by James Morrow
“What for?” asked Francis.
“Your pancreas.”
“My plastic one?”
“Your real one.”
Francis picked up the pills and rattled them. They were colorful and egg-shaped, like jellybeans.
“The pills will work.” There was no Moolian arrogance in Murari’s voice, only a bland professionalism.
The pills worked. Within twenty-five hours Francis’s blood passed every excess-sugar test known to science. The thought of retiring his needles unleashed a happiness that hung around for days. Tez said that he must now permit Vaxcala to burn the vile devices in the Temple of Tolca, but Francis argued that this gesture would all but guarantee a relapse. He placed his insulin kit in the drawer with his socks and forgot about it.
EXACTLY FORTY DAYS after Darwin landed on Luta, it flashed upon Francis that he never wanted to leave. He was sitting in the courtyard gardens, sipping herbwine and waiting for Tez to get home, and he said to himself, Whatever the distinctions between this planet and the Kingdom of Heaven, they are too fine to matter.
TWO DAYS LATER he began to miss rye bread. The Kingdom of Heaven had no rye bread.
The day after that he found himself longing for bawdy historical-spectacle marathons. He grew misty-eyed thinking of Mother’s Mocha Milkshakes. Before long he would have killed to see the Galileo Institute, with its glossy plastic grass, so orderly, and his cozy little office, everything just where he wanted it, all the books that had shaped him showing their spines to the world.
Nearth’s natural beauties were long since plowed under, but the civilization that grew on their graves boasted its own romance. Francis wanted to sit with Jack August in The Brief Candle, his favorite bar, and solve the world’s miseries over beer as live jazz sinuated through the cigarette smoke and the whopping generalizations. He wanted to go to a Halloween party and get scared.
Tez nursed Francis’s nostalgia not by making logical appeals to Quetzalia’s virtues but by letting the disease run its course. Her mere presence caused well-being.
To see a sample of Tez’s handwriting lying around was to feel a flush of serenity. To watch her button a fuzzy coat or snuggle a silly wool cap over her forehead before she went into the end-of-summer air was to know a total contentment. The things she fingered became talismans. Her marionettes were enchanted, as were her comb and her hourglass and whatever book she had borrowed from the Library of Iztac.
Words flowed between them with perfect ease, particularly when the topic was science. They talked about the astrophysics of the Malnovian Belt, the ecology of Planet Kritonia, and the medical traditions of Quetzalia. Francis learned that whereas Nearth treatments were largely allopathic, confronting the disorder with its natural enemies, the Chimec Hospital practiced homeopathy, dispensing toxic herbs that produced symptoms in well people and wellness in people who already had the symptoms. Small doses were the key.
At the Galileo Institute, such clinical research would have been scorned in favor of the laboratory. Germs bred and studied and diddled with in isolation were fine, but as soon as they contaminated themselves by infecting a human they ceased to be of interest. In Francis’s view there was ultimate gold in this commitment to impractical knowledge, to theories that had no responsibilities other than to be true. On good days the new ideas inched human intellect toward the grand understandings that were science’s pride and joy. They let you see far more than God’s answers. They took you into God’s private study and showed you his scratch pad.
Tez concurred. Ever since adolescence she had understood the lure of pure research. Her account of growing chactol eyes in direct defiance of Darwinism left Francis gasping. “These experiments must be repeated!” he declared, though it turned out that he was not the man for the job. He failed to deliver even one generation that was still alive by morning.
HIS HOMESICKNESS CURED, Francis could finally see Quetzalia for what it really was, neither prison house nor Shangri-La, but an imperfect earth inherited by a diverse meek. Tez enjoyed showing the place off. Together they visited a restaurant that specialized in food with tentacles, a gallery that featured pornographic upholstery, a high school that arranged for sex-tortured adolescents to lose their virginities under controlled conditions, and a theater that ran episodes of an interminable chapterplay called Vicarious.
Vicarious proved a lowlight. Patronizing the theater capriciously, Francis and Tez caught Vicarious Seventeen, Vicarious Twenty, and Vicarious Twenty-six, all of which concerned a large Quetzalian family’s heroic attempts to build a footbridge between Luta and the next asteroid over, a project that was apparently taken up by each successive generation. The trick, Tez explained, was to identify not so much with particular characters as with the family itself, so that, after twenty or so episodes, you’d begin to feel like an immortal presence, ceaselessly reincarnated as the plot plowed its way through births and deaths, lives and loves, wars and peaces, dark ages and new days. Francis spent the first half of Vicarious Twenty-six loudly voicing his opinion that they would never get their goddam bridge built, after which he fell asleep.
Puppet shows proved more his speed. When Planet of the Interchangeable Genitalia opened in a minuscule cabaret beneath an obscure corridor of the Library of Iztac, Francis’s only loudly voiced opinion was his laughter. Afterward, he took Tez to the restaurant that specialized in tentacles. There was a violinist; they ordered cuttlefish.
Playing with a tentacle, Francis asked why Quetzalian pacifism did not prevent the slaughter of animals.
“I have no good answer.” In fact, Tez explained, the topic of Huaca’s next debate was “Resolved: Quetzalians Should Be Vegetarians.”
“Which side will he take?”
“He’s not sure. He’s trying to decide whether anything matters to vegetables.”
“Things matter to beetles,” said Francis. “I’m sure of it.”
Tez said nothing, pantomimed a kiss. It was this gentle foolishness she most cherished. Quetzalians were raised to say the worst of all Eden Two descendants: barbarous, insensitive, bereft of Zolmec. But across the table sat this terrific living paradox.
Tez always had warm feelings about paradoxes. It was the scientist in her.
THROUGHOUT THE LOVERS’ TRAVELS, one face of Quetzalia—the Temple of Tolca—had remained conspicuously unseen. When the opoch turned and Tez went to her Zolmec service and came back all rosy, Francis realized he was afflicted with what his father used to term “an erection of the curiosity organ.” Four times he asked to join the next rites, and always Tez chose to endorse Vaxcala’s ban.
The words did not vary.
“I’d like to go with you,” Francis would say.
“Nearthling atheists aren’t allowed in the Temple of Tolca.”
“Suppose I went anyway?”
“I can’t stop you,” Tez would say, stopping him with the sanctity of her stance.
“I don’t disbelieve in Tolca, Tez. Or Chimec. Or that other one.”
“Iztac.”
“In fact, I’m utterly charmed by the idea of pacifist deities. As a boy, I used to think: Murder is a horrid thing, no matter who does it and whom it’s done to. If I made the rules, nobody who had killed, not even gods or saints or generals, would ever end up admired. So you see, I had Quetzalian notions even before I landed here. You should at least call me an agnostic.”
“All right, fine,” Tez would reply coolly. “Nearthling agnostics aren’t allowed in the temple either.”
The conversations went no further, and Francis’s erection went unrelieved.
QUETZALIAN FLOWERS never ceased to amaze Francis. They faced a startling variety of hardships, from exotic blights to plunging temperatures to indifferent maintenance, and always emerged bright-hued and vital. Francis was in the Olo gardens performing some indifferent maintenance with a watering can when a mounted messenger appeared.
She was a robust child, not quite twelve, and her agility frightened Francis. “Where is Dr. Te
z Yon?” she demanded, vaulting smoothly from her lipoca. “This is from the Hospital of Chimec.” She waved a wax-sealed note.
“I’ll give it to her,” Francis replied, intercepting the note. Tez was in the house, doing transplants on marionettes.
The messenger remounted in one skillful jump. Before spurring out of the courtyard, she turned and studied Francis with eyes of sudden tenderness. By the time she spoke, the conceited snap was gone from her voice. “I believe the news is sad.”
When Francis entered Tez’s workroom, she was trying to attach a jester’s head to its neckless body. She split the wax, saw the message, and let the head roll.
Francis took the page and read. “Tez: Teot Yon is comatose. Mool.”
Together they went for their lipocas, saddling, mounting, galloping off. Halcyon Road ran straight into the city. Entering the great plaza, they met what seemed like Tepec’s entire population sweeping toward the Temple of Iztac. The lovers drove their lipocas into the mob, forcing it to part around them.
Dull with misgiving, Francis and Tez could not fully comprehend this outpouring, but the throng’s ecstatic faces, its cries of “The Eater is dead!” and “Newman for governor!” made them realize that Burne was safe and triumphant. Reining up before the hospital steps, Francis looked down the causeway and saw that the Iztac pyramid swarmed top to bottom with citizens, Vaxcala presumably in the center of it all, and from this anthill, this stuttering mass of life, came hymns so happy they made him sick. He dismounted.
Everyone who could walk had left the hospital. Tez and Francis drifted through frescoed corridors, past places emptied of all save the dying and paralyzed, until at last they stood in a sallow room that had no smells.
Mool was there, humiliation and defeat making unaccustomed appearances on his face. “It may be temporary,” he began in a crippled voice. “But right now it is just as you said. Your words, as I recall them, were ‘Testing an herb on an animal gives you that animal’s reaction and nobody else’s.’”
“Did you send your message to my brother?” was Tez’s only reply. Mool managed to say yes in surprisingly few words.
Thanks to Tez, Francis knew all about Teot Yon. He knew about incessant energy and a private joke concerning an aunt and a fishing rod. He knew about ropy muscles that could make granite obey.
None of this knowledge could be guessed from the barely breathing form they now confronted. Teot’s mouth was a sunken slit, his irises were locked wide open, and his skin felt like wet apples. Many times Francis had imagined meeting this man, first shaking his thick stonecutter’s hand, then saying, “I just wanted to thank you for keeping your schedule straight the night you planned to father Tez,” and now the whole warming fantasy flew to bits like a badly aimed gobletball.
“I had no reason to believe the counteractive would fail,” Mool continued to prattle. “I was even planning to drink coyo myself, but—”
“I believe you,” Tez responded mechanically. She touched him on the elbow. “You have my forgiveness, such as it is.” The surgeons stood fast, commiserating through stares. Mool could feel Tez’s great fear, and pity her for it; Tez could feel Mool’s great guilt, and pity him as much.
Starting for the door, the elder surgeon decided to admit that Francis was in the room. “Hello, Lostwax. I see your hair is back.”
“Go to hell,” Francis replied.
“As you wish. But don’t think I neglected her father. I’m off to the celebrations now, but ask me to stay and I shall.”
“Get out,” said Francis evenly.
For the next hour they sat with the unconscious man.
Tez told Teot that she knew he could hear her, even though she didn’t, and that she loved him, which she did. She attempted to say more, was blocked by misery. Francis held her tight, and her sobs were steady, like heartbeats. A cheer went up from the Temple of Iztac.
As they returned to the daylight and descended the jaguar-flanked steps, it occurred to Francis that he was furious. “Well, I really don’t see how Mool learned any lessons from that!”
Tez was in no mood for words. “What did you want me to do, strangle him?”
“All of this happened to me once. A nurse killed my son and that’s exactly what I did. There are times when you’ve got to be aggressive.”
Tez mounted Mixtla. “I don’t know about those times.”
Evening arrived but not appetite. Tez and Francis entered the tapestried parlor and lost themselves amid wine and woven dragons. “It’s peculiar,” she said, “but I’m more upset by Huaca’s failure to show than by this death that’s going to happen.”
“Maybe he came after we left.”
“He didn’t,” said Tez knowingly. “Someday that man will be astonished to discover there’s a whole world marching along outside his buzzing head.”
Francis pressed his chitzal scar. “Your father’s doomed?”
“I’ve seen this before. An unknown herb goes haywire, so they pour in keyta, but it’s useless. The brain keeps shutting down, synapse by synapse.” She gargled her wine. “This should be a happy time, Francis, with your friend victorious. Humans are a fickle species. My entire race is saved, yet I cry about…What chitzal mourns its father’s death?”
“Yes,” said Francis quietly. He could think of nothing but to agree with her derangement. “We’re fickle.”
NO MATTER HOW MUCH SADNESS it brought, family tragedy could never keep a Quetzalian from attending a Zolmec service. The next night found Tez gobbling dinner and dashing around the house in search of cap and cloak. She paused to say good-bye to Francis, who was backstroking across the indoor pool. “I’m off,” she said.
“I have a better plan. Come in here and we’ll play marine biology.”
“No, it’s especially important that I go tonight.”
“Why?”
“Yesterday Mool’s arrogance came to its climax, and I must see him in church.”
“So you can officially forgive him?”
“Stop harassing me.”
“I only want to cheer you up.”
“Zolmec will cheer me up.”
“How can you forgive such a villain?”
“Mool is not a villain,” Tez said crisply, and exited toward the stables. Francis heard her preparing Mixtla. The water felt cold, cold like the air and the love of his life.
Francis surged out of the pool, dressed hurriedly. Seizing the handiest oil lantern, he reached the courtyard in time to watch Tez and Mixtla pass beneath an arch that sprouted wooden cutout letters. As one approached along the road, the sign read OLO SEMINAR CENTER; from where he stood, the sign read RETNEC RANIMES OLO in the flipped-letter language of some forgotten race.
Screw this second life of hers, Francis thought as he rudely roused his lipoca from its nap, trotted it brusquely through the courtyard, and spurred it secretly into the night. Screw it, screw it.
12
THE NIGHT WAS STARRY with lanterns. White-robed, Francis blended with the pilgrims as effortlessly as a swamp aphid blends with bark. They trotted up Halcyon Road, across the edge of the city, and into the woods beyond, their numbers ever-growing. By the time the wall was in view, a river of lantern light stretched endlessly in both directions, radiant twin to the noctus moat on the other side.
A strident wind arose, grabbing the robes and billowing them like sails, so that the procession became a massive regatta coursing toward the wall. Howling fortissimo, the wind soon found its rival in a Zolmec song, weird as any in the galaxy, weird as the chirps of Nearth’s gorgathon, but deeper and more maestro, weird as the threnodies of Kritonia’s forsaken morgs—sad, noble seabeasts—only con brio.
SAAHHRREEEMMMMM sang the pilgrims in flawless unison, vibrating the earth. There were words, too, difficult to comprehend at first, being tuned to the ears of gods. Francis worked his mouth, pretending to join in.
To Tolca’s heart I give this song
To Iztac’s eyes
And Chimec’s brain
Good souls despise
The Eaters’ reign
It went on like that.
When the hymn was over, the worshipers dismounted, tethering their lipocas to bushes and roots. Francis let the crowd carry him to within five meters of the wall’s dark foundation, where by lantern light a female figure climbed the stairs. She stood on the wall and faced her congregation, constellations arching over her head like a cowl.
“Peace!” boomed Vaxcala. Gold bands jangled about her swan’s neck.
“Peace!” answered the congregation. A few centimeters in front of Francis, a gaunt woman turned to her pudgy son. “Tonight we’re lucky. Our parish gets Vaxcala.”
“Who?”
“The high priestess herself,” replied the woman, thrilled. The kid didn’t care. Scanning the top of the wall, Francis noticed that, every hundred meters, a priest or priestess stood as Vaxcala stood, erect and commanding, each the focus of eight hundred pious eyes.
“Come with me on a journey through time and space,” Vaxcala began. “Come with me to the womb of our great-great-grandmothers, Eden Three. Come to the Level Nine Greenhouse, climb a tree, and watch Tellerist engage Brain Eater in ferocious battle. Next to you sits a little girl.”
“Janet Vij!” shouted the parish.
Francis wondered what a Tellerist was.
“Suddenly the guns grow silent. And Janet Vij, ten years old, raises her little hand and speaks.”
Instantly Vaxcala became Janet Vij raising her little hand and speaking. “Eaters and Tellerists!” she chimed. “Listen! Transcend your hatreds! Hand this battle down to history as the one where, right in the middle of the barbarity, every soldier said, ‘No!’”
Vaxcala resumed her accustomed voice. “Followers, what reply should the soldiers make?”
“I refuse to fight!” the parish chanted.
“But the soldiers do not refuse to fight!”
“They do not have Zolmec!”
“The Eaters aim at Janet Vij’s raised hand.”
