The Mantooth Part 42

He looked again toward the lovely Oriental, trying to gauge what should and should not be said. But lost in her own bitterness, she could give him no sign. So he sighed, and said simply.

'Kataya and I had hoped that perhaps Ishmael..... But he's gone now, and who knows if we'll ever see him again, or even if his chromosomes would match.'

'Ishmael will come back,' answered Kalus seriously, the doctor's words largely lost on him, but wanting to ease Kataya's pain. 'Once a man has touched his own soul through another, there is nothing else in life that matters.' And not understanding the effect that this would have, he looked not at Sylviana, of whom he was speaking, but to Kataya, by way of explanation and rea.s.surance.

At this Sylviana let out a wordless execration, threw down the sheet she was mending, and stormed off . Kalus followed in sudden fear.

'I did not mean---' he said desperately, but found her door slammed and bolted in his face. In confusion he returned to the doctor, imploring.

'What do I have to do?' he said in frustration. 'Can't she see that there could never be anyone else for me? Why can't she understand?'

'Give her time, my friend,' said McIntyre. 'She'll come around. If you want my observations, you're in her deep, and that frightens her. Just have a little patience, and if a man of science may say it, a little faith. What's meant to be, will always be in the end.' These words seemed wise, yet Kalus could find no comfort in them.

'But my stomach crawls without her. My heart is in my throat, and I cannot sleep. If I lose her there will be nothing. Nothing at all.'

'You haven't lost her, son.' With this he looked ruefully toward Kataya. 'And if I'm any judge, you won't. Just be steady, with open arms, and she'll come back to you in time.'

But as McIntyre continued to study the younger man, he saw that his expression remained deeply troubled, so much so that he was truly touched, as Kalus had been at the simple confusion of Ishmael.

'If it helps, I'll tell her what you meant just now. Kataya and I understood. She's just too close, and can't see it.'

'Would you really do that?'

'Of course.'

'Thank you,' said Kalus, though his fear was not abated. 'I have to go somewhere and think.'

Bewildered and restless, Kalus called to the cub, and went walking off in no particular direction, perhaps heading vaguely toward the solace of the sea.

He tried to tell himself that things would work out---that he would one day understand and be more comfortable among the baffling maze of human interaction. But it was no use. What was he doing here, surrounded by people and emotions he could not begin to read? Is this what Sylviana had wanted?

He found himself thinking, with sudden longing, of the world and way of life he had known in the Valley. He thought of his brother, who had taken a mate, and wondered if she was yet with child. Perhaps it would be a boy, like Shama, who would not mistrust him, but look up to him in friendship. He thought of the wolves, now led by Akar, his n.o.ble friend. Surely he did not mean for them to keep Alaska forever sundered from the pack, or from himself, who would need a mate. And last, though far from least he thought of Avatar, who would always be free. And for a time his spirit ran with him, through the heart of a forest five hundred miles deep.

Was a compromise of worlds possible, he wondered, some meaningful coexistence between the hill-people and the colonists? He tried, but could not imagine it. And what did it matter, if he lost the only woman he would ever love? Again he felt the sudden, sour turning of his stomach, and the debilitating flow of unused adrenalin.

He wanted just to go to her, and take her to him, and tell her he was hers alone, and always. He felt the longing for her touch like a hole in his chest. But what could he do, when she would not let him near her? He had not been alone with her for two days, which seemed an eternity, and she showed no sign..... Anger and jealousy hardly seemed the signs of love.

He could not work it out, and was soon too weary and sick at heart to care much, even for something that touched him so deeply. There was no understanding the minds of women, he conceded in despair. Or of men.

He could only be what he was, and hope this self-honesty would bring him to his proper place in the end.

AND IF IT DIDN'T?

Coming out of the ragged confusion of earth and stone onto a tranquil stretch of beach, he stripped off his outer garments and began to wade out into the waves, stooping to wash away both grime and fatigue. The water was not warm, and perhaps there were lurking dangers---

'I don't care!' he cried in answer, the torrent of his anger returning with sudden force. He dove and swam out into deeper waters, while the cub remained on sh.o.r.e and barked at him.

Slowly, fighting the undertow, he made his way back to solid ground. OR AS SOLID AS I'M LIKELY TO FIND, he thought bitterly. Emerging truly exhausted, he fell to his knees, then sorrowfully held and rea.s.sured his unspeaking friend.

He lay down in the sand like an animal. And slept.

Chapter 42

That night, wrapped in the tragicomedy of human pride and affection, none of the three found peace.

For Sylviana the evening seemed endless, trying to drag conversation from the tired and otherwise absorbed company. And when hard night fell at last she found she could not sleep. Instead she restlessly mulled over the ?situation' with Kalus, as she called it: the doctor's explanation for his actions, and his relayed message that, 'There could never be anyone else.'

But this only made her angry with herself for having been so obvious in front of the others. What did it matter to her what he said or did? He had given her her ?freedom', and seemed intent on exercising his own, no matter what his words might say. So she tried again to make herself interested in the young botanist, Smith, who had already asked her a number of leading questions, under the pretense (she a.s.sumed) of scientific inquiry.

But the bed was still empty, and her thoughts still vague and rootless, without Kalus there beside her. She felt again the primal urge to go to him, just go to him, and renew their bond through physical love. But remembering the pain of her last submission to it, she stubbornly refused. Or tried to. Until it was too late.

Kalus lay on his back on the ground, the sleeping bag giving him warmth, but little else. He put his hands behind his head and looked to the sky, while the cub nestled at his feet.

How far away the stars looked, how indifferent and utterly unreachable.

Thinking yet again of his love, he felt the loneliness and broken longing that every unfulfilled man must know: that of useless labors, and barren seed. The worry-sickness of caring for one who no longer returned that love, had slowly eaten away at the warmth and loyalty he felt for her, leaving him hard and cold and indifferent. Or so it seemed to him then. He rolled over onto his side, muttering, and perhaps an hour later fell at last into a restless, brooding sleep.

But Kataya could no more sleep than bring back the dead, stung to the very heart by intolerable memories of the love she had lost forever.

And this pain which lay at the heart of all others, aggravated that very day by the departure of Ishmael and the poor, doomed Children, tormented her every thought, until even the simplest feeling could not be accomplished without a pain that was almost physical.

And while she considered herself superior to Sylviana, and even in a way to Kalus himself, the lashings of emptiness at the hollow discipline of denial were no less acute for it. She remembered the words of Sinclair Lewis, from the book she was then translating.

'Not individuals but inst.i.tutions are the enemies, And THEY MOST AFFLICT THE DISCIPLES WHO MOST GENEROUSLY SERVE THEM.' A more apt description of her own religious and cultural servitude she could not imagine.

But these self-recriminations were meaningless, and she knew it. What lay at the root of her agitation was her forlorn desire for Kalus.

Beyond the strong and undeniable physical attraction, his innocence, like Ishmael's, of the brutal travesty which had killed both her husband and the unborn child she carried unknowingly onto the Virgo.....

'Enough! Leave me alone!'

But there was no escaping herself. Tragedy, desire, and longing for a new life that she could truly call her own, all drew her toward him as irresistibly as childbirth. Added to this was the knowledge, confirmed by the v.a.g.i.n.al thermometer, that this night, this very hour, her body was as ready to conceive as it had ever been since the long sleep, as it might ever be again. All her pain and frustration now focused upon this singular and uncorrupted man as a well-spring of life and relief, pure water to one dying of thirst. If he rejected her, the agony and shame would be unbearable. But dear, sweet holy Buddha, how could any pain be worse than this?

It was not greater wisdom that sent her to him in the end, but an agitation of sorrow and loneliness that were longer, and more inescapable. While Sylviana forced herself to stay, Kataya shed a single, honest tear, and surrendered.