Филип Фармер - The Lovers

Even as he spoke, he watched Fobo walking toward them. Behind Fobo, the antelope lay dead on the road.

The animal is dead, Hal thought. I thought it had managed to get away. Those eyes staring through the bush at me. Antelope eyes? But if it is dead, whose eyes did I see?

Pornsen's voice recalled Hal to the present.

'I think, my son, that we spoke in anger, not in premeditated evil. Let us forgive one another, and we'll say nothing to the Uzzites when we get back to the ship.'

'Shib with me if it's with you,' said Hal.

Hal was surprised to see tears welling in Pornsen's eyes. And he was even more surprised, almost shocked, when Pornsen made an attempt to put his arm around Hal's shoulder.

'Ah, my boy, if you only knew how much I loved you, how much it has hurt me when I've had to punish you.'

'I find that rather hard to believe,' said Hal, and he walked away from Pornsen and toward Fobo.

Fobo, too, had large tears in his unhumanly large and round eyes. But they were from another cause. He was weeping because of sympathy for the beast and shock from the accident. However, with every step toward Hal, his expression became less grieved, and tears dried. He was making a circular sign over himself with his right index finger.

It was, Hal knew, a religious sign which the wogs used in many different situations. Now, Fobo seemed to be using it to relieve his tension. Suddenly, he smiled the ghastly V-in-V smile of a wogglebug. And he was in good spirits. Though supersensitive, his nervous system was hit and run. Charge and discharge came easily.

Fobo stopped before them and said, 'A clash of personalities, gentlemen? A disagreement, an argument, a dispute?'

'No,' replied Hal. 'We were just a little shaken up. Tell me, how far will we have to walk to get to the humanoid ruins? Your car's wrecked. Tell Zugu I'm sorry.'

'Do not bother your skulls... heads. Zugu was ready to build a new and better vehicle. As for the walk, it will be pleasant and stimulating. It is only a... kilometer? Or thereabouts.'

Hal threw his mask and goggles into the car, where the Ozagenians had put theirs. He picked up his suitcase from the floor in the compartment back of the rear seat. He left the gapt's on the floor. Not without a slight pang of guilt, however, for he knew that as Pornsen's ward, he should have offered to carry it.

'To H with him,' he muttered.

He said to Fobo, 'Aren't you afraid the driving clothes will be stolen?'

'Pardon?' said Fobo, eager to learn a new word. 'Stolen means what?'

'To take an article of property from someone by stealth, without their permission, and keep it for yourself. It is a crime, punishable by law.'

'A crime?'

Hal gave up and began walking swiftly up the road. Behind him the gapt, angry because he had been rejected and because his ward was breaking etiquette by forcing him to carry his own case, shouted, 'Don't presume too far, you – you joat !'

Hal didn't turn back but plunged on ahead. The angry retort he had been phrasing beneath his breath fizzed away. Out of the corner of his eye, he had glimpsed white skin in the green foliage.

It was only a flash, gone as quickly as it had come. And he could not be sure that it was not a bird's white wing opening. Yes, he could be. There were no birds on Ozagen.

' Soo Yarrow. Soo Yarrow. Wuhfvayfvoo, soo Yarrow.'

Hal woke up. For a moment, he had trouble placing himself. Then, as he became wider awake, he recalled that he was sleeping in one of the marble rooms of the ruins. The moonlight, brighter than Earth's, poured in through the doorway. It shone on a small shape clinging upside down to the arch of the doorway. It glittered briefly on a flying insect that passed below the shape. Something long and thin flickered down and caught the flier and pulled it into a suddenly gaping mouth.

The lizard loaned by the ruins custodians was doing a fine job of keeping out pests.

Hal turned his head to look at the open window a foot above him. The bugcatcher there was also busily ton-guing the area clean of mosquitoes.

The voice had seemed to come from beyond that moonwashed and narrow rectangle. He strained his ears as if he could force the silence to yield the voice again. But there was only more silence. Then, he jumped and whirled around as a snuffling and rattling came from behind him. A thing the size of a raccoon stood in the doorway. It was one of the quasi-insects, the so-called lungbugs, that prowled the forest at night. It represented a development of arthropod not found on Earth. Unlike its Terran cousins, it did not depend solely on tracheae or breathing tubes for oxygen. A pair of distensible sacs, like a frog's, swelled out and fell in behind its mouth. It was these that had made the snuffling sound.

Though the lungbug was shaped like the sinister praying mantis, Hal didn't worry. Fobo had told him it was not dangerous to a man.

A shrill sound like that of an alarm clock suddenly filled the room. Pornsen sat up on the cot against the wall. Seeing the insect, he yelled. It scurried off. The noise, which had come from the mechanism on Pornsen's wrist, stopped.

Pornsen lay back. He groaned, 'That makes the sixth time those sib bugs have woke me up.'

'Turn off the wristbox,' said Hal.

'So you can sneak out of the room and spill your seed on the ground,' replied Pornsen.

'You have no right to accuse me of such unreal conduct,' said Hal. He spoke mechanically, without deep anger. He was thinking of the voice.

The Forerunner himself said no one was beyond reproach,' muttered Pornsen. He sighed and mumbled as he fell asleep, 'Wonder if the rumor is true... Forerunner himself may be on this planet... watching us... he predicted... aah...'

Hal sat on his cot and watched Pornsen until he began snoring. Hal's own lids felt heavy. Surely, he must have dreamed of that soft, low voice speaking in a tongue neither Terran nor Ozagenian. He must have, because it had been human, and he and the gapt were the only specimens of Homo sapiens for two hundred miles in any direction.

It had been a woman's voice. Forerunner! To hear a woman again! Not Mary. He never wanted to hear her voice again or even hear of her. She was the only woman he had ever – dare he say it to himself? – had. That had been a sorry, disgusting, and humiliating ordeal. But it had not taken from him the wish – he was glad that the Forerunner was not there to read his mind – to meet another woman who might give him that ecstasy of he knew nothing except from spilling his seed – Forerunner help him! – and which was, he was sure, only a paleness and a hollowness compared to that which waited . . .

' Soo Yarrow. Wuhfvayfvoo. Sa mfa, zh'net Tastinak. R'gateh wa f'net. '

Slowly, Hal rose from the cot. His neck was cased in ice. The whisper was coming from the window. He looked at it. The outline of a woman's head tilted into the solid box of moonlight that was window. The solid box became a cascade. Moonwash flowed over white shoulders. The white of a finger crossed the black of a mouth.

' Poo wamoo tu baw choo. E'ooteh. Seelahs. Fvooneh. Fvit, seelfvoopleh.'

Numbed, but obeying as if shot full of hypno-lipno, he began walking toward the doorway. He was not so shocked, however, that he did not look at Pornsen to make sure he was still sleeping.

For a second, his reflexes almost overcame him and forced him to wake up the gapt. But he withdrew the hand reaching for Pornsen. He must take a chance. The urgency and fear in the woman's voice told him that she was desperate and needed him. And it was evident that she did not want him to arouse Pornsen.

What would Pornsen say, do, if he knew there was a woman outside this very room?