Филип Фармер - The Lovers

Hal held the glowing coil of his own lighter to the tip of Pornsen's cigarette. His hand was steady.

Thirty-one years of discipline shoved back the grin he felt deep inside his face.

Pornsen accepted the light. A second later, a tremor around his lips revealed that he knew he had lost much of his advantage over Yarrow. He realized he couldn't allow a man to do him a service – even one as slight as this – and then crack the whip on him.

Nevertheless, he began formally, 'Hal Shamshiel Yarrow...'

'Shib, abba, I hear and obey,' replied Hal as formally.

'Just how do you explain this accident?'

Hal was surprised. Pornsen's voice was much milder than he had expected. He did not relax, however, for he suspected that Pornsen meant to take him off guard and lash out at him when he was not mentally braced for an attack.

'I – or, rather, the Backrunner in me – departed from reality. I – my dark self – willfully precipitated a pseudofuture.'

'Oh, really?' said Pornsen, quietly but with a note of sarcasm. 'You say your dark self, the Backrunner in you, did that? That is what you have said ever since you were able to talk. Why must you always blame someone else? You know – you should, for I have been forced to whip you many times – that you and you alone are responsible. When you were taught that it was your dark self that caused departures from reality, you were also taught that the Backrunner could cause nothing unless you – your real self, Hal Yarrow – fully cooperated.'

'That is as shib as the Forerunner's left hand,' said Hal. 'But, my beloved gapt, you forgot one thing in that little lecture of yours.'

Now, his voice had a sarcasm to match that in Pornsen's.

Pornsen, shrilly, said, 'What do you mean?'

'I mean,' said Hal triumphantly, 'that you were in the accident, too! Therefore, you caused it just as much as I did!'

Pornsen goggled at him. He said, whining, 'But – but, you were driving the car!'

'Makes no difference according to what you have always told me!' said Hal. He was grinning smugly. 'You agreed to be in the collision. If you had not, we would have missed the beast.'

Pornsen stopped to puff on the cigarette. His hand shook. Yarrow watched the hand that hung free by Pornsen's side, its fingers twisting the seven leather lashes of the whip handle stuck in his belt.

Pornsen said, 'You have always shown signs of a regrettable pride and independence. That smacks of behavior that does not conform to the structure of the universe as revealed to mankind by the Forerunner, real be his name.

'I have [puff] – may the Forerunner forgive them! – sent two dozen men and women to H. I did not like to do that, for I loved them with all my heart and self. I wept when I reported them to the holy hierarchy, for I am a tender – hearted man. [Puff!] But it was my duty as a Guardian Angel Pro Tempore to watch out for the loathsome disease of self that may spread and infect the followers of Sigmen. Unreality must not be tolerated. The self is too weak and precious to be subjected to temptation.

'I have been your gapt since you were born. [Puff!] You always were a disobedient child. But you could be loved into submissiveness and contrition; you felt my love often. [Puff!]'

Yarrow felt his back tingle. He watched the gapt's hand tighten around the handle of the 'lover' projecting from the belt.

'However, not until you were eighteen did you really depart from the true future and show your weakness for pseudofutures. That was when you decided to become a joat instead of a specialist. I warned you that as a joat you'd get only so far in our society. But you persisted. And since we do have need of joats, and since I was overruled by my superiors, I allowed you to become one.

'That was [puff] unshib enough. But when I picked out the woman most suitable to be your wife – as was my duty and right – for who but your loving gapt knows the type of woman best suited for you? – I saw just how proud and unreal you were. You argued and protested and tried to go over my head and held out for a year before you consented to marry her. In that year of unreal behavior, you cost the Sturch one self...'

Hal's face paled, revealing seven thin red marks that raved out from the left corner of his lips and across his cheek to his ear.

'I cost the Sturch nothing!' Hal growled. 'Mary and I were married nine years, but we had no children. Tests showed that neither of us was physically sterile. Therefore, one or both was not thinking fertile. I petitioned for a divorce, even though I knew I might end up in H. Why didn't you insist on our divorce, as your duty required, instead of pigeonholing my petition?'

Pornsen blew out smoke nonchalantly enough, but he dropped one shoulder lower than the other as if something had caved inside him. Yarrow, seeing this, knew that he had his gapt on the defensive.

Pornsen said, 'When I first realized you were on the Gabriel, I was sure that you were not on it because of a desire to serve the Sturch. I [puff] thought at the time that you signed up for one reason. And now I am shib, shib to the bone, that your reason was your wicked desire to get away from your wife. And, since barrenness, adultery, and interstellar travel are the only legal grounds for divorce, and adultery means going to H, you [puff] took the only way out. You became legally dead by becoming a crewman of the Gabriel. You–'

'Don't talk about anything legal to me!' shouted Hal. He shook with rage and, at the same time, hated himself because he could not hide his emotion.

'You know you were not carrying out the proper functions of a gapt when you sidetracked my request! I had to sign up–'

'Ah, I thought so!' said Pornsen. He smiled and puffed out smoke and said, 'I turned it down because I thought it would be unreal. You see, I had a dream, a very vivid dream, in which I saw Mary bearing your child at the end of two years. It was not a false dream but one that had the unmistakable signs of a revelation sent by the Forerunner. I knew after that dream that your desire for a divorce was a desire for a pseudofuture. I knew that the true future was in my hands and that only by guiding your conduct could I bring it about. I recorded this dream the day after I had it, which was only a week after I reviewed your petition, and–'

'You proved that you were betrayed by a dream sent by the Backrunner and did not see a revelation sent by the Forerunner!' shouted Hal again. 'Pornsen, I am going to report this! Out of your own mouth you have convicted yourself!'

Pornsen turned pale; his mouth hung open so the cigarette dropped to the ground; his jowls quivered with fright. 'Wha – what do you mean?'

'How could she have my child at the end of two years when I am not on Earth to father it? So, what you say you dreamed can't possibly become a real future! Therefore, you allowed yourself to be deceived by the Backrunner. And you know what that means! That you are a candidate for H!'

The gapt stiffened. His lower left shoulder drew level with the other. His right hand shot to the handle of the whip, closed around the crux ansata on its end, and he pulled it from his belt. It cracked in the air, a few inches from Hal's face.

'See this?' shrieked Pornsen. 'Seven lashes! One for each of the Seven Deadly Unrealities! You've felt them before; you'll feel them again!'

Harshly, Hal said, 'Shut up!'

Again, Pornsen's jaw dropped. Whining, he said, 'How, how dare you? I, your beloved gapt, am–'

'I told you to shut up!' said Hal, less loudly but just as bitingly. 'I'm sick of your whine. I've been sick of it for years, my whole life.'