Fiction complete, p.81
Fiction Complete, page 81
But already he had released his grip on the warm arm, the incredibly soft shoulder. What was he doing? The little vixen wanted this. She wanted to trap him in his emotions, to make a slave of the animal inside that was tearing his resolve to shreds.
Now her face was before him, tilted at a crazy angle, eyebrows arched, lips full and pouting. “Ver’ well, fly away, but I will catch you at once.”
Fuller’s pulse throbbed in his temples as he fought for control. So easy it would be to reach out slowly and draw those lips to his—
To his amazement the thought seized command. His arms extended and closed about Ramona. Gently, like touching a cloud, he narrowed the circle, and she floated to him, turning to parallel his stance.
“Ramona!”
“Raymond! The game—it is over so soon?” The black pupils were dilated as though she were drunk.
IT was insane to compromise his position with this woman! What kind of moral force could he provide on Venus if mere propinquity with a beautiful female could shatter all his own restraints? How could he hope to bottle up his virility for even five years if this wench could dissolve it in five days?
Forget it, his fevered brain told him. This is not Venus. You are a man, and no indoctrination can deny you this—this one last experience. Besides, there is no rule, no law about celibacy for Governors.
Of course not, his sub-consciousness echoed. No rule is needed with the conditioning you have. Your post is one of responsibility and self-sacrifice. 80,000 men exist on Venus, 80,000 men and fewer than a thousand women. No, there is no law, no rule, but tradition denies you even the right to enter the lottery that will determine Ramona’s husband. Perhaps some day there will be mates enough to go around, but not now. Not yet.
She’s no child! She’s a widow. And her new husband will never know—
Stop! Morality is the key to civilization, and your job is to build, not destroy. She would know. And you would know.
The cold logic of his indoctrination thrust icy fingers into his brain, but Ramona was a living flame in his arms. The icy fingers melted away as their bodies met, and passion surged through his great body. She was soft and firm in his arms, clinging to him and crying out with tears of relief.
“I want you,” she sobbed. “I must have you! Don’t let them put me on the lottery!” She hugged him with a strength born of desperation. “You will love me. I will make you love me, and I will love you. Oh, my Raymond, my Raymond!”
Yes, she wants you, a small cynical voice told Fuller. She want to be the Governor’s Lady and escape the hardships—
The voice was lost, overwhelmed by the pounding of the blood in his skull. The negative thoughts, inhibitions, both artificial and common-sensed, buzzed around in his head like a swarm of angry gnats—no, more like the fragments of a gyroscopic flywheel that has vibrated apart and lost all its stability; or the neat pattern of iron filings on paper held over a magnet, suddenly deprived of their polarity and scattered by a careless shake.
How could a man align his thoughts in a mad universe where there is no up or down? How could he orient his purposes when the only solid mass within reach was the half-naked woman in his arms? Or draw a rational breath with his lips crushed by a savage, wanton kiss? Or slow the tempo of his heart when it raced to match the wild beating in her breast?
SUDDENLY the very air took on a sub-sonic vibration, soft, then increasing in volume with a familiar frequency. Something touched his ankle, foot, knee, elbow. Something firm and unyielding—pressing more persistently. The wall annunciator hissed then spoke.
“Now hear this: All hands and passengers, alert! Prepare for 22 minutes of double gravity. Thrust will rise to two gravities in ten seconds. Here is the count off: Ten, nine, eight, seven—”
With each tolling word the deck pressed harder at Fuller’s side until at “five” the body in his arms was full-weight. The significance of the announcement ripped through his brain, and he staggered to his feet swinging Ramona into a two-arm carry. Through the stateroom door to her quarters—to her couch.
“Three—two—one—zero.”
They collapsed together. He struggled to escape against the thrust that had run his weight from zero up to 450 pounds in ten seconds, but Ramona’s arms were locked about his neck. “Don’ leave me, darling,” she cried. “I’m frightened! It was so beautiful—to be free as the air. This is ugly. I feel gross, like an elephant. Don’t let me feel that way, Raymond. Hold me! Hold me tight!”
But the iron filings were in place now. The gyroscope, solid and stable, spun in his brain with perfect alignment. Up was up, and down was down once more. The weakness of mind and muscle vanished, for now there was resistance, direction, purpose.
Gently he broke her frantic grasp and straightened to his feet like a man lifting an invisible load, but it was a good, honest burden, one which he could understand. Looking down at the crumpled body of Ramona Waverly a twinge of remorse shot through him.
He leaned over, drew her legs out straight and arranged her comfortably on her couch. Then he pulled her gown taut to her ankles. Instantly it plastered itself as if electrostatically to every slender, fragile line of her body and limbs, a vertually invisible sheath that enhanced the subtle voluptuousness of her lithe form.
The animal in him was caged once more, but it had scented the prey. It prowled in his heart and brain, and when he went to his own couch the image of Ramona was seared in his retina. He could not erase the vision of the firm breasts unflattened by the acceleration, heaving over her sobs, and the look of reproach and terror in her eyes, the fear wrought mainly from the significance of his desertion.
Could an emotion born of propinquity, and desperation approach the meaning of love? The alarm circuits in his brain clanged raucously. The question was irrelevant and dangerous. Deliberately he forced himself to think objectively, to analyze the breakdown of his mechanistic protection. How could such elaborate psychological conditioning fail so miserably. Did this mean that any unusual stress could peel the armor from his naked emotions? If so, he was as vulnerable and unfit to administer as any bearded Venusian sandhog.
But no, this wasn’t right. The one contingency they could not provide against on earth was a failure of gravity. All his conditioning was oriented, body, mind and senses, within the normal field-gravity of earth. Venus’ gravity was essentially the same, so a repetition was highly unlikely.
This was important, for the governor could command the presence and personal service of any soul on Venus. And any woman would come flying to the relative comfort of the governor’s quarters at the first summons.
IT was the subject of much soul-searching in the chronicles that Fuller had been studying, but not until now had he fully understood the aching emptiness of which these men had written—
“Abstinence is the lot of the majority,” Cottinghouse had written, “and so the tradition has grown that the Governor shares it. And he must enforce the sanctity of Venusian marriages, for monogamy is the heart of our morality, even as the family is the stable unit of our culture. And he must prosecute all acts of adultery and prostitution, and he must hold himself as a public object of celibacy! What a fool I was to think I could fulfill this measure! And so I close this log and admit defeat a year before my term is ended.
“I leave with the tradition unbroken, but I am not proud.
My record speaks well only for the efficacy of my conditioning. The bitterness I cannot endure further is the fact that there is no possible conditioning against the loneliness, the heartaching desire for the sound of a woman’s voice, the touch of her hand. I have reached the state of self-pity where I envy the other unmarried men the exhausting labor and incredible discomforts and hardships that sap their vitality. My body is still strong, my mind relatively clear, but my will to administer is gone. It is no longer within my ability to pronounce sentence for acts of immorality, and the women have discovered this—”
Fuller had read these words, and similar ones of earlier governors, with contempt. It had appeared a mere problem of sublimation. Now he wasn’t so certain. He pondered deeply long after the 22 minutes extraacceleration had passed and normal gravity had returned.
A tap at his door roused him from his reverie. It was Ramona. She looked up at him with tear-rimmed eyes, but she managed a smile. “The—the breakfast trays are here, and Captain Thorn just left. He wanted to know who in ’ell unlock my door?”
Fuller nodded gravely. “It was my error. I—I’m terribly sorry, Ramona.”
“No, no! Don’ say that!” She pressed her face to his chest and cried quietly. “I know how you feel now, but please don’ hate me. I realize that what I want is impossible—I saw it in your eyes when you left me. But please, there is so little time left for me. Let me pretend.”
Fuller put his hands on her shoulders. “That would only make it harder in the end,” he said. “You must understand my position, Ramona.”
“I do understand. It was stupid of me to think you would consider marrying a murderess—”
“Don’t speak of that again,” he said sharply. “When you marry a Venusian your debt is paid. You will never hear the word, ‘exile’, on Venus.”
“But that does not diminish the fact. I may never return to Earth. And when your term is completed you will be free to go back. So you would be a fool to marry me. In five years there would be children, and in that time you would love me for I would make you love me dreadfully.” Her cheek against his chest was slippery with tears.
He shook his head. “You have the right answer but the wrong reasons. I do not intend to return to Earth, ever. I am dedicated to the colony and to my post as long as I can administer. But tradition demands that the governor not enter the lottery, and no free Earth-woman will willingly endure He broke off. It was cruel to remind her of the hardships ahead.
Now her small, lovely face was tilted up, her eyes searching his. “Forgive me,” she said, “but I think you will fail like the others. Without a wife, without a family you will put down no roots. Sharing the men’s bitter loneliness will not make you a better administrator—it will drive you back to Earth.”
Fuller thought of Cottinghouse’s entry in the log. They were silent for a long moment, and suddenly he became aware that his arms somehow had slipped around Ramona and were holding her to him. Could the answer be as simple as this? Suppose Ramona were right and he, too, lost the will to administer when the ache grew too great to bear?
The ache! For the moment it was gone. Ramona’s quiescent body in his arms filled the emptiness. This was no wild passion born of bewilderment. It was a completeness, and almost mystic feeling of security and fulfillment that all his careful conditioning had failed to give him—indeed, had failed to protect him against hungering for.
“The tradition be damned!” he said so loudly that she winced. “The council is wrong—”
“No, Raymond. Not wrong, just helpless,” Ramona said. “As you told me, there is no law against Governors being married.”
“But their ridiculous tradition—”
“How can it be avoided?”
“I’ll tell you how. If you arrive as my wife they can’t demand a lottery drawing.”
“I don’t see how—”
“The Captain. He can marry us. I’ll call him right now.”
“But Raymond—you must be sure, very, very sure this is what you want. The men will be resentful, perhaps. There will be trouble over it—”
“Whose side are you on?” he asked with a crooked smile, moving to the annunciator and pressing the button. “Besides, they’ll get over it when they discover we are both permanent residents.”
CAPTAIN Thorn concluded his conversation with his important passenger and broke the connection. What a crazy trip! Unexplained secret orders to kill the jets for 22 minutes, simulating engine breakdown, a last minute gift of a prayerbook from that slab-headed Thom Hogan, the dispatcher—whatever in hell that meant—and now a request for him to become the first space-freighter captain in all history to perform a marriage ceremony.
Whoa! Maybe it did figure, after all!
He fumbled in his locker for the little black prayerbook and flipped it open. A hundred-dollar bill dropped out with a note attached:
“Dear Captain: What you need is on page 122 of this particular prayerbook, and just in case any fantastic explanations occur to you for certain incidents on this voyage, the attached money is to buy you enough whiskey in port to forget it. Don’t thank me. The book and the money come from higher up. Much higher up.”
Thorn looked on page 122, chuckled and slipped a bookmark between the pages at that place.
It was the marriage ceremony.
THE END
All Around a Pig’s Tail
Notice to our readers: THIS IS FICTION! Don’t write us for specification of the Pig’s Tail circuit, please! We wish we had one much as you do.
DONALD CURRY dropped the radio program popularity survey sheet he’d been studying and squinted with real annoyance. There it was again!
“. . . on behalf of Burpo, the self-burping baby formula that cuts junior’s feeding time in half Doctors say . . .”
He stretched a lanky arm across the expanse of desk and felt of the switch on his small radio. It was off, all right, but then it might be shorted across. He heaved his bulk from the leather swivel chair and snatched the line cord free from the floor plug. The message continued.
“. . . so why spend hours daily, patting your infant on the popo, when two drops of Burpo in his formula will . . .”
Curry stabbed a button on the intercom. “Hansen, do you hear it this time?”
His assistant cut in instantly. “Yes I do chief.”
“Well, don’t sit there; do something I I can’t work with that racket. Check the outer offices. Get the janitor or the building superintendent or somebody. Get it stopped, do you hear?”
“Yes, chief.”
Curry stared at the intercom. He pressed number three button. “Sheila!”
“Yes, Mr. Curry?”
“Somebody playing a radio out there?”
“Well, we’ve been looking, but . . . you mean, that Burpo business?”
“Yes, that Burpo business. It’s still on in here. Listen!”
“. . . the large economy size. Banish worry, banish care, banish baby’s tummy air . . . with Burpo! Now Burpo contains no harsh . . .”
“Yes, it’s out here, too.”
“Well, see that it’s stopped, please,
Sheila,” Curry commanded. The commercial ended as he spoke, and he picked up the survey again.
Exactly twelve minutes later, the thing started again. Curry let it beat into his brain for the whole sixty seconds before he arose, slammed the paper down and screamed for Hansen without bothering with the intercom. His bull voice got results; the assistant catapulted through the door.
“Chief, I’ve been checking. That’s our own ad copy for Ransome-Burlingame—you know, the soap, detergent and deodorant people. It’s our regular Monday morning Baby Baker show commercial.”
“Albert, I recognize our own wretched copy when I hear it; I want it out of my office, and I didn’t ask for an affidavit of authorship.”
“But . . . we can’t seem to locate any cause. I checked with the building custodian and he wants to know . . .”
“I’m not interested in questions; I want answers! Now get me some. Call the radio station. Call the network central office and find out what they are doing over there.”
HANSEN scurried out, his paunch jiggling at his unaccustomed pace. The executive watched him go and then scrubbed the scalp under his thick shock of wiry, gray hair with impatient fingers. The air was quiet, but the insipid words of the commercial cloyed his brain. The dead cigar clenched between his teeth dropped an inch of ashes on his brown tailored suit.
The intercom spoke with a soprano voice. “Mr. Curry, the report on Mr. Hansen’s inquiry from the network . . .”
“Yes, yes? Did you tell them to stop whatever they are doing? Fools, spraying the stuff around so it comes out of the woodwork!”
“Well, they say they are getting reports of it all over the country, and they disclaim any responsibility. They want to know if they should pull the rest of our Burpo ads.”
“I don’t care how they stop it, just so they stop it.” He switched over to Hansen. “Albert, follow that through, now. We support that lousy network, so don’t take any guff.”
“But, Mr. Curry, they claim it’s not their fault.”
“They offered to pull our advertising, didn’t they? They as much as admitted they were doing it.”
“I think they mean that something is picking up their original broadcast and re-transmitting it.”
“Well, if they aren’t responsible, who is? It’s our copy, and we aren’t doing it, are we?”
“Not that I know . . .”
Curry’s secretary cut in. “Will you take this call from Mr. Burlingame, Mr. Curry? He’s very insistent.”
“The Burpo sponsor, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir; he’s in charge of sales.”
Curry crossed his fingers. “Put him on.”
“That you, Curry?”
“Yes, Mr. Burlingame. Nice to hear your voice. How . . .”
“It’s big. It’s good! It’s fine! Can’t imagine how you got it by the Federal Communications Commission, but this cinches a renewal of your contract with us. Just wanted you to know our first reaction; nice little surprise for us. Congratulations, Curry!” He hung up.
Curry cursed and mouthed the words. “It’s big, it’s good, it’s fine.” Hansen came in, and Curry swung on him. “It’s murder, that’s what it is. That pap is bad enough when you can cut it off, but when you can’t.
“But, chief,” Hansen suggested, “should we disclaim credit for it just yet? If it’s just some freak effect, and if it stops now, why not let them think that . . .”
They both stiffened as the whispering commercial began once more. “Try Burpo, the self-burping . . .”
