The Best of Margaret St. Clair

by Margaret St. Clair

“In a shop that sells old things, in the back.” He did not tell her he had given ten days’ pay for the little turquoise locket. “But the stones are lighter than I realized. I wanted something that would be the color of your plumage.”

  Rhysha shook her head. “No, this is the color it should be. This is right.” She clasped the locket a round her neck and looked down at it with pleasure. “And now, what is the news you have for me?”

  “A friend of mine is a clerk in the city records. He tells me a new planet, near gamma Cassiopeiae, is being opened for colonization.

  “I’ve filed the papers, and everything is in order. The hearing will be held on Friday. I’m going to appear on behalf of the Ngayir, your people, and ask that they be allotted space on the new world.”

  Rhysha turned white. He started toward her, but she waved him away. One hand was still clasping her locket, that was nearly the color of her plumage.

  * * *

  The hearing was held in a small auditorium in the basement of the Colonization building. Representatives of a dozen groups spoke before Kerr’s turn came.

  “Appearing on behalf of the Ngayir,” the arbitrator read from a form in his hand, “S 3687 Kerr. And who are the Ngayir, S-Kerr? Some Indian group?”

  “No, sir,” Kerr said. “They are commonly known as the bird people.”

  “Oh, a conservationist!” The arbitrator looked at Kerr not unkindly. “I’m sorry, but your petition is quite out of order. It should never have been filed. Immigration is restricted by executive order to terrestials…”

  Kerr dreaded telling Rhysha of his failure, but she took it with perfect calm.

  “After you left I realised it was impossible,” she said.

  “Rhysha, I want you to promise me something. I can’t tell you how sure I am that humanity is going to need your people sometime. It’s true, Rhysha. I’m going to keep trying. I’m not going to give up.

  “Promise me this, Rhysha: promise me that neither you nor the members of your group will take part in the battles until you hear from me again.”

  Rhysha smiled. “All right, Kerr.”

  Preserving the bodies of people who have died from a variety of diseases is not without its dangers. Kerr did not go to work that night or the next or for many nights. His dormitory chief, after listening to him shout in delirium for some hours, called a doctor, who filled out a hospital requisition slip.

  He was gravely ill, and his recovery was slow. It was nearly five weeks before he was released.

  He wanted above all things to find Rhysha. He went to the place where she had been living and found that she had gone, no one knew where. In the end, he went to the identification bureau and begged for his old job there. Rhysha would, he was sure, think of coming to the bureau to get in touch with him.

  He was still shaky and weak when he reported for work the next night. He went into the tepidarium about nine o’clock, during a routine inspection. And there Rhysha was.

  He did not know her for an instant. The lovely turquoise of her plumage had faded to a dirty drab. But the little locket he had given her was still around her neck.

  He got the big jointed tongs they used for moving bodies out of the pool, and put them in position. He lifted her out very gently and put her down on the edge of the pool. He opened the locket. There was a note inside.

  * * *

  “Dear Kerr,” he read in Rhysha’s clear, handsome script, “you must forgive me for breaking my promise to you. They would not let me see you when you were sick, and we were all so hungry. Besides, you were wrong to think your people would ever need us. There is no place for us in your world.

  “I wish I could have heard you sing again. I liked to hear you sing. Rhysha.”

  * * *

  Kerr looked from the note to Rhysha’s face, and back at the note. It hurt too much. He did not want to realize that she was dead.

  Outside, one of the vast voices that boomed portentously down from the sky half the night long began to speak: “Don’t miss the newest, fastest battle sport. View the Durga battles, the bloodiest combats ever televised. Funnier than the bird people’s battles, more thrilling than an Anda war, you’ll…”

  Kerr gave a cry. He ran to the window and closed it. He could still hear the voice. But it was all that he could do.

  1951. Mercury Press, Inc.

  THE MAN WHO SOLD ROPE TO THE GNOLES

  The Gnoles had a bad reputation, and Mortensen was quite aware of this. But he reasoned, correctly enough, that cordage must be something for which the gnoles had a long unsatisfied want, and he saw no reason why he should not be the one to sell it to them. What a triumph such a sale would be! The district sales manager might single out Mortensen for special mention at the annual sales-force dinner. It would help his sales quota enormously. And, after all, it was none of his business what the gnoles used cordage for.

  Mortensen decided to call on the gnoles on Thursday morning. On Wednesday night he went through his Manual of Modern Salesmanship, underscoring things.

  “The mental states through which the mind passes in making a purchase,” he read, “have be encatalogued as 1) arousal of interest 2) increase of knowledge 3) adjustment to needs…” There were seven mental states listed, and Mortensen underscored all of them. Then he went back and double-scored No. 1, arousal of interest, No. 4, appreciation of suitability, and No. 7, decision to purchase. He turned the page.

  “Two qualities are of exceptional importance to a salesman,” he read. “They are adaptability and knowledge of merchandise.” Mortensen underlined the qualities. “Other highly desirable at tributes are physical fitness, and high ethical standard, charm of manner, a dogged persistence, and unfailing courtesy.” Mortensen underlined these too. But he read on to the end of the paragraph without underscoring anything more, and it may be that his failure to put “tact and keen power of observation” on a footing with the other attributes of a salesman was responsible for what happened to him.

  The gnoles live on the very edge of Terra Cognita, on the far side of a wood which all authorities unite in describing as dubious. Their house is narrow and high, in architecture a blend of Victorian Gothic and Swiss chalet. Though the house needs paint, it is kept in good repair. Thither on Thursday morning, sample case in hand, Mortensen took his way.

  No path leads to the house of the gnoles, and it is always dark in that dubious wood. But Mortensen, remembering what he had learned at his mother’s knee concerning the odor of gnoles, found the house quite easily. For a moment he stood hesitating before it. His lips moved as he repeated, “Good morning, I have come to supply your cordage requirements,” to himself. The words were the beginning of his sales talk. Then he went up and rapped on the door.

  The gnoles were watching him through holes they had bored in the trunks of trees; it is an artful custom of theirs to which the prime authority on gnoles attests. Mortensen’s knock almost threw them into confusion, it was so long since anyone had knocked at their door. Then the senior gnole, the one who never leaves the house, went flitting up from the cellars and opened it.

  The senior gnole is a little like a Jerusalem artichoke made of India rubber, and he has small red eyes which are faceted in the same way that gemstones are. Mortensen had been expecting something unusual, and when the gnole opened the door he bowed politely, took off his hat, and smiled. He had got past the sentence about cordage requirements and into an enumeration of the different types of cordage his firm manufactured when the gnole, by turning his head to the side, showed him that he had no ears. Nor was there anything on his head which could take their place in the conduction of sound. Then the gnole opened his little fanged mouth and let Mortensen look at his narrow, ribbony tongue. As a tongue it was no more fit for human speech than was a serpent’s. Judging from his appearance, the gnole could not safely be assigned to any of the four physio-characterological types mentioned in the Manual; and for the first time Mortensen felt a definite qualm.

  Nonetheless, he followed
the gnole unhesitatingly when the creature motioned him within. Adaptability, he told himself, adaptability must be his watchword. Enough adaptability, and his knees might even lose their tendency to shakiness.

  It was the parlor the gnole led him to. Mortensen’s eyes widened as he looked around it. There were whatnots in the corners, and cabinets of curiosities, and on the fretwork table an album with gilded hasps; who knows whose pictures were in it? All around the walls in brackets, where in lesser houses the people display ornamental plates, were emeralds as big as your head. The gnoles set great store by their emeralds. All the light in the dim room came from them.

  Mortensen went through the phrases of his sales talk mentally. It distressed him that that was the only way he could go through them. Still, adaptability! The gnole’s interest was already aroused, or he would never have asked Mortensen into the parlor; and as soon as the gnole saw the various cordages the sample case contained he would no doubt proceed of his own accord through “appreciation of suitability” to “desire to possess.”

  Mortensen sat down in the chair the gnole indicated and opened his sample case. He got out henequen cable-laid rope, an assortment of ply and yarn goods, and some superlative slender abaca fiber rope. He even showed the gnole a few soft yarns and twines made of cotton and jute.

  On the back of an envelope he wrote prices for hanks and cheeses of the twines, and for fifty-and hun dred-foot lengths of the ropes. Laboriously he added details about the strength, durability, and resistance to climatic conditions of each sort of cord. The senior gnole watched him intently, putting his little feet on the top rung of his chair and poking at the facets of his left eye now and then with a tentacle. In the cellars from time to time someone would scream.

  Mortensen began to demonstrate his wares. He showed the gnole the slip and resilience of one rope, the tenacity and stubborn strength of an other. He cut a tarred hemp rope in two and laid a five foot piece on the parlor floor to show the gnole how absolutely “neutral” it was, with no tendency to untwist of its own accord. He even showed the gnole how nicely some of the cotton twines made up a square knotwork.

  They settled at last on two ropes of abaca fiber, 3/16 and 5/8 inch in diameter. The gnole wanted an enormous quantity. Mortensen’s comment on those ropes, “unlimited strength and durability,” seemed to have attracted him.

  Soberly Mortensen wrote the particulars down in his order book, but ambition was setting his brain on fire. The gnoles, it seemed, would be regular customers; and after the gnoles, why should he not try the gibbelins? They too must have a need for rope.

  Mortensen closed his order book. On the back of the same envelope he wrote, for the gnole to see, that delivery would be made within ten days. Terms were 30 per cent with order, balance upon receipt of goods.

  The senior gnole hesitated. Shyly he looked at Mortensen with his little red eyes. Then he got down the smallest of the emeralds from the wall and handed it to him.

  The sales representative stood weighing it in his hands. It was the smallest of the gnoles’ emeralds, but it was as clear as water, as green as grass. In the outside world it would have ransomed a Rockefeller or a whole family of Guggenheims; a legitimate profit from a transaction was one thing, but this was another; “a high ethical standard”—any kind of ethical standard—would forbid Mortensen to keep it. He weighed it a moment longer. Then with a deep, deep sigh he gave the emerald back.

  He cast a glance around the room to see if he could find something which would be more negotiable. And in an evil moment he fixed on the senior gnole’s auxiliary eyes.

  The senior gnole keeps his extra pair of optics on the third shelf of the curiosity cabinet with the glass doors. They look like fine dark emeralds about the size of the end of your thumb. And if the gnoles in general set store by their gems, it is nothing at all compared to the senior gnole’s emotions about his extra eyes. The concern good Christian folk should feel for their soul’s welfare is a shadow, a figment, a nothing, compared to what the thoroughly heathen gnole feels for those eyes. He would rather, I think, choose to be a mere miserable human being than that some vandal should lay hands upon them.

  If Mortensen had not been elated by his success to the point of anaesthesia, he would have seen the gnole stiffen, he would have heard him hiss, when he went over to the cabinet. All innocent, Mortensen opened the glass door, took the twin eyes out, and juggled them sacrilegiously in his hand; the gnole could feel them clink. Smiling to evince the charm of manner advised in the Manual, and raising his brows as one who says, “Thank you, these will do nicely,” Mortensen dropped the eyes into his pocket.

  The gnole growled.

  The growl awoke Mortensen from his trance of euphoria. It was a growl whose meaning no one could mistake. This was clearly no time to be doggedly persistent. Mortensen made a break for the door.

  The senior gnole was there before him, his network of tentacles outstretched. He caught Mortensen in them easily and wound them, flat as bandages, around his ankles and his hands. The best abaca fiber is no stronger than those tentacles; though the gnoles would find rope a convenience, they get along very well without it. Would you, dear reader, go naked if zippers should cease to be made? Growling indignantly, the gnole fished his ravished eyes from Mortensen’s pockets, and then carried him down to the cellar to the fattening pens.

  But great are the virtues of legitimate commerce. Though they fattened Mortensen sedulously, and, later, roasted and sauced him and ate him with real appetite, the gnoles slaughtered him in quite a humane manner and never once thought of torturing him. That is unusual, for gnoles. And they ornamented the plank on which they served him with a beautiful border of fancy knotwork made of cotton cord from his own sample case.

  1951. Mercury Press, Inc.

  THE CAUSES

  “God rot their stinking souls,” the man on the bar stool next to George said passionately. “God bury them in the lowest circle of the pit, under the flaying ashes. May their eyeballs drip blood and their bones bend under them. May they thirst and be given molten glass for liquid. May they eat their own flesh and sicken with it. May they—” He seemed to choke over his rage. After a moment he lifted his glass of stout and buried his nose in it.

  “You Irish?” George asked with interest.

  “Irish? No.” The man with the stout seemed surprised. “I’m from New Zealand. Mother was Albanian. I’m a mountain climber. Why?”

  “Oh, I just wondered. What are you sore about?”

  The man with the moustache patted the newspaper in his pocket. “I’ve been reading about the H-bomb,” he said. “It makes me sick. I’m cursing the scientists. Do they want to. kill us all? On both sides, I’m cursing them.”

  “Yes, but you have to be reasonable,” the man on the second bar stool beyond George argued, leaning toward the other two. “None of us like that bomb, but we have to have it. The world’s a bad place these days, and those Russians—they’re bad cookies. Dangerous.” Uneasily he shifted the trumpet case he was holding on his lap.

  “Oh, sure, they’re dangerous.” The man with the stout hesitated, sucking on his moustache. “But basically, the Russians have nothing to do with it,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I know what you’re going to say, but it’s not true. Our real trouble isn’t the Russians… We’re in the mess we’re in because we’ve lost our gods.”

  “Hunh?” said the man on the second bar stool. “Oh, I get it. You mean we’ve become anti-religious, materialistic, worldly. Ought to go back to the old-time religion. Is that what you mean?”

  “I did not,” the man with the stout said irritably. “I meant what I said. The gods—our real gods—are gone. That’s why everything is so fouled up these days. There’s nobody to take care of us. No gods.”

  “No gods?” asked the man on the second bar stool.

  “No gods.”

  The interchange began to irk George. He finished his drink—bourbon and soda—and motioned to the bartender for another. Whe
n it came, he said to the man with the moustache, “Well, if we haven’t got any gods, what’s happened to them? Gone away?”

  “They’re in New Zealand,” the man with the moustache said.

  He must have sensed the withdrawal of his auditors, for he added hastily, “It’s all true dinkum. I’m not making it up. They’re living on Ruapehu in Wellington—it’s about 9,000 feet—now instead of Olympus in Thrace.”

  George took a leisurely pull at his drink. He was feeling finely credulous. “Well, go on. How did they get there?” he asked.

  “It started when Aphrodite lost her girdle—”

  “Venus!” said the man on the second bar stool. He rolled his eyes. “This ought to be hot. How’d she lose it?”

  “Her motives were above reproach,” the man with the stout said stiffly. “This isn’t a smutty story. Aphrodite lent the girdle to a married woman who was getting along badly with her husband for the most usual reason, and the girl was so pleased with the new state of things that she forgot to return it. The couple decided to take a long cruise as a sort of delayed honeymoon, and the woman packed the girdle in her trunk by mistake. When Aphrodite missed it—Olympian society goes all to pieces without the girdle; even the eagles on Father Zeus’s throne start fighting and tearing feathers—it was too late. The ship had gone so far she couldn’t pick up any emanation from it.”

  “When did all this happen?” George asked.

  “In 1913. You want to remember the date.”

  “Well, as I was saying, she couldn’t pick up any emanation from the girdle. So finally they sent Hermes out to look for it—he’s the divine messenger, you know. And he didn’t come back.”

  “Why not?” the man on the second bar stool asked.

  “Because, when Hermes located the ship, it had put in at New Zealand. Now, New Zealand’s a beautiful country. Like Greece, I guess—I’ve never been there—but better wooded and more water. Hermes picked up the girdle. But he liked the place so much he decided to stay.