'Sensitive? Self-conscious?' Emory choked and gagged. 'The man is as proud as Lucifer, and he's a walking insult machine. You press a button like 'Hello' or 'Nice day' and he thumbs his nose at you. He's got it down to a reflex.'
They muttered a few other pleasantries and drifted away.
Well bless you, Morton boy. You little pimple-faced, Ivy-bred connoisseur! I've never taken a course in my poetry, but I'm glad someone said that. The Gates of Hell.
Well now! Maybe Daddy's prayers got heard somewhere, and I am a missionary, after all!
Only...
... Only a missionary needs something to convert people to. I have my private system of esthetics, and I suppose it oozes an ethical byproduct somewhere. But if I ever had anything to preach, really, even in my poems, I wouldn't care to preach it to such lowlifes as you. If you think I'm a slob, I'm also a snob, and there's no room for you in my Heaven—it's a private place, where Swift, Shaw, and Petronius Arbiter come to dinner.
And oh, the feasts we have! The Trimalchio's, the Emory's we dissect!
We finish you with the soup, Morton!
I turned and settled at my desk. I wanted to write something. Ecclesiastes could take a night off. I wanted to write a poem, a poem about the one hundred-seventeenth dance of Locar; about a rose following the light, traced by the wind, sick, like Blake's rose, dying
I found a pencil and began.
When I had finished I was pleased. It wasn't great—at least, it was no greater than it needed to be—High Martian not being my strongest tongue. I groped, and put it into English, with partial rhymes. Maybe I'd stick it in my next book. I called it Braxa:
In a land of wind and red, where the icy evening of Time freezes milk in the breasts of Life, as two moons overhead—cat and dog in alleyways of dream—scratch and scramble agelessly my flight...
This final flower turns a burning head.
I put it away and found some phenobarbital. I was suddenly tired.
When I showed my poem to M'Cwyie the next day, she read it through several times, very slowly.
'It is lovely,' she said. 'But you used three words from your own language. 'Cat'
and 'dog,' I assume, are two small animals with a hereditary hatred for one another.
But what is 'flower'?'
'Oh,' I said. 'I've never come across your word for 'flower,' but I was actually thinking of an Earth flower, the rose.'
'What is it like?'
'Well, its petals are generally bright red. That's what I meant, on one level, by
'burning heads.' I also wanted it to imply fever, though, and red hair, and the fire of life. The rose, itself, has a thorny stem, green leaves, and a distinct, pleasing aroma.'
'I wish I could see one.'
'I suppose it could be arranged. I'll check.'
'Do it, please. You are a—' She used the word for 'prophet,' or religious poet, like Isaiah or Locar. '—and your poem is inspired. I shall tell Braxa of it.'
I declined the nomination, but felt flattered.
This, then, I decided, was the strategic day, the day on which to ask whether I might bring in the microfilm machine and the camera. I wanted to copy all their texts, I explained, and I couldn't write fast enough to do it.
She surprised me by agreeing immediately. But she bowled me over with her invitation.
'Would you like to come and stay here while you do this thing? Then you can work night and day, any time you want—except when the Temple is being used, of course.'
I bowed.
'I should be honored.'
'Good. Bring your machines when you want, and I will show you a room.'
'Will this afternoon be all right?'
'Certainly.'
'Then I will go now and get things ready. Until this afternoon ...'
'Goodbye.'
I anticipated a little trouble from Emory, but not much. Everyone back at the ship was anxious to see the Martians, poke needles in the Martians, ask them about Martian climate, diseases, soil chemistry, politics, and mushrooms (our botanist was a fungus nut, but a reasonably good guy)—and only four or five had actually gotten to see them. The crew had been spending most of its time excavating dead cities and their acropolises. We played the game by strict rules, and the natives were as fiercely insular as the nineteenth-century Japanese. I figured I would meet with little resistance, and I figured right.
In fact, I got the distinct impression that everyone was happy to see me move out.
I stopped in the hydroponics room to speak with our mushroom master.
'Hi, Kane. Grow any toadstools in the sand yet?'
He sniffed. He always sniffs. Maybe he's allergic to plants.
'Hello, Gallinger. No, I haven't had any success with toadstools, but look behind the car barn next time you're out there. I've got a few cacti going.'
'Great,' I observed. Doc Kane was about my only friend aboard, not counting Betty.
'Say, I came down to ask you a favor.'
'Name it.'
'I want a rose.'
'A what?'
'A rose. You know, a nice red American Beauty job—thorns, pretty smelling—'
'I don't think it will take in this soil. Sniff, sniff.'
'No, you don't understand. I don't want to plant it, I just want the flowers.'
'I'd have to use the tanks.' He scratched his hairless dome. 'It would take at least three months to get you flowers, even under forced growth.'
'Will you do it?'
'Sure, if you don't mind the wait.'
'Not at all. In fact, three months will just make it before we leave.' I looked about at the pools of crawling slime, at the trays of shoots.
'—I'm moving up to Tirellian today, but I'll be in and out all the time. I'll be here when it blooms.'
'Moving up there, eh? Moore said they're an in-group.'
'I guess I'm 'in' then.'
'Looks that way—I still don't see how you learned their language, though. Of course, I had trouble with French and German for my Ph.D., but last week I heard Betty demonstrate it at lunch. It just sounds like a lot of weird noises. She says speaking it is like working a Times crossword and trying to imitate birdcalls at the same time.'
I laughed, and took the cigarette he offered me.
'It's complicated,' I acknowledged. 'But, well, it's as if you suddenly came across a whole new class of mycetae here—you'd dream about it at night.' I His eyes were gleaming. I 'Wouldn't that be something! I might, yet, you know.'
'Maybe you will.'
He chuckled as we walked to the door.
'I'll start your roses tonight. Take it easy down there.'
'You bet. Thanks.'
Like I said, a fungus nut, but a fairly good guy.
My quarters in the Citadel of Tirellian were directly adjacent to the Temple, on the inward side and slightly to the left. They were a considerable improvement over my cramped cabin, and I was pleased that Martian culture had progressed sufficiently to discover the desirability of the mattress over the pallet. Also, the bed was long enough to accommodate me, which was surprising.
So I unpacked and took sixteen 35 mm. shots of the Temple, before starting on the books.
