The Final Planet Read online

  “All careers are ‘terminated’ at the age of ninety—about seventy-two of your years, I understand. It is possible to apply for an earlier termination; sometimes, in cases of illness, termination orders are issued before the officially designated date. You wonder how we ‘terminate’ careers, but you are reluctant to ask?”

  O’Neill nodded, draining the last drop of la-ir and hoping his own horror did not show.

  “Well, at Harvest Festival,” Ornigon explained, “they “go to the god.’ They become one with Zylong.”

  “Human sacrifice?” O’Neill gasped, his own paper cup now crumpled into a tight little ball.

  “It may have been once, Honored Guest. Now, of course, we are too civilized to do such a thing. It is all quite painless, not frightening at all—an easy way to end one’s career. At least it is said to be easy. We have no testimony from those who have been terminated.” Noticing that O’Neill was gripping the bridge railing tightly, Ornigon smiled wanly. “You are shocked at our customs. They are perhaps different from yours? Our motives are humane; no one wishes to be a burden on the rest of society. It is always said they would not be happy alive.…” His voice trailed off. The two of them silently watched the sun disappear from the sky.

  Later that night, leaning on a smaller bridge over the swiftly moving sewer, O’Neill thought that there was much repressed cruelty in this graceful and cultivated civilization. But it all seemed to work. There was no reason why everyone in the cosmos had to be Celtic anarchists like the Tarans. He turned away from the bridge to begin his walk back to the living space, hesitating as he tried to figure out which direction he should go.

  Yes, there was. The Tarans were crazy, but they loved kids, even handicapped ones, especially handicapped ones. And they treasured the old for their wisdom and their storytelling and their goodness.

  It’s not just a difference of opinion, he told himself firmly. These folks are civilized and we’re barbarians, but we’re right and they’re wrong, damn it all.

  His neck twitched dangerously. And a little too late. A foul smell filled his nostrils as a dirty rag was pressed against his face; hands were grabbing at his shoulders and ankles. Violently he thrust the hands away, but they persisted, slowly dragging him to the ground. He felt nauseous; his strength was failing him. His head spinning, consciousness slipping away, he tried to continue his struggle, but his muscles grew lazy and sluggish.

  He was roughly hoisted to the rail of the bridge and pushed. He floated in space and then abruptly hit the water. It was cold and dirty. A sewer indeed, he thought absently as he went under. He made a vague effort to swim, but his lazy body dragged him under again. He surfaced once more, one hand grasping for something to hold. It hit a projection on the stone riverbank. He clung to it. The current ripped at his arm, tore him away from his grip on life and bore him under in the darkness. His head was beginning to explode; so were his lungs. He wanted to pray.

  A hand grabbed his arm, a firm strong hand. He yielded to its strength. In total darkness he was pulled to shore, hauled laboriously up on the bank, forced to stand on unwilling feet, and then, smelling of sewer, dragged into a building, up a short flight of stairs, into a room. He collapsed on a hard bed.

  After a time he opened his eyes. The room was a yellow blur. The sickness was passing. The effects of the drug wore off quickly. That way they don’t find any traces in your body.

  “Our la-ir is too potent for you, Taran Visitor,” said a woman’s voice reprovingly. Ah, it couldn’t be herself now, could it? Was she the guardian angel the good guys had sent to protect him?

  “La-ir, hell, woman,” he replied weakly. “I was poisoned.” He tried to focus his eyes. Was it really her?

  “Oh,” said the voice skeptically, “how interesting.”

  ’Twas indeed herself. Seamus Finnbar O’Neill’s heart began to beat rapidly. He opened his eyes.

  The room was small, barrackslike in its simplicity: a bed, on which he was sprawled, a chair, a table, a video screen, a small bathing pool, lemon-colored walls, diffused light. Somehow it was an intensely feminine room, in part because of the intensely feminine presence in it.

  “I should at least know the name of the lovely lady to whom I owe my life,” he said, rubbing his aching head.

  Strong brown eyes regarded him critically. “You know very well who I am, Visitor; you made a fool of yourself ogling me at the Research Director’s living space. I am Lieutenant Marjetta of the Zylong army, Visitor. I’m not sure your life is worth saving.”

  “Well,” said Seamus weakly, “’tis yourself that’s worth ogling.”

  “You can watch to your heart’s content now, not that it makes any difference to me.” She had already tossed aside her robe. Now she slipped a practically invisible zipper and discarded the top of her lentat.

  Ah, that’s how they work, in two parts, is it?

  He also settled the critical issue of his daydream world about the most desirable variety of breasts; in this area too, the exquisitely flowering Marjetta was perfection.

  Quickly, but not rushing, she slipped into the pool. “I don’t care whether you wish to continue to smell like a waste-disposal unit. If you don’t, you may use the pool. You will not disturb me.”

  “If it were the la-ir,” Seamus defended himself, “if I’m drunk, how come I’ve come out of it so soon?”

  “Come here,” she ordered briskly.

  He obeyed, as he would a command from the Lady Deirdre, with whom she could fairly be compared, Seamus realized with a touch of unease.

  He put his feet on her soft carpet and stumbled toward the pool. She had sunk low enough into its opaque waters to serve the basic requirements of modesty but still suggest enough womanly attractiveness to threaten his self-possession.

  She peered intently at his eyes. He tried to look innocent, though his heart was beating rapidly.

  Dissatisfied, she pulled his head toward her face. “Let me look at you. I’m not going to rape you. Hmmm. So it would appear that you were assisted in your evening swim. That is no concern of mine.” She released his head and sank lower in the water. Despite her words, she was puzzled and perturbed. Maybe she was only a chance, not an official guardian angel. “So, as I suspected, the Fourth Secretary did not find your god legend amusing.”

  “It was him, was it?”

  She shrugged her strong shoulders indifferently. “Who else has power in this chaos? There are others who might have done it, but they hardly know of you yet.”

  “Others?”

  “If you stay in our city long enough, you will learn of them.”

  “Maybe it would have been safer for you just to have let me go under,” he said, probing for her reaction.

  Her brown eyes turned hard with anger. “Don’t be absurd. I am commissioned to protect life.…” She hesitated, wondering perhaps who had other designs. “Poet O’Neill, for so I am told you are called, you smell of the foul stream. Would you please remove your garments and step into this pool. I will look the other way while you undress, lest I offend your strange outworld prudery. After I have bathed, you will remain here, looking at the wall, while I dress. Then I will leave the room while you do the same. Then I will escort you to the living space of Samaritha and Ornigon.”

  “Sure, in my condition, even your great beauty would not stir me up.” He tried to laugh as he stripped off his clothes and slipped into the pool, careful to stay as far away from her as he could. Still, his eyes sought out her breasts, just beneath the level of the water and not altogether invisible.

  She gripped his shoulders and turned his face firmly to the wall. “You will do as you have been told.” No sense of humor at all. He was still dazed. He tried to think it out. His body ached.

  “Ah now, ‘twas a very fortunate thing for me, wasn’t it, Lieutenant Marjetta, that you just happened to be coming down the street when I was going under,” he remarked amiably to the wall.

  The discreet splashing of water at her end of th
e bathing pool stopped. “You’re quite right, Poet O’Neill. I might also have been the one who pushed you in. You will just have to take the chance that I am not, won’t you?” The voice was firm but not hard, the womanly laugh that followed made him forget he was still dizzy. He clenched his fists, grimly determined not to look away from the wall.

  “You’re a terrible woman altogether,” he complained, causing another laugh.

  She’s enjoying this. She’s got me in an awkward and embarrassing situation and loves every second of it.

  “Well, just for the record, I want to say thanks for saving my life. It may not be all that much a life—” a plea for pity “—but it’s the only one I have.”

  “It is indeed not much of a life, to judge by the reports about you, which I do not altogether believe,” she said in a terse, hard voice, “and all I did was my duty. I would do it for anyone.” Then the voice softened, becoming almost maternal. “Still, I accept your gratitude and am happy I could save your life. You are not—” she gave a small, only faintly disapproving laugh “—a light burden to pull from the sewer.”

  There was a splashing noise indicating that she was climbing out of the pool. Seamus did not dare look.

  “This cloak will probably cover you adequately until we return to the living space of the Research Director.” She threw a huge brown sacklike garment on the couch. “It is a mountain robe. It may be a little warm,” she actually giggled. “But you do not come in any of our regular sizes. Now I will leave the room, so as not to offend your male prudery.” Silently and unsmilingly she left.

  After O’Neill, thoroughly humiliated, had dressed, they left her room and walked down the steps. A cruddy old place for someone like her, he thought. Then without reflection he muttered the age-old Gaelic benediction. “Jesus and Mary and Brigid be with this house.”

  “Who are they?” Marjetta demanded.

  “Ah, holy people.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, special friends of God.”

  “I see,” but in the darkness she sounded like she did not. “Your god has special friends?”

  “Well, kind of. We pray to Him through them. We sort of hope they’ll use their influence with Him.”

  “How consoling. A kindly god then?”

  “Sometimes too kindly by half. Won’t leave us alone. Head over heels with us. If you take my meaning.”

  “Extraordinary. And yet somehow not unreasonable. I should like someday to know more about him. It is him, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes,” O’Neill answered. “Well, the Old Fella has the characteristics of both.”

  “You do not deceive me?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  She conducted him back to the quarter of his hosts. They said not a word to each other till they came to the small parklike plaza in front of the Sammy/Ernie skyscraper.

  “Thanks again.” He reached in the darkness for her hand. “I owe you one.”

  “What nonsense is that?” she demanded imperiously.

  “You’ve saved my life, so I am, uh, well, not in debt to you—” he searched for an explanation “—but, well, at your service if you ever need me.”

  “That is very beautiful,” she said, her voice choking up. “I may well need you. And I will call upon you gladly.”

  Now that was a change of tune, O’Neill thought uneasily.

  “How can I help?” he asked spontaneously.

  “No one can help.” She sounded close to tears.

  Then they were, unaccountably, in each other’s arms, locked in as furious an embrace of love as O’Neill had ever known, her breasts pressed against his chest, his hands digging into her rump, their lips glued together, their bodies twisting in the preliminary motions of passion. His cloak fell off him, her robe slipped away with a simple touch of his hands. He felt her body stiffen in resistance. “Please …,” she begged.

  O’Neill was an expert on no’s. This was a real no, reluctant, sad, but definitive. She didn’t expect him to honor it, which was, his instincts told him, all the more reason to do so. It would be much better eventually when she said yes.

  Besides, the pavement was awfully hard.

  Then in an instant Seamus Finnbar O’Neill discovered what love was. Her fragility became more important than his passion, her fears more important than his need. His lips and hands became instruments not of conquest but of reassurance, his embrace not an imperious demand but a tender offer of protection, his kiss a delicate and sensitive tribute to her goodness.

  She melted in his arms. He released her. She leaned against him for a few seconds and then pulled back.

  He reclaimed his coat and her robe in the darkness and arranged the robe around her trembling shoulders.

  “You stopped,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “You wanted me to.”

  “Most men wouldn’t. It was my fault. My emotions are more undisciplined than I thought. Now I owe you a favor.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “You may be a space parasite, Poet O’Neill, but you’re still a good man.” She paused. “And a fine lover.”

  “I’m flattered.” He tried to laugh. “At least I think I am.”

  “You kiss Dr. Samaritha that way?” she asked curiously.

  “I’ve never kissed anyone that way in my life.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never quite loved anyone like I love you.”

  When we finally know what love is, the Cardinal had often said, we know what God is like.

  “Now I am flattered. But enough. I must take you home. Here is my hand,” she laughed, “for guidance purposes. Follow me.”

  His heart sang within him. She felt the same way he did. She needed to be saved from this terrible place and he was the man to save her.

  “Poet O’Neill found our City so fascinating that he became lost,” she sternly told the four people who were anxiously waiting, Horor, the slender, intense son, and Carina, the diminutive hard-faced future daughter-in-law, having joined his host and hostess.

  The kids were impassive; Ernie and Sammy were obviously relieved. “You folks certainly provide charming guides.” He smiled expansively, going along with Marjetta’s lie.

  “A happy event which brings the good Lieutenant to our living space,” said Sammy warmly, taking the girl’s hand.

  Everyone in the room seemed delighted by the trim soldier’s presence, the young people especially. For a kid not yet twenty, she was very well known. Ah, woman, I’ve got to get to know you better. Still he was more than a little afraid of her. She was almost as tough as the Lady Deirdre. Come to think of it, Your Ladyship, who the hell tried to kill me and why?

  When she left the apartment, she said, with a glance at O’Neill, “Jesus and Mary and Brigid be with this house.”

  They stared at her in astonishment.

  “It is one of the Poet’s blessings.” She permitted herself a small smile. “Friends of his god. I find it consoling.”

  Glory be to God!

  Later O’Neill was luxuriating in the fragrant waters of his bath. The jungle smell that filled the room had chased the last memories of the drug and the sewer. The Zylongi were bathing freaks, worse than the Tarans, if that were possible. Even the Technical Student—in whose quarters he was staying—had a vast bathtub, set into the floor, in which many-colored pulsating waters created a feeling of deep tranquillity. Then he thought about the simple almost harsh quarters of the Lieutenant. Not everyone was equal in this world, not by a long shot.

  He splashed some water on his face and sank lower into the tub, fantasizing about the long trim legs of Lieutenant Marjetta. His door panel slid open and Dr. Samaritha entered.

  “I am concerned about your health, Honored Guest.” She leaned against the door, slightly and becomingly out of breath. Oh Lord, now two women on my mind.

  “Not a thing wrong with me,” he boasted. “Just a long hard day in the most pleasant possible company.”<
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  Dr. Samaritha smiled. Then she asked, “Honored Poet Guest, may I ask you a question?”

  O’Neill nodded.

  She blurted out, “Do I displease you completely?”

  “Of course not. What would make you think that? Sure, I doubt any space tramp has ever had a more gracious and considerate hostess.” He again splashed his face with water, trying to hide his unease.

  “Poet O’Neill, you are a strange man. Sometimes you joke, sometimes you say improper things, sometimes you are kind and considerate, sometimes you look at me very suspiciously. It is … it is most disconcerting.” There was a muscle in her throat that twitched bewitchingly.

  She was at her best when she was vulnerable. He pressed his hands against the bottom of the tub to restrain his impulse to jump out and embrace her. “Well, lovely women always throw me off balance, I guess. Besides, sometimes I get the impression there are many things I don’t understand.”

  “Must you understand everything?” she pleaded, extending her lovely arms. “It is not too good to be too curious. The Music Director and I intend you no harm. You should allow us to please you. But … I have said too much.” She turned and fled, as though some emotion were too powerful to contain.

  Uh, oh, O’Neill, you may just be in really serious trouble. You’ve been here a couple of days and already you have two beautiful, vulnerable, fragile women on your hands. This wasn’t supposed to be part of the program.

  At all. At all.

  6

  The next day O’Neill was to hear, much to his disgust, substantial clinical details about the fragile and vulnerable Doctor Samaritha—Sammy—in bed. Only she was described more like a beast in heat than a woman who needed to be treated with the utmost tenderness. He and Ernie were “engaging in exercise” in a local “exercise” center. He did very badly in a kind of team handball—a melee in which every man was for himself. Though he was a half-foot taller than the Zylongi males and thirty pounds heavier, they were in much better condition and more agile than he. Every muscle ached—too much dark cream and la-ir, he judged.