Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

Two cool girls near us in frocks that hover between innocence and indecency comment to each other. She to her: “Disastrous lowbrow hokum! I can’t think how we laughed at it last year!” She to her: “Hokum maybe, Chloe, but brilliant Theater!” I had propped myself against the stones of a fallen arch. Lambant had hoisted himself up and now sprawled on them. He said in my ear, “Be warned by that exchange!—Thus, enjoyment in youth gives way to criticism in old age!”

His casual words were caught by the girls, who failed to join in the general laughter then prevailing as Judy, the Law Man’s Daughter, tried to kiss Allosaur Man—mistaking him, still trapped in the helmet, for Space Man. They turned to us, and one turned rosy and one pale at Lambant’s affront, so that I was vexed to think which colouring effect took me most.

“We also overheard your conversation, cavaliers, but less insultingly, since our overhearing was involuntary, and caused purely by the loudness and coarseness of your voices,” one of these delicate creatures indited. “We found your remarks as amusing as you appear to have found ours!”

She it was whose sister had addressed her as Chloe. She was the smaller and the more rounded of the two, with pretty chestnut hair and soft brown eyes—though they attempted to pierce both Lambant and me at that moment. She it was who had turned to so fair a shade of rose, her sister who bore cheeks that temporarily resembled ivory.

Her sister, whose name we soon discovered to be Lise, was no less ferocious, but of a more willowy physique, slender and dark, with hair as black and shining as midnight reflected down a well, and eyes as blue-grey as the flower of speedwell. Neither of them could have been much more than halfway through their second decade, and neither was empty of words; for Lise, following swift on her sister’s jibe, cried, with stormy brows—but I saw the moon shine through the storm—“To hear brainless gallants like you discussing the just rewards of artists! I’d as lief go to my maid for instruction in the True Religion!”

Lambant slid from his stone to his feet, saying, “Your maid should instruct me in anything she liked, Miss, if she were one-half as fair as you!”

“She should instruct me in nothing, were either of you princesses present to teach the lesson!” I said, looking from one to the other to decide which one of them had my heart more firmly in sway, and perceiving that the dark and willowy Lise had its chief custody.

“Your compliments are as feeble as your insults!” Chloe said.

She spoke among the general applause of the little audience, for the show had now ended, the Banker’s Lady had gone off with the Space Man, the Banker had rewarded the Police Man, the Joker had had his way with Bettini, the Banker’s Daughter, and the Allosaur Man had devoured the Robber Man. Now the puppet master came round with his wooden plate, thrusting it hopefully among the dissolving auditory. As he leveled it at us, I tossed in a kopetto, and said, “Here’s one true artist at least believes his reward should be neither ability nor applause alone.”

“Faith, master,” he quoth, rolling his eyes, “I need fuel as well as flattery for my performance. So do my missus and our six children!”

“Six children!” said Lambant. “Then you also need a lettro for your performance!”

Our two young beauties looked abashed at this pleasant crudity and, perhaps to hide their embarrassment, Chloe said, “These carnival men deserve money possibly, but not the title of artist.”

Boldly, I took her sister’s arm and said, “Since the subject of artistry interests you, let’s stroll awhile and see whether you have an equivalent knowledge of it. Our main topic—of which the theme of artistic reward was merely a subtopic—was whether this was not a decadent age.”

“How very strange, sirs,” said Chloe, smiling, “for we had been saying to each other how creative this age was, although our seniors little realised the fact.”

“Stabbed to the heart!” I cried, clutching at my chest and falling against Lambant “You hear that, brother? ‘Our seniors’. . . that’s for us, at least six years the senior of these two old maids. Poor croaking greybeards, they must think us!”

Taking the cue, Lambant began to hobble before us, clutching one knee and limping like an old man.

“Quick, quick, Prian, my embrocation! My rheumatics are killing me!”

“’Tis your wit rather that will be the death of us!” exclaimed Lise, but she and Chloe were laughing prettily, making their youthful bosoms shake like fresh-boiled dumplings. So pleasant was the sight that Lambant redoubled the vigour of his parody of senility, somewhat spoiling the effect

“Hokum, Lambant, maybe, but brilliant Theatre!” I said. ‘‘Now take your bows before we take these ladies somewhere where we may have out our argument in peace. Let’s stroll to the river.”

The girls were looking doubtfully at one another when we saw, distantly, one of the winged women take off gracefully from the city walls and come flying in our direction. As was often the fashion of her kind, she wore long ribbons in her hair which trailed out behind her in the tranquil air. She was both young and naked and the sight of her overhead was in sunlight very pleasing; as she passed behind the Big Cornet to alight, we heard the solemn flutter of her wings, like some transvestite Jove seeking an hermaphrodite Leda.

No doubt the sight inspired Lise. “We’ll come with you if we can fly,” she said, resting a pretty hand upon my sleeve.

“Done,” said Lambant and I together. “Let’s go and find the carpet man!” And we swept them along, whistling “When the Still Air Hath Waked” in march-time, Lambant taking the melody and I the counterpoint, past the booths of chance and cheiromancy.

Since it was by now growing late in the afternoon, the crowds at the fair were thickening. The most crowded and the gayest time would come after dusk, when flares were lit and masks were donned, and the Eastern dancers started their contortions on the open stage. We soon found our way to the nearest carpet man. His carpets were of plastic and too brilliantly coloured for our liking; but they carried a six-hour guarantee, and we were in no mood to be particular. We paid the man’s fee and a deposit besides, mounting his rickety little scaffold with a good deal of jesting.

As the meter showed, our carpet had a twelve-foot ceiling, but it bore us swiftly enough, flapping above the motley heads of the people and avoiding other fliers. The girls squealed and laughed prettily, so that Lambant and I looked at each other behind their delicious backs, nodding in silent agreement that we were lucky in finding—and so soon—the two prettiest and most intelligent girls in the autumn fair.

We left the stalls behind and threaded our way through a grove of slender birches. Ahead lay the river and, beyond, the foothills of the Vokoban Mountains. Lambant pointed to them.

“Let’s go to a nest I know, safe from interruption!”

“No, take us no further than the river!” cried the girls. Perhaps they recalled the old legends about what happens when one flies over water on a fine day.

Lambant would not hear argument, and we sailed across to a mossy ledge high up a slope on which wild autumn crocus grew, pink on pink. So high were we that we could still clearly see the tiny bright booths of the fair, and the fortifications of the town, and even hear, now and again, the strepitation of a tinsel trumpet. Above us, to one side, we could see the jagged grey slates of a mountain village—Heist was its name—and peasants toiling with their man-lizards among the vines below its walls.

“This is supposed to be an evil mountain,” Chloe said. “My father tells me that the Exiles are imprisoned within the entrails of these peaks!”