“What’s that?” Ivar asked.
“Why, our luck,” Dulcy said. “Name of Larzo.” She reached into the cage, which had no provision for closing. “C’mon out and say hey-ah, Larzo, sweet.”
“Your, uh, mascot?”
“Our what?” Mikkal responded. “Oh, I grab you. A ju, like those?” He jerked his thumb at the hanging grotesques. “No. It’s true, lucks’re believed to help us, but mainly they’re pets. I never heard of a wagon, not in any Train, that didn’t keep one.”
A vague memory of it came to Ivar from his reading.
No author had done more than mention in passing a custom which was of no obvious attractiveness or significance.
Dulcy had brought the animal forth. She cuddled it on her lap when the three humans settled side by side onto the lower bunk, crooned and offered it bits of cheese. It accepted that, but gave no return of her affection.
“Where’re they from originally?” Ivar inquired.
Mikkal spread his hands. “Who knows? Some immigrant brought a pair or two along, I s’pose, ‘way back in the early days. They never went off on their own, but tinerans got in the habit of keeping them and—” He yawned. “Let’s doss. The trouble with morning is, it comes too damn early in the day.”
Dulcy returned the luck to its cage. She leaned across Ivar’s lap to do so. When her hand was free, she stroked him there, while her other fingers rumpled his hair. Mikkal blinked, then smiled. “Why not?” he said. “You’ll be our companyo a spell, Rolf, and I think we’ll both like you. Might as well start right off.”
Unsure of himself, though immensely aware of the woman snuggled against him, the newcomer stammered, “Wh-what? I, I don’t follow—”
“You take her first tonight,” Mikkal invited.
“Huh? But, but, but—”
“You left your motor running,” Mikkal said, while Dulcy giggled. After a pause: “Shy? You nords often are, till you get drunk. No need among friends.”
Ivar’s face felt ablaze.
“Aw, now,” Dulcy said. “Poor boy, he’s too unready.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Never mind. We’ve time. Later, if you want. Only if you want.”
“Sure, don’t be afraid of us,” Mikkal added. “I don’t bite, and she doesn’t very hard. Go on to your rest if you’d rather.”
Their casualness was like a benediction. Ivar hadn’t imagined himself getting over such an embarrassment, immediately at that. “No offense meant,” he said. “I’m, well, engaged to be married, at home.”
“If you change your mind, let me know,” Dulcy murmured. “But if you don’t, I’ll not doubt you’re a man. Different tribes have different ways, that’s all.” She kissed him again, more vigorously. “Goodnight, dear.”
He scrambled into the upper bunk, where he undressed and crawled into his sleeping bag that she had laid out for him. Mikkal snuffed the lantern, and soon he heard the sounds and felt the quiverings below him, and thereafter were darkness, stillness, and the wind.
He was long about getting to sleep. The invitation given him had been too arousing. Or was it that simple? He’d known three or four sleazy women, on leaves from his military station. His friends had known them too. For a while he swaggered. Then he met star-clean Tatiana and was ashamed.
I’m no prig, he insisted to himself. Let them make what they would of their lives on distant, corrupted Terra, or in a near and not necessarily corrupted tineran wagon. A child of Firstmen and scholars had another destiny to follow. Man on Aeneas had survived because the leaders were dedicated to that survival: disciplined, constant men and women who ever demanded more of themselves than they did of their underlings. And self-command began in the inmost privacies of the soul.
A person stumbled, of course. He didn’t think he had fallen too hard, upon those camp followers, in the weird atmosphere of wartime. But a … an orgy was something else again. Especially when he had no flimsiest excuse. Then why did he lie there, trying not to toss and turn, and regret so very greatly that he should stay faithful to his Tanya? Why, when he summoned her image to help him, did Fraina come instead?