[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

the exception of when I was very young with my mother and
father. But I do not think that applies in this situation.
He shook his head.  I am doing all I can, Dray. I want you to
become one of the Savanti, to belong to the city, to join us in what
we must do, when you understand fully what that is. It is not easy.
 Maspero, I said.  This is Paradise for me.
 Happy Swinging, he said, and went toward his own
apartments in his house.
 Maspero, I called after him.  The girl. Delia of the Blue
Mountains. Will you make her well?
But he did not answer. He went out and the door closed
softly.
On the following evening I saw the crippled girl at one of the
parties that could be found all over the city. Always there were
singing and laughing and dancing, formal entertainments, musical
contests, poetic seminars, art displays, a whole gamut of real vivid
life. Anything the heart desired could be found in the Swinging
City. Perhaps twenty people circulated in the relaxed atmosphere of
this quiet party given by Golda, the flame-haired beauty with the
bold eyes and the lush figure, a woman with whom I had spent a
number of pleasant evenings. She greeted me bearing a book, a
thick tome of many pages and thin paper, and she smiled tilting her
cheek for me to kiss that smooth rosy skin.
 You ll love this one, Dray. It was published in Marlimor, a
reasonably civilized city some long way off in another of the seven
continents and nine islands, and its legends are really most
beautiful.
 Thank you, Golda. You are very kind.
She laughed, holding out the book. Her gown of some silvery
lamé glistened. I wore my usual simple white shirt and trousers and
was barefoot. My hair had been, as I had promised myself aboard
the leaf boat, cut to a neat shoulder length and, in honor of Golda s
party, I wore a jeweled fillet in my hair, one of the many presents I
had received from friends in the city, among the trophies I had
won.
 You were telling me about Gah, said Maspero, walking up
with a wine goblet for me. He drank from his own.
Again Golda laughed; but this time a different note crept into
her deep voice.  Gah is really an offense in men s nostrils,
Maspero, my dear. They delight so in their primitiveness.
Gah was one of the seven continents of Kregen, one where
slavery was an established institution, where, so the men claimed, a
woman s highest ambition was to be chained up and grovel at a
man s feet, to be stripped, to be loaded with symbols of servitude.
They even had iron bars at the foot of their beds where a woman
might be shackled, naked, to shiver all night. The men claimed this
made the girls love them.
 That sort of behavior appeals to some men, said Maspero.
He was looking at me as he spoke.
 It s really sick, said Golda.
 They claim it is a deep significant truth, this need of a
woman to be subjugated by a man, and dates right back to our
primitive past when we were cavemen.
I said:  But we no longer tear flesh from our kill and eat it
smoking and raw. We no longer believe that the wind brings babies.
Thunder and lightning and storm and flood are no longer
mysterious gods with malevolent designs on us. Individuals are
individuals. The human spirit festers and grows cankerous and
corrupt if one individual enslaves another, whatever the sex,
whatever specious arguments about sexuality may be instanced.
Golda nodded. Maspero said:  You are right, Dray, where a
civilized people is concerned. But, in Gah, the women subscribe
also to this barbaric code.
 More fools them, said Golda. And then, quickly:  No that
is not what I really mean. A man and a woman are alike yet
different. So very many men are frightened clean through at the
thought of a woman. They overreact. They have no conception in
Gah of how a woman is what she is as a person.
Maspero chuckled.  I ve always said that women were people
as well.
We talked on, about the latest fashions that had, in some
mysterious way, reached Aphrasöe from the outside world. The city
contained a pitifully few people to lead a planet. Everyone was
needed. Maspero, later on, told me that he was now beginning to
feel that I would be really the right fiber as he put it one of the
privileged few who could shoulder the responsibilities of the
Savanti. It would be hard, he said.  Don t think the life will be easy;
for you will be worked harder than you have ever worked in your
life before  He held up a hand.  Oh, I know of what you have
told me of the conditions aboard your seventy-fours. But you will
look back to those days and think them paradise compared with
what you, as a Savanti, will have to undergo.
 Aphrasöe is Paradise, I said simply, meaning it.
Then Delia of Delphond hobbled across, her face as twisted
as her leg at the effort of walking, her gasps loud and separate, a
series of explosive blasts of pain.
I frowned.
Frowning was easy, habitual.
 And in Paradise, I asked Maspero,  what of ?
 I cannot talk about it, Dray, so please do not ask me.
To have spoken at that moment to Delia would have been a
mistake.
As the party was breaking up and the guests were calling
 Happy Swinging! to one another and leaping out into space
aboard their swingers, I found Delia and, without a word, put my
hand beneath her armpit and so helped her along toward the
landing platform where Maspero stood talking gaily with Golda. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

ssaver.htw.pl