Star Quest

will make your way to the Market of Concubines. I have contacted the Old Man and told him about you, and Hunk's plan. He agrees on Hunk's idea and on your being given a chance to find Tarnilee. He is contacting all other groups and evacuating them to friendly but unarmed planets. We are scheduled to join a large Mutie group on Columbiad. We will put our plan into action then. I hope you understand what we want to do. We are going to create — that is not the proper word, but it will serve — a universe without warlike worlds. We hope to live in peace. If you wish to come with us, be back here no later than twenty-four hours from the time you leave. You must find your woman in that period. We have shown you the city via maps and have tutored you in the customs of the lowest class so that you can move more freely than many people in the upper strata of society. Babe will give you one thousand credits with which you may, with some luck, bid for your woman should she come up on the platform. There will also be another fifty credits there for the miscellaneous. We can't accompany you, only wish you luck.”

“I'll find her and bring her back,” Tohm said, standing.

“Now I guess I should catch some sleep while there's still time.”

“You'll need it,” Corgi said.

“Goodnight.' — Babe.

“Goodnight,” he answered, moving through the door and into the corridor, conscious of their eyes and semi- eyes on him. His mind was in a turmoil. His conversation with Mayna hung heavy about him, made him feel strangely inadequate, impotent. Somehow, he was not as excited about the search tomorrow as he should have been. Would finding Tarnilee mean returning home? Although baffled by it, he was charmed with the civilized worlds. The red-leafed trees, the fish and the fruits were no longer enough. The simple life had fled from him and left a hole in his being, in the delicate fabric of his soul.

His thoughts were intruded upon by a strange noise that competed for his attention. He stopped and listened. He had heard — and yes, there it was again — an animal sound, a rumbling noise and a weeping. Very strange indeed. It seemed to be coming from Seer's room.

Again.

But Seer didn't cry aloud…

Seer shook, yes…

And Seer wept, certainly…

But Seer did not cry out as if in pain…

Not normally…

There was a sudden screech again, louder this time. But it seemed that whatever was making the noise was trying to suppress it, to seal its own lips from the outcry of its own lungs…

Quietly, he moved across the hallway to the door, pushed it gently open, peered in…

And stood transfixed.

Frozen…

There, on the old mans bed, was Mayna. Her leotard suit was pulled down to her waist. Her breasts were naked, and Seer, nestled in her lap like a child, was drawing upon one. The breasts were longer than they were wide and were mostly fleshy nipple like an animal's teat.

Suddenly, almost spasmodically, she jerked her head to face him.

“You—” he started to say.

“Get out!” she screamed.

The words hung back in his throat, choking him with their reluctant syllables, their hesitant fingers of meaning…

“Get out!”

He closed the door, his head spinning. Why with Seer of all people? Why with, a babbling idiot? Even Babe would have been better. Or Corgi, certainly. He turned and ran, throwing his hands over his ears to block out any traces of the weeping. He found his room, fumbled the door open and shut, and fell into bed without palming the lights. Why, why, why? And why the Hell should he care? It was bad enough that she did it, but why was he all hung up over it? Forget it. Wipe it out. It's nothing to you. If she wants the old man, let her have him. The idiot! The slobbering moron!

The door crashed open, and she was there, dressed once again, standing in the rectangle of light that flooded through the open portal.

“Get out!” he snapped.

She slammed the door, palmed only the nightlight which brightened the room — but not too much. “You,” she said, hissing in tones that were more cat than woman and that made the single word a paragraph.

“It's my turn to say get out!” He bunched his fists, searching for something to strike out at, wondering all the while why he was so enraged. “You're in my room. I want you out.”

“I don't give a damn,” she hissed again, her foot claws trembling in and out of their sheaths, retracting, springing, over and over. “I don't give a little good damn what you want! What right have you got to snoop in other people's rooms?”

“I thought he was in trouble. I heard the weeping noises — like someone in pain.”

“He bit me. He bit me, Hero Tohm, not you!”

“I thought he was alone; old fool like that hurt—”

“Shut up!”

“Get out!” he snapped back, determined, this time, to fight her viciousness with cunning and hatred of his own.

“No. Not until I've told you really what a worm you are, Hero Tohm!”

“I'm not a hero.”

“I know that.”

“Get out!”

“No. I started to tell you some of this in the caves before supper. You thought, by appealing to my animal characteristics, my lust, you'd buy time for yourself. You thought a good kiss would get me all heated up.”

“You aren't heated by anyone but old fools—”

She leaped on top of a chair, sitting on the back, perfectly balanced, ready to spring upon a mouse. She looked down at the bed. “Old fool, is he? You don't know half of what he knows. None of us does. None of us can imagine just what he sees, Hero Tohm. Fool indeed! You're the fool. A damn fool, Hero Tohm. He has reason to babble: he sees. He sees it!”

“It?” he asked, interested despite himself.

“God!” she boomed, leaping from the chair to the dresser, sitting with her exquisite back to the mirror. “God, Hero Tohm. Seer sees God, and he can't take it. Does that mean anything to you? Does it suggest anything? Seer looks down into the very heart of things, past the stars, beyond the realities and semi-realities and quasi-truths and what we call the Real Truths. It is all chaff to him, Hero Tohm. Seer looks around the bends we don't even know are there and peeks into corners we have forgotten about or never seen. He looks upon God. And it has driven him insane. Does that mean anything to you, Hero Tohm?”

“I—” He started to sit up.

“No. It wouldn't. You don't understand the concepts. But God, Hero Tohm, is a concept you should certainly be able to understand. Vaguely, at least. Don't tax your mind. You had God on your primitive little world, didn't you? Some kind of god. Wind God. Sun God. But God is nothing like you imagine him or I imagine him — or like anyone has ever imagined him. Seer knows what He is like, and Seer has been driven insane by the knowledge. So, Hero Tohm, what the Hell is God? What is it that could be so horrible that it has kept Seer babbling and weeping all these years? Maybe he doesn't see anything — just vast emptiness, pitch, void, godlessness. Maybe there is no God, Hero Tohm. But I don't think that's it. I think Seer could recover from that view. God is there. But God is something so horrible and with so many facets of terror that Seer never ceases to be horrified into insanity.”

Tohm grabbed his head in his hands as if to burst it, to smash it open. All he wanted was Tarnilee. He thought that was it. Wasn't it? He couldn't really put his finger on anything else. At least, he wouldn't let himself.

She hissed scornfully. “Certainly I suckle him. He can't eat. It's not only a case of not being able to feed himself; there's more, much more, to it. He has reverted, Hero Tohm. If he could get his nourishment from a tube connected with his belly, he would be happy. He wants back in the womb, Hero Tohm. He wants swallowed. But he can't have that. Damn it, he should, but he can't. So there is nothing but breast feeding; that's the farthest back he