It was the second visitor that surprised me.
I'd just finished a tolerably good Last Meal, and from a strong sense of tradition as much as from prudence I ate heartily. Being upwind of the building's front door, I didn't even get spoor warning. I simply looked up and Alia was there.
A giant punched me under the heart with considerable vim, and the overseer part of my brain that wanted to slam the cerebrum into high gear was informed that the cerebrum was not accepting calls at this time. I rummaged desperately in my bag of wisecracks and grabbed the first one I found.
"If Shorty's had his dessert, would you ask him to come in?" I rolled to my feet.
"Isham, I . . ."
"Aren't you the heroine who brings the prisoner a Pfeil with a cake in it? You can't be the prison chaplain, and Collaci doesn't wear his grenades under his shirt like that. I know you're not my lawyer, or they wouldn't let you see me. What are you here for?"
"I came to hear a babbling idiot do vaudeville routines," she said dryly.
"Den you in de right place. Fus' dey gimme ten years in Leavenworth. Den dey gimme 'leven years in Twelveworth. Now I gets five and ten in Woolworth, and do you know how much wool worth these days? Say, why haven't you asked me to shut up by now? It sure is a hell of a note when you can't even piss people off any. . ."
"Isham, please shut up."
I shut up, and we looked each other over for a hundred years or so. My first conscious thought was that she looked different somehow, the first person I had seen who didn't look precisely as they had before I'd left home to go shorten Wendell. I couldn't nail down the difference, and, finally controlling my funk, looked closer.
The hair was the same, soft brown wings falling from a center part, worn just a bit longer than was practical. The line of her jaw was as regally strong as I remembered it. Same almond eyes, with that improbable tiny red splotch next to the left pupil and no eyebrows worth mentioning. Same slender neck, skin the color of coffee extra light disappearing beneath the familiar blue turtleneck. Powerful shoulders, hands callused but surprisingly graceful for a blacksmith's, with long spatulate fingers. Same generous, low-slung breasts, the right still markedly larger than the left. Same wide hips, soft belly and pouting mound under the very same patched jeans I had last seen pooled at her feet, four months ago . . .
I ceased my catalog hastily; a breeze was blowing and I was upwind. And as my eyes traveled prudently upward, I saw the little things I had missed, the subtle differences. At the place where waist became hips, two pads of flesh that I didn't recall distorted the twin curves. The belly and breasts appeared fuller, more padded. The mouth, for which I had never found any adjective but "chewable," now had firm things happening in the corners—as if it'd done some chewing of its own. That, combined with the fact that the almond eyes were bloodshot, made her overall face subtly older, stronger somehow but in a melancholy way. There was something about those eyes . . .
"You've changed, Isham."
I snorted. "Yeah. I used to be bilaterally symmetrical."
"Stop it. I don't mean your arm, and I don't mean the changes losing an arm makes in your face and in the way you carry yourself. I was expecting them."
"What do you mean, then?" Dammit, I was trying, consciously, to make my voice soft, but the edge just would not come off it.
She lowered her eyes. "I don't know. Forget it."
"Okay. You've changed too." For Christ's sake, say something nice. "You're getting fat."
She shook her head. "Getting thin. I've lost five pounds in the last two weeks. I got fat while you were away."
"I must say I'm astonished to see you."
"You are?" Her face fell. "Didn't you know I'd—"
"Hell, I was surprised they let Dr. Mike in, and your father can reasonably rely on him to keep his mouth shut. But you?"
Her face got up again. "What do you mean? Keep my mouth shut about what?"
"Whoa. Back up. What do you know about why I'm here?"
A muscle tightened in her jaw. "Papa says you admitted murdering Dr. Stone. And some foofooraw about collaborating with Muskies."
"He say anything about Carlson?"
She paled a little, but her voice was steady. "He says Carlson has brainwashed or subverted you in some way, that he made you kill your father."
"Mmm-hmm. And you know my sentence?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand it. Krish must be nuts to let you speak with me. He must know in his heart that I can convince you of the truth in about ten minutes, and that no power on earth will shut you up. He can't let the true story get out—folks might not . . ."
"Isham?"
". . . unless—yes?"
"What makes you think Papa knows I'm here?"
I blinked. "But Shorty would never let you back here unless—"
"—unless I told him that Papa authorized it. So I did."
"Oh." Prison life is making you stupid, old son. "Suppose he'd checked?"
"I leaned on him just a little. I told him Papa'd written out the authorization, and showed him a memo about a crew chiefs' meeting with Papa's signature on the bottom."
"And Shorty bought it?"
"He can say he did—if anyone ever asks. Who's going to mention it—you?"
"Shorty's a nice fella. I'm gonna be extra careful not to get him hurt."
Her eyes widened, and I was somehow subtly pleased at the operating speed of her uptake. Interesting datum, that pleasure.
"Need any help?"
I hesitated, and she sensed my distress. "Shorty's stepped out for a breath of air."
"Shorty is a gentleman and no I don't think I need any help." Her face once again landed on its face. Dammit, she wants to help. Make nice—need something, for Chrissake. "No, wait—if you can occupy Teach' somehow between, say, midnight and one tonight, without sticking your neck out—"
"It's done."
"And for the love of Carlson, stay away from the Tool Shed!"
"Damn." She grinned. "Dr. Gowan hinted about that. I should have added two and two." I liked the grin.
"Oh, the doc he is a subtle man." In the same funny way as before, I was pleased at the questions she wasn't asking. Never rains but it pours, does it? I was sort of out of things to say; we sat in silence for a measureless space, whirling thoughts surely hidden behind both sets of eyes. We were taking each other's measure.
I began to speak, telling her the story she had not yet heard, recapitulating all the events that had led me to where I was. And as I spoke, my thoughts kept returning to where I'd been, to the even earlier events which had led me to the start of the road whose journey I was recounting.
Specifically the ones having to do with Alia. We have known each other forever, and shared some intensely traumatic times, good and bad. She was, for instance, there when Mom was cut down by a Musky on the Lake shore before our eyes, and we cried together all that day. I was, for instance, there with her on the day when her mother died by her own hand, and we both took guilty comfort in having another before whom we did not have to cry and look sad. We were together much, feeling somehow closer to each other than to the other children of Fresh Start, whose fathers were not movers and shapers. And somehow it was not until we both were fourteen that we first made love.
I understand by Pre-Exodus standards that's shockingly young, and I guess I believe it. But things are different nowadays—in fact, Alia and I were a trifle backward. By virtue of our parentage, we probably got a better sexual education than most do these days—but only from the academic standpoint. We were playmates for years before we caught on that those particular scents meant that.
From there, of course, it is a short step to combining the scents to see what results. As it happened, it was Dr. Mike who found us, in the woods east of the Lake, lost in the wonders of scientific inquiry, covered with mosquito bites and hickeys. He apologized for disturbing us, we told him that was all right, and he went back to his walk, looking thoughtful. We too returned to our exercise, and thought no more about the encounter. But that night we each walked into the windmill back at our respective homes.
Characteristically, Dad had never given my sexual identity a thought—it was after all right under his nose. Alia's dissimilar plumbing had, on the other hand, literally rubbed Krish's nose in the matter some years earlier—but he had been too embarrassed to do more than give her a coldly factual lecture on procreation and genetics that went in one ear and out the other.
That night, though, both our fathers suddenly discovered a great deal they had meant to say, all of it intensely personal and personally intense. I remember Dad's oration very well. He could be pretty Old Testament when he put his mind to it, and I got both barrels that night.
The basic theme was that a warrior can't afford to go and get himself entangled with no women—at least not until he's discharged his duty. "With Civilization gone, there just isn't any kind of contraception left, Isham—except self-control! I know you're reaching the age when girls will seem like the only thing in the world—but there's another thing in the world, and its name is Wendell Carlson, and it must be destroyed. If I hadn't had you and your mother to care for, I'd have gone after Wendell myself long since. I, I nearly did when Barbara died . . . well. I'm an old man now, son, and our revenge won't wait much longer. If you think for one minute that you can . . ."
You get the idea. I certainly did—by the time Dad had finished pulling all the stops on the emotional organ, I was sobbing with remorse, and shaking with fear that Alia and I had already made a baby. I avoided her, and all women my age, like plague vectors for months thereafter, practicing my karate and becoming preternaturally adept at masturbation.
I never did learn what Alia's father told her, but I gathered it was more racial in theme. At any rate, she and Tommy Ostermyer had an abortion together the next spring (which I was not supposed to know about and never let on I did), and she was thereafter seen in the company of other young men, all of them white. If this bothered me, I didn't tell myself about it.
It was, oh, years later that we were next within twenty yards of each other.
I had actually left Fresh Start on my way to New York City for my destined meeting with Wendell Carlson, loaded down with good wishes and bad advice and grim courage and growing terror, and made my first camp about twenty miles to the south with the onset of evening. I intended to take my time and arrive fresh and full of beans, and so I went to sleep soon after supper.
Sometime in the small hours I found myself awake with Musky gun in one hand and knife in the other. The moon was full, the night crisp and still. I saw her at once, much closer than she should have been able to get without waking me. She stood quite still, a few yards from my feet, and her eyes gleamed unnaturally bright. She was naked, her clothes pooled at her feet. I had the idea she'd been standing there for some time.
As I stared, unable to shake off the unreality of the moment enough to speak, she began walking toward me, slowly and with grace. I smelled the scent of her, pungently female. I felt myself harden in response. I saw the muscles of her thighs ripple under skin the moonlight had turned to new meerschaum. I heard the whisper of her feet on soft earth. I tasted desire, harsh behind my tongue.
The glistening at her eyes spilled over and ran down her cheeks as she knelt at my feet, but she made no sound. She grabbed the end of my sleeping bag and pulled, slowly and firmly. As it slid downward I said something like "Hey." I dropped my weapons, but did not grab the sleeping bag. She tossed it carelessly into the darkness, breasts jiggling, and sat on her heels staring up the length of my body. Her lower lip hung slack and her head seemed too heavy for her neck to support; my head swam with the scent of her. The ground was cold beneath me.
I spoke her name, a dry croak around a leather tongue. She almost smiled.
"They can't say I kept you from going, now," she whispered huskily. "And you might not be back."
And all at once she swarmed up my body and sealed my mouth with her tongue, and she was warm and wet and urgent. She rode me like a succubus, demanding and insistent, the way men take women in all the books, her own climaxes coming in clusters as she rocked on my groin. White heat boiled my brain and ecstasy nailed me to the ground. I spasmed, screamed, spasmed, arching back lifting us both from the earth, clutching fingers prying at her shoulder blades. And fell, boneless like a Jell-O man, through an endless sea of black molasses, gasping for air.
The second time was slower, longer, much more tender, and infinitely sweeter, the first truly profound thing I had ever known. The crashing chord of its resolution blended indistinguishably into total sleep without ever permitting even momentary return of conscious thought.
And in the morning she was gone, and the road was before me.
I told her of that road now, and where it had led me. I sat within a stone cube in my own home town, and through the bars I told her of Dad and Wendell and Muskies and of the strange place that was New York, of the hate and guilt and madness that went back twenty years, that had made the world we lived in. I found to my surprise that I was telling her a different story than the one I had given the Council. Instead of talking of interspecies conflict and the precious hope of peace that lay within our grasp, I spoke of the gentle, calm, yet inexplicably different nature of the Muskies I had met, of the soft inquisitive touch of them in my mind. Instead of dwelling on the rage and hate that had led me to booby-trap the bathroom, I spoke of Wendell, of his contradictions and paradoxes and his strange, funny blend of incompetence and wisdom. Instead of bitterly attacking her father and the Council and Dad and Collaci, I found myself speaking of a dead Persian tom and a decrepit leopard. There was something I was trying to tell her, a message I recognized only subliminally. It would not even jell in my mind as "what I would say to her if I had the guts" or anything like that—I just kept on talking and talking and hoping that somewhere between the lines I was saying what I wanted to. I stared at the floor as I spoke, and wondered what my spoor was telling her. I wished I could read hers.
She absorbed the story in silence, which should have surprised me and didn't. The story of Dad's treachery must have turned her world-view as violently upside-down as it had mine—like finding out that fresh air causes cancer. But she made no sign. For my part I was staggered to discover the new perspective problems can take on simply because a woman listens to them. I experienced a steadying effect like six quick hits of reefer, a calming and centering of my energies I had not experienced since my last talk with the Sirocco Brothers. The confusion and unacknowledged pain of the last few days stopped being the whirlpool I was drowning in, became only the situation I had to work with.
Somewhere in there a thing was decided, an agreement was made between us, unnamed in any of the words I spoke. We both knew it.
At last I was talked out. We sat in silence together, sharing the stillness, until loud ahem-ing and Shorty's returning footsteps brought us back to an awareness of our situation.
" 'Bout ten minutes more, Miz Alia. Your father's due at ten-thirty, and it's almost ten now."
"Thanks, Shorty. You are a good friend." He smiled sadly, shook his head and left, whistling "Salt Peanuts."
"He sure is," I agreed. "Knew he was downwind, and so he took the trouble to make noise coming back. Instinctive courtesy."
She nodded. "Your father had that, Isham."
"And Judas was kind to midgets" is what I started to say, but before the words reached my mouth my anger melted, and what I said was, "Yes, he did."
After a pause, she caught my eyes and said, "My father is partly right, too, Isham. The Agro situation really is becoming unstable. Public opinion has been running high against us since your father's death—he was the figurehead for the whole community. People were willing to accept us eggheads as long as we were governed by a man they liked. They respect Papa, as a negotiator, but they don't like him. He . . . doesn't inspire love."
"Do those hayseeds think that all Dad's ideas and ideals died with him? Don't they still want hot-shot, and safe childbirth, and—"
"People have short memories, Isham."
I was unsettled to find myself hotly championing Dad's ideals, but there it was. "Collaci gave me the broad outlines. What are the specifics?"
"Well, the usual, of course: spot raids, handwritten broadsides, whispering campaigns. But they've opened up some new fronts. They're getting more confident now.
"First they held a huge meeting, a week after Dr. Stone died. Jordan spoke, at length. The vicious Technos had done away with your father because he had finally discovered their conspiracy to enslave everyone else. He claimed Papa was in radio contact with Wendell Morgan Carlson, and had been for some time. He repeated the charge that Muskies raid most near us, while we never get hit. He said that proved we could control Muskies. He called on every able-bodied man within a hundred miles to leave his farm and join the `Agro Army,' a group he proposes to train and lead. In return he promised them food, quarters, protection for their wives and families—and a slice of the pie, though not in so many words."
"What pie? Those idiots believe they could conquer Fresh Start, and run it themselves?"
"That's just what they believe, some of them. Jordan'd be happy just to keep the hot-shot plant in operation, and maybe the ice-cream maker. He has no use for the research or agricultural labs, or for the power plant or the distillery, or even my smithy. Back to nature: muscle power and a thirty-year life span."
"Look, I know Jordan's a musclehead and his followers suffer from rectocranial inversion. But did any of our neighbors swallow that bilge?"
"The musclehead was smart. He gave an oration that appealed to people's fear, threw in half-truths and hinted at the other halves—and didn't call for a show of hands. He thanked everyone for listening and sent them home.
"A few days later, some of his bravos started going door to door. `Why aren't you joining, Mr. Jones? Your neighbor Sam Smith is.' Then, when you've signed him up, trot over to Sam Smith's and use Jones's name to sign him up. Some of the smaller holdouts got roughed up just a little."
"Christ!"
"Lately, even big suppliers have been having mysterious bad luck. Amos Lewis's barn happened to catch fire. The Crows Hollow gang couldn't get their tractor to start one morning and there turned out to be sugar in the tank. A rockslide on a sunny day almost got Mr. Rosenberg and his son."
"Yeah, Teach' told me about that one. Jordan's getting bold. Maybe too bold. Is his location known?"
"He's still at Salt Mountain, in the old mine. But they say he has nearly a hundred and fifty with him."
"Whoo-ee. All fighting men?"
"Most of them. Isham, it really hurt us when the Muskies got Mr. Hardy. One of our biggest suppliers, on his way here with a load of rye, and he's killed a quarter-mile from the Gate. Mrs. Hardy went strange, sent her four sons off to join Jordan, and burned the homestead flat. Old Man Barton from across the river came to the Gate the other day, screamed incoherently for ten minutes, and stumped off home again. People are in an ugly mood."
"And the true story about what went down in New York wouldn't help much. I know."
"And Carlson can't—and Wendell can't get the Muskies to stop their attacks and help us?"
"Not without help from Fresh Start. Your father isn't inclined to give it."
"I'll talk to him."
"Talk to Dr. Mike first—he may help you keep your foot out of your mouth. He extracted mine pretty smoothly."
"I will. Is there anything else I can do?"
"Just what I said. Keep Teach' occupied for an hour or so. Then when you hear a very loud noise, act surprised. I . . . I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Maybe not in person for awhile, but . . ."
"Isham?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks for trusting me."
All of a sudden that uncomfortableness was back between us again, stronger than ever. I didn't know why. "Why shouldn't I? You once gave me the best going-away present I ever got."
"You too."
"Eh?"
"Never mind. You've got things to do, and so do I. Time I got to them."
I found I was reluctant to let her go. "How're things at the smithy?"
"Busy. The bellows busted and I got backed up, and then my damnfool apprentice ran off and married a chemist. But I've got a new helper now, the Taylor boy. I think he'll work out; he can pound sand. I. . . . I'd like to meet Wendell some day. He sounds like a very nice man."
"He is. I hope you get the chance real soon, Alia. I hope he's still al—"
And I stopped speaking, just shut up like a broken tape. The wind had suddenly backed, uncharacteristically for that time of day, and I found myself dumbstruck. Alia sensed it at the same instant I did, tried briefly and without success to keep her features straight. She swore bitterly and burst into tears.
"Damn, damn, damn, shit. I didn't mean for you to know."
I was cunningly constructed of corn flakes and stale glue. The steering was out and the brakes wouldn't work. The only slug left was jammed in the firing chamber. The last step wasn't there. I had swallowed a giant ice cube and my stomach was shrinking around it. "When are you due? Asshole question number one; March, isn't it? I thought you were getting fat."
Dr. Mike's pedagogical voice sounded distantly in my ears. "The distinctive, identifiably feminine scent of woman arises in large part from glandular changes based on the ovulation cycle . . ."
She was actually wringing her hands, a gesture I'd read of but never really seen. "I thought if I came after supper, the wind would stay hard north."
"This time of year it was a good bet. There you go."
There seemed only so long I could avoid making some kind of statement, some declaration of where I was at. Where the hell was I? Teach' is right. Sometimes it seems they just keep a-comin' at you.
I didn't know the half of it.
"Isham, I don't . . . you can't . . . I won't have you . . . " She couldn't get it out, and I wanted to interrupt her so she wouldn't have to, and I didn't know what to say, and prayed for a distraction of any kind at all, and instantly there was a sound like the trump of doom heard from arm's length. Thank you. The floor danced and Alia screamed.