“Ah!” said the host, stretching luxuriously. “She will not dare to trouble us again tonight.” He poured the glasses full. “You cannot imagine what this means to me! At last—an evening of social conversation with a congenial friend! I have waited so long—I had almost ceased to hope.”
“I think it is your turn to talk now,” said the scout coldly.
“I know. You are right. And I can see that you are displeased with me. You think me rude and brutal, you think I abuse a poor woman whose only fault is that she adores me too much. But when you have heard—”
“You tried to kill her, at dinner.”
“Precisely: she angered me beyond endurance . . . and I tried. You observed that I did not succeed.”
Patrick recovered his aplomb.
“I apologize,” he said. “It is not my business to judge what I cannot understand. But you will realize I must be puzzled.”
“I do indeed. And you are my friend—my first friend in fifty years. I will tell you everything you want to know. Only, it is hard to know how to start.
“Tell me: in your world, are there . . . beings . . . persons that are not human?”
Patrick smiled indulgently. “Some people in my world believe so. Everybody believed so once.”
“Here also. Only, I have proved that they are real.”
Oh, come now! Patrick thought. Fairy tales at this point? “You have?” he said in his best diplomatic manner.
“As you see about you . . . Then, have you a story that one may force such a being to do one’s will?”
“We do have a myth—a symbol which has inspired some of our greatest artists—about selling one’s soul to the devil—”
“Oh, as with the Nameless!” Zoth turned pale and raised his arms high, the thumbs and forefingers firmly pressed together. “Do not speak of Him!”
Patrick remembered the terrifying hundred-foot statue in the nave of the great temple. Unreasoningly, he knew that this was the Nameless; and for a moment he felt less scornful of the fairy tale.
“No,” Zoth went on; “what I mean is closer to the simple akkir plane. These are lesser beings, but powerful enough. If one of them can be brought into your power, he can be compelled to grant you five wishes. You have such?”
“Fairies, leprechauns, demons . . . I see what you mean. But on Earth it is, according to legend, only three wishes that he grants. ”
“You are luckier than we.”
So Zoth’s Standard Galactic, the scout thought with amusement, was not so altogether perfect as he had assumed—luckier when he meant less lucky. Patrick hid a smile as Zoth refilled their goblets.
“I shall tell you the whole story. It is the easiest way to make it clear.”
. . . if not necessarily convincing, Patrick thought. And yet, he asked himself, have you, my bright Galactic scout, found any normal rational method of accounting for this deserted planet, this celestial Mary Celeste:5
“Fifty years ago I was twenty-three years old. You look surprised. I can age like other akkir, but I can never be senile.
“I was young. I was poor. I had a mean job I hated. I was lonely, with no close friends—I, so gregarious a man—and I was madly in love with a girl who would not even look at me. I was in despair.
“How the grosh was summoned to me and how he came under my power I shall not tell you. It would be too hard to make it plain, and besides, these are secret things better not told. But he came, and I did subdue him to my will.”
“The grosh—that’s the demon?”
“You may call him so; he is in any event a being like neither you nor me, nor any material creature. I may tell you that my own grandfather was a vardun— a priest in the great temple of the Nameless in this city—and from him, though I myself was not chosen to be a vardun, I had learned many things in my boyhood.”
He repeated the propitiatory gesture—the arms raised and the thumbs and forefingers pressed together.
“So there I was, with five wishes at my disposal. Even then—though I never guessed”—Zoth shuddered—“I thought it wise not to use up all of them at once, but to keep one at least in reserve. You will see how wise that was—but still not wise enough.
“What does anyone want? Long life, health, wealth, love, fame perhaps, though that I did not care about: and if one’s heart is good, one wants also good fortune for others as well. I was canny; I had speculated long, to get into small compass as much as possible of the things I craved and had never had.”
“Understandably,” Patrick nodded. “We are of different worlds, Zoth, but of the same nature.”
“So I wished, first, to live to a hundred years at least, and always in good health and strength, without injury or illness. ‘Granted,’ said the grosh.
“Then I wished, not for great wealth which may be a burden, but that I should never lack for any comfort or luxury I might desire. And, since I am one who loves my fellow-beings, loves company and good talk—I, who for fifty years have spoken only to that silly creature in there!—I specified that among these comforts and luxuries must be the ability to converse freely with every person I ever met. You must realize that in Xilmuch at that time there were different communities, all equal, but speaking different tongues—”
“You mean, different nations?”
“Of course; that is your word for them. I intended to travel much, and I wanted to be able to associate with all whom I met. So this, I stipulated, must be part of
