sorry!" Try as he might, he couldn't make his voice sound sorry, and, as he swung around and lurched away, his shoulders shook . . . but not with regret. An enemy, Anthony thought, in sinking despair. This will give him payment for humiliation. But what do we do, now? He turned to Martha, met her blazing eyes.
"You have your nerve!" she hissed. "How dare you tell him ... let him think that, about me? Now he thinks I'm —I'm a Negro, and so do you!"
"No I don't" he said, grimly. "I don't think anything of the kind. But you itch, just as I do. And you take . . . and need . . . anti-tan. How long since you had any? How long? Look, there's no point, any more, in trying to pretend. How long since you last took a tablet!"
"I don't know," she wailed. "I've lost track of the time, in this mad place. I've lost mine, or mislaid it somewhere. I'm always losing it, or running short and having to make a mad dash to the nearest drugstore. And I couldn't ask anybody, could I? Now everybody will know!"
"How long since you first started to itch?" he pressed her, as they made their way restlessly out of the great hall.
"I don't know. It started, I think, when we were getting off the ship, but I thought it was just the heat . . . and then
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it kept on. What am I going to do?" Her voice was ragged, now, as full realization crept over her. "What am I going to do?"
"What are we going to do?" he rephrased it, and she looked at him, her violet eyes wide and unseeing. She would have to be told, he thought. The truth, which was a thousand times worse than the fears she had now . . . but how to tell her? He caught her arm, suddenly, drew her aside into a room lined with glass cases.
"Tell me," he said, urgently, "just who do you think your parents were? Do you know?" As she hesitated, he pushed the question a bit closer to home. "Did either of them have anything to do with . . . Venus?"
"With Venus?" she was startled out of her shakes, for a moment. "What on Earth are you talking about?"
"You believe either your father or your mother was colored —was dark-skinned, don't you?"
"Must we discuss it? All right, if you must have it, yes. It was my father. I don't know anything about him. Mummy would never talk, she just wouldn't tell me. Therel Satisfied? Not but what everybody will know, soon." He had turned away from her, combing his mind for some set of words that would break the truth to her gendy. He had read a line on a metal plate three times before it clicked. He looked around, at the others, in dawning comprehension. This was a Hall of Records, of a land. The metal plates were dated, carried lists of names. He caught her wrist again.
"There ought to be something here," he muttered, reasoning out the sequence, doing simple arithmetic in his mind. Names, honorable degrees in any science you cared to name . . . and so many of them bore the final notice, "L P D"— "Lost, Presumed Dead." A history of Man's struggle to win Venus, all here in memoriam.
"What are you up to, now?" she demanded, angrily.
"You're not colored," he said, abruptly. "No more than I am. At least, not the way you think. Not any color you'd ever imagine."
"Have you gone stark raving mad?"
"I think notl" He was peering at the cases, quickly, until he found the one he wanted, that he knew had to be. Then he halted, turned to look at her, and caught his breath.
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For the concert, she had chosen a scarlet cape, and the briefest possible skirt in the same color. Against the vivid flame, there could be no mistake. He looked away, at the wall, saw a great mirror.
"I'm not crazy," he said. "Come and see for yourself. Come on!"
He took her by the shoulder, more roughly than he intended, thrust her face to face with the mirror and stood behind her. "See for yourself . . . you're green!"
He watched her, saw her face go blank with shock. Her hand went to her face, shakily, and then to the soft curves of her shoulder and throat.
"Oh no! It can't be. There must be some mistake!"
"No mistake. You're a Greenie, a half-breed Greenie, just as I am."
"It's not true. It's a joke of some kind, something we've eaten," she stared at herself frantically. "It can't be. I don't want to be a Greenie ... an animal . . . I'm not ... I won't!" She fought him as he took her arm and led her back to the case where the all-important record was kept.
"Look there," he commanded, harshly, "and then argue." His finger led her eye to a line of graven script that read, laconically: Dr. T.O. Merrill. Following that there ran a string of degree credits and then the stark phrase: Lost in jungle on study-tour; wife and baby daughter returned to Earth.
"Baby daughter . . . you," Anthony said. "The date is about right, too, isn't it? Isn't it?" She stared, speechlessly, her lips moving as she read the cruel words over again. "You were bom right here on Venus. And so was I. Look!" His finger moved, skipped lines, came to rest. Dr. Eleanor Taylor . . . died in childbirth, in jungle. Dr. R.S. Taylor, husband, returned to Earth with infant son.
"Infant son . . . me. Dr. Sherwood Taylor was my father. I've known, all the time, that I was a Greenie. That's why I didn't want to come."
She broke and whirled away from him, but he caught her in two steps. "Where will you run to?" he asked, harshly. "You're green, and getting greener every minute. You ran out of drugs a bit sooner than me, but 111 be right there with you in a
short while. Greenies . . . both of us."
Her lips were purpling as he looked at her. So were
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her nails. In an odd way, the green tint flooding to her skin made her more beautiful than she had ever been. But Green.
"Oh Godl" she said, dully, "what are we going to do?"
PART TWO
"IFWE STAY," he said, suddenly ice-calm, "they'll come back, and find us ... as Greenies. And you can guess what that will mean. The only other thing is to run for
"But where?" She gave back his own question. "Where can we go?"
"Out . . . out there in the jungle. It's our home, after all. This is our native land. If the other Greenies can live out there, we can!"
"But it's jungle I It's hot, and misty, and dangerous. We don't know anything about it. We'll get lost!"
"And well be torn to pieces if we stay, Martha. Already we have hit these people in the talent. What do you imagine they will do when they find out what we really are?" He could feel her sagging, as he gripped her arm.
"It's hopeless. We can't just run off into the jungle."
"All right!" He let her go with a quick twist of his hand, so that she almost fell. "You stay, and face them. I'm going. ..."
"No! Anthony, don't leave me. Don't!" "Make your choice, and be quick. Stay ... or run with me.
She turned, her eyes sweeping the quiet room, seeking some solution to a thing that had none. He saw her catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and blanch at what she saw there. Her hands went to her breasts, and then she held them out, fingers spread, and stared at them as if they were new. But they were her own, and green.
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"We don't seem to have any choice, do we?" she whispered, coming towards him. "We can't do anything else."
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