XII
“A SHIP!”
What a strange _contretemps_! Its suddenness left me temporarily
speechless; the embarrassment of Duare was only too obvious. Yet it was
that unusual paradox, a happy _contretemps_—for me at least.
I advanced toward her, and there must have been a great deal more in my
eyes than I realized, for she shrank back, flushing even more deeply
than before.
“Don’t touch me!” she whispered. “Don’t dare!”
“Have I ever harmed you?” I asked.
That question seemed to bring her confidence. She shook her head. “No,”
she admitted, “you never have—physically. I sent for you to thank you
for the service you have already rendered me; but I did not know it was
_you_. I did not know that the Carson they spoke of was the man who—”
She stopped there and looked at me appealingly.
“The man who told you in the garden of the jong that he loved you,” I
prompted her.
“Don’t!” she cried. “Can it be that you do not realize the
offensiveness, the criminality of such a declaration?”
“Is it a crime to love you?” I asked.
“It is a crime to tell me so,” she replied with something of
haughtiness.
“Then I am a confirmed criminal,” I replied, “for I cannot help telling
you that I love you, whenever I see you.”
“If that is the case, you must not see me again, for you must never
again speak those words to me,” she said decisively. “Because of the
service you have rendered me, I forgive you your past offenses; but do
not repeat them.”
“What if I can’t help it?” I inquired.
“You must help it,” she stated seriously; “it is a matter of life and
death to you.”
Her words puzzled me. “I do not understand what you mean,” I admitted.
“Kamlot, Honan, any of the Vepajans aboard this ship would kill you if
they knew,” she replied. “The jong, my father, would have you destroyed
upon our return to Vepaja—it would all depend upon whom I told first.”
I came a little closer to her and looked straight into her eyes. “You
would never tell,” I whispered.
“Why not? What makes you think that?” she demanded, but her voice
quavered a little.
“Because you want me to love you,” I challenged her.
She stamped her foot angrily. “You are beyond reason or forbearance or
decency!” she exclaimed. “Leave my cabin at once; I do not wish ever to
see you again.”
Her bosom was heaving, her beautiful eyes were flashing, she was very
close to me, and an impulse seized me to take her in my arms. I wanted
to crush her body to mine, I wanted to cover her lips with kisses; but
more than all else I wanted her love, and so I restrained myself, for
fear that I might go too far and lose the chance to win the love that I
felt was hovering just below the threshold of her consciousness. I do
not know why I was so sure of that, but I was. I could not have brought
myself to force my attentions upon a woman to whom they were repugnant,
but from the first moment that I had seen this girl watching me from the
garden in Vepaja, I had been impressed by an inner consciousness of her
interest in me, her more than simple interest. It was just one of those
things that are the children of old Chand Kabi’s training, a training
that has made me infinitely more intuitive than a woman.
“I am sorry that you are sending me away into virtual exile,” I said. “I
do not feel that I deserve that, but of course the standards of your
world are not the standards of mine. There, a woman is not dishonored by
the love of a man, or by its avowal, unless she is already married to
another,” and then of a sudden a thought occurred to me that should have
occurred before. “Do you already belong to some man?” I demanded,
chilled by the thought.
“Of course not!” she snapped. “I am not yet nineteen.” I wondered that
it had never before occurred to me that the girl in the garden of the
jong might be already married.
I did not know what that had to do with it, but I was glad to learn that
she was not seven hundred years old. I had often wondered about her age,
though after all it could have made no difference, since on Venus, if
anywhere in the universe, people are really no older than they look—I
mean, as far as their attractiveness is concerned.
“Are you going?” she demanded, “or shall I have to call one of the
Vepajans and tell them that you have affronted me?”
“And have me killed?” I asked. “No, you cannot make me believe that you
would ever do that.”
“Then _I_ shall leave,” she stated, “and remember that you are never to
see me or speak to me again.”
With that parting and far from cheering ultimatum she quit the room,
going into another of her suite. That appeared to end the interview; I
could not very well follow her, and so I turned and made my way
disconsolately to the captain’s cabin in the tower.
As I thought the matter over, it became obvious to me that I not only
had not made much progress in my suit, but that there was little
likelihood that I ever should. There seemed to be some insuperable
barrier between us, though what it was I could not imagine. I could not
believe that she was entirely indifferent to me; but perhaps that was
just a reflection of my egotism, for I had to admit that she had
certainly made it plain enough both by words and acts that she wished to
have nothing to do with me. I was unquestionably _persona non grata_.
Notwithstanding all this, or maybe because of it, I realized that this
second and longer interview had but served to raise my passion to still
greater heat, leaving me in a fine state of despair. Her near presence
on board the _Sofal_ was constantly provocative, while her interdiction
of any relations between us only tended to make me more anxious to be
with her. I was most unhappy, and the monotony of the now uneventful
voyage back toward Vepaja offered no means of distraction. I wished that
we might sight another vessel, for any ship that we sighted would be an
enemy ship. We were outlaws, we of the _Sofal_—pirates, buccaneers,
privateers. I rather leaned toward the last and most polite definition
of our status. Of course we had not as yet been commissioned by Mintep
to raid shipping for Vepaja, but we were striking at Vepaja’s enemies,
and so I felt that we had some claim upon the dubious respectability of
privateerism. However, either of the other two titles would not have
greatly depressed me. Buccaneer has a devil-may-care ring to it that
appeals to my fancy; it has a trifle more _haut ton_ than pirate.
There is much in a name. I had liked the name of the _Sofal_ from the
first. Perhaps it was the psychology of that name that suggested the
career upon which I was now launched. It means killer. The verb meaning
kill is _fal_. The prefix _so_ has the same value as the suffix _er_ in
English; so sofal means killer. _Vong_ is the Amtorian word for defend;
therefore, _Sovong_, the name of our first prize, means defender; but
the _Sovong_ had not lived up to her name.
I was still meditating on names in an effort to forget Duare, when
Kamlot joined me, and I decided to take the opportunity to ask him some
questions concerning certain Amtorian customs that regulated the social
intercourse between men and maids. He opened a way to the subject by
asking me if I had seen Duare since she sent for me.
“I saw her,” I replied, “but I do not understand her attitude, which
suggested that it was almost a crime for me to look at her.”
“It would be under ordinary circumstances,” he told me, “but of course,
as I explained to you before, what she and we have passed through has
temporarily at least minimized the importance of certain time-honored
Vepajan laws and customs.
“Vepajan girls attain their majority at the age of twenty; prior to that
they may not form a union with a man. The custom, which has almost the
force of a law, places even greater restrictions upon the daughters of a
jong. They may not even see or speak to any man other than their blood
relatives and a few well-chosen retainers until after they have reached
their twentieth birthday. Should they transgress, it would mean disgrace
for them and death for the man.”
“What a fool law!” I ejaculated, but I realized at last how heinous my
transgression must have appeared in the eyes of Duare.
Kamlot shrugged. “It may be a fool law,” he said, “but it is still the
law; and in the case of Duare its enforcement means much to Vepaja, for
she is the hope of Vepaja.”
I had heard that title conferred upon her before, but it was meaningless
to me. “Just what do you mean by saying that she is the hope of Vepaja?”
I asked.
“She is Mintep’s only child. He has never had a son, though a hundred
women have sought to bear him one. The life of the dynasty ends if Duare
bears no son; and if she is to bear a son, then it is essential that the
father of that son be one fitted to be the father of a jong.”
“Have they selected the father of her children yet?” I asked.
“Of course not,” replied Kamlot. “The matter will not even be broached
until after Duare has passed her twentieth birthday.”
“And she is not even nineteen yet,” I remarked with a sigh.
“No,” agreed Kamlot, eyeing me closely, “but you act as though that fact
were of importance to you.”
“It is,” I admitted.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“I intend to marry Duare!”
Kamlot leaped to his feet and whipped out his sword. It was the first
time that I had ever seen him show marked excitement. I thought he was
going to kill me on the spot.
“Defend yourself!” he cried. “I cannot kill you until you draw.”
“Just why do you wish to kill me at all?” I demanded. “Have you gone
crazy?”
The point of Kamlot’s sword dropped slowly toward the floor. “I do not
wish to kill you,” he said rather sadly, all the nervous excitement gone
from his manner. “You are my friend, you have saved my life—no, I would
rather die myself than kill you, but the thing you have just said
demands it.”
I shrugged my shoulders; the thing was inexplicable to me. “What did I
say that demands death?” I demanded.
“That you intend to marry Duare.”
“In my world,” I told him, “men are killed for saying that they do _not_
intend marrying some girl.” I had been sitting at the desk in my cabin
at the time that Kamlot had threatened me, and I had not arisen; now I
stood up and faced him. “You had better kill me, Kamlot,” I said, “for I
spoke the truth.”
He hesitated for a moment, standing there looking at me; then he
returned his sword to its scabbard. “I cannot,” he said huskily. “May my
ancestors forgive me! I cannot kill my friend.
“Perhaps,” he added, seeking some extenuating circumstance, “you should
not be held accountable to customs of which you had no knowledge. I
often forget that you are of another world than ours. But tell me, now
that I have made myself a party to your crime by excusing it, what leads
you to believe that you will marry Duare? I can incriminate myself no
more by listening to you further.”
“I intend to marry her, because I know that I love her and believe that
she already half loves me.”
At this Kamlot appeared shocked and horrified again. “That is
impossible,” he cried. “She never saw you before; she cannot dream what
is in your heart or your mad brain.”
“On the contrary, she has seen me before; and she knows quite well what
is in my ‘mad brain,’” I assured him. “I told her in Kooaad; I told her
again today.”
“And she listened?”
“She was shocked,” I admitted, “but she listened; then she upbraided me
and ordered me from her presence.”
Kamlot breathed a sigh of relief. “At least _she_ has not gone mad. I
cannot understand on what you base your belief that she may return your
love.”
“Her eyes betrayed her; and, what may be more convincing, she did not
expose my perfidy and thus send me to my death.”
He pondered that and shook his head. “It is all madness,” he said; “I
can make nothing of it. You say that you talked with her in Kooaad, but
that would have been impossible. But if you had ever even seen her
before, why did you show so little interest in her fate when you knew
that she was a prisoner aboard the _Sovong_? Why did you say that you
thought that she was my sweetheart?”
“I did not know until a few minutes ago,” I explained, “that the girl I
saw and talked with in the garden at Kooaad was Duare, the daughter of
the jong.”
A few days later I was again talking with Kamlot in my cabin when we
were interrupted by a whistle at the door; and when I bade him do so,
one of the Vepajan prisoners that we had rescued from the _Sovong_
entered. He was not from Kooaad but from another city of Vepaja, and
therefore none of the other Vepajans aboard knew anything concerning
him. His name was Vilor, and he appeared to be a decent sort of fellow,
though rather inclined to taciturnity. He had manifested considerable
interest in the klangans and was with them often, but had explained this
idiosyncrasy on the grounds that he was a scholar and wished to study
the birdmen, specimens of which he had never before seen.
“I have come,” he explained in response to my inquiry, “to ask you to
appoint me an officer. I should like to join your company and share in
the work and responsibilities of the expedition.”
“We are well officered now,” I explained, “and have all the men we need.
Furthermore,” I added frankly, “I do not know you well enough to be sure
of your qualifications. By the time we reach Vepaja, we shall be better
acquainted; and if I need you then, I will tell you.”
“Well, I should like to do something,” he insisted. “May I guard the
janjong until we reach Vepaja?”
He referred to Duare, whose title, compounded of the two words daughter
and king, is synonymous to princess. I thought that I noticed just a
trace of excitement in his voice as he made the request.
“She is well guarded now,” I explained.
“But I should like to do it,” he insisted. “It would be a service of
love and loyalty for my jong. I could stand the night guard; no one
likes that detail ordinarily.”
“It will not be necessary,” I said shortly; “the guard is already
sufficient.”
“She is in the after cabins of the second deck house, is she not?” he
asked.