The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

“I didn’t see any fishing equipment,” she said.

“It was on the other side of the grailstone. And the fog was thick, remember, mademoiselle ?”‘

“Ms.”

“And we got to talking of things on Earth, places, people we had known, friends who had come to a bad end, children who had died, how our parents had misunderstood us, enemies, why we were here, and so on, understand? I became depressed, thinking of what might have been on Earth, especially what my cousin Madeleine and I might have done if I had been more mature or had not been so naive at that time. And so . . .”

“And so you got drunk,” she said, her face grave.

“And offended you, Ms., though I swear that I did not believe that you were a woman. The fog, the baggy clothing, my own addled wits …”

“Forget it,” she said. “Only … I believed you would never forgive me, since you would have lost face after a woman punched you out. Your ego …”

“You must not stereotype!” Cyrano cried.

“And you are right,” she said. “That is a failing I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often . . . well, most people are living stereotypes, aren’t they?”

They stood there, talking for a long time. Jill sipped on the purple passion, feeling her belly slowly warm up. The marijuana fumes became thicker, and she added to their intensity by drawing on the burning joint between her fingers. The voices were becoming loud­er, and there was much more laughter. Some couples were dancing now, their arms around each other’s necks, shuffling languorously.

Piscator and Jugan seemed to be the only ones who were not drinking. Piscator was smoking a cigarette now, the first, she believed, that he had lit up since she had entered.

The combination of liquor and pot had given her a pleasant halo now. She felt as if her flesh must be leaking a red-colored light. The smoke clouds were forming into almost-shapes. Sometimes, out of the corners of her eyes, she would glimpse a definite figure, a dragon, a smokefish, once, a dirigible. But when she turned her head toward them, she could see only amorphous masses.

When she saw a metal tub float by to one side, she knew that she had had it. No more booze and grass the rest of the night. The reason for the appearance of the tub was apparent, since Cyrano had been telling her about crime and its punishments in the France of his day. A counterfeiter, for instance, was stretched out upon a large wheel. The executioner then broke his arms and legs with an iron bar, sometimes pounding them to a pulp. Executed criminals were hung in chains in marketplaces and left to rot until the bodies fell through the chains. The guts of others were left in big open tubs so that they could remind the citizens of what happened to transgressors.

“And the streets ran with sewage, Ms. Gulbirra. No wonder that those who had the money drenched themselves with perfume.”

“I thought it was because you seldom bathed then.”

“True,” the Frenchman said. “I mean, true that we did not bathe often. It was thought to be unhealthy, un-Christian. But one can get used to the stench of unwashed bodies. I was not often aware of it since I was, as you might say, immersed in it, as unconscious of it as a fish is of water. But here, helas! Where so few clothes are worn and where running water is so at hand, and where one encounters so many who cannot endure the odor of long-dirty humans, then one learns new habits. I, myself, now, I must confess that I saw no reason to be so fastidious, but then after some years I met a woman with whom I fell into love almost as passionately as I had with my cousin. She was Olivia Langdon …”

“You can’t mean Sam Clemens’ wife?”

“But yes. Though of course that meant nothing to me when I first met her and still does not. I understood that he was the great writer of the New World-she told me much about what happened since I had died on Earth-but I do not think much about it. And then Olivia and I wandered down The River and suddenly we were confronted with that classical situation which so many people dread. We met the former, the Terrestrial, spouse, of one’s hut mate.