“So that’s how you speak Standard Galactic, is it? That’s puzzled me a lot.”
“That is how. And if you had spoken any other language, I could have understood and spoken it just as well.”
“And what was your third wish?” Patrick began to see a pattern forming—and wished that he did not.
Zoth paced the room, his glass of stralp in his hand. He glanced furtively at the door through which Jyk had vanished. Then he said in a shaking voice:
“I told the grosh—the Nameless forgive me!—that I wished that the girl with whom I was then so madly in love should love me in return, as madly and forever. I wished that she might be willing to marry me at once. And I wished that she should never leave me, but would live exactly as long as I did myself.
“And the grosh said, ‘Granted.’ ”
“That’s three wishes.” Patrick hesitated. “Did you make any more?”
“One more. Do you know what a war is?”
“Certainly. It has been centuries since there has been a war on Earth, but in the past they were only too common. Even now, we must guard vigilantly against hostility and conflict between rival groups.”
“We had not progressed so far. At one time or another, all of our various— nations, as you call them—on Xilmuch had been at one another’s throats. We had torn one another almost to pieces, and as our science advanced our wars grew still more terrible. And at that very moment there was threat of a new war that would have advanced my own people, here in this city.
“I was an idealistic young man, who hated bloodshed. So for my fourth wish, I wished that everywhere on Xilmuch there should be complete and perpetual peace.
“ ‘Granted,’ said the grosh.
“These were my four wishes. And I told the grosh that when I was ready to make the fifth, I would summon him: these beings are immortal, you know. I have still not made it.”
“But I don’t understand,” Patrick objected. “It seems to me that those were all practicable wishes. And you say you had the—the grosh in your power. Didn’t he really grant them?”
“He granted them all,” said Zoth.
“As for the first, I am as you see me. I shall live at least 27 years more, and I shall never know illness or bodily pain. That wish I have no doubt the grosh granted me with pleasure—knowing that long before the end I should yearn in vain for death.
“And I have, as you observe, every comfort and luxury I could desire. I live in a palace, and I have at my disposal the food, the clothing, the furniture, all the paraphernalia of life of a great city. The supply, easily obtained, will certainly outlast my lifetime. As for the ability to converse with my fellow-beings in their own tongues, it is only today that I have had occasion to test it—and that with an akkir from a world of outer space. But you see it was granted to me.”
“But the third wish? What went wrong about the girl you loved? How did the demon get out of really granting you that?”
“He didn’t . . . It was Jyk.”
“Oh.”
“I had thought my heart was broken when she spurned every advance I made. Now of her own accord she came to me: she loved me wildly, as she always will. I was in ecstasy. We were married at once. I was the happiest man on Xilmuch.
“How could I foresee that my own love would turn to loathing? But against my will, it did: first she bored me, then she disgusted me, now I hate her with all my heart.
“And she will be with me all my life. She will live exactly as long as I.”
“So that’s why—” Patrick exclaimed.
“Yes, that is why no knife, nor any other means, can ever rid me of her.
“I am ashamed that you saw that scene; it does not happen often. But can you imagine what it must be like to have someone, someone you detest, pester you with constant worship? Sometimes I think I shall go mad: nothing, nothing will ever offend or alienate her, and she clings to me every minute. I know she is not sleeping now; she will do whatever I tell her, but she is waiting for me right now with open arms; if I did not go to her eventually, she would seek me out, wherever I might be. And for fifty years there has been no akkir on Xilmuch but her and me!”
He paused, fighting for self-control.
“I don’t want you to think I am naturally cruel,” he went on in a calmer voice. “If I had pity left for anyone but myself, I should pity her. But I need not; she is happy just to be with me, however I treat her. Nearly always I can pretend patience. It was only today, when your coming had so excited me—”
The scout averted his eyes. Quickly, to change the subject, he asked:
“But your fourth wish? Did the demon grant you that?”
“Is there not peace on Xilmuch?” asked Zoth simply.
The Terran was silent. Demons indeed! But this planet. . . the pattern . . .
“Yes,” his host went on, “the grosh knew. We akkir are not made by nature for perpetual peace—or we were not so made fifty years ago. The animals also . . . There is no animal on this planet now which fights with others for its mate, or kills others for its food.
“And there is great and lasting and perpetual peace today on Xilmuch.”
Patrick said nothing. His host filled their glasses.
Finally the Terran broke the silence.
“Is there no way,” he said hesitantly, “by which, with the wisdom you have acquired, you could use the fifth wish still at your disposal to undo some of the evil the demon did you?”
You might wish, Patrick thought, to return your wife’s love once more, and salvage that much out of the mess; but probably it’s too late
