Safer to kiss a badlands kill-moth!
It was time to move out. "Onward Christian Soldiers!"
Neq sang. The words were incomprehensible, but the tune
and spirit were apt.
They marched singing through a wilderness of carnage.
Only occasionally did they have to defend themselves
from attack. Some pairs were locked in combat, some in
amour, for the women had been drawn into the activity.
A man and a woman snarled and bit at each other in the
midst of copulation. Children were fighting as viciously
as adults, and some were already dead.
The passion would pass, but the tribe would never quite
recover.
Vara's campaign continued. Neq learned how Var had
saved her from a monster machine in a tunnel—the same
tunnel Neq had lacked the courage to enter—and from a
hive of wasp-women, and how he had interposed his body
to take arrows intended for her. He had fought the god-
animal Minos to save her from a fate almost as bad as
death.
Var had evidently had a short but full life."The docu-
mentation of that life was sufficient to cover more than a
month of travel, at any rate. The climate became warmer
as they moved south and east and further into spring, but
the girl's language never ameliorated.
When she finally ran out of Var's virtues, she started on
Var's faults.
"My husband was not pretty," Vara said. "He was
hairy, and his back was hunched, and his hands and feet
were deformed, and his skin was mottled." Neq knew
that, for he had fought the man. "His voice was so hoarse
it was hard to understand him." Yes. With clever enun-
ciation, Neq might have understood enough in time to
withhold his thrust. "He could not sing at all. I love him
yet."
Gradually Neq got the thrust of this new attack. Neq
himself was handsome, apart from (he lattice of scars he
had from years of combat and the mutilation of his hands.
His voice was smooth and controlled. He could sing well.
Vara held his very assets against him, making him ashamed
of them.
It was like the vine narcotic. Neq knew what she was
doing, but was powerless to oppose it. He had to listen,
had to respond, had to hate himself as she hated him. He
was a killer, worse than the man who had killed his own
mate.
Tyi did not interfere.
In the next month of their travel, Vara grew especially
sullen. Her campaign was not working, for Neq only ac-
cepted her taunts. "I had everything!" she exclaimed in
frustration. "Now I have nothing. Not even vengeance."
She was learning.
She was silent for a week. Then: "Not even his child."
For Var had been sterile. Her father Sol had been
castrate; she had been conceived on his bracelet by Sos
the Rope, who later gave his own bracelet to Sosa at
Helicon. So her husband, like her father, had had no child.
Neq knew that twisted story, now, and understood why
the Weaponless, who had been Sos, had pursued Var.
Vengeance, again! But Var had been hard to catch, for
his discolored skin had been sensitive to radiation, a mar-
velous advantage near the badlands. But that ability bad
come at the cost of fertility.
"And my mother Sosa was barren," Vara cried. "Am I
to be barren too?"
Tyi looked meaningfully at Neq.
Var had been naive. Neq was not. That had been estab-
lished and reestablished in the past two months, to his
inevitable discredit. But this shocked him. The meaning of
Tyi's original stricture had suddenly come clear.
Vara wanted a baby....
She didn't seem to realize what she had said, or to
comprehend why Tyi had stopped her from attacking Neq
at the outset.
Yet what was in Tyi's mind? If he thought it important
ways as there were men in the world. Why this? Why
Neq, Vara's enemy? Why dishonor?
There was an answer. Vara did not want just a baby—
she wanted a child to Var. Any infant she bore would be
Vari, the line of Var. Just as she herself had been born
Soli, child of the castrate Sol. The bracelet, not the man,
determined parentage in the eyes of the nomads. And
what man would abuse Var's bracelet and his own honor
by contributing to such adultery, however attractive the
girl might be?
What man indeed—except one already shed of his
bracelet, and so hopelessly sullied by his own crimes that
violation of another bracelet could hardly make a differ-
ence? What man, except one bound by oath to return a
life taken?
What man but Neq!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Now it was Tyi's turn to advance his cause, and Neq's to
stand aside. The trek continued into the third month, inter-
rupted by strategies and combats and natural hazards,
but the important interaction was between Tyi and Vara.
Vara's initial fury had been spent, and she was now
vulnerable.
It started subtly. One day Tyi would ask her a ques-
tion, seemingly innocuous, but whose answer forced her
to consider her own motivations. Another day he would
question Neq, bringing out some minor aspect of his back-
ground. In this way Tyi established that Vara's closest
ties were to Sol, not her biological father, and to Sosa,
not her natural mother, and that Sol and Sosa had lived
together in deliberate violation of both their bracelets,
making a family for Soli/Vara.
"It's different in Helicon," she said defensively. "There
are no real marriages there. There aren't enough women.
All the men share all the women, no matter who wears
the bracelets. It wouldn't be fair, otherwise." She spoke
as though Helicon still existed, though she knew the truth.
"Did Sosa share with all the men, then?" Tyi inquired
as though merely clarifying a point of confusion. "Even
those she disliked?"
"No, there was no point. She couldn't conceive. Oh, I
suppose she took a turn once in a while, if someone
insisted—she's quite attractive, you know. But it didn't
mean anything. Sex is just sex, in Helicon. What counts is
that women have babies."
Similarly true in the nomad society, Neq thought.
"Suppose you had stayed there?" Tyi asked.
"Why should I be different? I was only eight when I
left, but already—" She stopped.
Tyi didn't speak, but after a while she felt compelled to
explain. "One of the men—there's no age limit, you know.
He liked them young, I suppose, and there weren't many
girls anyway. But I wasn't ready. So I hit him with the
sticks. That was all. I never told Sol—there would have
been trouble."
There certainly would have been! Neq remembered
something she had cried in the flower-forest, when the
visions were strong. A threat to some attacking man.
"But if
you had been older—" Tyi said.
"I would have gone with him, I guess. That's the way it
is, in Helicon. Preference has nothing to do with it."
"But when you married Var—would you have returned
to the mountain then?"
"That was where we were going!" Then she had to
explain again. "Var would have understood. I would have
kept his bracelet."
But she shared some of Var's naivete, for she still didn't
comprehend where Tyi was leading her.
Neq's turn as subject, then, in similar fashion. Day by
day, as they marched and fought and slept. He didn't
want to cooperate, but Tyi was too clever for him, phras-
ing questions he had to answer openly or by default.
Gradually the outline of Neq's service in the empire came
out, and his extreme proficiency with the sword, and the
code by which he had lived. Yes, he had killed many
times as a subtribe leader, but never outside the circle
and never without reason. Much of it had been done at
Sol's direction; none on order of the Weaponless, who
had not tried to expand the empire.
Vara remained grim, not liking this seeming alignment
of character.
Then Tyi came at Neq's post-empire activity. "Why did
you seek the crazies?" ^,
"The empire was falling apart, and so was the nomad
society, and outlaws were ravaging the hostels. There
was no food, no supplies, no good weapons. I tried to
learn why the crazies had retreated."
"Why had they retreated?"
"They depended on supplies from Helicon, and their
trucks weren't getting through. So I said I'd take a look." ,
Then the description of what he had found at the moun-
tain. Vara's impassivity crumbled; tears streamed down
her cheeks. "I knew it was gone," she cried. "My two
fathers did it, and Var and I helped. But we didn't know
it was that awful. . . ."
Thus Tyi had somehow cast Neq as the upholder of
civilized values, while Sol and the Weaponless and even
Var were its destroyers. What a turnabout for Vara's as-
sumptions!
They marched a few more days. Then Tyi resumed.
"Did you go alone to Helicon?"
Neq would not answer, for the memories remained raw
despite the years and he did not want this part of it
discussed.
Surprisingly, it was Vara who pursued the questioning
now. "You married a crazy! I remember, you admitted it.
Did she go with you?"
Still Neq was silent. But Tyi answered. "Yes."
"Who was she? Why did she go?" Vara demanded.
"She was called Miss Smith," Tyi said. "She was secre-
tary to Doctor Jones, the crazy chief. She went to show
the way, and to write a report. They drove in a crazy
truck, all the way across America. That's the Ancient
name for the crazy demesnes—America."
"I know," she said shortly. And another day: ^'Was she
fair?"
"She was," Tyi said. "Fair as only the civilized are fair."
"I'm fair!"
"Perhaps you too are civilized."
She winced at the implications. "Literate?"
"Of course." Few nomads could read, but most crazies
had the ability. Vara herself was literate, but neither Tyi
nor Neq.
Another day: "Was she a—a real woman?"
"She turned down the Weaponless, because he wouldn't
stay with the crazies."
Neq winced this time. Neqa had put it another way.
"The Weaponless was my father!" Vara flared. Then:
"My natural one. Not my real one."
"Nevertheless."
"And she loved Neq?" she demanded distastefully.
"What do you think?" Tyi asked in return, with a hint
of impatience.
Another day: "How could a literate, civilized woman
love /HOT?"
"She must have known something we do not," Tyi said
with gentle irony.
Finally: "How did she die?"
Neq left them then, afraid to discover how much Tyi
knew. The man was embarrassingly well versed in Neq's
private life, though he had given no hint of this before.
Neq ran through the forest until he was gasping for
breath, then threw himself down in the dry leaves and
sobbed. This merciless reopening of the old, deep wound;
this sheer indignity of public analysis!
He lay there some time, and perhaps he slept. As dark-
ness came he saw again the bloody forest floor, felt again
the fire of severed hands. Six years had become as six
hours, in the agony of Neqa's loss.
What use was it to practice vengeance, when every
tribe was as savage as the one he had destroyed. Any one
of those outlaw tribes could have done the same. The
only answer was to ignore the problem—or to abolish
them all. Or at least to abolish their savagery. To strike at
the root. To rebuild Helicon.
Yet here he was, after having tried his best to organize
that reconstruction, subject to the bitterness of a girl who
saw him as the same kind of savage. With reason. How
could a savage eliminate savagery?
It was all useless. None of it could recover the woman
he had loved. The body lay there, tormenting him, mock-
ing his efforts to reform. The musky perfume of the vine-
lotus enhanced its horror. He didn't care.
After a time he rose to bury the corpse. He was a
savage, but Dr. Jones was civilized. Neq coMd not help
himself, but he could help the crazies. He had loved one
of them—this one. To that extent he loved them all. He
bent to touch the body, knowing his hand would strike
something else, whatever it was that was really there. A
stone, perhaps.
The flesh was there, and it was warm. It was a woman.
"Neqa!" he cried, wild hope surging.
Then he knew. "Vara," he muttered, turning away in
disgust. What preposterous deceit!
She scrambled up and came after him, circling her
arms about his waist. "Tyi told me—told me why you
killed. I would have killed tool I blamed you falsely!"
"No," he said, prying ineffectively at her arms with the
heel of his pincers. "What I did was useless, only making
more grief. And I did kill Var." The fumes were stronger.
She looked like Neqa.
"Yes!" she screamed, clinging as he moved. "I hate you
for that! But now I understand! I understand how it
happened."
"Then kill me now." As so many had begged him,
when he stalked Yod's tribe. "You have honored Tyi's
stricture."
"But you haven't!" Her grip on him tightened.
"The vine is here. I smell it. Let me go before—before
I forget."
"I brought the vine! So there would be truth between
us!"
He batted at her arms with the closed pincers. "There
can be no truth between us! Tyi would have us defile our
bracelets—"
"I know! I know! I know!" she cried. "Be done with it,
Minos! Set me free!" She climbed him, reaching for his
face with her mouth. She was naked; she had been t
hat
way when he first touched her, as she played corpse.
The flower drug sang complex melodies within his brain,
making him overreact on an animal level to this female
provocation. He crushed her to him within the living por-
tion of his embrace, joining his lips to hers.
It was savagely sweet.
She relaxed, fitting more neatly within the circle of his
arms. The glockenspiel jangled against the pincers, jolt-
ing him into momentary awareness of their situation. In
that moment he wrenched away from her. His body was
aflame with lust, but his mind screamed dishonor! He ran.
She ran too, fleetly. "I hate you!" she panted. "I hate
your handsome face! I hate your wonderful voice! I hate
your fertile penis! But I have to do it!"
In the dark he smashed into brush and spun about,
trying to avoid the tangle. She dived for him again. He
fended her off with the claw, trying not to hurt her but
determined to keep her at bay until the narcotic wore off.
As long as she was desirable to him, he had to balk her
ardor.
Now she was fighting him. She had fetched a stick
along the way, a branch of a tree, and she struck him
about the shoulders with it, hard enough to hurt. He
knocked it away, then caught it in the pincers and