The Final Planet Page 11

  Images of the Iona blowing up, the Wild Geese being slaughtered, the Captain Abbess being destroyed by a satanic serpent, rape at High Mass in the chapel, inundated him. Then, replacing all the others, an image of God—nothing.

  For a few desperate moments that seemed like the whole of eternity and more, these terrifying pictures became the only reality in his existence. They were true and nothing else was. He fought to break from them, but they would not let him go. They absorbed his mind, permeated his imagination, filled his soul. It was the end of all he believed in, all he wanted, all he was willing to die for.

  For several terrible seconds he was captured by a compulsion to dash up on the worship platform and throw himself into the pit of fire, to obliterate himself as all his hopes and loves had been destroyed. Then the full rays of the sun flooded the plaza. It was all over. There was a loud exclamation of joy from the crowd, like the Deo Gratias at the end of Mass. They began to file out of the Worship Plaza, just as calm and normal as when they came in, chatting pleasantly with their companions. If anyone knew they were in a drug-induced ecstasy, they didn’t show it. Whatever it was, O’Neill realized, its effects subsided quickly.

  Sweating and trembling still, O’Neill puzzled it out: if you’re not sensitized to the stuff, it’s an ecstasy of terror. Maybe it’s like that for the others, too, and they’re so used to it that they don’t notice. Maybe it’s like hitting your head against the alloy wall of the monastery. It feels so good when you stop you don’t remember what the pain was like.

  “Is it not a beautiful and refreshing ceremony, Honored Friend?” asked Sammy briskly, as they threaded through the crowded streets toward their tower. “It is so peaceful. You are at one with Zylong, with your family, your friends, with the people, all the universe. You see what everything means and how tiny you are in that meaning.” She seemed in fine fettle. (Just like Deirdre on Sunday morning.)

  “What does everything mean?” he asked innocently.

  “It is inexpressible, Honored Friend,” responded Ernie. “Perhaps you have to be a Zylongi to understand.”

  There was an unexpected benefit of Zylongday. Ernie referred to it as a “mild diversion” for a Zylongday afternoon. To O’Neill it was a picnic. After the worship service the City atmosphere was relaxed—a holiday spirit pervaded the air. Small wandering bands and orchestras played in the plazas and the squares. The sidewalk cafés were crowded. Streets were filled with people in brightly colored clothes, strolling together and chatting. Whatever was in the “communion” drug seemed to relax the formality and tensions of Zylong life. His hosts were more cheerful than usual. Sammy hummed a tune as she bounced around the living area preparing for their “diversion.” When they left their tower for the “short” walk to the wall, she changed to another tune and compelled O’Neill and Ernie to hum with her.

  The woman’s idea of “short” was not the same as Seamus’s. After the first half hour he began, Taran-like, to complain.

  “You are young enough to be my son and strong enough to be a god.” She poked a finger at him. “Stop your complaining.”

  “I’ll complain as much as I want, woman.” Seamus put his hands around her waist, lifted her into the air as if she was a child, and spun her around, shouting and sputtering, and then, when he thought she’d had enough of her carnival ride, deposited her unceremoniously on the ground. Ernie and the other folks walking toward the wall seemed to think this was hilariously funny. Taran savage doing his Zylongday thing.

  Sammy was red-faced, dizzy, flustered, and exorbitantly pleased, truly the little girl-child he had for the moment made her. “You do strange things, Poet O’Neill, very strange things.”

  “You keep a proper tongue in your head, woman,” he laughed at her, “or I’ll do even stranger.”

  Everyone thought that was uproarious too.

  “Well, you need complain no longer.” She was breathing deeply still, wonderful breasts moving up and down rapidly. “We are almost at the wall.”

  “’Tis the walk home that worries me,” he protested.

  “We will ride home, Honored Guest.” Ernie didn’t quite understand it was mostly a game.

  “Almost” meant fifteen more minutes on his now aching feet. He complained. Sammy made little faces at him but did not take the risk of another ride. Too bad, he’d enjoyed it. Ah, sure nothing but a harmless little game, he told the Lady Abbess, just in case she was listening.

  The wall of the City was what Ernie called a “symbol,” a waist-high slab of gleaming pink alloy that circled the City (doubtless produced in one of the mills of the spanking-clean factory center which O’Neill had visited earlier in the week). Panels swung open when you touched them. In time of conflict an electrical energy was released to make them effective barriers; now one could easily leap over them—which he did, to the mingled dismay and amusement of his hosts.

  “When do you shoot the current through it?” Seamus tried to sound innocent.

  “In times of conflict,” Ernie said calmly.

  “And when do you have conflict in this well-ordered and peaceful place?”

  His hosts were silent.

  “We don’t, of course.” Sammy began to walk along the wall, not looking at him. Her husband followed as he usually did when she led.

  “It is merely a precaution,” her husband added lamely.

  “Ah, indeed.” Seamus lifted his picnic basket, the heaviest because, as Sammy had explained, “you are by far the biggest,” and followed along, docile and dumb.

  At the nearest gate, an opening in the wall, at which two sleepy cops with rusty pikes stood guard, they entered a blockhouse and descended by elevator to one of the huge underground chambers that lay beneath the City. It was the end of a monorail line. Next to the terminal there was a garage filled with the small electric cars that scurried through the City. Ernie’s status entitled him to the use of a car. He handed a token to the bored attendant. After trying two cars that refused to work, they found one that, with considerable effort, was persuaded to sputter into action.

  The bowels of the City, Seamus noted before he was distracted, were also the seamy side of the City. The obsessive cleanliness that was required aboveground did not seem necessary underground. The monorail station and the car park were littered with torn scraps of paper and unidentifiable rubble and permeated with a strong smell hinting broadly at human sewage. The monorail that arrived just as they were leaving seemed to limp wearily into the station. Even the docile Zylongi muttered angrily at what Seamus took to be the late arrival of the train.

  Underground you don’t even have to be patient and polite: even mine host and hostess are churlish with this dummy that can’t find a car that works.

  Then came the distraction.

  Seamus saw the Lady Deirdre herself get off the monorail train.

  At least it looked like her, a tall, slim woman with black hair tinged with gray and a thin ascetic face, gentle yet determined. Like Marjetta might appear in, well, fifty years. Before Seamus could be certain, the woman slipped away in the crowd.

  It couldn’t be her, he told himself uneasily. Just my guilty conscience.

  Yes, it could. You know very well that like some of the other “sensitives” up there, she can project an image of herself that is almost as good as the real thing, almost anywhere she wants. Isn’t she after doing it for laughs on the great festival days?

  And isn’t it after wearing her out too?

  And what should she be doing down here?

  Spying on her spy, you idjit, what else?

  And why does the Lady Cardinal remind me of Margie?

  Because they look a little like each other, you idjit, even if you never noticed that before.

  “Is there something wrong, Honored Poet?” Sammy asked anxiously.

  “Ah, I thought I saw someone I knew, but sure it couldn’t be?”

  “The Honored Lieutenant Marjetta?”

  “Not exactly. Someone maybe sixty years older.
But sure it wasn’t her at all, at all.”

  She doesn’t have lithe swelling breasts like my Margie. Well, not that I’ve let myself notice anyway. And herself a Cardinal.

  The car started then, and they chugged up the ramp, out an opening beyond the City walls.

  “The day is so pleasant,” Ernie said, a broad smile on his face, “that I thought it would be diverting to leave the City.”

  The air was warm and dry, the sky completely cloudless, the sun a deep, rich rose. The scent of flowers was everywhere. Since there weren’t any in sight, the odor must come from the low grass-like plant that grew on the narrow plain which ran between the City and the great River, beneath the sweeping sandbanks that were upriver from the City.

  It is not paradise, but it will do. Sure, it couldn’t have been herself.

  You have a guilty conscience, that’s what you have.

  I haven’t done anything to be guilty about.

  Not yet, but you’re fixing to.

  Their car actually was a small hovercraft, bumping along on a cushion of air. Its motor needed a good tune-up. Doubtless the Repair Committee had assigned it a priority. Well, if it breaks down, I hope they don’t expect me to fix it. I’m a poet, not a mechanic.

  Of course, the woman could have something else going on down here besides me. Maybe I’m a pawn.

  The thought infuriated him.

  Ah, but you’ve known that you were a pawn from the beginning, why let it upset you now and ruin your day?

  The woman was up to no good, you can bet on that.

  They sped over the plain to a small gravel beach on the riverbank. The Island (it had no other name) lay in the River, roughly parallel to the City, perhaps two miles from it.

  So that’s where she wants to land, is it now? Well, it’s not a terrible bad place, I suppose. It sure beats the blackness of hyperspace.

  Despite the beauty of the afternoon, there were only occasional small groups of Zylongi wandering around on the plain or sitting at the edge of the River. They seemed to keep close to the City walls when they ventured out for their Sunday, oops, Zylongday, picnics.

  Their hovercraft left the bank and sped across to a small cove on the Island. It was unusual in the topography of Zylong—a low mountain rearing its head far away from the planet’s main chain. Some five miles long, it had hills, valleys, some flat meadows, tiny forests, creek beds, and wide orange sand beaches on every side.

  No, it’s not bad for a monastery at all, at all. Why don’t we just take it over? We can tell these folks that the red-bearded god took a fancy to it.

  “May Jesus and Mary and Brigid be with this island,” Sammy said devoutly as they climbed out of the rickety hovercraft.

  “What did you say?” Seamus could hardly believe his own hearing.

  “It is your blessing we learned from the Honored Marjetta,” Ernie remarked apologetically. “You are distressed that we use it? It is sacrilegious?”

  “Ah, no,” Seamus sighed loudly. Sure I should have thought about blessing the future site of the Iona. “The question is whether they would object, and they’re a lot more tolerant than we are.”

  “It is beautiful that your god has friends,” Sammy murmured piously.

  “Ah, lots of them, too many altogether.”

  They swam in the warm, buoyant River, drank la-ir in copious amounts, ate the nameless delicacies that Sammy had prepared, and lay on the soft sand. O’Neill had a hard time keeping his eyes off Sammy since she handed him her toga almost the moment their skiff pulled up on the beach. The scanty lentat merely emphasized her seductive charms. Sammy was richer and fuller than Marjetta, though not so perfectly sculpted. Marjetta’s athletic grace challenged you, Sammy’s flowing figure invited you to the warmth of earth.

  Sure there’s room for both, isn’t there?

  Near nakedness for her culture meant only friendship—before the Festival anyway; she seemed to feel no shame lying on the hot sand, her heels digging little holes in the beach, between her husband and her friend, both of whom were as unclad as she.

  Ernie went for another swim. “Do you find my body pleasing, Honored Friend?” she asked, laughing softly.

  He had been staring too intently. “I find you pleasing, Sammy,” he replied truthfully enough. He wondered what Marjetta would look like in a brief loincloth and banished the image. It came right back.

  “As always, you speak the beautiful and the mysterious.” The grip of her fingers tightened. “You are far behind in your kisses.”

  “What do you mean by that?” He wondered about pulling his fingers away.

  “You said that patients and doctors exchange kisses twice a day.”

  “I never did.”

  “At the Body Center, you most certainly did.”

  “Ah, but that’s our custom, not yours.”

  “It is a good custom.”

  “I like this one better.” He repeated his spin-the-dolly-in-the-air routine.

  Kissing, he decided as he whirled the delighted Sammy above his head, might be safer than this. Sure she might just as well have nothing on at all.

  So he laid her back down on the beach, laughing and gasping, and kissed her lightly, twice for good measure. O’Neill decided he needed a swim too.

  When he returned, his friends asked if he would permit them a brief stroll down the beach.

  “I think I might take a wee nap.” He yawned and stretched. “The woman wakes me up while it’s still dark and now makes me hike halfway across this planet. The least she can do is let me catch forty winks.”

  That should convince them that I have no idea they’re going off somewhere and breaking the rules, the dirty things!

  “Forty winks?” Despite the softness of anticipation in her eyes, Sammy had to ask the question.

  “An idiom for a brief rest.”

  Sure I’d never have thought herself would break the rules. I bet they haven’t been doing it for long, either. Do you have to come over here or do you risk it late at night in your tower?

  He was willing to wager that the security system shut down in Zylong when the lights went out, just like everything else. The Guardians probably did spot checks of bedrooms to keep everyone honest. You took your chances of ending up in the fire on Zylongday when you made love, so you did it rarely. But you still did it. There were probably a lot of things the Committee did not want to know, because it couldn’t do anything about them anyway.

  Sammy and Ernie, however unsuited for each other they may have been when they “officially mated,” were now, it seemed obvious, deeply in love with one another. How could anyone expect them not to play with each other’s bodies?

  He had learned in the monastery school about the Shakers, mostly because they composed such wonderful songs. Despite their music, they did themselves out of existence because they believed in celibacy not only for monks—which Seamus supposed was all right as long as it was your vocation, God knows it wasn’t his—but for married people too.

  And they made it work till there were no more Shakers and no more songs. They probably did shake because of the way they lived. It’d be enough to make anyone shake. The songs were joyous enough, though, weren’t they?

  He hummed “Simple Gifts.” And then sang it for his hosts. They loved it. He taught them the words in their own language and they sang it with him.

  “It is indeed a gift to be free,” Ernie sighed wistfully. “A great gift. Almost as great—” he took her hand “—as a good wife.”

  Sammy blushed happily and clung to his hand. “We must take our walk now, Honored Poet.”

  “Have a nice walk.” Seamus could have kicked himself for that smart-aleck crack. They both blushed and turned away.

  So you can live like a Shaker if you have to and want to and your society and culture make you.

  Yeah, but most people can’t.

  But they’ve been doing it here. Or rather not doing it for a long time.

  All right, so it is possible. But it�
�s silly.

  Since Seamus was an orphan, Carmody had provided him with his sex instruction—God knows the monks wouldn’t mention a thing like that. The Brigadier was a good teacher. It was said of his wife, Maeve, that she became more beautiful each year and, with a knowing wink, “You know what that means!”

  The power of sexual attraction, Carmody had explained, is that it keeps man and woman together, even though “they have no business trying to live in the same house and sleep in the same bed. Can you imagine a more difficult thing for two human beings and themselves as different as can be?”

  Seamus admitted that he could not.

  “And sure,” the huge, grizzled Brigadier went on in his rich mischievous baritone, “just when you’re ready to murder the woman and long after she’s made up her mind to poison your coffee, you fall in love again and it’s the most glorious thing in all God’s world.”

  That seemed reasonable enough.

  “’Tis just like God feels about us,” Carmody observed, echoing the theories of Cardinal Deirdre, after he had laid out some of the more graphic details for a fascinated Seamus.

  “Ah, He’s not that way at all, at all,” Seamus protested. “God is a spirit.”

  “Are you letting those gombeen men in the school teach you that nonsense? Whoever said spirits don’t have passions? God is daft over us. That’s what herself means when she preaches that marriage is a sacrament—it gives us a hint about what God is like. Sure, He’s even more crazy in love with us than we are with one another when we’re turned on.”

  “Go long with you,” Seamus said, dubious but delighted. “If God were like that, well…”

  “Would I be misleading you now?” Carmody had demanded.

  Sure he would not.

  Sex is a hint of God? ’Tis a nice idea. I’ll have to tell Marjetta the next time I see her. She seems kind of interested in our god.

  And when will I see her again? It’s all right for the two of them to go sneaking off into the woods so they can lollygag with each other. Here I am, an enforced celibate, and myself not even a monk.