The Best of Margaret St. Clair

by Margaret St. Clair

  Blixa looked at him steadily. After a moment she nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “I’ll explain it.” Yet she hesitated and lowered her eyes as if she found it hard to begin.

  “I’m a Martian patriot, George,” she said at last. “You Earth people don’t understand how Martians feel about Mars.” Blixa was speaking slowly; and, for the first time since George had known her, she made on him an impression of deep and complete sincerity. “Because we don’t drink toasts to our planet or sing songs about its green hills, because we never brag about how fine it is, you think we have no love for it. Some times, I know, you laugh at us because Mars is so poor and there is so much you have without thinking on your planet that we can never have. I have heard that your planet was far richer once, that before it came under a planet council much was wasted and washed away. That may be, but even so, Earth in our eyes is rich—rich!—and Mars—” Blixa threw out her hands in a gesture of resignation. “Well! We Martians do not wear our hearts upon our sleeves; and if Mars is poor, it may be we love out planet only the more dearly because of that.

  “Once before I told you a little about the pig. Most Martians learn about its worship—its service—while they are children, and grow up without ever thinking about it again. That is a bad thing, for if they thought about it, it would disgust and sicken them. The worship of the pig—the worship of the pig—”

  Blixa paused and clenched her hand. “I can’t talk about it,” she confessed, as if the confession were somehow disgraceful. “It makes me ashamed. Every thirty-one days, for example, we—no, I can’t tell you. It is unreasonable, but I can’t. The pig’s worship, George, is like something invented by a feeble-minded child. A nasty, nasty child with a feeble mind. A child who catches flies and swallows them. It makes me ashamed.

  “Four of us— two inside the cult and two outside—decided to try to stop the service of the pig. The pig had been sent to Terra as a part of the ritual of the Great Year. When we heard it was coming back, it seemed like a good time. The cult messenger was detained on the island, and I was sent to get the pig in his stead. But the Plutonians got there first.

  “Now the pig is on its way to the island. It should get there about dawn. When it does, there will be a ritual meal, with Daror partaking on behalf of the actual members of the cult, and Rhidion and Gleer on behalf of all the people of Mars. And that will be the end of the pig.”

  There was a short pause. George was trying to assimilate what he had heard. “They—will there be trouble about your having killed the pig?” he asked at last.

  Blixa shrugged. “Possibly. On the other hand, many of our cults have as their central feature a ritual meal in which the cult object is eaten, symbolically, by its worshipers. It isn’t far from that to actually eating the object’s flesh. Gleer is a publicist who specializes in word-of-mouth rumors. He plans to circulate accounts of the meal which present it as a pious act, a necessary sacrifice for Mars’ prosperity. People will hiss us for a while, but—who knows?—we might end up as heroes of a sort.”

  “I should think so,” George said. He was feeling somewhat impressed.

  Blixa laughed. “The really heroic part,” she confided, “will be eating that awful pig. I do wish it weren’t necessary. It isn’t really alive, you know—I’m sure it came from Vulcan’s workshop originally—and only Pharol knows what it will taste like. I hope it won’t poison them.

  “Our work, of course, will only be beginning when the pig’s out of the way. It’s too bad there aren’t more of us. We’ll try to replace the pig’s service with something better—a Pharol cult, perhaps, or something from Earth. Something that is—well!—not too unworthy of Mars.”

  Blixa’s voice died away. George, regarding her faintly-smiling profile, felt that he was seeing her for the first time.

  “In the canal?” a high voice said from around the corner of the warehouse.

  “N-n-n-n-no.” It was not stuttering, but a vibrato caused by an incessant trembling of the tongue and lips. “N-no-t u-un-t-til w-w-e ha-a-ve s-o-me f-f-un wi-th t-t-them.”

  George’s heart gave a lunge. He’d heard a voice like that once before, when one of the Cyniscus’ passengers had turned out to be a glassy-eyed homicidal maniac. He whirled around.

  The men who held the sliver guns looked more like badly-stuffed, half-rotting burlap bags than human beings. The hands on the guns were black with scabs and scaling flesh; they looked like burned and blistered rubber gloves. The hands alone would have identified the men to half the inhabitants of the Martian planet as last-stage alaphronein addicts.

  “You see,” the one who could still talk normally said, “you birded Louey a bout the groot. Poor Louey! He’s got very little groot left. And you birded us. Can’t have that. Louey sent us to correct you. Have some fun.”

  “T-t-the la-ad-y,” the shorter addict said. “En-j-joy using the g-gu-un. O-on h-er.” He coughed, and spat something thick and blackish on the pavement.

  George felt an apprehension that physically sickened him. The dart from a sliver gun is instantly fatal to human beings in a few spots; but over most of the body area, puncture with it produces a horrible tetany. In the agonized tonic spasm victims not infrequently snap their spines or fracture their own jaws. He and Blixa would wind up dead in the canal; but before that, Louey’s men (Louey must be the person to whom Farnsworth had told George to deliver the alaphronein) would enjoy themselves. Would enjoy themselves with their sliver guns. And Blixa’s smooth, soft skin…

  George pushed the nausea and the fear deep down inside himself and got ready to jump.

  Blixa touched him lightly on the arm. “Wait,” she breathed. She stepped forward, pulling the shari from her head.

  “Careful!” the taller addict warned, waving his gun. He was wearing a hard, bright, happy grin.

  “Ando djar,” Blixa said. She raised one hand and swept the red curls back from her forehead.

  “D-d-dai?” the shorter addict asked.

  “Andor,” Blixa replied. George, peering at her obliquely, saw that on her forehead shone, in pale blue fire, the interwined symbols of the full and crescent moon.

  There was a moment of intolerable tension. George realized that he was so keyed up that the smallest unexpected noise would have sent him charging into the two sliver guns. Then the taller of Louey’s emissaries put down his hand. “Par don, lalania,” he said to Blixa. “—Come along, Mnint.”

  “B-b-u-ut L-l-lou-ey s-sa—”

  “Bird Louey! He’s got hardly any groot. Let’s go have fun with him.” A glance of understanding passed between the two. Then they slouched away.

  Blixa leaned back against the wall of the warehouse. She was looking quite white. “Pharol,” she said weakly, “but I was afraid! I hope I never have to do that again.”

  George put out an arm to steady her. He was feeling a little shaky himself. “What did you tell them?” he ask ed after a moment.

  “Why, that I—here comes an abrotanon car! We’d better hide!”

  She whirled about, but the driver of the car had already seen them. The car circled, returned, and hovered. Its passenger peered intently down at them through the lucitra ns bubble that formed the underside of the car. Then the port opened, the stair shot out, and the passenger hopped down.

  “Is that you, George?” he said. “I thought I recognized the top of your head. Yes, it is. Where the devil have you been? They let me out of the hospital last night, and I’ve been looking for you ever since. I’ve been worried sick. Did you deliver the Pig?”

  George looked at his cousin Bill for a moment before answering. “Not exacdy,” he said at last.

  “Not exactly? What do you mean by that?”

  George indicated Blixa, who was standing beside him. “This lady took charge of it,” he answered.

  Bill regarded Blixa dubiously for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Why, that’s perfectly all right,” he said happily. “She’s the Idris of the cult—I recognize the marks on her f
orehead. Legally, she can sign anything. Why didn’t you tell me you knew her? It would have saved a lot of trouble.”

  George said nothing. Bill produced a receipt book from an inner tunic pocket and extended it and a brush toward Blixa. “If you don’t mind signing here, lalania,” he murmured. “An acknowledgement of the delivery of the pig…”

  “Not at all.” Blixa took the brush from him and drew her name quickly in the proper place. She handed the book back to him.

  Bill examined the receipt carefully before he thrust the book back in his pocket. He gave a satisfied nod. “That’s fine,” he said, “just fine. Thanks a lot for helping out, George. Don’t forget, I’ll give you half my bonus when it comes. You’ve really earned it by delivering the pig. And then you can marry Darleen.”

  He slapped George on the shoulder, nodded with more formal politeness to Blixa, and hopped into the abrotanon car. It drove away.

  There was a silence. Bill’s last words, “marry Darleen,” seemed to be floating in the air. Blixa looked at George and George, alternately, looked at her and then down at the ground. What was the matter with him? Why wasn’t he happy, now that he could marry Darleen?

  “Who’s Darleen?” Blixa asked at last in a colorless voice.

  “I… Girl I know on Earth,” George mumbled.

  There was an even longer silence. It was still quiet beside the canal, but all around came the thousand noises of a great city waking to life. The polar mail went arching through the sky with a long scream of rockets. George kept looking down at the ground.

  “Was that why you helped me get the pig?” Blixa said finally. Her voice was even more impersonal than it had been. “So you could have enough money to marry this Darleen?”

  “…I… I… guess so.”

  “Are you quite sure?” Blixa asked. Her voice was as toneless as ever, but something in it made George look up quickly. Blixa’s eyes were still fixed on him, but she had begun to smile. “Are you quite sure?” she said again.

  Something in the words ran down George’s spine like a drizzle of melted honey. It reached the base of his vertebral column and stayed there, circling in a warm, sweet flood. For a moment he looked at Blixa unbelievingly. Th en he advanced on her with the determination of a male rhyoorg in spring.

  Blixa gave a slight scream. “Be reasonable!” she said. “Ooooh, oooh! Not here, George! It’s too public! Be reasonable!”

  1949. Startling Stories

  THE GARDENER

  Traffic cops have been known to disregard “No Parking” signs. Policemen filch apples from fruit stands under the proprietor’s very eye. Even a little authority makes its possessor feel that the rules don’t apply to him. Thus it was that Tig lath Hobbs, acting chief of the Bureau of Extra-Systemic Plant Conservation, cut down a sacred Butandra tree.

  It must have been sheer bravado which impelled him to the act. Certainly the grove where the Butandra trees grow (there are only fifty trees on all Cassid, which means that there are only fifty in the universe) is well protected by signs.

  Besides warnings in the principal planetary tongues, there is a full set of the realistic and expressive Cassidan pictographs. These announce, in shapes which even the dullest intellect could not misunderstand, that cutting or mutilating the trees is a crime of the gravest nature. That persons committing it will be punished. And that after punishment full atonement must be made.

  All the pictographs in the announcement have a frowning look, and the one for “Atonement” in particular is a threatening thing. The pictographs are all painted in pale leaf green.

  But Hobbs had the vinegary insolence of the promoted bureaucrat. He saw that he had shocked Reinald, the little Cassidan major who had been delegated his escort, by even entering the sacred grove. He felt a coldly exhibitionistic wish to shock him further.

  Down the aisle of trees Hobbs stalked while the tender green leaves murmured above his head. Then he took hold of the trunk of the youngest of the Butandras, a slender white-barked thing, hardly more than a sapling.

  “Too close to the others,” Hobbs said sharply. “Needs thinning.” While Reinald watched helplessly, he got out the little hand axe which hung suspended by his side. Chop—chop—chop. With a gush of sap the little tree was severed. Hobbs held it in his hand.

  “It will make me a nice walking stick,” he said.

  Reinald’s coffee-colored skin turned a wretched nephrite green but he said nothing at all. Rather shakily he scrambled back into the ‘copter and waited while Hobbs completed his inspection of the grove. It was not until they had flown almost back to Genlis that he made a remark.

  “You should not have done that, sir,” he said. He ran a finger around his tunic collar uneasily.

  Hobbs snorted. He looked down at the lopped-off stem of the Butandra, resting between his knees. “Why not?” he demanded. “I have full authority to order plantations thinned or pruned.”

  “Yes, sir. But that was a Butandra tree.”

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “There have always been fifty Butandra trees on Cassid. Always, for all our history. We call them ‘Cassid’s Luck’.”

  Reinald licked his lips. “The tree you cut down will not grow again. I do not know what will happen if there are only forty-nine.

  “Besides that, what you did is dangerous. Dangerous, I mean, sir, to you.”

  Hobbs laughed harshly. “You’re forgetting my position,” he answered. “Even if they wanted to, the civil authorities couldn’t do anything to me.”

  Reinald gave a very faint smile. “Oh, I don’t mean the civil authorities, sir,” he said in a gentle voice. “They wouldn’t be the ones.” He seemed, somehow, to have recovered his spirits.

  He set the ‘copter down neatly on the roof of the Administration Building, and he and his passenger got out. Back in the grove near the stump of the sapling Butandra, something was burrowing up rapidly through the soil.

  Hobbs left Cassid the next day on the first leg of the long journey back to earth. In his baggage was the piece of Butandra wood. He was taking particular care of it since one of the room maids at his hotel in Genlis had tried to throw it out. But for the first few days of his trip he was altogether too occupied with filling out forms and drafting reports to do anything with it.

  About this same time, on Cassid, a conversation was going on in the Hotel Genlis dining room.

  “Tell us what you thought it was when you first saw it,” Berta, the room maid for the odd-numbered levels in the hotel, urged. “Go on!”

  Marie, the chief room maid, selected a piece of mangosteen torte from the food belt as it went by. “Well,” she said, “I was, checking the rooms on the level to be sure the robot help had cleaned up properly and when I saw that big brown spot on the floor my first thought was, one of them’s spilled something. Robots are such fools.

  “Then it moved, and I saw it wasn’t a stain at all, but a big brown thing snuffling around on the eutex like a dog after something. Then it stood up. That was when I screamed.”

  “Yes, but what did it look like? Go on, Marie! You never want to tell this part.”

  “It was a big, tall lanky thing,” Marie said reluctantly, “with a rough brown skin like a potato. It had two little pink mole hands. And it had an awfully, awfully kind face.”

  “If it had such a kind face I don’t see why you were so scared of it,” Berta said. She always said that at this point.

  Marie took a bite out of her mangosteen torte. She ate it slowly, considering. It was not that the emotion she had experienced at the sight of the face was at all dim in her mind. It was that embodying it in words was difficult.

  “Well,” she said, “maybe it wasn’t really kind. Or—wait now, Berta, I’ve got it—it was a kind face but not for people. For human beings it wasn’t at all a kind face.”

  “Guess what room this happened in,” Berta said, turning to Rose, the even-numbered room maid.

  “I don’t need to guess, I know,” Ro
se drawled. “One thousand one hundred and eighty-five, the room that Earthman had. The man that didn’t leave any tip and gave you such a bawling-out for touching you-know-what.”

  Berta nodded. “If I’d known—” she said with a slight shudder. “If I’d guessed! I mean, I’d rather have touched a snake! Anyhow, Marie, tell Rose what you think the brown thing was.”

  “As Rose says, I don’t need to guess, I know,” Marie replied. She pushed the empty dessert plate away from her. “When a man cuts down one of our Butandra trees—that thing in the room was a Gardener.”

  The Gardener left the soil of Cassid with a minimum of fuss. Not for it the full thunder of rockets, the formalized pageantry of the spaceport. It gave a slight push with its feet and the soil receded. There was an almost imperceptible jetting of fire. Faster and faster the Gardener went. It left behind first the atmosphere of Cassid and then, much later, that planet’s gravitational field. And still it shot on, out into the star-flecked dark.

  On his fourth day in space Hobbs got out the Butandra stick. Its heavy, white, close-grained wood pleased him. It would, as he had told Reinald, make a fine walking stick. Hobbs got a knife from his pocket and carefully began to peel off the tough white bark.

  The bark came off as neatly as a rabbit’s skin. Hobbs pursed his lips in what, for him, was a smile. He studied the contours of the wood and then started to whittle out a knob.

  The wood was hard. The work went slowly. Hobbs was almost ready to put it aside and go down to the ship’s bar for a nightcap when there came a light tapping at his cabin’s exterior viewing pane.

  When a ship is in deep space the sense of isolation becomes almost tangible. It seeps into every pore of every passenger. The ship floats in ghostly fashion through an uncreated void in which there is nothing—can be nothing—except the tiny world enclosed by the curving beryllium hull. And now something—something outside the ship—was rapping on Hobbs’ viewing plane.