wish I had some adequate way of thanking you—not for myself—for millions of people. Perhaps one day we’ll find a way of sending you back to your own world, but—” his shoulders moved negatively, “I can’t say—”
Adric’s lean non-human face peered over Narayan’s shoulder. He looked subdued, and spoke with a curious humility. He sounded sane. “There will be a way, some day. It will take time to find it, now, but—there will be.”
Spontaneously we grinned at each other. I could not hate this man. I knew him too well. I knew, suddenly, that we would be friends. Which, indeed, is what happened.
Narayan looked from one to the other of us, troubled; then Gamine’s intent face was at his elbow.
“I’ll see to these men,” she said quietly. “Narayan, they need you, and it’s your responsibility. They have to be told why they were wakened, and how; there are slaves to be freed, armies—”
Narayan glanced guiltily over his shoulder at the other Dreamers who stood huddled together in a bewildered little knot. “That’s so,” he acknowledged gravely, and went to his people. I watched him, feeling as if my one friend here had deserted me; but it had to be that way. Narayan was not our kind. He was the sort of man who could remodel a world; but the look he sent us over his shoulder told Adric and I that we should, if we liked, have a share in that work.
“Now Mike Kenscott,” said Gamine, “I want to talk to you.”
We left Adric and Cynara in that place, and I cast a wistful glance back at them. Cynara was lovely, and very human, and I suppose I had hoped that in some way she would compensate for my enforced stay in this world. But there was Adric—
Gamine and I stood on the steps of the Dreamer’s Keep, and her voice, soft and wistful, mourned in the grey dawn. “No one ever knew I had the Dreamer powers— except old Rhys. Rhys and I were bound together—he knew, and kept me close to him, hid me and helped me. One day Adric found out. It—changed Adric. He—we freed Narayan together. Then Karamy made me what I was—what you saw. It hurt Adric—hurt something in him. I could have cured him, in time, but Karamy had him bewitched. She stripped him of power, of memory. I do not know, but perhaps some day, Adric may remember that I was—I was—”
“Gamine! Gamine!” Adric’s voice cried from within, and the next moment he rushed forth—caught the Dreamer woman in his arms, and his mouth met hers and she stood swaying in his arms, laughing and crying together. Cynara, following slowly, smiled with gentle satisfaction. I said, stunned, “What—”
Over Adric’s shoulder Gamine’s blue eyes met mine in liquid satisfaction and she finished her interrupted sentence. “I was Adric’s wife,” she said, gently. Cynara’s voice was tenderly humorous as we left them together in the glory of the rising sun. “Poor Gamine,” she said, “and poor Adric, too. I was sorry for them both. But I wish these men would make up their minds!”
I had an idea.
“Adric’s made up his mind,” I said, turning my head a little toward the couple who stood, clasped, as if they could never let go. “I suppose—” I came a little closer to Cynara, who stood looking up at me with wide, innocent eyes and lips ingenuously parted, “I suppose that gives me the right to make up my mind. Doesn’t it?” She smiled. “Does it?” But her bright eyes had given me my answer, and I never had to make up my mind again.
The Green Odyssey
by Philip José Farmer
To Nan Gerding
1
For two years Alan Green had lived without hope. From the day the spaceship had crashed on this unknown planet he had resigned himself to the destiny created for him by accident and mathematics. Chances against another ship landing within the next hundred years were a million to one. Therefore it would do no good to sit around waiting for rescue. Much as he loathed the idea, he must live the rest of his life here, and he must squeeze as much blood as he could out of this planet-sized turnip. There wasn’t much to squeeze. In fact, it seemed to him that he was the one losing the blood. Shortly after he’d been cast away he’d been made a slave.
Now, suddenly, he had hope.
Hope came to him a month after he’d been made foreman of the kitchen slaves of the Duke of Tropat. It came to him as he was standing behind the Duchess during a meal and directing those who were waiting upon her.
It was the Duchess Zuni who had not so subtly maneuvered him from the labor pens to his coveted, if dangerous, position. Why dangerous? Because she was very jealous and possessive, and the slightest hint of lack of attention from him could mean he’d lose his life or one limb or another. The knowledge of what had happened to his two predecessors kept him extremely sensitive to her every gesture, her every wish.
That fateful morning he was standing behind her as she sat at one end of the long breakfast table. In one hand he held his foreman’s wand, a little white baton topped by a large red ball. With it he gestured at the slaves who served food, who poured wine and beer, who fanned away the flies, who carried in the household god and sat it on the god chair, who played something like music. Now and then he bent over the Duchess Zuni’s long black hair and whispered phrases from this or that love poem, praising her beauty, her supposed unattainability, and his burning, if seemingly hopeless, passion for her. Zuni would smile, or repeat the formula of thanks—the short one—or else giggle at his funny accent.
The Duke sat at the other end of the table. He ignored the by-play, just as he ignored the so-called secret passage inside the walls of the castle, which Green used to get to the Duchess’s apartments. Custom demanded this, just as custom demanded that he should play the outraged husband if she got tired of Green or angry at him and accused him publicly of amorous advances. This was enough to make Green jittery, but he had more than the Duke to consider. There was Alzo.
Alzo was the Duchess’s watchdog, a mastiff-like monster with shaggy red-gold hair. The dog hated Green with a vindictiveness that Green could only account for by supposing that the animal knew, perhaps from his body-odor, that he was not a native of this planet. Alzo rumbled a warning deep in his chest every time Green bent over the Duchess or made a too-sudden movement. Occasionally he rose to his four feet and nuzzled the man’s leg. When that happened Green could not keep from breaking out into a sweat, for the dog had twice bitten him, playfully, so to speak, and severely lacerated his calf. As if that weren’t bad enough, Green had to worry that the natives might notice that his scars healed abnormally fast, almost overnight. He’d been forced to wear bandages on his legs long after the new skin had come in.
Even now, the nauseating canine was sniffing around Green’s quivering hide in the hope of putting the fear of the devil in him. At that moment the Earthman resolved that, come the headsman’s ax, rack, wheel, or other hellish tortures, he was going to kill that hound. It was just after he made that vow that the Duchess caused him to forget altogether the beast.
“Dear,” said Zuni, interrupting the Duke in the midst of his conversation with a merchant-captain, “what is this I hear about two men who have fallen from the sky in a great ship of iron?”
Green quivered, and he held his breath as he waited for the Duke’s reply.
The Duke, a short, dark many-chinned man with white hair and very thick bristly salt-and-pepper eyebrows, frowned.
“Men?
