What is it she knows?”
She shook all over, then was silent for a long time. I realized suddenly that she was wearing only her flimsy dancer’s costume. I pushed her from me, took off my jacket, and put it about her shoulders.
“Great Malann!” I cried. “You’ll freeze to death!”
“No,” she said, “I won’t.”
I was transferring the rose-case to my pocket.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A rose,” I answered. “You can’t make it out in the dark. I once compared you to one. Remember?”
“Yes—Yes. May I carry it?”
“Sure.” I stuck it in the jacket pocket.
“Well? I’m still waiting for an explanation.”
“You really do not know?” she asked.
“No!”
“When the Rains came,” she said, “apparently only our men were affected, which was enough . . . . Because I—wasn’t—affected—apparently—”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
We stood there, and I thought.
“Well, why did you run? What’s wrong with being pregnant on Mars? Tamur was mistaken. Your people can live again.”
She laughed, again that wild violin played by a Paginini gone mad. I stopped her before it went too far.
“How?” she finally asked, rubbing her cheek.
“Your people can live longer than ours. If our child is normal it will mean our races can intermarry. There must still be other fertile women of your race. Why not?”
“You have read the Book of Locar,” she said, “and yet you ask me that? Death was decided, voted upon, and passed, shortly after it appeared in this form. But long before, before the followers of Locar knew. They decided it long ago. ‘We have done all things,’ they said, ‘we have seen all things, we have heard and felt all things. The dance was good. Now let it end.’”
“You can’t believe that.”
“What I believe does not matter,” she replied. “M’Cwyie and the Mothers have decided we must die. Their very title is now a mockery, but their decisions will be upheld. There is only one prophecy left, and it is mistaken. We will die.”
“No,” I said.
“What, then?”
“Come back with me, to Earth.”
“No.”
“All right, then. Come with me now.”
“Where?”
“Back to Tirellian. I’m going to talk to the Mothers.”
“You can’t! There is a Ceremony tonight!”
I laughed.
“A Ceremony for a god who knocks you down, and then kicks you in the teeth?”
“He is still Malann,” she answered. “We are still his people.”
“You and my father would have gotten along fine,” I snarled. “But I am going, and you are coming with me, even if I have to carry you—and I’m bigger than you are.”
“But you are not bigger than Ontro.”
“Who the hell is Ontro?”
“He will stop you, Gallinger. He is the Fist of Malann.”
IV
I scudded the jeepster to a halt in front of the only entrance I knew, M’Cwyie’s. Braxa, who had seen the rose in a headlamp, now cradled it in her lap, like our child, and said nothing. There was a passive, lovely look on her face.
“Are they in the Temple now?” I wanted to know.
The Madonna-expression did not change. I repeated the question. She stirred.
“Yes,” she said, from a distance, “but you cannot go in.”
“We’ll see.”
I circled and helped her down.
I led her by the hand, and she moved as if in a trance. In the light of the new-risen moon, her eyes looked as they had the day I had met her, when she had danced. I snapped my fingers. Nothing happened.
So I pushed the door open and led her in. The room was half-lighted.
And she screamed for the third time that evening:
“Do not harm him, Ontro! It is Gallinger!”
I had never seen a Martian man before, only women. So I had no way of knowing whether he was a freak, though I suspected it strongly.
I looked up at him.
His half-naked body was covered with moles and swellings. Gland trouble, I guessed.
I had thought I was the tallest man on the planet, but he was seven feet tall and overweight. Now I knew where my giant bed had come from!
“Go back,” he said. “She may enter. You may not.”
“I must get my books and things.”
He raised a huge left arm. I followed it. All my belonging lay neatly stacked in the corner.
“I must go in. I must talk with M’Cwyie and the Mothers.”
“You may not.”
“The lives of your people depend on it.”
“Go back,” he boomed. “Go home to your people, Gallinger. Leave us!”
My name sounded so different on his lips, like someone else’s. How old was he? I wondered. Three hundred? Four? Had he been a Temple guardian all his life? Why? Who was there to guard against? I didn’t like the way he moved. I had seen men who moved like that before.
“Go back,” he repeated.
If they had refined their martial arts as far as they had their dances, or worse yet, if their fighting arts were a part of the dance, I was in for trouble.
“Go on in,” I said to Braxa. “Give the rose to M’Cwyie. Tell her that I sent it. Tell her I’ll be there shortly.”
“I will do as you ask. Remember me on Earth,
