The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

She would say nothing then, and he would raise his eyebrows and shrug his shoulders in a completely Gallic manner.

Cyrano was better than she. No matter how much she practiced, no matter how hard her determination to best him, because he was a man, because she did not like to lose to anybody, male or female, she always lost. Once, when she had jeered at his ignorance and superstitions and so had made him furious (she had done it on purpose), he had attacked her with such vigor that he had touched her five times in one and a half minutes. Instead of losing his head, he had become even more a being of cold fire, moving with certitude and swiftness, doing everything exactly right, one hun­dred percent anticipatory of her every movement.

It was she who was humiliated.

Rightfully so, she told herself, and she apologized, though it was a double humiliation to do so.

“I was terribly wrong to sneer at your lack of knowledge of science and at your mistaken beliefs,” she said. “It is not your fault that you were born in 1619, and I should not have taunted you with that. I did so just to make you so mad I’d get an edge on you. It was a rotten thing to do. I promise not to do it again, and I most abjectly beg your pardon. I did not really mean it.”

‘ “Then you said those nasty vicious things merely as a trick?” he said. “A verbal device to gain points? There was nothing personal in those so-cutting remarks?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “I have to be honest. My main purpose was to make you lose your head. But I was not so cool myself. At the moment, I did feel that you were an ignorant simpleton, a living fossil. But that was my own anger speaking out in me.

“Actually, you were far ahead of your time. You rejected the superstitions and the barbarisms of your time, as far as anybody is able to reject his culture. You were an exceptional man, and I honor you for being that. And you’ll never hear such words from me again.”

She hesitated again, then said, “But is it true that you repented on your deathbed?”

The Frenchman’s face became red. He grimaced and said, “But yes, Ms. Gulbirra, I did indeed say that I was sorry for my blasphemies and my unbelief and I asked the good God for His pardon. I, who had been a violent atheist since the age of thirteen! I, who hated the fat, smug, oily, stinking, ignorant, hypocritical, parasiti­cal priests! And their unfeeling, merciless, cruel God!

“But you do not know, you who lived in a freer and more permissive age, you do not know the horrors of hellfire, of eternal damnation! You cannot know what it was to have the fear of hell soaking you, drowning you! It was taught us from earliest child­hood, ground into our flesh, our bones, our deepest mind!

” And so, when I knew for sure that I was dying from a combina­tion of that filthy disease with the lovely bucolic name of syphilis and a blow on the head from that beam, fallen accidentally or dropped by an enemy of mine, and I who only wanted to love all mankind, and womankind, too … where was I?

“Ah, yes, knowing for sure that I was to die, and with the terrors of the devils and of eternal tortures swarming around me, I gave in to my sister, the toothless bitch and withered nun, and my good, too good friend, Le Bret, and I said, yes, I repent, I will save my soul, and you may rejoice, dear sister, dear friend, I will probably go to purgatory, but you will pray me out of it, won’t you?

“Why not? I was frightened as I had never been in all my life, and yet, and yet, 1 did not wholly believe that I was destined for damnation. I had some reservations, believe me. But then, it could not hurt to repent. If Christ was indeed available for salvation, not costing a centime, mind you, and there was a heaven and a hell, then I would be a fool not to save my worthless skin and invaluable soul.