Drinking Sapphire Wine Read online

  “Yes,” I said, “I’d had a couple of ideas about that too.”

  I tried not to sound sullen. Kam had stolen my thunder, but never mind, at least her story was original.

  “All that marrying business,” Danor said, glinting. “All that delay. Part of me always knew I’m spontaneous. He taught me that. Oh, ooma,” she said suddenly, the light fading from her face, “I loved him. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yes, I know about love,” I said. “Like God, it doesn’t seem to function any more.”

  “They won’t let it function. Do you know what happened? One night his child arrived—how ironical. He was a sort of amber male with cold eyes. He took one look at me and ran off to his guardian, and about three splits later there was a messenger baa in the house from the Committee. They spoke to both of us, together and individually. They were very kind, that was what made it so silly. They explained that the age and experience difference simply wouldn’t work. That Kam was a maker-figure for me and I was a child-figure for him. I said, what did it matter if we were happy? But they convinced Kam, and that unit he said I must go. He was very firm. He ordered me out, and his eyes were full of tears.”

  I glanced at her. She was still calm, wholly in command of herself. She looked very beautiful, very desirable in the cool starlight, which, despite its artificial idiocy, is effective. But what can you do with a friend who sits grieving stoically by your pool for a lost lover that isn’t you?

  Just then, the swan tottered—probably drunk on its synthojuice—to the water’s edge, and tumbled in.

  I had a moment’s wild hope it would regain a lost instinct and begin to swim, but it sank like a stone, only its beak protruding for an instant, honking out a snatch of song— “You are the wonderful sun of my sky!”—which was presumably the only way it could cry for help.

  I suspect the swan had reminded me somewhat of the pet, though the pet’s intelligence had been razor-sharp, for all its zaradannity, while the swan was manifestly a mental deficient.

  Not stopping to calculate, I plunged straight into the pool after the bloody thing, and swiftly emerged with its struggling, wet-feather body, which I deposited on the bank, against great opposition from the swan itself. It promptly puked the water it had swallowed into half the silk-flowers and then sat down on the other half with a look of mild self-congratulation.

  I rose from the pool, my poet’s gear of black cactus-velvet plastered to my skin, and my loosely curling hair matted to a consistency guaranteed to shred my skull when next I came to brush it.

  Danor had begun to cry, almost unobtrusively.

  “Poor swan,” she whispered, but I knew who she meant.

  I knelt by her and, regardless of my saturated condition, she clung to me. I was familiar with this scene, had acted in it with myself as Danor. I held her close, and presently picked her up and carried her inside. At the door I paused to tie up the swan and send some house machines with towels and things to look after it. Danor thanked me between her sobs.

  I set her on the larger, goldwork couch.

  “We haven’t married,” she said flatly. “Jang tradition.”

  “Vixaxn Jang tradition,” I said quietly, and her mouth was tearfully laughing as I found it.

  4

  Danor lay sleeping like an azure dream, but outside in the sunny garden the swan, having snapped its leash, was plodding about and sneezing like a vivacious klaxon. Though it was the pop-pop of the porch signal which had waked me.

  I switched on the signal image.

  There stood a three-dimensional of Zirk, flexing and unflexing his deltoids grimly, and almost purple in the face.

  “Attlevey, Zirk,” I cheerfully greeted him.

  “Attlevey!” roared Zirk. “Attlevey! You lying, double-crossing, maladjusted thalldrap! You regurgitated, tosky, maker-making promok! You—”

  “Attlevey again, Zirk. Let’s start all over, shall we? What do you want?”

  “You’ve got Danor,” Zirk accused.

  “Danor’s here, yes.”

  “So it was a filthy trick, deliberately perpetrated. The whole circle standing there like fools, howling at the wrong female ‘Welcome, Danor!’ And you’d dragged her off. And she’s been here the entire night, and you never married. Listen,” he growled, “Jang get cut out of circles for doing half of what you’ve done.”

  “Piss off, Zirk,” I cordially invited him, and flipped the recluse switch.

  Outside, the swan had sneezed down a couple of miniature copper arbors, and seemed set for the pool again. I went out and got it and brought it in. A machine bustled from under the bed and tied up the swan, and gave it a plate of something, who knows what, but it tucked into it with enthusiasm. Danor had waked. She looked as though she might have heard my chat with Zirk, but she only said:

  “Do you think we should signal anyone, Hergal or Kley? Or Thinta?”

  “I have a feeling we won’t need to,” I said.

  However, it was Hatta who communicated next, though not from the porch.

  Danor and I were in the bathing unit, not precisely bathing. Some houseproud machine or other, trying to anticipate my needs, had deactivated the recluse switch. Heralded only by the signal light, scarlet, balloonlike Hatta materialized in our midst.

  “Er,” said Hatta. Maybe he flushed, no one could tell. The image winked out, but around thirty splits later, at a more appropriate moment, he reappeared.

  “Sorry,” said Hatta. He cleared his throat and said, “Hello, Danor.”

  “Attlevey, Hatta,” said Danor. “How are you?”

  “Oh, mustn’t grumble,” said Hatta.

  “Why not?” I demanded. “Looking as you do, I’d say you have every right.”

  He peered at me sorrowfully.

  “You haven’t been very ethical,” he said, “and to involve Danor—”

  “I involved myself,” said Danor.

  “They want you out of the circle.”

  “Splendid,” I said. “And don’t expect any tears.”

  “Zirk’s been going to the History Tower,” said Hatta carefully to me. “Did you know? He’s been there all night. You recall that foolish joke you had with Hergal—about a dwull.”

  “A what? A duel?”

  “Duel, then. Yes. Well. I think Zirk’s been looking them up.”

  Close by, the swan sneezed. Hatta blinked uneasily.

  “Don’t say that,” he warned. “It’s no laughing matter.”

  I met Zirk outside Silver Mountain two units later. Danor was inside, buying some pet vitamins for the swan, and a pet-maintenance Q-R was giving it an injection to stop it sneezing. Zirk came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and, when I turned around, knocked me about six blocks down the street. I don’t really remember it particularly. I woke up flat on my back, or nearly, since some unknown Jang girl had cradled my head on her lap. The sky was full of robot planes in midswoop, thinking someone had suicided as people were always doing every second of the day. A small crowd had gathered, as usual when anything vaguely out of the ordinary occurs, and Zirk stood, arms akimbo, grinning his great white teeth.

  “OK,” he announced, “I’ve challenged you. Are you going to accept?”

  The Jang girl gazed down at me over her glamorous breasts, and stroked my brow.

  “There, there,” she soothed.

  I smiled at her, but Zirk shouted:

  “Don’t you waste a split on him. He’s going to be cut up and cut out in that order. He’s had love with half the circle without marrying them.”

  The Jang girl looked shocked. So did the crowd, and the robots milling from the planes. I got up and my head rang, and I staggered, but no one helped me this time.

  “Well, do you accept?”

  I’d cottoned on to the general idea by then.

  “All right, loudmouth, I accept.”

  Zirk beamed. I might have known the History Records would have a worse effect on him than on me. He was all thick-brained swashb
uckle and teeth.

  “I’ll mince you,” he promised. “Do you accept swords?”

  People round about, mostly the Older Ones, asked each other what “swords” were. Some of the Jang knew from their Dream Room fantasies and the Adventure Palace.

  “Been practicing?” I inquired.

  “Do you accept swords?” he grated.

  “If it will shut you up.”

  Zirk looked about at the crowd, and flexed everything he had.

  “Since my body is a good foot taller than yours,” he said, “I’m willing to permit you to get a new one on a larger scale.”

  “Gosh, thanks,” I drooled.

  “The time is tomorrow at dawn, Ilex Park, west corner.”

  I could see the crowd making a mental note. We should attract quite an audience.

  Just then Danor and the swan came out of Silver Mountain. The swan had stopped sneezing but, judging from the disinfectant aroma, it had done a few other things instead.

  Danor halted when she saw the gathering.

  Zirk bowed to her, bulging.

  “Everybody understands,” he said penetratingly, “that none of this was your fault. I’ve no quarrel with you, Danor. In fact …” He coyly winked, then spun on his heel and rolled off.

  The unneeded robot planes were scurrying skyward, but a couple of Flash Center bees were homing in, so I took Danor’s hand and began to walk her and the swan quickly away.

  “It’s happened at last,” she said, very low.

  “It certainly did. I bet the flashes will be blazing with it tonight.”

  “Have a body change,” she said. “Come back a female. Then he won’t have the gall to fight you.”

  “What does it matter?” I said. “It’s my fault for starting it off with Hergal. And in any case, if he shoves his crackpot pseudo-steel fencing foil right through me, the Limbo Tub will have me back on my feet in no time, right?”

  “But, ooma,” she began, “don’t you see—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I saw. If Zirk really meant what he said, and melodramatically stabbed me to the heart, it would be the first intended murder committed on our planet for over sixty rorls.

  5

  Somewhere about then, I made a decision. I decided that if Zirk and I were really going to that sort of limit—a killing—he was going to have to kill me. The decision was rational, which was rather a joke, since I have always been an emotional and impulsive character. I can think in straight lines, but, when it comes to the point, I find myself running about in circles, as usual. However, the thing with Zirk was that if anyone received the label “murderer,” it wasn’t going to be me. Zirk had, after all, so far led a fairly blameless Jang career—an excess of suicides and body changes, a measure of dome sabotage, and a nervous breakdown or two—but these were all perfectly normal as far as the Committee was concerned. I, on the other hand … Oh no, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Yet there was something working against me, something I’d never have reckoned on.

  I’d forgotten that, ever since that last compulsory body change twelve vreks before which followed the historic swooning, I hadn’t suicide once. In itself this was fairly untypical, particularly since formerly I’d been one of the worst offenders, constantly drowning in order to acquire a new exterior. But suicide had become unappealing to me after that traumatic time; now I waited the prescribed thirty units between each change, and anyway, hardly ever did change. What was this? Could it be that I, even in the safe cities, had acquired an antique and obsolete fear of death? Or was it rather, perhaps, that somehow, somewhere along the stony path of my pathetic Janghood, I had evolved, despite everything, a life-wish?

  And for the record also, for about a vrek I had been indulging in fencing practice, off and on, at the Adventure Palace. Presumably Zirk had taken a course, too, but really, built as he was, a power axe was far better suited to his style than a poetic slender sword, weapon of emaciated princes and dreamers.

  Dawn takes place always at the same split each day, prophesied always by the same streamers of rose and ember, and the identical singing of mechanical, light-reactive birds, dumped here and there in the parks and gardens. Imported real birds from BOO ignore dome-dawn with lofty disdain, and, having witnessed an authentic desert sunrise or two, I don’t blame them.

  The jade leaves of the jade-trees of Ilex Park glowed and flashed under the pink sky. Long, black-green shadows were creeping down the slopes, and a little artificial ground mist—most artistic—was smoking about in the grottoes and groves.

  As I approached the west corner, however, I began to hear the hubbub.

  I won’t say my heart sank. It had been fairly sunk for hours, what with the depression that had set in at the thought of letting that moron Zirk impale me. But a cryogenic sensation idled up my guts like a cold snake out for a walk. Of course, odds on there would be a crowd, after Zirk’s public fashion of announcing our plans. This, though, sounded as if half the city had crammed itself into the park, and I wasn’t in the mood for making a spectacle of myself in front of forty million sensation-seeking thalldraps.

  Just then I came to the carefully sculptured avenue that leads down to the west, the sun behind me. And out of the trees nipped Doval, Zirk’s out-circle Jang friend, afire with enthusiasm and importance.

  “Attlevey,” he drawled. “Got your svork?”

  “Sword. Yes, I do.”

  “And your seconds?”

  I looked at him sourly. Zirk really had been reading things up.

  “No.”

  “Well, you ought to have seconds,” said Doval. “Zirk has.”

  “Let me guess,” I guessed. “You and Hergal.”

  “Kley and Hergal,” Doval announced loftily.

  “Female seconds aren’t generally allowed,” I said, “not if Zirk wants to follow the old customs accurately. Or has Kley changed?”

  “No,” said Doval. “She’s just slavering to see you gutted.”

  “How sweet of her,” I said.

  We walked down the avenue together, Doval eyeing my fine-honed sliver-of-steel sword with contempt inadequately masking his interest. The house robots, which can be quite versatile with a bit of re-programming here and there, had made the sword yesterday. They had been making my clothes and other gear for two vreks.

  “Danor not with you?” inquired Doval.

  “Something wrong with your eyes, Doval?”

  Danor had been tense and pale, so last night I’d slipped a minor soporific in her snow-in-gold, and left her sleeping. The swan was firmly anchored to the bed, its beak stuffed three inches deep in a plate of swan-food.

  The noise of the crowd was impressive now, and as we emerged from the trees into the clearing Zirk had elected for our duel, most of my fears were realized.

  The bulk of the onlookers were Jang. Glittering and giggling, shoving, pushing, and gulping their pills, an enchanting picture they made. The air was full of their bees, bringing them mirrors and scent and cigars and wine and meals and pets. And every so often the bees would ram each other, and Joyousness and bright-blue kicking animals would rain upon the press below. Zirk, Hergal, Doval, and Kley between them had recruited their own bees to erect a temporary fence to hold the crowd back from the clearing. Some terraces went up on the north and east sides, so they would all get quite a decent view, damn them.

  Zirk himself was sitting on a big platinum chair, stripped to the waist. Somewhere in his reading he had been led astray, for he was wearing a rather peculiar helmet, brazen greaves and so on. Need I say he looked magnificent? Because he did, and also a complete idiot. Kley, in spiky gold with gilt dragon heads pasted over her nipples, was honing Zirk’s sword personally, and sparks were flying. Hergal lounged in the shade, handsomely bored. I could see he was regretting the inconvenience already—was I worth all this trouble? The rest of the circle were there too. Thinta in pale-green see-through with a cat or two hooked on; Mirri, a male for once, being very obviously marrie
d to Thinta and making sure I noticed it. I even detected Hatta by a blunder of scarlet among the glass shrubbery.

  Doval strutted up to Zirk and said something. Zirk grinned, Hergal yawned. The circle clustered together and looked at me out of their cozy togetherness. Then Mirri detached himself and came over.

  “I’ve said I’ll be your second, since you haven’t got one, you thalldrap.”

  Hatta, tripoddling up behind on his three legs, said:

  “Me, too. You may need us.”

  “May I?”

  “Zirk will rip you in shreds,” said Mirri, twisting his mustache playfully. “So you’re going to have a painful time till you get to Limbo.”

  Everyone seemed so certain Zirk was going to finish me that I suppose I might have relaxed with a happy sigh and just let events take their course. However, I’ve never been a lover of pain—I’m a whimpering coward, in fact—and I could just see me, bleeding slowly and agonizingly away in the silk-grass while Kley or somebody misled the robot rescue planes just long enough to make sure I got the most of it. Naturally, you couldn’t really fool them, and they’d save me in the end; they always do. But for someone who flies to the medicinal-salve-dispenser for a hangnail, the prospect was unpleasing.

  “Aren’t you pale?” said Mirri. “Scared?”

  “Shut up,” said Hatta. “If you’re his second, you’re supposed to be on his side.”

  I won’t say Hatta’s loyalty touched me, but his stolid sense of fairness certainly brought a note of humor to the drumdik scene.

  The Jang crowd, meanwhile, were setting up a hooting howl for us to begin. Zirk stood up and cracked his muscles loudly. Doval, primed in the formalities, came over and offered me wine, which I refused. Zirk swilled his mouth and spat, all brutal, on the quartz flowers. Then he marched into the clearing’s center and Kley brought him the sword. It was a sort of cleaver, notched here and there to suggest previous (nonexistent) fights. Zirk had certainly caught the spirit of the thing.