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[Illustration]
GEORGE
LOVES
GISTLA
By JAMES McKIMMEY, Jr.
_"Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl," his
father had often repeated. But George was on Venus ... and he loved
pale green skin ... and globular heads and most of all, George loved
Gistla._
George Kenington was sixteen, and, as he told himself, someone who was
sixteen knew more about love than someone who was, say, forty-two. Like
his father, for instance. A whole lot more probably. When you were
forty-two, you got narrow-minded and nervous and angry. You said this is
this, and that is that, and there is nothing else. When someone thought
and felt and talked that way, George thought bitterly, there was not
enough room inside that person to know what it was like, loving a
Venusian.
But George knew. He knew very well.
Her name was Gistla. She was not pretty in standards of American
colonists. She had the pale greenish Venusian skin, and she was too
short and rather thick. Her face, of course, was not an American face.
It was the face of native Venus. Round and smooth, with the large
lidless eyes. There were no visible ears and a lack of hair strengthened
the globular look of her head.
But she was a person. The beauty was inside of her. Did you have to
point to a girl's face and say, "Here is where the nose should be, here
is where the ears should be?" Did you have to measure the width between
eyes and test the color of the skin? Did you have to check the size of
the teeth and the existence of hair? Was all of this necessary to
understand what was _inside_ someone?
George snapped a leaf from an overhanging vine and threw it angrily to
the ground. He was walking along a thin path that led from the colony to
the tangled hills beyond, where hues of red and yellow and purple
reflected like bold sweeps of watercolor. In a moment he would see
Gistla, and with the color before his eyes and the sweet perfume of the
flowers in his lungs, he felt again the familiar rise of excitement.
George had not always lived on Venus. The Colony was very new. By 2022,
most of the Earth countries had sent colonizers to Mars. But as yet, in
June of that year, Venus had been touched by only the sparsest invasion
of American civilization. George had arrived just three years ago, when
his father had been appointed Secretary of the colonizing unit.
And that was the whole trouble, really. Father was the Secretary, Mother
was the Secretary's wife, Sister was the daughter of the Secretary.
Everybody was wrapped up in it. Except George.
George loved Gistla.
"Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl?" his father
had said. "Say like Henry Farrel's little daughter?"
Henry Farrel's little daughter was a sweet sickening girl with a nasty
temper and a nasty tongue. Her father was Governor of the Colony. She
told you about it all the time.
"Or," his father had told him, "why not little what's-her-name, Doug
Brentwood's daughter?"
Little what's-her-name's father was the President of the Council. "My
father is President of the Council," she said. Over and over, as though
in a settlement the size of the Colony, there would be anyone who
wouldn't know her father was the President of the Council.
It was all a very tight and careful circle, chosen on Earth with a great
deal of "common sense."
There were the ordinary settlers, of course. They had daughters. Some of
them were very pretty and long-limbed. And George had thought about
that.
Certainly there wasn't a decent-looking girl in the whole Governing
circle, and the sight of a girl with flashing eyes and a nice red mouth,
who was shaped a little like something besides a tree stump, was indeed
an exciting sight.
But there were limitations to the settler girls.
They had no background to speak of, and though that didn't make any
difference, George assured himself, they knew nothing about art, music,
poetry, or anything really worth while. And, too, while George's father
had said, "Now, George, we're all one here. Each of us is as good as
another. Joe Finch, who cares for the flowers outside, is every bit as
good a man as I am"--still George knew, if he told his parents he was
going to marry Joe Finch's daughter someday, there would be hell to pay.
So as long as the restrictions had been bound around him, there was no
reason to go just half-way. George was not an ordinary boy. He did
things in extreme. He was now in love with a Venusian girl, and his
family was already starting to make him pay.
* * * * *
George turned off the path, just beyond an arch of thick purple-green
vines that always reminded him of a gate to a garden. There was a quiet
simplicity to this small clearing where he and Gistla met. There was an
aloneness to it, and only the sound of the flat shiny leaves sliding
together and the high, trilling sound of the small Venusian birds broke
the peaceful silence. They had always met here, nowhere else.
Now, as George found himself in the clearing, he began to wonder what
Gistla would say or do when he told her he was taking her home to meet
his family. It had been a sudden decision, brought out of anger and
indignation.
George sat down upon the flat hollow of a large vine. The sky was murky
as usual, but the soft warm feel and smell of the growth around him,
with its color and brightness, made up for a sunless sky.
As he waited, he remembered what his mother had said:
"Oh, George, you're really not serious about bringing a _Venusian_ into
our home!"
And his sister, Mari, had said, "My God!" Mari, who was eighteen, said
this to most anything.
But his father, eyes bright and alert, had said, "No, now if George
wants to bring one of these, ah, Venusians home with him, that's his
privilege. I think it would be very interesting."
George knew what his father meant by interesting.
Exposing Gistla to his family would result in deliberate sarcasm and
eye-squinting and barely hidden smiles. There would be pointed remarks
and direct insults. And when it was over, George knew, he would be
expected to see the error of his ways. He would then be expected to
forget about this odd creature and find himself a nice ignorant little
Colony girl, whose father was a member of the Governing circle.
"And to hell with that, too," George said.
"What?" George heard Gistla say. He turned quickly. She was standing at
the edge of the clearing, her round green eyes looking soft and serious.
She wore the usual gray cape that reached her ankles. Her voice was a
deep round sound, and there was hardly any accent in the words she had
learned so quickly since the Colony had begun.
"Talking to myself," George grinned. The old excitement was inside of
him. There was a kind of exotic quality in meeting Gistla that never
disappeared.
She crossed the clearing, not too gracefully, and touched her fingers
against his hand. This had been the extent of their physical expression
of love.
"It is nice to see you, George."
He noticed his feeling of pleasure when he heard her speak his name.
There was something about his own name being spoken by Gistla that had
always seemed even more strange than anything else.
She sat down beside him, and they looked at each other while the leaves
whispered around them and the birds fluttered and chirped. He discovered
again the feeling of rightness, sitting beside Gistla. There was a
solidity about her, a quiet maturity that he seemed able to feel in
himself only when he was with her. And that too was strange, because in
American terms of age, she was much younger than he.
Sitting, as they were doing, silent, watching each other, had been most
of their activity. You did not need to entertain Gistla with foolish
small-talk or exaggerated praising.
But right now he wanted to tell her quickly, to make sure that she would
feel the enthusiasm he had felt.
"Listen, Gistla," he said, while she watched him with her soft-looking
round eyes. "I want you to come with me today to meet my family."
His words seemed to have an odd ring to them, and George waited tensely
until he was sure that she was not shocked or angry about what he had
just said.
She sat silently for a moment and then she said, "Do you think that is
right for me to do, George?"
"Sure it is! Why not? They know about you and me. They know we're in
love."
"Love--" She spoke the word as though it were an indefinite, elusive
thing that you could not offer as reason for doing anything.
Gistla was very wise, George realized, but this was a time for
enthusiasm, a time to strengthen their own relationship in this world.
"Say you will!" George said.
"Do you want me to?"
"Well, sure I do. What did you think?"
She held her hands in her lap quietly. They were not unlike his own,
George observed, except for the extreme smallness and the color.
"I do not think it will be nice for you or them," she said.
"Ah, listen, Gistla. Don't talk that way. It'll be fine!" But he knew
that he was not deceiving her with the lightness he tried to put into
his voice.
Then, although she had never done it before, she reached out and touched
his cheek. George had grown used to the emotions that reflected on her
face, and he knew she was suddenly very sad. "Yes, George," she said. "I
will go with you to meet your family." And she said it as though she
were telling him good-by.
* * * * *
It was no better than he had expected. It was worse. Much worse. And he
was growing angrier by the moment. They were all seated in the
rock-walled patio behind the large white house. Gistla sat beside him,
looking very small and frightened and very different. And it was that
obvious difference that George had hoped everyone might ignore. But
instead, each of them, his father, his mother, his sister, appeared to
be trying to make it even more obvious.
The first strain, when everyone had sat there staring at Gistla as
though she were something behind a cage, had passed. But now his parents
and sister were moving in a new direction. They had relaxed, having
found control of the situation, and they were cutting her to pieces.
"Tell me," his sister was saying, her eyes dancing slyly, "don't you
people have some very strange tricks you can do?"
George tightened his fingers against his palms. He heard Gistla answer,
"Tricks?"
"Yes." His sister's white smile shined. "You know, like making things
disappear, things like that."
"My father," Gistla said seriously, "can do very wonderful things. He is
a musician."
George's father leaned forward, blinking amusedly. "Really? What does he
play?"
"Play?" asked Gistla.
"Yes. He's a musician. He must play something, some kind of instrument."
Gistla looked at George, but George did not know what to say. He wished
he had never tried to do this. He wished he had just ignored his family
and gone on loving Gistla in the privacy of his own emotions.
"Well, now," Mr. Kenington was saying rather impatiently. "Does he play
something like our violin or clarinet or oboe, or what?" His father,
George had noticed, was becoming impatient more frequently since he had
become Secretary. The Secretarial post was very important.
"He does not play anything," Gistla said carefully. "He just ... makes
the music and I hear it."
"But how?" Mr. Kenington insisted. "What does he play the music _on_? He
certainly can't make the music without using something to make it on."
Gistla glanced again at George and he said quickly, "It's pretty hard to
understand, Father. I don't think--"
"No, now don't interrupt just now, son. This is very interesting. We'd
like to know what she's talking about."
Mrs. Kenington spoke for the first time. "Are you just making this up?"
It was like a whip coming through the air. His mother sat there,
blinking, the suspicion and distrust she felt for this creature showing
in her eyes and upon her mouth and even in the way she was sitting.
"Now, Lois," Mr. Kenington said, as though he really sympathized with
what she had said, believing that not only Gistla was making it up, but
that all of her race made everything up. But he was stubborn. "Come now,
tell us. Tell us what you mean."
Gistla's smooth head turned this way and that. "Sometimes," she said
slowly, "my father journeys to other places, and if he cannot return
soon, he sends me music. When the light has gone from the day and I am
alone, I hear it."
"You mean he sends it by wires or by radio?" Mr. Kenington asked with
surprise.
"No."
"Now, wait a minute," George's sister leaned forward, smiling. "You just
hear this music, is that right? Up here." She tapped her forehead.
"Yes," said Gistla.
"My God," George's sister said. She looked at her parents, arching her
eyebrows.
"You shouldn't make things up," George's mother said.
"Mother," George said, his face coloring. "She's not making things up!"
"Just a moment, son," Mr. Kenington said crisply. "You don't want to
talk to your mother in that tone."
"No, but, my God," George's sister went on. "Imagine. No wires, no
loudspeakers, just ... up here." She tapped her forehead again.
"I'm not talking to my mother in any tone at all," George said,
disregarding his sister.
"Well, she shouldn't lie," said Mrs. Kenington with conviction.