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. I took ‘stats until I was sick of turning pages without knowing what they said. So I started translating a work of history. “Lo. In the thirty-seventh year of the Process of Cillen the rains came, which gave way to rejoicing, for it was a rare and untoward occurrence, and commonly construed a blessing. “But it was not the life-giving semen of Malann which fell from the heavens. It was the blood of the universe, spurting from an artery. And the last days were upon us. The final dance was to begin. “The rains brought the plague that does not kill, and the last passes of Locar began with their drumming….” I asked myself what the hell Tamur meant, for he was an historian and supposedly committed to fact. This was not their Apocalypse. Unless they could be one and the same…? Why not? I mused. Tirellian’s handful of people were the remnant of what had obviously once been a highly developed culture. They had had wars, but no holocausts; science, but little technology. A plague, a plague that did not kill…? Could that have done it? How, if it wasn’t fatal? I read on, but the nature of the plague was not discussed. I turned pages, skipped ahead, and drew a blank. _M’Cwyie! M’Cwyie! When I want to question you most, you are not around!_ Would it be a _faux pas_ to go looking for her? Yes, I decided. I was restricted to the rooms I had been shown, that had been an implicit understanding. I would have to wait to find out. So I cursed long and loud, in many languages, doubtless burning Malann’s sacred ears, there in his Temple. He did not see fit to strike me dead, so I decided to call it a day and hit the sack.
I must have been asleep for several hours when Braxa entered my room with a tiny lamp. She dragged me awake by tugging at my pajama sleeve. I said hello. Thinking back, there is not much else I could have said. “Hello.” “I have come,” she said, “to hear the poem.” “What poem?” “Yours.” “Oh.” I yawned, sat up, and did things people usually do when awakened in the middle of the night to read poetry. “That is very kind of you, but isn’t the hour a trifle awkward?” “I don’t mind,” she said. Someday I am going to write an article for the _Journal of Semantics_, called “Tone of Voice: An Insufficient Vehicle for Irony.” However, I was awake, so I grabbed my robe. “What sort of animal is that? she asked, pointing at the silk dragon on my lapel. “Mythical,” I replied. “Now look, it’s late. I am tired. I have much to do in the morning. And M’Cwyie just might get the wrong idea if she learns you were here.” “Wrong idea?” “You know damned well what I mean!” It was the first time I had had an opportunity to use Martian profanity, and it failed. “No,” she said, “I do not know.” She seemed frightened, like a puppy dog being scolded without knowing what it has done wrong. I softened. Her red cloak matched her hair and lips so perfectly, and those lips were trembling. “Here now, I didn’t mean to upset you. On my world there are certain, uh, mores, concerning people of different sex alone together in bedrooms, and not allied by marriage….Um, I mean, you see what I mean?” They were jade, her eyes. “Well, it’s sort of…Well, it’s sex, that’s what it is.” A light was switched on in those jade eyes. “Oh, you mean having children!” “Yes. That’s it! Exactly!” She laughed. It was the first time I had heard laughter in Tirellian. It sounded like a violinist striking his high strings with the bow, in short little chops. It was not an altogether pleasant thing to hear, especially because she laughed too long. When she had finished she moved closer. “I remember, now,” she said. “We used to have such rules. Half a Process ago, when I was a child, we had such rules. But–” she looked as if she were ready to laugh again–“there is no need for them now.” My mind moved like a tape recorder playing at triple speed. Half a Process! HalfaProcessa–ProcessaProcess! No! Yes! Half a Process was two hundred-forty-three years, roughly speaking! –Time enough to learn the 2224 dances of Locar. –Time enough to grow old, if you were human. –Earth-style human, I mean. I looked at her again, pale as the white queen in an ivory chess set. She was human, I’d stake my soul–alive, normal, healthy. I’d stake my life–woman, my body… But she was two and a half centuries old, which made M’Cwyie Methusala’s grandma. It flattered me to think of their repeated complimenting of my skills, as linguist, as poet. These superior beings! But what did she mean “there is no such need for them now”? Why the near-hysteria? Why all those funny looks I’d been getting from M’Cwyie? I suddenly knew I was close to something important, besides a beautiful girl. “Tell me,” I said, in my Casual Voice, “did it have anything to do with `the plague that does not kill,’ of which Tamur wrote?” “Yes,” she replied, “the children born after the Rains could have no children of their own, and–” “And what?” I was leaning forward, memory set at “record.” “–and the men had no desire to get any.” I sagged backward against the bedpost. Racial sterility, masculine impotence, following phenomenal weather. Had some vagabond cloud of radioactive junk from God knows where penetrated their weak atmosphere one day? One day long before Shiaparelli saw the canals, mythical as my dragon, before those “canals” had given rise to some correct guesses for all the wrong reasons, had Braxa been alive, dancing, here–damned in the womb since blind Milton had written of another paradise, equally lost? I found a cigarette. Good thing I had thought to bring ashtrays. Mars had never had a tobacco industry either. Or booze. The ascetics I had met in India had been Dionysiac compared to this. “What is that tube of fire?” “A cigarette. Want one?” “Yes, please.” She sat beside me, and I lighted it for her. “It irritates the nose.” “Yes. Draw some into your lungs, hold it there, and exhale.” A moment passed. “Ooh,” she said. A pause, then, “Is it sacred?” “No, it’s nicotine,” I answered, “a very _ersatz_ form of divinity.” Another pause. “Please don’t ask me to translate `ersatz’.” “I won’t. I get this feeling sometimes when I dance.” “It will pass in a moment.” “Tell me your poem now.” An idea hit me. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I may have something better.” I got up and rummaged through my notebooks, then I returned and sat beside her. “These are the first three chapters of the Book of Ecclesiastes,” I explained. “It is very similar to your own sacred books.” I started reading. I got through eleven verses before she cried out, “Please don’t read that! Tell me one of yours!” I stopped and tossed the notebook onto a nearby table. She was shaking, not as she had quivered that day she danced as the wind, but with the jitter of unshed tears. She held her cigarette awkwardly, like a pencil. Clumsily, I put my arm about her shoulders. “He is so sad,” she said, “like all the others.” So I twisted my mind like a bright ribbon, folded it, and tied the crazy Christmas knots I love so well. From German to Martian, with love, I did an impromptu paraphrasal of a poem about a Spanish dancer. I thought it would please her. I was right. “Ooh,” she said again. “Did you write that?” “No, it’s by a better man than I.” “I don’t believe it. You wrote it yourself.” “No, a man named Rilke did.” “But you brought it across to my language. Light another match, so I can see how she danced.” I did. “The fires of forever,” she mused, “and she stamped them out, `with small, firm feet.’ I wish I could dance like that.” “You’re better than any Gypsy,” I laughed, blowing it out. “No, I’m not. I couldn’t do that.” “Do you want me to dance for you?” Her cigarette was burning down, so I removed it from her fingers and put it out, along with my own. “No,” I said. “Go to bed.” She smiled, and before I realized it, had unclasped the fold of red at her shoulder. And everything fell away. And I swallowed, with some difficulty. “All right,” she said. So I kissed her, as the breath of fallen cloth extinguished the lamp.