“You’d make a rotten slave, woman.”
“I could try.” She would not look at him. “Beat me if you wish, please beat me. I deserve to be terribly beaten. I’ll try to be a good slave. I really will.”
“That won’t do. The only thing you’d be any good at is a wife. You’re much too bossy to be a slave. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a bossy slave woman. I’ve had my share of them, let me tell you. Now there was that time on Galway when a bossy slave woman, two Wild Geese, and myself were having a quiet jar of the creature and…”
Her tears stopped. “Geemie, you’re joking.”
“Not at all, at all. But I’ll tell you one thing, woman. There’ll be none of this slave and master stuff between us, and that’s settled. You’re my wife and that makes us equals, which gives me an advantage because if you weren’t my wife, you’d clearly be superior.”
“Geemie,” her eyes were shining.
“As a matter of fact,” he was not going to quit when he was on a roll, “I’ll even stipulate that, wife or not, you are still a little bit superior to me, but not much. Is that clear?”
She nodded, so choked with emotion that she could not speak.
“Now as for this beating stuff, we Tarans are not into it, if you take my meaning. Sure, occasionally we lose our tempers, but we hate ourselves afterward. A wife like you deserves a good spanking now and then.…”
“Spank me if you wish. I deserve it. I…”
“Might even like it, huh? Well, you’ll never get any of that from me, woman, no matter how much you deserve it. God knows what you might do to me when I’m in the wrong. Anyway, I can think of a lot better things to do with you, some of which I intend to try in a very few moments.”
Not bad altogether. If I do say so myself. He kissed her cheek, a promise of reconciling love to come. God knows, I’ll have to tell Carmody he was right.
“I am forgiven, then?” She was radiant again, hardly able to believe her good fortune.
What else did you expect, woman?
“If I’m forgiven too.”
She threw her arms around him. “I love you so. You are such a wonderful man. I am the most fortunate woman in the galaxy.”
“At least.”
She took a deep breath. The words bubbled out like a tumbling brook. “Seamus, what was wrong with me? I fell apart. I was not me anymore. I am a soldier; I believe in bravery, but I acted the coward. I believe in loyalty to my leader, but I tried to destroy your effectiveness. I believe that one should support one’s mate, but I let you down over and over. I love you, but I hurt you terribly. I wanted to die because I had failed you. I was about to die. This voice inside of me said, ‘Go back to him, you little idjit, he needs you.’ So I came back. But you don’t really need me, do you? Of course you do. You love me. What is happening?” She broke down. “Oh, Geemie, please help me.…”
How do you explain culture shock to a woman under such emotional stress? He would make more of a mess of things to try. The sheer physical effort to attempt an explanation was beyond him. Better to let things go.
“Margie, I can’t help you,” he said with heavy resignation, but his heart was beating rapidly and his body was already aching for her.
Marjetta continued breathlessly, her eyes begging, tearing at his heart, “I don’t want to hurt you, Geemie. I decided to die out there in the jungle. Then that voice inside me said that I would hurt you even more by dying. So I came back to try again.”
“And glad I am you did.” His lips began to roam, her eyes, lips, ears, throat, chest. Love after fights is the best of all, Carmody said. Well, I’ll soon find out.
“Tell me what is happening. Am I becoming insane?” she pleaded.
“I’ll tell you, but please, I am tired and worn-out and so are you. Listen to what I’m saying and promise me you won’t get angry?”
“I promise.” She wiped her tears. “But how can I listen if you play with my breasts that way?”
“That’s part of listening.”
Only it made talking a little difficult. So he turned to her head and stroked her short, curly hair tenderly. He took a deep breath, crossed his fingers, partly to make up for any wee fibs he might have to tell and partly for luck, and began very carefully.
“Well, it’s like this.…” He grinned. “You see, you were attracted to me partly because I am irresistible and partly because I am the opposite of the Zylongi, whose whole culture you were beginning to doubt. Remember you said you didn’t want to live before you pulled me out of the drain?”
“And after I met you I became a revolutionary?”
Ah, she catches on quick.
“You find out that your government has been systematically lying to you, that they are even trying to kill you. Sure most people would have caved in worse than you did.”
She looked at him very seriously, drawing back slightly from his embrace, waiting for him to go on.
“I come along like an amadon, I upset you with a line of come-on blarney that you’d never heard from any eligible Zylongi bachelor, we go through all that stuff in the desert and on the mountain; then I turn gentle. Emotions come out you never knew you had, surrender, trust, passion, sexual playfulness.” I sound like the monk who gives our annual retreat. “It must have scared the hell out of you, so you try to protect yourself by becoming a child again.”
Those last words were a mistake. She pulled back from him, furious.
“How dare you say I’m a child. I’m just as adult as you are. More so.”
He gritted his teeth and grabbed her arms very hard. “Woman, you are more so. I already said that. But show you’re adult by listening to me.”
She clenched her fists and struggled to free herself. Then she began to laugh. “Seamus, you wonderful, lovable idjit. It’s splendidly funny.” She leaned her head against his chest. “You’re just going to have to treat me like a confused child.” And then she laughed like it was the greatest joke in the world.
A dark nasty suspicion raised its deformed head in the back of his imagination. “It was a voice inside you that told you to come back? What exactly would that voice have been saying?”
Her fingers stroked his face. “Oh, I don’t remember.… Is it all that important?” She felt his jaw tighten. “All right, darling, it is important. Let me see … the voice said, ‘Get back there, you idjit, the poor man needs you.’ Yes, those were the words.”
“Poor man.” That wasn’t Zylongi talk at all, it was pure Taran. Deirdre, I owe you one. So you are still listening and watching. The least you can do, woman, is give a man a little privacy.… She jarred him out of his thoughts by taking his hand and guiding it back to her breasts. You get out of here, Your Eminence, and leave me and my proper woman in some decent privacy. You hear now?
“Aren’t you ever going to couple with me again?” his woman asked plaintively.
“Indeed I am, woman,” he sighed. If the Abbess wanted to play voyeur, he’d give her quite a show. “Like you’ve never been coupled before.”
“Wonderful,” she sighed happily. “You’re such a good man.”
“And after that?”
“Yes, master?” she grinned wickedly.
“After that—” Sure she wasn’t the only one whose passions had changed “—after that, we’re going down to Zylong City and clean out that mess so decent people like you and me can live there in peace and freedom.”
16
The saber-toothed tiger bounded toward Seamus like a demon sent from hell.
It was, he noted as he fumbled for his spear, the biggest critter he had ever seen. God had made a mistake in upgrading the harmless kitten into such a fearsome beast.
As long as the Dev, he estimated as the tiger leaped, its long and fearsome teeth aimed at his neck.
He realized he would not raise his spear in time. It’s been an interesting life.
“Marjetta!” he screamed, knowing that it would be his last word.
Somehow
she slipped between him and the soaring beast, jammed her spear into its chest, and twisted the fearsome animal out of its line of flight.
It rolled over next to Seamus in an angry spasm, growling and pawing the air with its huge claws as blood erupted from its gaping wound.
Marjetta hurled Seamus savagely back from the dying animal. “Are you waiting for it to kill you, you bloody idjit? It’s not dead yet.”
Trembling and silent, Seamus let her pull him to the side of the tiny clearing in which they were camped. She continued to rage at him.
“What was the matter with you? Why did you stand there and stare at that awful thing? Why didn’t you pick up your spear and kill it? You’re a bloody amadon.”
“Why an amadon?” he began to breathe again.
“Because you’re the worst kind of idjit. Why didn’t you kill it?”
“Well, partly because I was too scared to move.…”
“I don’t believe that,” she snapped at him.
“And partly because I didn’t know how to.”
“Oh, of course.” Small contrite voice. “I assumed that they had these ugly creatures on all planets and that you had practiced killing them, like soldiers do here.”
“You practice on real ones?”
“Of course not.” Now she was gasping for breath, terror finally catching up with her. “Mechanical ones.”
“’Tis yourself that has the quick reactions.”
“The holy saints be praised,” she threw her arms around him. “Oh, Geemie, I almost lost you!”
“I owe you about a half dozen now.” He crushed her in his own arms. “Sure that thing had its eye on my throat. Come on, woman, let’s sit down before we both collapse.”
They huddled together on the floor of the forest, avoiding the sight of the dead tiger and trying to calm their shattered nerves.
“I have a confession to make,” she said calmly. “I knew I’d have to tell you eventually. Now I must tell you … before something else happens.”
Seamus stirred uneasily. She was a complex mixture of woman, comic mimic, grateful child, passionate lover, and fiercely quick soldier. The last had been quiet lately as she docilely followed her husband through the jungle. Don’t kid yourself, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill, she’s still a handful.
“Confess away, darling girl.”
“No Zylongi maiden strips for a stranger the way I did that first night. I was shameful.”
“Sure now, I didn’t mind getting a first view—” he held her close “—of the merchandise, if you take my meaning. They’re not bad breasts, you know. I mean I’ve seen better. Good breasts, not great ones, you know. Now on the planet Cork…”
“Be quiet,” she insisted primly. “I’ll not be distracted by your foolishness. I wanted to seduce you. I was terribly attracted to you the first moment I saw you … that’s why I was so rude, understand?”
“I think so.”
“I thought I would die soon; I wanted to be ravished once before I died; a red-bearded god would be better than most lovers; so … well, you know what I did.”
“I do.…”
“Then I learned what love was.…”
“Ah. What is it now?”
“The way you treated me, kind and gentle and good man that you were. I thought it was all violence and pleasure. I fell completely in love with you then. It was hard during the mission because I didn’t know who you were. But I’ve wanted you since that night.”
“And you finally got me?”
She nodded, her head against his chest.
“Now what is it that you’re sorry for in this whole disgraceful story of seducing the innocent space bum?”
She considered carefully. “Nothing, I guess.”
“Herself says that when we know what it is really like to love and be loved, we know what God is like.”
“How beautiful. Your god—Jesus, is it?—feels about me like I do about you? He loves me the way you love me?”
“Well, now, Jesus is involved in it all, if you take my meaning, but I guess the answer is yes.”
“That’s what Deirdre says?”
“Ah … the woman’s name keeps coming up.” He thought for a few seconds. “Were you following me that night?”
“Of course,” she seemed surprised that he asked. “I knew the Fourth Secretary feared you and that you needed someone to take care of you.”
“From saber-toothed tigers and Fourth Secretaries, deliver us, O Lord.” Seamus rather liked the turn of phrase.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a prayer to my guardian angel … they’re spirits God sends to take care of us.”
“Your god is so wonderful. Just like you.” She snuggled close to him. “I think I’m ready now to make love, Seamus.”
“I was afraid that would happen.”
Afterward, when she slept complacently in his arms, Seamus wondered why the great need to confess what should have been obvious to any man who was smart enough to realize that he was the pursued and not the pursuer.
“Someone as smart as me, in other words,” he muttered ruefully.
* * *
Late the next day they encountered a band of well-armed hordi. Again it was Marjetta who was alert to the danger first.
She sniffed the air. “Someone coming, Geemie, take cover.”
It was an order, not a request. O’Neill did what he was told and followed her into a cluster of crimson bushes that reminded his guilty conscience of the Cardinal herself.
Sure enough, a band of about forty hordi males, with females and young trailing behind, padded down the side of the lake, armed to the teeth with knives, spears, and clubs almost as big as they were. On the lake itself several large canoes, jammed with more weapons and supplies and steered by a massive rudder, were drifting at the same speed the aborigines were walking.
O’Neill and his woman waited motionless till the band had disappeared.
“We wouldn’t have provided much more than an appetizer for that crowd,” he said when she rose from the bushes.
“It’s a war party, not a hunting party,” she said thoughtfully. “Marching toward the City.”
“They’re going to storm the City with spears and clubs?”
“As part of Narth’s army. He’ll send them across the River first to see if the laser weapons are operational. If they die, then Narth knows not to attack.”
“He’s dead.”
“Is he?” she asked skeptically. “I hope so.”
“So the Outsiders don’t think the hordi are human either?”
“Of course not. They’ll use them and kill them too. Why should they be any different from us?”
“But you think they’re human?”
“Sometimes I think they’re more human than we are. And, however they may have come here, they were here first.”
“So even if … I mean after we win in the City, we will have to do something about them, won’t we?”
She stooped to pick up her pack. “What would you do, Seamus O’Neill, to reverse a thousand years of mistakes?”
Well, now that was a very intelligent question. “I’d sign up Quars to begin negotiations with them. He’s got his head screwed on right.”
She smiled proudly. “That’s my Seamus. No one in this whole world would have thought of that.”
Seamus was not sure that he agreed or that her proud smile was justified. What do I know about politics?
“Freedom for everyone, darling—” she squeezed his arm “—including those poor little creatures.”
“For everyone,” he agreed with a certain lack of enthusiasm.
“Come, we must hurry to the City before it is too late. Freedom for everyone!”
17
Many days later, having spent a restless night worrying about freedom, Seamus O’Neill opened one eye as the morning sun forced its way into the control cabin of the Eamon De Valera. There was a naked woman standing at the entrance hatch, her strong young body ba
thed golden in the rays of the sunrise. She was gazing at him with tolerant adoration. Quickly he closed the eye.
Ah, the woman will be the death of me. Wasn’t it bad enough, her laughing at me every inch of the way from the Great Lake? She wants to make love at this heathenish hour of the morning, and myself trying to decide whether to go into that damn City today.
He sighed quietly for fear of stirring up her pagan passions even more if she knew he was awake. The last thing he’d expected was that the woman would turn into a comic. She had barely smiled till they got to Hyperion. Now she was laughing and dancing all the day long, even with the two of them exhausted.
She must have always been a comic, just hiding it from me so I wouldn’t know what I was getting caught in.
He was afraid again, but it passed quickly. Her unexpected humor had kept him going when he was ready to give up, down the long, twisting animal-infested paths from the Great Falls.
Drat the woman. She says the same things she said before our fight, but now they’re a joke. What am I going to do with her? He knew what she wanted him to do … it’d wear a man out.… It all started the day after they had seen the hordi by the lake.…
That morning he awoke to find Marjetta gone. The carbine was gone with her. A weather change dissolved the lake mists, the wind was brisk, the sun shone warm. She had probably gone off to do some exploring—he hoped.
She was back, eyes dancing. “We’ve found our waterfall, Seamus O’Neill. Sure, if you had ears like a Zylongi you would have woken up this morning to hear its roar. Hurry, darling, it’s the most amazing thing you’ll ever see.”
Seamus had seen a lot of marvels in various parts of the galaxy, but the Great Waterfall of Zylong took the prize. Almost without warning the whole lake spilled over into a valley half a mile below. They could not see the other end of it, lost as it was in the rainbow mists. The fall was dazzling in the sunlight; the spray blew in their faces, soaking them. O’Neill and Marjetta hugged and danced.
“Geemie…” Her face turned glum, her fingers dug into his arm. “If we get through all this, will they let you back on Tara?”
The Final Planet Page 21
