The Bones of Zora

XIV - THE SPACEPORT

The following day, Marot asked Reith: "Where on Krishna did Ozum get that cook? He is terrible! Me, I am sure I could do the better, despite the unfamiliar ingredients. I will speak to him."

"Better get Ozum's okay," said Reith. "He wouldn't like it if you didn't go through channels."

The next time Reith saw him, Marot was in the galley speaking to Yeshram, the stout cook. Ozum glanced in and went about his business; but Yeshram seemed too awed by his off-planet visitor to say more than: "Aye, sir. Aye, sir. I'll try it, sir."

"For tomorrow's breakfast," said Marot, "we shall learn what in my country we call crêpes. They are a kind of very thin—Ah, Fergus!"

"Yes?" said Reith, looking into the galley.

"What is Gozashtandou for 'pancake'? I cannot find it in my phrase book."

Reith frowned. "I don't know of an exact equivalent; but nánash comes pretty close."

"Excellent! Master Yeshram, we shall make the crêpe, which is a very thin nánash. We begin with badr powder and shaihan milk. Have you two bijar eggs? First we shall separate the yolks from the whites, because they must be added to the mixture separately. A little salt ... A large spoonful of that sap you use for sweetening ..."

Marot finally spooned the thin batter into Yeshram's hot copper frying pan and tilted the pan with a wobbling motion, round and round, so that the sizzling batter ran to all parts of the pan bottom. He picked up the spatula, saying: "Now, my friend, regard! I take the gâche, whatever you call it ... There we are! It is simple when one knows. Then we roll it up, so. Now taste!"

Yeshram tasted and gave an appreciative gurgle. Marot continued: "Today you shall pour a crêpe. Tomorrow you will mix the ingredients under my eye. Go ahead, pour!"

Nervously Yeshram picked up the frying pan and the serving spoon. As he spooned the mixture into the pan, which had been heating on his little coal stove, Alicia appeared at the galley entrance, saying: "Move over a little, Fergus, so I can see."

Yeshram began to wobble the pan as he had seen Marot do. "Hey!" cried Alicia, stepping forward. "You're doing it all wrong!"

"Please, Alicia!" said Marot. "You will only confuse him. He must learn by doing—"

"We can't let him form bad habits; poor pedagogy. Let me show—"

"Lish!" exclaimed Reith. "Stop interfering and get out of the galley!"

Bewildered, Yeshram looked from one vehement Terran to the other, pan and spoon immobile in his hands.

"You'll ruin it!" cried Alicia. "Give me that frying pan!"

She grabbed for the handle, but Yeshram refused to let go. As the two struggled for possession, Reith reached into the confined space and seized Alicia's left wrist. "Come on, Lish! You'll only make a mess—"

As he spoke, he pulled Alicia towards the galley door. Stubbornly she resisted, trying the while to keep her hold on the utensil. Yeshram, his antennae quivering with fright, suddenly released his grip on the handle. The pan swung wildly, and the hot metal scorched her left arm.

"Ow!" she yelled, and dropped the pan. It landed with a clang upside down on the galley floor.

Reith backed out the doorway as Alicia picked up the pan, beneath which lay the crumpled remains of Yeshram's crêpe.

"You—you—" she breathed, advancing on Reith with murder in her eyes. Wielding the pan like a headsman's ax, she whipped it up over her head and, with a mighty swing, slammed it down on Reith's coppery hair.

Reith staggered back a step and slumped to the deck, with his back against the rail. He slowly put his hands to his head and groaned.

"Are you mad, Alicia?" exclaimed Marot. "Is it that you wish to give him the concussion? Or perhaps to fracture the skull?"

"Fergus!" she cried. "Are you all right?" As Reith looked up, blinking from unfocussed eyes, she added: "You're so pale!"

Slowly he replied: "I don't know. What happened? You're— you are my wife—Alicia Dyckman Reith. Or are you still my wife? What are you doing here? And that fellow is ... Wait. He is Aristide—Aristide—who?"

Marot said: "My poor friend, let me take you to your cabin. You have had an accident."

"Oh, Fergus! Darling!" wailed Alicia.

"Help me up, Aristide," said Reith. The two staggered into his cabin. Reith sat down on his bunk, while Marot poured water into a basin and dipped a towel. He wiped the blood from Reith's hair and saw that the scalp was broken and oozing. The flesh beneath had begun to swell into a fine goose egg.

"How are you now?" asked Marot.

"My head aches," said Reith. "But I'm beginning to remember. It was that damned pancake ..."

Alicia had followed the men into Reith's cabin. Peering at the wound, she exclaimed: "Oh, Fergus, I'm so horribly sorry! What can I do—"

Reith raised his head and gave her the level, slit-eyed, expressionless stare with which a man confronts an enemy. In an even, coldly precise voice, he said: "What you can do is to stay out of my sight. I never want to see you again."

Stifling a sob, Alicia ran to her cabin and closed the door.

Reith presently began fumbling with the money belt beneath his shirt. He said to Marot: "While I think of it, here are enough LPs to last you and Alicia for the rest of the trip." He held out a fistful of capsules. "You give her her half; I don't want to be the one to give them to her."

"How many does that leave for you?" asked Marot.

"Never mind that!"

"My friend, I insist; or I will not take them."

"Well, truth to tell, that's all there are. My share's finished."

"But I cannot accept—"

"You can and you will!" said Reith. "I'm the youngest of the three of us, and it won't hurt me to age at the normal rate for a couple of days."

"No, I beg you! Keep half for yourself, and I will give the rest to Alicia. I, too, can do without for a little while. We arrive at Novorecife in two or three days."

At last they compromised. Alicia should receive her full ration, but the men would use the precious longevity pills only on alternate days.

After the frying-pan incident, Reith and Alicia said nothing to each other beyond a curt "Good morning." Alicia doggedly added to her notes, rarely speaking save to ask Marot: "What was the name of that place where ...?" or "Remember that Krishnan who ...?" or "What day was it that we ...?" When Marot could not answer the question, he sometimes got the information from Reith; but Alicia never spoke to Reith directly.

In one of his morose moods, Reith sat on a chest on deck and watched the familiar banks of the Pichidé creep past. Marot said: "Cheer up, my old one! Despite its hardships and hazards, our safari has been a great success."

"Huh? It's nice for you to think so; but I don't see that we've accomplished a damned thing."

"Ah, but we have! Your Ozymandias is a significant step in understanding the evolutionary development of Krishna."

"I know that's important to you," said Reith gloomily. "As for me—well, I just can't feel passionately involved."

"In addition," continued the genial scientist, "we broke the religious tyranny of the Bákhites. We pried open the door to admit the truth of evolution to-Chilihagh. This is one key— the thin end of the wedge, as you say—to starting the scientific revolution here."

"You think that's a good thing?"

"But of course! Policies based on irrational myths cannot in the long run benefit their believers. People need a solid grounding in the science, to achieve their desires by logical action."

"Well," said Reith, "during the last few centuries, a substantial fraction of our fellow Terrans have abandoned the 'irrational myths' of the major religions for what they consider scientific materialism. But I don't see that it's done a damned thing for their manners and morals. If anything, they've become worse. Maybe they need cults and doctrines like Lazdai's to make them behave."

Marot brushed the objection aside. "You are a bom pessimist, my old one. Then, having amassed an amazing lot of data on Krishnan societies, your little Alicia came close to abolishing slavery in Qirib. At least the idea of emancipation has been launched there. Besides, in this wild place, merely to have survived is a triumph."

"Okay, then, we're a success," said Reith lugubriously.

Marot smiled. "I know; your personal problems weigh upon you. Ça passe. Come and show me how to play that game they call piza."

When the Zaidun tied up at Novorecife, Reith bade a warm farewell to Captain Ozum, waved to the deck crew, shouldered his bag, and went ashore with Marot. Carrying a folder of pencilled notes as well as her bag, Alicia caught up with Marot and tugged at his arm. "Aristide!"

Marot paused; Reith tramped on up the path as if he had not heard. "Yes, my little one?" said Marot. "Excuse, I forget that you dislike the expression."

"How is he?"

"In health, as good as ever, save for that lump on the cranium. That will soon depart."

"Well—I wonder—could you give him a message?"

Marot shook his head. "No, my dear, I regret to say that I will not. If you wish to convey a message, speak or write yourself. You have seen the results of ill-advised meddling. Me, I avoid it."

"Oh, please! I only want to tell him how sorry I am."

"No, dear Alicia, for his sake I will not. With you for a friend, my poor Fergus has no need of enemies."

"Oh, Aristide, what a cruel thing to say! You know I love him!"

"My heart is torn, but there is nothing I can do. I am not a marriage-and-divorce counselor."

Following Reith, Marot strode resolutely up the path, leaving Alicia with her bundles at her feet and hands pressed against her eyes.

The Juruá came down in flame and thunder. When the landing pad had cooled, the towering landing ramp wheeled itself out and extended its upper section like a tentacle.

As passengers began to trickle down the long slope, bearing their hand luggage, Fergus Reith awaited them at the foot of the ramp. He recognized the tour leader by the yellow paper sunflower pinned to his coat and stepped forward to greet him: "Mr. Svoboda?"

"Mr. Reith?" said the man with the sunflower, smiling. "Glad to know you. Let me introduce Mr. Kovacs, Mrs. Powanda, Mr. Mahler, Mr. and Mrs. Bratianu, Miss Nagy, Mrs. Markovici, Dr. Wyszkowski, Mr. and Mrs. Novotny ..."

Reith shepherded his new gaggle of tourists through customs and saw to their billeting in the part of the compound reserved for incoming travelers. Henceforth Svoboda, who spoke no Krishnan languages, would (Reith noted with satisfaction) be responsible for the groups' internal problems. Reith was in charge of the external ones, including itinerary, transportation, quarters, food, and sights of major interest.

For several days, organizing the new tour preempted Reith's attention. He had to escort his charges, a few at a time, through the Outfitting Shop. Novo's physician, Marina Velskaya, gave each one a physical checkup. Ivar Heggstad, the trainer, put the men and the more active women through muscle-hardening exercises.

During this busy time, Reith caught not even a glimpse of Alicia, towards whom he made a determined effort to remain coolly impersonal. Yet, as his resentment of her assault with the frying pan cooled, his bitterness faded before a host of tender memories and recollections of how stoutly she had stood by him in danger.

Reith had an informal understanding with Herculeu Castanhoso, the station's chief security officer. Before each tour group set out under Reith's guidance, Castanhoso would take them on a couple of small excursions, up the Pichidé to Rimbid and down to Qou. This would give Reith a chance to clean up unfinished paperwork and iron out last-minute details.

Reith also dropped in on Li Guoching, the communications officer. After he had told some of his adventures, Reith added:

"What's the latest from Chilihagh? They were having a civil war."

"The Dasht won, but by a fluke of fortune."

"Indeed? Do tell."

The stout Chinese drew on his potent Krishnan cigar. "Kharob had Lazdai and her leading priests arrested, but a mob of Bákhites delivered them. Soon Lazdai controlled all Jeshang but the palace, where Kharob held out with his partisans. General Gurshman collected a force from the frontier garrisons and marched on Jeshang. Someone loyal to the Dasht opened the gate for them.

"The two forces met in the main square of Jeshang. After much shouting of threats and anathemas, Lazdai ordered a charge. Her forces much outnumbered the loyalists, including those who had been besieged in the palace, and who had broken out and joined Gurshman.

"But Lazdai decided to lead the charge in person, brandishing a sword like legendary Queen Dejanai. The ancient bag of bones, however, had not been on an aya for nearly a century. When her mount bounded forward, she fell off and was instantly killed by the impact of the cobblestones. The Dasht set up a cry of 'Bákh has spoken!' and the insurgents fled helter-skelter. Their leaders' heads now adorn the main gate.

"Kharob has disestablished the Temple of Bákh and declared his realm friendly to all gods regardless of their overlapping claims."

Reith chuckled. "Foltz's attempt to kidnap us wouldn't have done him any good after all. He'd have arrived in Chilihagh to find our friend the Dasht in control."

In telling of Foltz's abortive raid on the riverboat, Reith had said nothing of his death at Alicia's hands. He had simply said that Foltz had fallen into the river during the fight and drowned. As far as he was concerned, this would remain the official story.

Sitting in his quarters one evening, Reith was calculating the expenses of his expedition with Marot. as far as he could reconstruct them. He heard a knock and called: "Come in!"

Alicia, wearing a simple Terran street dress, black with a white collar, entered hesitantly. "May I sit down?"

"Of course, Alicia. What have you been doing with yourself?"

"Tidying my records for microfilming. How about you?"

"Getting my next tour organized; and you can bet we won't stop at Ghulindé! I'm also giving myself a crash refresher course to polish my rusty German. Half these Middle European tourists of mine speak German but no English, and I'm damned if I'll tackle Magyar or Czech or Romanian. Was kann ich für dich tuun?"

Alicia hesitated, nervously twisting her fingers. "This isn't exactly a business call."

"Well?"

"I have a reservation on the Juruá tomorrow."

"You have? I didn't know you'd decided to go Earthside."

"Well, I did, more or less. I—I didn't think you'd want me to go off without saying good-bye."

"Of course not! I'd certainly want to see you off; but it would seem a little cold, just to shake hands at the ramp and say: 'Boa viagem! "

"Look, Fergus—I don't know how to say—what I mean is—"

"Take a deep breath, count ten, and spit it out."

She paused. "Well—what I mean is, if you asked me to marry you again, I'd jump at the chance. I can still cancel my passage."

Reith chewed his lip. "I thought something like that was in the wind."

"Well, are you going to ask me?"

"I've been thinking about that very thing. Ever since Zora, in fact, I've thought about little else—except when we were being chased by pirates, fanatical priests, and mad paleontologists."

She brightened hopefully. "And what did you conclude?"

Reith looked at Alicia, sitting in his favorite chair and looking like a goddess in Terran street clothes. His heart sank into his bedroom slippers, but he knew he could not stall any longer. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid the answer is no. I know we'll never be good for each other."

Alicia's shoulders sagged, and she drooped like an unwatered flower. "After all we've gone through together? Don't you love me any more?"

"I still love you with all my heart. It might make things easier if I said I didn't; but you've always been square with me." Except with Vizman, he thought.

"Then what prevents us from making another try? You know I love you, too."

"Because, darling, no matter how passionately we love each other, we simply cannot live together."

"You mean all those wretched quarrels and arguments?"

"Yes; not to mention my ducking in the Zora and the frying pan. I don't want to be a battered husband."

"I'll try to control my temper," she said. "I'll really, really try."

"I know you've tried, but you haven't succeeded, have you? The moving finger writes, et cetera."

"If you really loved me, how could you be so cold-bloodedly rational about us?"

"Just using my brain to save my hide, as sensible people do," he said.

"Maybe you should have been the scientist instead of me.

I'm too emotional ... Darling, I'm sure I could change my ways. I'll do anything you want. Before, I wouldn't have children because of my career. Well, I'll even give up my career and settle down as a housewife, and mother as many children as you want."

Reith sighed. "A pretty picture, Lish; but I know you too well. After a moon or two of housewifery, you'd get itchy and either tear off on some expedition or break a vase over my head."

"I have a confession to make," said Alicia. "Yes?"

"On the Zaidun, when I said I was safe, I lied. Well, not exactly; I said I'd begged FMs off Gorbovast—and that was true. But I didn't say I'd taken them. I hoped you would get me pregnant, so you couldn't let me go. But I'm not. Fergus, if you won't have me as I am, I'll undertake a basic personality change."

"How?" he asked.

"If you'll wait for me, I'll board the Juruá, go back to Earth, and put myself under Moritzian deep therapy. It takes a year, and it's drastic and painful; but they say it can actually change a person's basic traits."

He shook his head. "Won't work, Lish."

"Why not?"

"The time factor. It would take maybe a year and a half by subjective time—your time. But by objective time, my time, you'd get back to Krishna twenty-odd years after you left. By that time, I might be dead, or the patriarch of my own family, or a Krishnan sultan with a harem."

"I may take the Moritzian therapy anyway, since my present personality seems contraproductive. Maybe when I'm all fixed up, I'll come back with another research grant, to see how Krishnan society has changed."

"I'll always be glad to see you. But that's all."

She straightened her shoulders and, with a flash of her old intransigence, said: "Or maybe I'll settle down with a nice, dull, conventional husband—though I'll never love him the way I love you."

"The husband for you, darling, is a meek, submissive rabbit of a man, who'd let you boss, bully, and dominate him; who'd obey orders and let you make all the decisions; and who'd worship you even if you kept a stable of lovers."

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't respect a man like that, and he'd bore the hell out of me! I want one with guts and character, a man like you."

"Thanks; but the trouble is, you want two incompatible things. A man of guts and character wouldn't permit you to push him around, the way you do with everybody who lets you get away with it. Can't have your cake—or as the Krishnans put it, you can't go swimming and expect to stay dry."

"You mean it's okay for husbands to domineer but not for wives?"

"Not at all. A man can be fair-minded and still refuse to be bulldozed. If either spouse, male or female, is domineering while the other is subservient, they may get along; but if both are dominant types, the marriage will be one long Donny-brook—while it lasts."

"Should I wave my alabaster body at Aristide on the way home? He's a good, kind man, even if he's the unsexiest Frenchman I ever met. He's about as exciting as one of his fossils; but at least he'd be a quiet, undemanding husband."

"You could try, though I doubt he'd take the bait. He once told me he knew he could never cope with a 'tornado of energy' like you and had better sense than to attempt it. But you don't really need a husband, Lish."

"What, then?"

"You need success in your career, and an occasional lover to flatter you and satisfy your sexual needs."

"Oh, to hell with my sexual needs! You make me sound like the cliché of the modem career woman, who cuts a new deal every day and screws a new man every night. I've told you sex as mere recreation doesn't interest me. You know all about my wretched little affairs, and you know I was never promiscuous, in spite of what some people say about field anthropologists. You're the only one I ever enjoyed it with, because we had love. Without love, it's just exercising the lower abdominal tissues.

"Besides, no money came on the Juruá. So either I marry you, or get a job here, or go back to Terra."

"What's wrong with a local job? I could pull wires."

"It would waste all my special knowledge, training, and experience."

"With the money from your necklace, you wouldn't have to work at all, for years anyway." Reith got up and paced the floor, back and forth in front of her.

She shook her head. "I don't see hanging around Novo for years, doing nothing useful and hoping you'll change your mind; I know you too well. Seeing you now and then would just tantalize me with false hopes. If I can't have you, roped and branded, I'll go back to Earth and try to pick up the pieces there. In time I suppose I'll get over loving you. But I'm not going to sit forlornly in my casement window, waiting for my knight in shining armor who never comes riding by."

"Oh, come! Any time you go sit in a casement window, you'll have a whole squadron of knights singing canzonets and roundelays beneath it." Reith halted his pacing before Alicia and made motions of strumming a guitar. She said:

"I want only one man, and you're he. There are so many things we can do as a couple that we can't do alone."

Reith smiled. "Like the tango?"

"That's only one. You know how much more effectively we work together than separately. It's a case where one and one makes more than two."

"But hitting each other with blunt objects isn't my idea of working together."

"Oh, dear! I don't suppose you'll ever forget that frying pan."

Reith gingerly touched his scalp. "You wouldn't, if it had been your skull. But I've forgiven you long since, if that's any comfort."

"But forgiving isn't forgetting, is it?"

"It never is, unless you hit the victim hard enough to cause permanent amnesia."

Reith sat down; this time Alicia got up and paced. She asked: "Isn't it true that, a couple of times on the way back from Zora, you almost proposed to me?"

"Yes," admitted Reith.

"Then, when did I blow it? You were so loving and tender at the ranch house in Kubyab, the day after the battle, that I thought I had you for sure."

"You almost did. To answer your question, it wasn't any one thing that blew it but a whole series of incidents. At times you seemed to be controlling the virago in you so well that I thought there might be hope for us. But every time I wavered towards proposing, you'd do something outrageous, like the rumpus over the visit of the Bákhite priest, or your tryst with Vizman—"

"I've regretted the Vizman thing every day since—because of what it did to us, not because it was altogether wrong in itself."

"Maybe it wasn't wrong in the abstract; but it sure gave a kick in the balls to my masculine ego. Most people have love affairs at some time or other. But if one is seriously courting somebody, one doesn't go frigging in the rigging with a third party practically under the loved one's nose, and then expect the courtee to like it. That's just Human Nature 1A. You of all people ought to know that, having written a thesis about it. Anyway, by the time we arrived here, you had finally convinced me that, much as I love you, to marry you again would be a dreadful mistake."

Alicia sat down on the corner of Reith's desk. "By the time of our last night together, on the boat, you'd made up your mind, hadn't you?"

"Let's say, ninety-five percent. The frying-pan incident made it an even one hundred."

"So I've got to spend the rest of my life being miserable?"

"Oh, rubbish! With your looks, brains, charm, and energy, you can get anybody you want."

"Damn it!" she cried. "I don't just want anybody. If I'm all that good, why can't I have the one man I really want?"

"Because marriage between us is like a beautiful yacht, all fresh paint and shining brasswork, that won't float. We've been all through it and know how it works—or rather, doesn't work. You're an adorable creature, but I can't take the treatment you deal out to the one who adores you."

She pounded her knees. "Fergus, why can't I make you understand how miserably sorry I am for all those incidents? Every time I lose my temper, or make an idiotic decision, I go through hell afterwards."

"I know; you're always frightfully sorry after you've done something that can't be undone. That doesn't stop you next time."

Not yet ready, even then, to concede defeat, she argued further. She proposed that they live together on a trial basis; that Reith come back to Earth with her; or that he marry her but keep a mistress to comfort him when Alicia was difficult. To all of her suggestions, Reith turned a deaf ear. At last she cried:

"Oh, damn! Why must you be so realistic?"

"If I had been truly realistic, darling," he said gently, "I'd have come to a firm decision much sooner and stuck to it. But I couldn't leave you broke in the middle of nowhere, and you're such a damnably desirable woman."

They sat in silence for a time. At last Alicia gave a long sigh. "Well, if I can't change your mind, wouldn't you like to make love, just one last time?"

Reith shook his head, although in her prim black-and-white outfit she seemed more desirable than ever. "No, dearest love. It would only make the parting harder." He rose. "I'll see you at breakfast. Good-night, Lish." He did not voice his real reason for rejecting her suggestion: a lively fear that, if she renewed her importunities while he lay in her arms, he would weaken and yield after all.

Wordlessly, Alicia fled the room. When he was alone, quietly, and for the first time in many years, Reith wept.

In the cafeteria, Reith and Alicia were dawdling over their breakfast. They said little but stared at each other as if to store up memories of every detail of the other's appearance. At last Reith said:

"Besides all those xenological treatises you're determined to write, why don't you compose a personal memoir of your years on Krishna? You've had adventures enough for three. The book could be a best-seller."

"But I'd have to tell the world how horrid I was to you!"

"Actresses are always confessing how beastly they were to their husbands and lovers, of whom they seem to have hundreds apiece. Or you could blame me for all our troubles; or tactfully skim over the parts about us."

"Oh, Fergus, I couldn't bear to blame you ..." But even as she spoke, her sapphire eyes took on the gleam of a writer who sights a viable book idea. "I may try it at that. I'll confess all my follies. Would you mind if I published it under the name of Alicia Dyckman Reith? I have a sentimental attachment to the name."

"Use any name you like, darling. I'd be honored."

"And I'll dedicate it to—to 'My once and future—' " She broke off, pressing her lips together, her eyes brimming with tears. Then she glanced at the wall clock. "I'd better get out to the boarding ramp. Coming to see me off?"

At the foot of the ramp, Reith drew himself up. "Goodbye, Lish, and the best of luck. I hope your books on Krishna set Terra afire."

"Thanks. Oh, Fergus dear, you haven't changed your mind?"

"No. This is it."

"Then good-bye." They kissed, an endless, ardent kiss, clinging to each other.

"I'll come back some day," she said at last. "And as long as I live, I'll remember our great adventure together, and what a fine person you are, and what a splendid lov—" Her voice broke and she turned away, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

With head up, Alicia ascended the ramp, very slowly, as if she were mounting a scaffold. Reith, with a knife twisting in his entrails, watched her go. Within him rose a surge of emotion, a burning wish to call out: Alicia, come back! We'll work something out! He tried to suppress the urge, knowing it to be irrational and self-destructive. It would be an invitation to another disaster. But the emotion grew and swelled until, like a tidal bore racing up a river, it swept away all prudential considerations. As she turned to wave, and even while he told himself: stop, you fool! he filled his lungs to shout.

At that instant, a familiar voice said: "Ah, mon ami!" Marot held up a small bag of fossil fragments, each freed from its surrounding burden of stone. "See our Ozymandias? Some pieces were doubtless lost when Foltz broke up the fossil, but I think there are enough left to settle the dispute. I shall name it Parodosaurus reithi, meaning 'Reith's transitional lizard.' It will go down in history as one of the most important discoveries in Krishnan biology. I will see to it that you are given credit for, first, finding it and, second, for getting it back to Novo-recife through ghastly perils.

"If you return to Terra, mon cher, you must come to see me in Paris. Perhaps we shall go out on a dig together. Au revoir!"

Marot kissed Reith on both cheeks and strode briskly up the ramp. Alicia had already disappeared into the lock.

Back in the customs building, Reith ran into Kenneth Strachan, the civil engineer. Strachan was in his professional-Scotsman mood, larding his speech with "braid Scots."

"Ye dinna look happy, ma billie! Parting from the little blond dynamo, eh?"

Reith nodded. "Ken, if there's a more miserable feeling than learning that the one great love of your life is someone you can't possibly live with, I hope I never know it." He blew his nose, muttering: "If that damned Frenchman hadn't come along ... but maybe it's just as well he did."

"Ah, stuff!" said Strachan. "I dinna believe in the one great love of your life. It disna exist; it's an invention of romantical storytellers. Man, there'll be anither along in a minute! Why, a braw pair of lassies came in on the Juruá to work here, and incidentally to look for husbands."

"Wait till you meet your true love," said Reith. "You'll sing a different tune."

Strachan waved away the notion. 'Tell you what. Next to a glass of guid Scots whiskey, which canna be had on this world, there's nocht like a guid fuck to cheer a man up. I know a bonny little hoor in the Hamda', so fasteejus she makes her clients bathe before she screws 'em. I'll introduce ye—"

"Wouldn't help," said Reith. "The way I feel, I'd be as limp as a wet noodle. Anyhow, I've got to round up my new batch of tourists. We've supposed to start down the Pichidé tomorrow, and Captain Zarrash's Chaldir is two days overdue. I must keep my charges busy till he comes."

"That's the spirit!" said Strachan. "This might be considered a happy ending after all."

"How do you figure?"

"Weel, from all I've heard and seen about the pair of ye, as miserable as you were at the parting, you'd have been a sight unhappier yet if you'd tried to live together again."

"Ken," said Reith with a wry laugh, "if that's your idea of a happy ending, may Bákh preserve me from an unhappy one! Have you seen Svoboda around? You know, my opposite number on this next tour? I've got to find him ..."

The End