Author: Joan D. Vinge
Category: Science
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He began to hum a fragment of song whose words were incomprehensible to him, although he knew them all. Its tune sounded alien and disturbing to his ears, the tonal shifts and intervals made him feel vaguely queasy although he knew they were perfectly precise. He did not hum when he was happy. In the distance he could see other strongholds—fortress towers, sleek needles of self-contained strength rising like defiant fingers through the impenetrable barrier of the forests. He could name the drug and vice bosses who controlled each of them, who ruled the lives of communities of workers, researchers, and henchmen as if they were petty feudal lords. The shielded towers were easily reached only by air. In their business, the thorn forest made for good neighbors. It also kept locals who weren’t in their pay out of their hair.
Reede turned away from the twenty-centimeter-thick pane of virtually impenetrable ceramic, moving back and forth restlessly, running his hands through his hair, pushing them into the deep pockets of his lab clothing. He had not bothered to change, because Humbaba had sent word that he was to come up immediately … only to keep him pacing out here like some lackey. He hated waiting, hated to stop moving any time when he didn’t have to, any time when there was nothing to occupy his mind.… He sat down, stood up, his hands tightening into fists; began to pace again, pulling at his ear. “Shit—” he said, and said it again.
The sweet chiming voice of a hundred silver bells whispered his name, behind him. He turned, with the swiftness of a startled animal, as someone’s hand circled his arm.
“Mundilfoere—” He stopped himself, as abruptly and lightly as if he had no mass, at the sight of her face. She barely came up to his chin, and her face was veiled; the cloth was a filmy gauze, intentionally almost transparent, so that her features were clearly visible but still a mystery, sensually shrouded. The cloth of her gown, which covered her from neck to foot, was only slightly more opaque. She was Humbaba’s First Wife. She said that she was a jewel merchant’s daughter from the lands of the south, purchased on a whim to become one of his countless concubines. But she was more than she seemed—which was why she was now his First Wife, and held more influence over him than any of his advisors. And Humbaba was not the only one who had noticed her uniqueness.
Reede’s hands rose, trembling; he felt himself overwhelmed by his need for her, which was at once a terrifying physical hunger for the things that her body knew, and was teaching to him, and something deeper that he had never tried to name, let alone understand. His life seemed to have begun the first night that he spent in her arms, the morning that he had awakened to find himself lying beside her. “Where were you last night? I waited … I waited until the second moon rose—”
“I was with my lord Humbaba,” she said softly. “He required my presence.”
“Again?”
She shrugged, expressionless. She had been Humbaba’s favorite since before Reede had known either one of them; and as a rule, Humbaba was easily bored.
“I don’t suppose you were simply discussing business,” he said sourly.
“Not the entire night, no.” Her indigo eyes regarded him with mild censure from behind the silvered gauze.
He made a face. “How do you kiss him without vomiting?”
She did not smile. “All men are handsome in the dark, beloved,” she said softly. “Just as all women are beautiful.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I must.”
He turned away from her, taking a deep breath. She waited without speaking until he turned back again. He found that she had drawn aside her veil. To see her face suddenly revealed to him was somehow as erotic as seeing her completely naked. He sucked in a breath, as a hundred different images of her face, of her body and his own together, filled his mind … a thousand memories of secret moments, hours, nights together in stolen corners of their hermetically sealed world. How long she had been his lover—or he had been hers, chosen by her—he wasn’t even sure. His life was all randomness and chaos, except when he was at work in the labs. Time had no meaning for him except when he was in her arms. He kept his hands rigidly open at his sides, afraid that his need would betray them both.
She moved away, as if she sensed his control slipping. “He is an old man, tisshah’el,” she murmured, barely audible. “Even he says so, so it must be true. He has never made me weep tears of joy.… Only you can do that.”
“Tisshah’el,” he murmured. Beloved stranger. A word like a sigh, full of so much longing, and so much grief: the word her people used for someone caught in adultery, a crime they sometimes punished with death by flaying, or castration. Sometimes he wished she wouldn’t use it, even though she appreciated its poignant irony more than he did.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him, finally.
“Humbaba wanted to see me,” he answered, noncommittal.
“Why?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been rotting out here for half an hour—” He broke off. “Why are you here?”
“He asked to see me also.”
“Why?” he said, tensing, suddenly feeling afraid. “Gods—do you think he knows?”
“I don’t know.” There was no concern on her face. There never was. Her thoughts were like the depths of a pool; he was never allowed to see below their surface. Sometimes he wanted to shake her, to force some reaction out of her. Sometimes he was certain her perfect calm was only an act. Sometimes he thought it was just the resigned fatalism her culture bred into its women.… And then he wondered if it was his potential violence that attracted her to him; if all she wanted from him was just another suicidal asshole, like the men she had always known. And then he would tell himself fiercely that he was more than that, and so was she—
The doors to the inner chamber opened, with a soft sucking sound like a kiss. He turned, feeling her turn with him; she covered her face quickly with her veil. Stepping back from each other until there was a neutral distance between them, they walked together through the doorway and into Humbaba’s presence.
Reede’s vision recoiled, as it always did, as his eyes found Humbaba’s face—still refusing to believe, after all these years, that what he saw was real. Humbaba came from somewhere on Tsieh-pun, and he’d heard the local customs had merged into and gone beyond the usual underworld tattooing. They had traditionally scarred their faces, the uglier the better, because it intimidated their enemies and their underlings. Cosmetic surgery had given them stomach-turning possibilities far beyond the original, primitive scarring. Ugliness meant strength, power.… If that was true, Reede had often thought that Humbaba should have been the most powerful man in the galaxy, because he had to be the ugliest. He looked like he was wearing his intestines on his face.
Reede swallowed his disgust, along with his sudden, unexpected unease, and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead in a salute. “Sab Emo.” Beside him, Mundilfoere made the same obeisance.
Humbaba turned away from them, toward his aquarium, peering in at the fish that moved like glinting shadows through its green-lit depths. Reede could see Humbaba’s face reflected in the glass, huge and grotesque, with their own two figures tiny and distorted in the background. Behind the transparent wall, the fish peered back at them curiously; their faces were a wad of distorted flesh that matched their master’s. They came from Tsieh-pun too, where for some segment of humanity ugliness had even become beauty. Reede kept the grimace off his face, telling himself that it made as much sense as anything else humans did. And from a bioengineering standpoint, maybe it was even true.
The ever-lengthening moment of Humbaba’s silence stretched Reede’s nerves like time on the rack. At last Humbaba turned away from the green, peaceful world of the hideous fish and faced them again. “They have given me so much pleasure…” he murmured. His voice was perfectly normal, a deep, pleasant baritone; as was the total unselfconsciousness of his manner—another incongruity he used to good effect. “As you have, my jewel.” He nodded to Mundilfoere, and she bowed her h
ead in acknowledgment, her bells singing softly.
“And your work has brought pleasure to millions, Reede.” His voice took on an ironic amusement. He reached out, his thick, blunt fingers hovering over a long side-table covered with what Reede realized suddenly was a banquet of drugs—all of his creations. Humbaba selected something from the display, popped it into his mouth and chewed it like a sweetmeat. “And put millions into my accounts, which pleases me even more. Our mutual working agreement has served us both well.”
Reede said nothing, shifting uncomfortably, sure that this round of empty compliments was not the reason for their being here. He could tell nothing from Humbaba’s expression, which was always totally inhuman.
Humbaba turned back to them abruptly. “But something has come to my attention that does not bring me pleasure. In fact, it causes me more pain than anything has since I lost my beloved mother.” His small, black eyes seemed to flicker, as if he was blinking rapidly inside the mottled piles of flesh. “How long have you been lovers?”
Reede froze, left groping for words by the bluntness of the unexpected question. “We aren’t—”
“Since before I brought him to you, my lord,” Mundilfoere said quietly. “Since the day I first saw him.” Reede shot a disbelieving look at her as Humbaba moved slowly forward, his massive body dwarfing her.
Humbaba reached out, taking hold of the veil that covered her face, his fist tightening, as if he were about to rip it off. But he lifted it almost tenderly, as he stood staring down at her. “Are you saying you seduced him, in order to ensure his loyalty to me—?”
Reede watched her, unable to take his eyes off her; suddenly needing to know her answer more than he needed to go on living.
She glanced at him; her eyes lingered on his face, before her gaze flickered downward. “No, my lord. That was not why.”
Humbaba’s fist tightened, muscles bunched in his arm. “Damn you,” he said. “Why won’t you ever lie to me? I even gave you the lie myself—”
She glanced away, up at him again. “I have never lied to you, my lord. You know that. That is why I have been your First Wife for so long.”
He snorted, and wattles of flesh quivered. “I’d like to know what else you never bothered to mention to me, though, my jewel,” he said sourly, his hand leaving the veil aside, to close over her jaw until she winced. “I trusted you, in ways I never trusted any other woman … and perhaps more than I ever trusted any man—” Reede’s hands tightened impotently; his chest ached from the breath he was holding. “So,” Humbaba murmured, “you like pretty young boys the best, after all—? How many other have there been?”
“None, my lord,” she answered, with difficulty. “Only him. Only you—”
He snorted again, with derision, letting her go. “You know the penalty for adultery among your people, Mundilfoere. I could have the skin peeled off your face until you looked like me.” He shot a glance at Reede. “I could cut off your prick and make you eat it, Kullervo.” Reede grimaced. “I always wondered why you had no interest in sex,” Humbaba muttered. “I offered you women, all you wanted, or men, or boys—you remember?” Reede nodded numbly. “But you always said no. I thought maybe you were getting it in town. But you were getting it right here. I gave you everything. But you had to take the one thing you were not offered.” His heavy fist rose, stopped just short of Reede’s face. Reede flinched involuntarily. “Why?”
“Because when I met her she made me forget everything else.” Answering only with the truth, too, Reede found the voice to speak; but the voice hardly sounded like his own. He felt like a man in a bad dream, trying to wake up. How did you find out? He almost asked it, couldn’t force himself to. Knowing that the details didn’t matter. Knowing it should have happened years ago. Nobody could keep anything a secret in a place like this; it was like living in orbit. It was only his frequent trips around the planet and offworld, and Humbaba’s, that had kept them safe this long. He had always let himself believe that even if they were discovered Humbaba would look the other way, because he was indispensable, and Humbaba knew it—
“Yes,” Humbaba murmured, “I know you, Reede … I know that look. You think you’re indispensable. But losing your genitalia won’t affect your brains.” He looked back and forth between their silent, stricken faces. Slowly he reached into the folds of his long, sleeveless robe, and brought out a heavy blade, with serrations the size of teeth and a tip curved like a claw. “Tell me,” he said, “how much do you really love each other? Would you give away your manhood to save your lover’s face, Kullervo?… Would you give up your beauty, my jewel, to spare him that indignity?” He gestured, the blade echoing his invitation with its smile of steel.
“Yes.”
“Yes—” Reede broke off, as he realized that Mundilfoere had answered the same way, at the same moment. He stepped forward, coming between her and Humbaba. He unfastened his belt and dropped his pants. “Go ahead,” he said, meeting Humbaba’s unreadable gaze above the gleaming knifeblade. “Cut it off.”
Humbaba stared at Reede a moment longer. Then suddenly his face began to quake, a landslide of flesh. Deep laughter poured out of the lipless opening that was his mouth. His Head of Research stood glaring back at him with his pants down around his ankles. Humbaba shook his head. “You probably know a way to make it grow back, you crazy bastard.” As slowly as he had brought the knife out, he put it away again. “Pull your pants up.” He looked at Mundilfoere and shook his head again, his wattles jiggling. “My jewel…” he said, almost sadly. He touched her face, a gentle contact this time. “It would have been painful to have ruined that face … although in your way you would still have been as beautiful to me, and given me as much pleasure.…” He sighed. “But you are growing old, anyway, and that is a form of damage I do not care for.” He took her arm abruptly, and pushed her at Reede. “Here. I give her to you, Reede. Have her for a wife. See if she is still as irresistible when the fruit is no longer forbidden.”
Reede took hold of her, steadying her against the abrupt motion and his own surprise.
“My lord…” Mundilfoere whispered, looking from man to man with stunned eyes. “Is this a joke?”
Humbaba shrugged irritably. “My sense of humor doesn’t extend that far,” he said, and Reede sensed from his voice what he couldn’t tell from his face—that he frowned. “I don’t want you anymore. I’m finished with you. You belong to my man Kullervo now, until he doesn’t want you anymore.” He waved a hand at them, dismissing them.
Mundilfoere fluttered her hands, jingling. Reede put his arm around her, started to lead her to the door; he saw that the expression on her face looked more like distress than joy or relief. “Mundilfoere…?” he murmured. She looked up at him, seeing the unspoken question in his eyes. She reached up, touching his cheek lightly, her face transforming suddenly, giving him his answer. He looked back at Humbaba. “Thank you,” he said, for the second time in his life that he could remember.
Humbaba made an unreadable gesture. Reede knew as well as Humbaba did that he could do his work with his cock cut off. But he’d do it better if he was a happy man. Humbaba wasn’t an original thinker. He survived because he had a gut instinct for how to keep his people loyal. “That new inhalant you’ve been developing. I expect to be enjoying it soon,” Humbaba said to his retreating back.
“Yes, sab.” Reede smiled to himself as the doors slid aside, permitting him to leave with Mundilfoere held close against him, and shut again behind him.
In the outer room he tried to stop, but Mundilfoere kept him moving with a subtle motion of her body. He obeyed her, suddenly understanding her need to put more distance between them and what had almost happened. They went on through the seemingly endless corridor beyond the antechamber. The air was incongruously thick with the scent of flowers, the light was green and dappled, as they entered the lush foliage of a hydroponics area.
He stopped Mundilfoere at last, under the spreading shelter of a fruit tree, and put
his arms around her; kissed her with all the depth of need and ravenous hunger of a freed prisoner. He had never kissed her like this, openly, freely, as if there were nothing to fear, nothing to hide.
But her own hands rose, separating her from him with gentle, insistent pressure until he let her go, although his hands still clung to her. “We must be discreet—”
“Why—?” he said.
“Until we have considered the consequences.”
He saw the urgency in her eyes, and remembered what she was trying to make him remember. He nodded, barely. “Come to my room with me, then.”
“Yes,” she murmured, pressing her face against him, her body momentarily fusing to his own. He felt her heartbeat inside his chest like the wildly beating wings of a bird. “I need to weep for joy.…”
* * *
In his room, in his bed, he made love to her as if the act were a sacrament; though he had no real idea what a sacrament was. He knew only that he would worship her if he could, that her body was the altar of her soul, and that pleasure was the only form of prayer he knew.…
Afterwards, lying beside her, the restless motion of his existence stilled at last, he asked, “Why did you seduce me when we met, if it wasn’t to make me want to work for Humbaba?”
She looked over at him languorously, her eyes half-closed. He smelled the scent of her, rich with the strange herbs and oils she used on her hair and skin. “To bring you peace,” she said, running her fingers across the sweat-gleaming surface of his chest.
He lifted his head, with a single grunt that might have been laughter or disbelief; let it fall back again. “Damn you…” he muttered. His hand closed over hers, covering it until it disappeared inside his own. And yet the gesture was that of a child clinging to its mother. “No wonder you kept Humbaba besotted all those years. Even I never know what you really mean.… I don’t know what anything means, sometimes.” He pushed up onto his elbows, looking back at her, touching the silver-metal pendant that lay between her breasts, the solii jewel at its center like a nacreous eye looking up at him. His hand rose to couch the matching pendant that he wore, reassuring himself that it was still there. “Mundilfoere … tell me the way we met.”