The Best of Margaret St. Clair Read online

  All the same it was a mess. Mars was less than 42 hours away, and Bill might be unconscious until after they landed. In that case, George would have to deliver the pig (at 23, to a man wearing a black camellia) without knowing the countersign. He hated messy things. It was a good thing the pig wasn’t valuable.

  He rooted around in Bill’s baggage until he found the deodorant spray and then carried it and the pig to his own cabin. As he opened the door the polka-dotted purple zygodactyl he had bought the last time they touched at Venus opened one eye and stared evilly at him. “You’ll be sorry!” it croaked. “You’ll be sorry!” It was the only thing George had ever been able to teach the bird to say; it had been funny at first, but George was beginning to be tired of it. “You’ll be sorry,” the zygodactyl went on, working itself up into a verbal frenzy, “you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be sorry!”

  George threw a book at it to make it shut up. Then he pulled out his bunk to its fullest extent, sat down on it, and looked at the pig.

  His first impression, that it was alive, seemed to be correct. When he punched it with his finger it made a weak noise, and even moved its mouth at him. But it was a sluggish, low-grade kind of life. The pig appeared to be basically a collection of fatty tissue surrounded with a pale blue skin. Considering its size it might have been an attractive, appealing little animal, but it wasn’t. It had no personality.

  It was beginning to smell. George gave it a good spraying and bent to put it in his foot locker. He hesitated. Bill had said it wasn’t valuable, but there was something funny about Bill’s food poisoning, when you considered it. Nobody else on the ship had been affected. You never could tell with religious things.

  The cabin was poor in hiding places. In the end George loosened one of the plastitiles of the ceiling with a multi-tool and shoved the pig up in the space behind. It would get plenty of air there, at any rate. He anchored the tile in place again with a sliver of preemex.

  He had other patients to see to. He couldn’t spend all day on Bill’s pig. He took one last look at the ceiling and then went out. As he closed the door the zygodactyl croaked, “You’ll be sorry!” at him.

  In the forty-one and a third hours before the Cyniscus put in at Marsport, George’s cabin was searched twice without the pig’s, apparently, being discovered. George made attempt after attempt to see Bill, but his cousin was always receiving sedation. It was not until the ship was almost in Mars’ atmosphere that he was admitted to the hospital ward.

  Bill, looking extremely wan, was lying on one pillow with a refrigerator pack on the back of his head. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi. You look terrible. Say, what’s the countersign?”

  Bill frowned. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve tried and tried to think, but somehow I can’t remember.”

  “Mental block, caused by anxiety,” George barked professionally. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it out of you in no time under deep hypnosis.”

  The red-headed nurse who had been hovering in the background came up. “You’ll have to go if you excite him,” she said warningly.

  Bill waved her aside with one thin hand. “It doesn’t matter, though,” he said. “Give the pig to the man with the black camellia. It’s not valuable.”

  “My cabin’s been searched twice.”

  “You’re imagining it. Martian cults aren’t important, the way religion is on Earth. You know how Martians are—extremely sane, realistic, unimaginative. Only a little lunatic fringe is interested in their cults. Nobody’s trying to get the pig away from you.” Bill had majored in Martian subjects at the University.

  “Well, if it’s so unimportant, why did they send it from Terra with a private courier?”

  “Save time, I guess. You know how many complaints there’ve been about the slowness of the regular mail. I don’t think the cult has more than six members all told. But don’t you worry about it. You deliver the pig.”

  The nurse came up and took Bill’s circulatory reading. She pursed her lips. “You’ll have to go,” she said to George.

  The north side of the spaceport was near the drainage pits. As George approached it through the flickering shadows of the Martian night there seemed to be echoes everywhere. He felt tense and keyed up. Of course Bill was right, and nobody was trying to get the pig. On the other hand, he had always found his cousin’s judgment brash and overconfident. He shifted the pig’s carrying case under his arm, a movement which added a taint of fish to the perfumed Martian breeze, and swallowed. His throat was dry.

  The man with the black camellia was waiting about fifty meters further on, in the shadow of one of the triple cranes. George went up to him, his footfalls echoing slowly on the rhodium-colored pave. He cleared his throat. “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said.

  “Huh?” the man said after a minute. He was a big man, of a typically somatotonic build, and he put a world of interrogation into the sound.

  “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” George repeated, beginning to grow warm around the ears.

  “Run along, sonny,” the man said indulgently. He turned his head to one side for a leisurely expectoration. George saw, in the skipping light of Phobos, that what he had thought was a black camellia was, in fact, one of the half-animal Dryland epiphytes which Martian geeksters liked to wear. “Run along,” the somatotonic type repeated. “You got the wrong tzintz. Do I look like I’d be interested in sightseeing tours?”

  His face hot, George beat a retreat. Of all the fool things to have to go up and say to a stranger! “Perfumed Ma rs, planet—” Bah! As far as he was concerned, Mars and the pig both stank.

  A good deal farther on he encountered the second man. He was a small, dark tzintz (Martian for “bozo”) with a thin little goatee. George circled around him warily, making sure that he was really wearing a camellia and that it really was black, before he spoke.

  “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said. “Rubbledyrubbledryrubbledlyrube,” the stranger said, his head bent.

  George paused. A suspicion was stirring in his mind. What the man had answered might have been Old Martian, of course, but surely the countersign would have been in Terrese, like the sign itself. And anyhow, it hadn’t sounded like a language at all, just mumbling.

  “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” he said for the fourth time that night.

  “Rubbledlvrube,” the thin dark tzintz answered, more briefly. He stuck out his hand.

  George drew back. There was a fishy odor about this. It smelled as bad as the pig. “No you don’t,” he snapped. I—”

  The next thing he knew he was lying at the bottom of one of the drainage pits, a lump as big as a rhea egg on his head. From above someone was speaking to him.

  “Be reasonable!” the voice said scoldingly. “How do you expect me to pull you up if you won’t cooperate? Do be reasonable!”

  Something brushed George lightly on the face. He sat up, rubbing the lump on his head and trying not to groan.

  “That’s better,” the voice said encouragingly. “Now you’re being reasonable. The next time I cast for you with the shari, take hold of the mesh and pull yourself up.”

  Once more there came a light touch on George’s face. He looked up. A girl was leaning over the edge of the drainage pit, trailing her shari at him.

  The shari is an invariable part of the costume of Martian women of every class. A long, strong, slender net, as richly ornamented as the means of its owner will allow, it is used to carry parcels, tie up the hair, transport young children, and as an emergency brassiere. A Martian woman would feel naked without it and, by Terrestrial standards, she very nearly would be. This was the first time George had ever been asked to climb up one. As it trailed over his face again he hooked his fingers in it and pulled himself upright.

  “That’s fine!” the girl cried. Even in the poor light he could see that she was a good-looking girl—though not, of course, as pretty as Darleen. Darleen was like a picture, never a
hair out of place. “You hold on, and I’ll tie it around the winch.”

  Still holding the shari she got lightly to her feet and whirled off into the darkness. “Hook your fingers and toes in the mesh!” she called back. George obeyed. After a moment the shari began to move slowly upward. Obviously the girl had tied its end to a hand winch and was pulling him up. He only hoped the shari wouldn’t break.

  He stepped out on the level just as the mesh of the shari gave an ominous creak. He was still disentangling himself from it when the girl came back. She was panting a little and her dark red hair was disarranged. “Tore my shari some,” she observed ruefully, taking the net from George. She smoothed her hair with a skillful hand, settled the shari around her head so that it fell in a glinting golden cascade over her nape, and drew the shari’s end through her girdle in front to form a garment which, if not exactly modest, was adequate.

  Her toilet completed, she looked scrutinizingly at George. “My, he certainly hit you hard,” she said. “Did he get away with the pig?”

  George winced. The pig was something he didn’t want to be reminded of. And anyhow, what did this girl know about it? “What pig?” he asked warily.

  “Oh, be reasonable. You know very well what I mean. Idris’ pig. You should have taken better care of it.”

  “Um.”

  “Well, you should. Say, what’s your name?”

  “George.”

  “Well, mine’s Blixa. I was supposed to pick up the pig.”

  This was a little too much. “You’re not wearing a black camellia,” George pointed out rather acidly. “And you’re certainly not a man.”

  “No, of course not.” Blixa agreed, looking down at her slim round body with some complacency. “But there was a last minute change in our plans. The regular messenger couldn’t come. They sent me instead. Try me. I know the countersign.”

  “Perfumed Mars, planet of perfumes,” George said unwillingly.

  “Perfumes that take captive or set free the heart,” Blixa said briskly. “See. I know it. I was supposed to get the pig.”

  George looked at her thoughtfully. His head was aching so much that clear thought was difficult. And besides, the scent that Blixa wore (Martian women were always drenched in it) disturbed and oddly troubled him. All the same, in the depths of his mind an alarm signal was going off. Blixa might be telling the truth, but there was about her, as palpably as her heady perfume, a positive aura of unreliability. He wouldn’t have trusted her as far as he could throw a rhyoorg with one hand.

  “Um,” he said. They had been walking along slowly as they talked, and by now had come, through the scented Martian shadows, to the top of a little rise. Marsport at night, a glittering twinkling incredible pageant, lay spread out in front of them.

  “Well, I was,” Blixa said impatiently. “But only Pharol knows where the pig is now.”

  “Out there somewhere, I guess,” George said, indicating the ten thousand dancing lights.

  “No doubt,” Blixa replied. “But it’s too important to dismiss like that. Do you want to help me try to get it back?”

  George hesitated. He had an overpowering hunch that a man who was associated with Blixa was heading for trouble. “You’ll be sorry!” the zygodactyl had croaked at him. On the other hand, Bill’s job depended on making safe delivery of the pig, and he had always been fond of Bill in an unsentimental masculine way. There was the matter of the bonus which would, he was almost sure, provide the final argument in persuading Darleen to marry him. And besides, some reliable person ought to keep an eye on this girl.

  “All right,” he said. “Nobody can steal my pig and get away with it.”

  “Fine!” Blixa exclaimed. “Then we’ll go hunt a good clairvoyant to locate it for us.”

  “Clairvoyant?” George echoed incredulously. The idea was so foreign to the notion he had formed of Blixa’s character he could not believe he had heard her aright.

  “Certainly. How else are we to find the pig? I never can see why you Earth people admit that telepathy and clairvoyance and other sorts of ESP exist, and yet refuse to consult experts in them. It’s not reasonable.”

  They were coming now to populous streets. Blixa’s long graceful stride (not as feminine, though, as Darleen’s shorter one) made walking with her agreeable. Ahead of them a laughing girl dashed out of a doorway, her white thighs flashing under her blue shari, and ran down the street. A young man ran after her, his sandals going slap slap slap. A perfume cart, rumbling past, drenched them both, and as the driver came abreast of George he raised the nozzle and showered him with the fragrant drops. Somebody was throwing aveen petals from a rooftop; somebody else was playing on a double anzidar. The music, thin and high and a little sad, floated out excitingly on the warm air. Against his better judgment, George found that he was rather enjoying himself.

  “Will we be able to find a clairvoyant at this time of night?” he asked. Blixa’s idea seemed far-fetched to him, but he had to admit there was a certain logic in what she had said.

  “Oh, I think so. This is the Anagetalia, you see, and if anybody goes to bed, it isn’t at night.” She pointed down to the cross-iter, where a soma fountain was. Twenty or thirty people were clustered around it. A girl had plunged her arms up to the wrist in the gushing fluid; others were drinking from their cupped hands. Six or eight couples were moving expertly, if a little unsteadily, in the stamping, challenging maze of a Dryland dance. “Turn this way.”

  “Urn.” George and the girl were moving into a poorer quarter now. The buildings, though they still had the typical air of Martian elegance (composed, George thought, of broadleaved trees and good architecture) stood closer to each other and were made of poorer materials. He decided to put one of the questions that were in his mind. “Listen, Blixa, how did you know I had the pig?”

  Blixa’s green eyes (hazel?—no, green ) laughed at him. “If you had smelled yourself before the perfume cart went by, you wouldn’t need to ask,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anything in the system that smells quite like Idris’ pig… Here we are. There are several clairvoyants here.”

  They knocked on three doors before they found anyone in. The woman who finally answered them had a haggard, rather handsome face, long dark hair, and deep-set, burning eyes. She too had been celebrating the Anagetalia, for there was a long rent in her gauzy mauve tunic and a wreath of aveen flowers sat crookedly on her head. She staggered a little as she showed George and Blixa into her consulting room.

  Blixa put the case to her in the long-winded hypothetical Martian manner (“If it should happen that one found a certain object”), and the sibyl listened attentively. When Blixa had finished, the woman drew a deep breath. Though her face remained impassive, George felt that she was startled, almost alarmed, by what she had heard. She put a quick question to Blixa in Old Martian, and the girl nodded. Once more the woman drew a sharp breath.

  She lay down on the long low couch set diagonally in the corner. From a recess she got out fetters of shining metal and slipped them over her hands. She gave one of the balls which terminated the chains to Blixa to hold, the other to George. Then she closed her eyes.

  For a long time there was silence in the room. Outside in the street people laughed, sang, played on double and single anzidars. Doors slammed. Once someone screamed. The woman on the couch gave no sign.

  George moved restlessly. Blixa quieted him with a severe glance. At last the clairvoyant spoke. “A man,” she said, “a man with a shaved head. He has it. The two crowns.” She writhed, opened her eyes. After a moment she sat up and yawned.

  “Did I say anything?” she asked.

  “Shaved head. Two crowns,” Blixa answered briefly.

  The woman’s eyes grew round. After Blixa had paid her she went with them to the door and stood watching them as they went down the street.

  “What did she mean?” George asked. Blixa was walking briskly along, headed apparently north.

  “She told us who had the
pig.”

  “So I gathered. But who?”

  “The Plutonian ambassador.”

  “What!” The exclamation was jarred out of George; his idea of the present possessors of the pig had gone no higher than geeksters, or, perhaps, the agents of some rival cult. “Why?” he asked more calmly.

  “This is the Anagetalia,” Blixa replied. She looked down at the folds of her gold-spangled shari, frowned, and rearranged them so that they left a good deal more of her person exposed. “This is the time of year when we negotiate treaties and handle affairs of state. Mars is a poor planet. If one should happen to have possession of a certain small blue animal it might, perhaps, be of advantage to him.”

  “But— Look here, I was told that there weren’t more than six members altogether of the cult of the pig.”

  “The person who told you that was wrong. There are eight.”

  “Well, then, if the cult has so few members, how could having the pig be of advantage to anyone?”

  There was a protracted silence. At last Blixa spoke. “It is because of the nature of my people,” she said.

  “Go on.” They had been walking north all this time.

  George, whose feet were beginning to hurt, wondered briefly why Blixa did not call an abrotanon car. He decided that it was because all the drivers would be celebrating the Anagetalia too. “Go on,” he repeated.

  “We Martians are not like you,” Blixa said slowly. “We Martians say always that we are more reasonable than Terrestrials, and so we are.” For a moment pride shone in Blixa’s voice. “We are far more reasonable. Sometimes we find it difficult to understand you at all, you do such childish and foolish things.

  “But there is one thing about which we Martians are not reasonable in the least. It is as if all the foolishness and illogic and unreason and childishness of our natures, which in you Terrestrials is mixed in with everything you do, were concentrated in one place with us. We are not reasonable about our cults.

  “They are not like your religions which enjoin, I have heard, ethical duties on their followers. We Martians”—again the note of pride in Blixa’s voice—“do not need religion to tell us, for example, of the brotherhood of man. We are logical, except about our cults.