Drinking Sapphire Wine Read online

On the sand-ship runs, the glacia-view of the towers clouds and clears in spasms, to lessen the shock. Most passengers go crazy and foam at the mouth when they see the desert: I never had, and my hauteur had known no bounds. But this time I’d been hoping, I think, that the glacia-view would be opaque. However, it was night outside, and the towers stay clear nocturnally, presumably judging everyone a-bed.

  Desert night. Yes, I’d forgotten.

  Pale sand hills, seas of sand under the stars, black crags supporting black sky. To the west, one of the ubiquitous eruptions going on, but so distant as to be only an enlarged sequin on the dark. And yes, it was powerful, beautiful, but it was unfriendly, cruel, vast, limitless. And I was afraid. It wasn’t like the dream.

  Nowhere to run now, but to this inhospitable land.

  Go to the sand and say: Help me. Go to the rock and ask it for love and kindness.

  The stars stare down, the bones of the planet stare up, and I am caught between as if on the points of two daggers.

  The tower, clear on every side and above, seemed swimming around me in a blur of black and paleness. I clutched at objects in panic, as if to prevent myself from falling from a great height, and accidentally activated a siren which went whooping off in the ceiling. This saved me, by a hair’s breadth, from something I had no name for, pure insanity, maybe. I bashed at buttons, and the siren relapsed into silence. Then, I fled from the tower and into my safe cabin with its window-spaces of solid blue brocade.

  I lay among the gauzes of the anchored float-bed, crying soundlessly. For, having come to fight the desert, I couldn’t even face it now, I, who had danced, so long ago with my pet, among its rain-green dunes.

  Three units and three nights we ran, the ship and I. I lay on my bed and the machinery rocked me, and fed me pills to make me sleep, and injected me with meals, and wiped away my tears with anodyne sponges.

  “How kind of you,” I sniveled to it, forgetting I had set the switches for this care, and wanting to forget.

  The third night I dreamed I was in a great hall. Outside the hall stood people, not from the cities but from the desert, ghosts of the nomads that had wandered about there eons back. The hall had many tall windows, each of which was thickly curtained. But the curtains kept drawing themselves open, and then the nomads would intently gaze in at me. I went from curtain to curtain, closing them again, but as soon as I pulled one pair together, another pair would part.

  At the hall’s center stood a table with a flagon on it, and in the flagon, bright-blue wine. I knew if I could get to the table and swallow the sapphire liquor everything would be all right. But somehow, I wasn’t permitted to drink while the people outside were watching. And the curtains opened and opened.

  Finally my eyes opened, and I was awake.

  A crystallize chronometer had been set going in the wall by one of the robots, part of normal sand-ship-run procedure. It wasn’t on city time, but desert time, and it told me that among the geography outside, dawn had come.

  I swung off the bed and stamped into the bathing unit. I splashed and brutalized myself under freezing jets, was dried and almost accidentally creamed, powdered, and perfumed by wild machines that leaped on me from the walls. In my cabin, a meal-injection, and four oxygen tablets downed in a pint or so of fire-and-ice.

  I strode toward the forward end of the ship. Coming to the bank of switches, I almost wavered, but the dream had infuriated me. There was, after all, no sapphire wine of forgetfulness here. With a flailing hand I spun a dial, and thereby indicated to the ship that it must stop.

  An immediate sighing among the motors. A soft shuddering. Presently, stillness, broken only by quiet settling noises. I stood there, as if waiting for the crack of doom.

  Come on, doom’s not in here.

  Suppose, I thought, suppose I’ve stopped us right on top of an erupting volcano. But, of course, the ship would automatically have adjusted such an error, overridden my order, and dashed to a safer spot. No good trying to get out of it that way.

  The doors slid back with a subtle hiss, as if trying to catch my attention.

  No need, I was hooked already.

  I looked out, and my legs turned to water, but I gripped the doorway and went on staring.

  “Come on, ooma,” I was burbling to myself, “you weren’t scared before, you liked it before. How derisann, you said. Merely observe the majesty of the mountains, all black and jagged on the turquoise sky. Concentrate on the horizon, the color of those special rose sweets Thinta used to eat. And the sand. Go down and touch the sand. How groshing it is, isn’t it? Come on, you bitch.”

  I tottered down the ramp and half fell, strengthless, on my knees. The sand felt dry and brittle, each grain separate and individual, pressed into my skin. The atmosphere also was dry and brittle, already hot from the risen furnace of the sun, and the rocks were blistering.

  “No, don’t look at the sun. Remember, you can’t, not like a dome sun. Now, a bit at a time. Just start with the sand.”

  Air whistled around me. The planet appeared to spin in slow arcs that I could actually see and experience. When I lifted my watering, barely focused eyes to the horizons, the mountains seemed to tilt, about to collapse on me. The sand sifted through my fingers. The rocky ground beneath me, at least, felt almost stable.

  Breathe shallow, remember, don’t strain to get extra lungfuls: the tablets will take care of the oxygen. No, the mountains aren’t falling, nor is the sky. I won’t be beaten. No I won’t.

  Then I raised my head slowly again to face the land, and I screamed.

  It was standing there, eight-legged, on a rock. Hardly a petrifying sight, obviously scared half out of its own probably limited wits. About the height of my kneecap, pale lemon in color, its fur standing out from its body like a brush in fright or surprise. Two gray eyes of incredible innocence and a chocolate ruff completed the enchanting picture.

  My heart swelled. I’d forgotten the animal population of the desert. At BOO they trap desert beasts, attempt to train and tame them, and sell them in the Fours as pets. My pet had been such a one. More interesting and more trouble than an android creature, pets frequently run amok in the streets of the cities, biting all and sundry.

  “Attlevey, beastie,” said I, in the voice of a saccharine floop. I was trembling at the contact, at the live presence so near to me, when I thought I should never see or touch anything live again. How I ached to grab that ludicrous furry real body. “Are you hungry, beastie? Fancy a little snack? Wait there, pretty beastie. Don’t go ‘way.”

  Making the most absurd gestures of patience and supplication, I crawled backward, scrambled up the ramp and into the ship, and flew madly for the provision dispenser.

  What would it like? Nut paté? Salad-on-ice?

  I loaded a platter with messy, hastily prepared delicacies, and stole back to the doors. Would it have run off?

  At first I couldn’t see it, and desolate tears burned my lids. Then I spotted its lemon form, lying backward on a nearby rock, sunning its stomach, and looking at me upside down with pop eyes.

  “Here, pretty, pretty. Come and try the nice first meal maker’s brought you.”

  I recall, with nauseated shame, my antics. How I crept about on the sand, hoping to approach. How it bounced upright, eight legs set for retreat. How I fell back, apologizing.

  I finally deposited the plate about ten paces from the ship, and removed my obviously leprous and unwanted presence to the doorway. Where I sat, motionless, watching.

  Lemon-furred Gray-Eyes remained upright about half an hour, pointed nose pointedly in the air. Eventually, with a proud and aloof demeanor, Gray-Eyes pattered up to the food and began to eat. Pausing only once, when I ventured to congratulate it, to direct at me a look of disdainful warning: Shut up, or I go.

  Witnessing Gray-Eyes golluping made me hungry, but I didn’t dare leave the doors in case it was gone when I returned.

  Soon the food platter was empty, and Gray-Eyes, having licked it pristine and
turned it over to make sure there wasn’t some other tasty bit of something on the reverse side, sat down and began to wash. A fascinating sight, particularly since none of the eight legs seemed terribly well co-ordinated with the others. Perhaps Gray-Eyes was very young, or perhaps it just didn’t care.

  When it rolled over for the ninth time, I laughed, which wasn’t the thing to do.

  Gray-Eyes drew itself to its full height—two feet?—made some sort of blood-freezing threat-display—bared gums, daft ears back, ruff bristling—and bravely ran for its life.

  My loss at its flight was mingled with hilarity. I shouldn’t have laughed, I knew it. But oh, the relief of laughter.

  It wasn’t till I had gone down to get the plate (charming with saliva, and slightly chewed) that I realized the desert had stopped rotating and the mountains tilting. I looked right up at the sky, beautiful arch of heaven high above. Agoraphobia had perished, along with the cactus-cream, in Gray-Eyes’ silly little teeth.

  There was something I wanted to say to someone. I couldn’t think quite what, or to whom. Maybe one of those ancient rituals … prayers? But going in, stubbing my toe on a rock, it was other things I actually said.

  3

  So my love affair with Gray-Eyes began, and a stormy and tempestuous affair it was to be.

  I’d only meant to stop to do battle with my phobia, and the place I’d picked was random, chosen blind and angry by the spin of a dial. Odd to consider how important the most haphazard and trivial of decisions can turn out.

  Naturally, once I’d made contact with my visitor, I reckoned on staying put a while longer. I planned to win the little thalldrap’s interest and affection by stuffing food down its gullet until it was too fat to waddle off again to the Hard Life. Failing that, I was prepared for kidnap. To such doleful measures are the lonely reduced.

  All that first unit I prowled the adjustable veranda I’d forced into constructing itself along the “porch” side of the ship, or wallowed on the pillowy couch I’d installed there just by the doors. A robot, programmed to bring me Gray-Eyes-tempting trays from the saloon, scurried back and forth. Absorbed in my scheme, and probably more than half zaradann, I gobbled things myself off the trays, watched magazines, and frequently cajoled the desert: “Come on, aren’t you hungry yet?”

  It never occurred to me, though it should have, with my previous experience on the archaeological site in the past, that something other than the expected guest might materialize, having sniffed the odor of victuals on the breeze. Luckily nothing did, for in the condition I was in I might well have accorded it equally friendly treatment, and got divided, devoured, and digested along with the meal as a reward.

  I hadn’t really looked at the terrain much: getting over my fear of its openness had been enough. In the desert, initially, everywhere is like everywhere else—sky, sand, mountains. So far, this was the extent of what I’d seen in my involuntary roost. Then the day began to ebb, the world turned to topaz and gold, and the color of the sky seemed to sink away into the disc of the sun. I found I really could touch the beauty of it then, as I had touched its beauty so long ago when I was free to travel where I wished, and the city still owned me. Now, tinged with my sorrow, the loveliness was bittersweet, but strong as wine.

  The ship perched on highish rocky ground, which in turn fell quickly away into a valley of dunes edged east, north, and south by the fabulous, many-shaped crags. None of these looked particularly violent, and the lava traces I was still able to detect, more or less at a glance, were absent from their lean, gnarled thighs.

  The scent of the desert changes at sunfall, as it changes at dawn. This I’d forgotten, maybe only because I couldn’t bear to remember in sterilized Four BEE. At early evening it’s a smoky voluptuous scent, like a candle of incense burning down, but this alters, as the air darkens and the stars emerge, to a hollow, almost spiritual smell of emptiness. After the rains, the perfume of green oxygen fills the spaces, and inebriates.

  I’d got up from the veranda, and wandered down and out into the dunes, a damn silly thing to do, as are most of the things I do, let us admit. Suppose something were to pounce—

  Something did.

  Gray-Eyes.

  “Gray-Eyes!” I shrieked, and God, how that high female voice got on my nerves after three vreks of baritone alternating with silver tenor. Apparently it got on Gray-Eyes’ nerves as well, for, leaving the steaming dish I had laid out for it but ten splits before, it fled.

  I tore my hair and rushed for the veranda, yowling at the robots to fetch more food. It was too awful to have lost the wretched animal when I’d been waiting the entire day. However, I needn’t have had such a fit. For no sooner had I collapsed upon my pillowy couch than Gray-Eyes reappeared, virtually out of nowhere, thumped up to the dish, and resumed work. Nevertheless, its rear end was noticeably tense. “I’m doing you a favor,” that rear end said. “I mean, I don’t really like this muck, but one doesn’t want to be rude. Still, watch your step. It won’t take much for me to bolt.”

  I cringed, quietly, eating up Gray-Eyes with my glance. Every twitch and burp was dear to me. I longed to cradle it in my arms. Let’s face it, ooma, I thought, it’s the only child-substitute you’ll ever get, some poor little animal you’ve seduced out of the dunes with your filthy synthesized nutmeat.

  One of my reasons for remaining a male so long had been that child thing.

  I’d killed my child, too, hadn’t I? Due, as the Q-Rs said, to sheer folly. They’d never, never have let me make another child, even when I was out of Jang. They didn’t trust me, despite the fact that after my one mistake I’d hardly have fooled about in that area again. (That was the stupidity of their assessments, wasn’t it? They could act on deeds, but not on psychology, the knowledge that you might have learned.) As a male, my paternal urge was around ten percent, very low. But when female, though only at certain intervals, the yearning came strong.

  So here I was in the waste, female and childless and yearning. So watch out yourself, tiny lemon-fur, I’ll make a pet out of you yet. And this time there’ll be no shock wall, and no death for you. I’ll wrap you in cloud cotton if I have to, I’ll defend you with my good right arm.

  4

  Several units I courted Gray-Eyes by putting out sumptuous feasts. Dawn, noon, and sunset came to be the set times for feeding—Gray-Eyes, naturally, determined these times. Having fed, Gray-Eyes would wash thoroughly, presumably in order to scent itself with the aftertaste of syntho steak-jelly and liver-root. During these ablutions I was careful to observe a respectful silence. At last, the guest would lie down on the rocky slope just below the ship, eight paws pointing heavenward, belly distended, and looking at me upside down.

  Always then I made the fatal mistake of trying to approach. Sometimes Gray-Eyes would let me get within arm’s length before scooting away across the dunes—or into them, for I would soon lose sight of it.

  Through the daytime, only too aware of filling in the hours, I went for brief trudges here and there about the sand valley. A modicum of caution had returned, and I didn’t wander too far from the ship, never out of sight of it, and always I took a robot with me. I wasn’t sure, in an emergency, quite what it would be able to do, for they carry no armament, of course. Still, perhaps, I could get it to sock any ravening monster on the jaw. My knowledge of local fauna was more or less nil. My most dangerous encounter formerly, I had to admit, had been with the ski-feet, whose worst fault might only have been that they’d trample you underpaw in order to sample your earrings.

  The robots weren’t meant for the outdoor life, though; they tended to get dust and rainbowy sand in their valves, and would suddenly stop in the middle of nowhere to service themselves with reproachful, martyred clatterings. Fortunately nothing attacked. In truth, apart from Gray-Eyes, and maybe other gray-eyeses, the valley appeared uninhabited beyond the odd pale furry snake, humping morosely from dune to dune. The watercourses in the desert were sunk deep, and rare, and none seemed prese
nt hereabouts, which probably accounted for the depopulation.

  Nevertheless, I enjoyed my walks—falling down sand-slides, over rocks, into small faults. The air hummed with heat, and a few miniature hard-shelled insects, which dived about on tinsel wings, made strange faint whispery noises. They seemed indigenous, for I couldn’t remember seeing such entities elsewhere. But then, how much had I seen before?

  At night, the cool came. The sky was black, but outlined against the mountains, oddly phosphorescent. Stars dazzled. I’d already got a couple of landmarks—a northern crag that reminded me of a fire-apple (round and pitty, with a sort of stalk); another to the east like an enormous cup, its sides eaten inward by wind, sun, and rains, its summit widening into a large smooth overhang, which one unit, no doubt, would come crashing off and frighten me into a paroxysm—if I were still in the vicinity.

  Then—about three hours after sunset, almost to the split—the Sisters would go off like two great guns to the south.

  I hadn’t been able to resist calling them that. Sisters and brothers were figments of the past, ancient history. In the cities, nobody was permitted to make more than one child per Ego-Life—that is, between PD sessions—so consequently nobody ever got a sister or a brother. The supposition of related flesh from one’s own makers had intrigued me when I read about it in the History Tower.

  By day, the Sisters were very far off, blue and vague with distance, like two pillars of almost-blown-away smoke, about half a mile apart, and apparently identical. In the dark, lit with their own red glare, as they puffed up steam and the odd fountain of molten pumice, they had a suggestion of slender aggressive villainesses from antique romance, tossing their ruby hair. Lucky for me they were too remote to wreck the valley. At any rate, their nightly performance only lasted about ten splits.

  Tonight I’m going to get you, Gray-Eyes.

  The sky was turning cinnamon and green as I lurked on the veranda, dish of goodies in hand.