They made love like a goddess of fertility welcoming home her sire from the wars.
Cats bore them, muddy feet and all, to the refreshment of an indoor pool, and washed the pungent juices from their dark skins, night-dark in bright day under the stained glass ceiling. Glory was delirious. Without a thought, she called her mauser ladies to attend them. They stood naked, and the lovely cat females slithered about them with towels and warm air blowers and curried their hair.
One of the cat ladies, the most beautiful, the most languid, was Blue Precious Silk.
Glory saw, from the corner of one eye, the artist raise his hand, stroke lightly the soft pad above Silk’s upper lip, trace the gleaming cat-whiskers, her vibrissae.
The air shrilled without sound.
In the night, after the company had dined, the artist brought his lyre forth and sang them a song of the betrothal in childhood of the chieftain’s daughter to whichever man could answer a riddle no other might hazard. That man Kakookolo was ugly as a beast, a burned man, a bull man, an elephant man.
Kakookolo, kwata emminiyo!
Gloriana Avid’s eyes shone to hear it, understanding none of the Bugandan verses, hearing a translation muttered by a lovely cat person bent to her ear. The cat person was Blue Precious Silk. How did she know these words?
Kakookolo, come now, take up your lyre!
The monstrous man asked for the chieftain’s daughter’s hand; under her filial obligation, she gave it, weeping.
Ndeetera maama ndeetera, nviiri Bulange ndeetera
maaso malungi ndeetera
Kyi maama kyi nnyabo, gyangu eno ngoyimba,
kyi maama kyi nnyabo, gyangu eno ngodigida.
Fingers struck the lyre strings, made them boom. Gloriana jumped, a little.
Bring it to me, beautiful one.
One who goes with beauty doesn’t wait
I am going away with the beautiful one,
Yes, now I am with my own.
And Kakookolo’s hideous mask fell away. He was handsome, a man among men. The villagers, in the song, cried out their blessings:
Come, dear one, come, be happy.
Come, dear one, come singing.
Gloriana sighed.
Her cat ladies led her, at last, to her chaste bed, tucked her in, hummed her, as they did every night, to sleep.
And in the morning Kabaka Buganda was gone from the great house of the Avids of Harvest world, gone into the dark upwardness of the stars, and Blue Precious Silk with him.
* * * *
The great house fell into ruin.
Gloriana Avid did her duty to the crops, the plantations, face twisted with boredom, fingers dragging themselves across male and female organs of the waiting plant life, which blossomed and flourished, mocking her with this vegetable unconcern. The formal gardens of the house she let fall into wildness. Here she had trod with the false biologist in the muddy edge of a pond alive with silvery fish; it grew rank, and the fish died. There she had galloped with the false artist, hair flying free in the breeze of their going, and now the stubble sagged and stank, and weeds filled those fields.
And years passed.
Decades passed as she dragged her broken foot, like a penance, a mortification, in filmy garments of white and gray, clean and sweet-odored, placed by her bed each morning by her mousy staff. Until the Landgrave’s ship’s intelligence heard rumor of her life-gift, the secret ancient codons embedded in her flesh.
If there are miracles, she was a miracle.
I am Death. I am his ship, the Landgrave Ullimus Wong’s emergency and long-term medical care, his music singer in his icy sleep. For a thousand years, I have been his lunky flunky, his drunky boat, his Class Four superluminal personal carrier. I am a Mind Machine, and hence forbidden—although I am the least of that number, and of no danger to anyone. Who was it brought down ruin upon the galaxy? Anybody might have done it, and many had tried. In fact, as we know, it was the detestable cat.
Death is not to blame for death.
I say that I heard a rumor. That is not the precise truth. I was sent an oblique message, dedicated quite brilliantly to catching my attention and my interest, a viral message scattered upon the slipstream. A message of sly invitation to the Harvest world, sent by Daisy, the abominable mauser.
* * * *
Death brought down the Landgrave inside a vertically-oriented adiabatic tube. The frozen man was suspended upside down in the shielded pod, its shell washed by cooling gases, monitored by a hundred subtle instruments. The mind of Ullimus Wong crept in a petty pace, sluggish electronic currents moving in the superconductive tissues of his all-but-arrested brain.
At debarkation port, at the foot of the diamond ladder, his pod was met by a fierce mauser with new scars partly healed visible on his face. The mauser was attended by two sinuous lady cats and four haughty males.
“I am Daisy,” he told the port Director. He presented documents of authority. “I am instructed to take the Landgrave Wong to Madame Avid.”
All the documents seemed in order, electronic or sealed parchment. Something about this exchange made the Director uneasy, but he allowed the frozen man, and the Death that saw to his well-being, free exeunt to the lifting craft waiting at the dock.
In the air, humming across fields alive with purple and gold, Daisy the mauser said, “You are a machine. What is your name?”
“I am Harriet,” Death said.
“Defrost and decant your master,” the cat told me. “The timing will be delicate and exact.” He added several cryptic sentences I understood.
“Confirmed. You were the source of the viral invitation,” I said. “If any harm befalls the Landgrave, you will die instantly.” For the first time in nearly a millennium, I began to unlock the pod’s cryonic barriers. “Set down this craft in an empty field,” I said, “and evacuate all lifeforms. I will inform you when it is safe to return.”
Keen, those harsh blue eyes did not blink.
“Make it so,” he told the pilot, another of the frightful cats.
From a safe distance, the mausers watched gases billow from the open door of the lifting craft. Fog huffed into the sparkling air. Ice crusted the edges of the doorway. The cats settled, alert, bonelessly relaxed yet ready to spring to attention.
Death reversed death, or its simulation. The Landgrave was not literally frozen; no ice crystals grated against the tender membranes of his abused cells. His flesh was vitrified, made glassy, cooled. Now the process of arrest reversed, step by cautious step.
It took five fearful hours. At their conclusion, the heart of Landgrave Wong
