* * * * *
Steady hands lifted Steve up, and a hushed silence ringed Steve round.
"Azala," I said. "Where is she--"
Then I saw her. She was advancing straight toward me through the glare
of sunset on desert sand, a shining eagerness in her eyes. The girl of
the mirror, young and straight and alive, her hair the color of red
sand and sunset glow, her eyes twin dark stars.
She paused before me and raised her eyes in questioning wonder.
"Go to him," I said. "He will never love another woman. I can promise
you that."
She ran to Steve with a little glad cry and fell to her knees beside
him. I wanted to break through the circle and slap Steve on the back,
and wish him all the happiness on Mars. The first Earthian to wed a
Martian, and it was tremendous, and I wanted to tell Steve--
But how could I tell him that Martians had numerous ways of watching
Earthians, the very best being mirrors which were really two-way
televisual instruments. How could I tell him that the alert Martian
women had all been trained to watch and observe Earthians day and
night? And all the while the Earthians thought they were carrying about
with them, in beautiful jeweled artifacts of a dead culture, the living
images of their heart's desire!
Steve was awake now and sitting up straight, and the image was warm and
alive in his arms. But how could I make Steve understand? I had a wild
impulse to say: "I'd change places with you if I could, Steve. She's
just about the cutest kid I know."
You get to thinking that way when you've mingled with Earthians around
desert campfires, studying them as you'd study a new neighbor who comes
knocking at your door, the neighbor you fear at first and are never
quite sure of until you really get to know and like him.
You see, we had so much to offer one another. A young race,
constructive, brawling, shouting its defiance to the stars. And an old
race, imaginative, sensitive, heirs to a civilization on the wane, but
needing just a few Steves to make it young and great again.
I'd picked Steve because he was one of the shining ones of Earth. I'd
known from the start that persuading him to wed a Martian woman would
take plenty of doing.
* * * * *
Earthians are funny that way. Love to them is a complex thing, a web
that has to be skillfully woven right from the start. Beauty alone
isn't enough. You have to say to them: "You'll never hold that woman in
your arms. Can't you see how hopeless it is?"
Then the iron goes deep. If a love flies straight in the teeth of
despair and comes out all right in the end, it will be as strong as
death.
So I'd arranged for Steve to stumble on the mirror, to pick up that
two-way televisual circuit into a very special paradise for two. And
I'd opposed and warned him just to make sure he'd think of himself as a
man facing hopeless odds to win through to an undying love.
On the other side it was easier. Azala had fallen in love with Steve
before we put her on the other end of that televisual circuit. But
seeing him wounded and in need of her had turned it into what Earthians
call a great love.
Perhaps Earthians would someday smash the aura that had flamed about
the heads of the Martian rulers for fifty thousand years.
I'd done my best to smash it. I had gone simply and humbly among
Earthians, seeking a fresh wind to trundle the cinders of a dying
culture.
I dreamed of Martians and Earthians standing equal and strong and
proud, hands linked in friendship, cemented by bonds of kinship,
separated by no gulfs such as now yawned before me, separating me from
Steve.
I wanted to shout: "Good luck, Steve, Azala. You're good kids and you
deserve the best."
Then I remembered that Steve was nearly forty, not quite a kid by
Earthian standards. But, looking at Azala, I was pretty sure that Steve
still had his best years ahead of him.
I wanted to go up to him and shake his hand for the last time. But now
the hands of my people were tugging at my shoulders, stripping off the
Earthian garments I'd worn so long with scant respect for my desire to
be as human and regular as the next guy.
They got the suit off, and then I saw the old familiar cloak, purple
and billowing out with shimmering star images, and I shuddered a little
because I knew I'd never really feel at ease wearing it from that
moment on.
They got me into the cloak and they bent down and straightened the
stiff imperial folds and I was suddenly bored and deathly weary.
A chill wind from the stars seemed to blow over me, but I stood
straight and still, and allowed them to fasten on the cloak the great
glowing jewel I'd worn from childhood.
Steve saw me then. He was sitting up very straight, his hand on Azala's
tumbled, red-gold hair, and I heard him say: "Holy smoke."
I stared down at the jewel, blazing and shuddering and shivering in
the desert air, and I shut my eyes tight, wishing for the first time
in my life that it did not proclaim me Tulan Sharm, the Glorious One,
Temporal Ruler of the Seven Cities before Whom the Stars Bowed.