Robert Silverberg - Bride 91

There were no candidates for heroism. All the husbands ran. Some of them grabbed their wives; most did not. I was planning to run, too, but I’ll say this in my favor: I intended to take care of Landy. I looked around for her, failed for a moment to find her, and then observed her in the vicinity of the snorting beast. She seized a rope dangling from its haunches and pulled herself up, planting herself behind its mane. The beast reared and stamped. Landy clung, looking like a child on that massive back. She slid forward. She touched her ingestion slot to the animal’s skin. I visualized dozens of tiny needles brushing across that impervious hide.

The animal neighed, more or less, relaxed, and meekly trotted back to the corral. Landy persuaded it to jump over the fence. A moment later the startled cowhands, those who were able to function, tethered the thing securely. Landy descended.

“When I was a child I rode such an animal every day,” she explained gravely to me. “I know how to handle them. They are less fierce than they look. And, oh, it was so good to be on one again!”

“Landy,” I said.

“You look angry.”

“Landy, that was a crazy thing to do. You could have been killed!”

“Oh, no, not a chance.” Her spectrum began to flicker toward the extremes, though. “There was no risk. It’s lucky I had my real teeth, though, or—”

I was close to collapse, a delayed reaction. “Don’t ever do a thing like that again, Landy. ”

Softly she said, “Why are you so angry? Oh, yes, I know. Among Terrans, the wife does not do such things. It was the man’s role I played, yes? Forgive me? Forgive me?”

I forgave her. But it took three hours of steady talking to work out all the complex moral problems of the situation. We ended up by agreeing that if the same thing ever happened again, Landy would let me sooth the beast. Even if it killed me, I was going to be a proper Terran husband, and she a proper Terran bride.

It didn’t kill me. I lived through the honeymoon, and happily ever after. The six months elapsed, our posted bonds were redeemed, and our marriage was automatically terminated. Then, the instant we were single again, Landy turned to me and sweetly uttered the most shocking proposal I have ever heard a woman propose.

“Marry me again,” she said. “Right now!”

We do not do such things. Six-month liaisons are of their very nature transient, and when they end, they end. I loved Landy dearly, but I was shaken by what she had suggested. However, she explained what she had in mind, and I listened with growing sympathy, and in the end we went before the registrar and executed a new six-month contract.

But this time we agreed to abide by Suvornese and not Terran mores. So the two marriages aren’t really consecutive in spirit, though they are in elapsed time. And Suvornese marriage is very different from marriage Terran style.

How?

I’ll know more about that a few months from now. Landy and I leave for Suvorna tomorrow. I have had my teeth fixed to please her, and it’s quite strange walking around with a mouthful of tiny needles, but I imagine I’ll adapt. One has to put up with little inconveniences in the give-and-take of marriage. Landy’s five sisters are returning to their native world with us. Eleven more sisters are there already. Under Suvornese custom I’m married to all seventeen of them at once, regardless of any other affiliations they may have contracted. Suvornese find monogamy rather odd and even a little wicked, though Landy tolerated it for six months for my sake. Now it’s her turn; we’ll do things her way.

So Bride Ninety-one is also Bride Ninety-two for me, and there’ll be seventeen of her all at once, dainty, molasses-flavored, golden-eyed, and sleek. I’m in no position right now to predict what this marriage is going to be like.

But I think it’ll be worth the bother of wearing Suvornese teeth for a while, don’t you?