'Maybe I'm being too suspicious. That's more than likely. Nevertheless, Macneff should be informed. But I can't tell him how I found out; I wouldn't even dare make up a lie about my source of information.
'I'm on the horns of a dilemma.'
'A dilemma? A beast I never heard of before.'
He hugged her and said, 'I hope you never do.'
'Listen,' she said, looking eagerly at him with her beautiful brown eyes, 'Why bother to tell Macneff? If the Siddo should attack the Haijac – or, as you say their enemies call them so aptly, Highjackers – and conquer them, why not? Couldn't we make our way to my homeland and live there?'
Hal was shocked. 'Those are my people, my countrymen! They – we – are Sigmenites. I couldn't betray them!'
'You are doing just that now by keeping me here,' she said gravely.
'I know that," said Hal slowly. 'But it's not a gross betrayal, not a real betrayal at all. How am I hurting them by having you?'
'I don't worry at all about what you may be doing to them. I do worry about what you may be doing to yourself.'
'To myself? I am doing the best thing I ever did!' She laughed delightedly and gave him a light kiss on the lips.
But he frowned, and he said, 'Jeannette, it's serious. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, we have to do something definite. By that, I mean find a hiding place deep underground. Later, after it's all over, we can come out. And we'll have at least eighty years to ourselves, which will be more than enough. Because it will take that long for the Gabriel to return to Earth and for the colonizing ships to come back. We'll be like Adam and Eve, just us two and the beasts.'
'What do you mean?' she said, her eyes widening.
'This. Our specialists are working night and day on samples of blood the wogs gave us. They hope to make an artificial semivirus that will attach itself to the copper in the wog's blood cells and change the cells' electrophoretic properties.'
' 'Ama?'
'I'll try to explain even if I have to use a mixture of American, French, and Siddo to get it across.
'A form of this artificial semivirus is what killed most of Earth's people during the Apocalyptic War. I won't go into the historical details; it's enough to say that the virus was desseminated secretly from outside the Earth's atmosphere by the ships of Martian colonists. The descendants of Earthmen on Mars, who considered themselves true Martians, were led by Sigfried Russ, as evil a man as ever lived. Or so say the history books.'
'I do not know what you are talking about,' she said.
Her face was grave, her eyes fixed upon his face.
'You can pick up the gist of it. The four Martian ships, pretending to be merchant vessels orbiting before entry, dropped billions of these viruses. Invisible knots of protein molecules that drifted through the atmosphere, spreading throughout the world, covering it in a very tenuous mist. These molecules, once they penetrated a human being's skin, locked onto the hemoglobin in the red blood cells and gave them a positive charge. This charge caused one end of a globin molecule to bind with the end of the other. And the molecule would go into a kind of crystallization. This would twist the doughnut shaped cells into scimitars and thus cause an artificial sickle-cell anemia.
'The lab-created anemia was much swifter and more certain than the natural anemia, because every blood cell in the body would be affected, not just a small percentage. Every cell would soon break down. No oxygen would be carried through the human organism; the body died.
'The body did die, Jeannette – the body of humanity. Almost an entire planet of human beings perished from lack of oxygen.'
'I think I understand most of what you have told me,' said Jeannette. 'But everybody, they did not die?'
'No. And at the beginning, the governments of Earth found out what was going on. They launched missiles toward Mars; and the missiles, designed to cause earthquakes, destroyed most of the Martian underground colonies.
'On Earth, perhaps a million survived on each continent. With the exception of certain areas where almost the entire population was untouched. Why? We don't really know. But something, perhaps favorable wind currents, bent the fall of virus away until the virus had fallen to the ground. After a certain time outside of a human body, the virus died.
'Anyway, the islands of Hawaii and Iceland were left with organized governments and a full population. Israel, too, was left untouched, as if the hand of God had covered it during the deadly fall. And southern Australia and the Caucasus Mountains were spared.
'These groups spread out afterward, resettling the world, absorbing the survivors in the areas which they took over. In the jungles of Africa and the Malayan peninsula, enough were left alive to venture out. These reestablished themselves in their native lands before colonies from the islands and Australia could take over.
'And what happened to Earth is destined to happen here on this planet. When the order is given, missiles will leave the Gabriel, missiles laden with the same deadly cargo. Only, the viruses will be fitted for the blood cells of the Ozagen. And the missiles will circle and circle and drop their invisible rain of death. And... everywhere ... the skulls–'
'Hush!' Jeannette put her finger on his quivering lips. 'I don't know what you mean by proteins and molecules and those – those electrofrenetic charges! They're way above my head. But I do know that the longer you've been talking, the more scared you've been getting. Your voice was getting higher, and your eyes were growing wider.
'Somebody has frightened you in the past. No! Don't interrupt! They've scared you, and you've been man enough to hide most of your fear. But they've done such a horribly efficient job that you haven't been able to get over it.
'Well–' and she put her soft lips to his ear and whispered – 'I'm going to wipe that fear out. I'm going to lead you out of that valley of fright. No! Don't protest! I know it hurts your ego to think that a woman could know you're afraid. But I don't think any the less of you. I admire you all the more because you've conquered so much of it. I know what courage it took to face the 'Meter. I know you did it because of me. I'm proud that you did. I love you for it. And I know what courage it takes to keep me here, when at any time a slip would send you to certain disgrace and death. I know what it all means. It's my nature and instinct and business and love to know.
'Now! Drink with me. We're not outside these walls where we have to worry ourselves about such things and be scared. We're in here. Away from everything except ourselves. Drink. And love me. I'll love you,. Hal, and we'll not see the world outside nor need to. For the time being. Forget in my arms.'
They kissed and ran their hands over each other and said the things lovers have always said.
Between kisses, Jeannette poured more of the purplish liquor, and they drank this. Hal had no trouble swallowing it. He decided that it wasn't the idea of drinking alcohol so much as it was the odor that sickened him. When his nose was deceived, his stomach was also. And every drink made it easier for the next one.
He downed three tall glasses and then rose and lifted Jeannette in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. She was kissing the side of his neck, and it seemed to him that an electric charge was passing from her lips to his skin and on up to his brain and on down through his beating chest and warming stomach and swelling genital and on down through the soles of his feet, which, strangely, had become ice. Certainly, holding her did not make him want to withdraw as when he had carried out his duty toward Mary and the Sturch.
Yet, even in his ecstasy of anticipation, there was a stronghold of retreat. It was small, but it was there, dark in the middle of the fire. He could not completely forget himself, and he doubted, wondering if he would fail as he had sometimes when he had crawled into bed in the dark and reached out for Mary.
There was also a black seed of panic, dropped by the doubt. If he failed, he would kill himself. He would be done forever.
Yet, he told himself, it could not possibly happen, must not. Not when he had his arms around her and her lips were on his.
He put her on the bed and then turned off the ceiling light. But she turned on the lamp over the bed.
'Why are you doing that?' he said, standing at the foot of the bed, feeling the rise of panic and the fall of his passion. At the same time he wondered how she could so swiftly, unseen by him, have unclothed herself.
She smiled and said, 'Remember what you told me the other day? That beautiful passage: God said, Let there be light.'
'We do not need it.'
'I do. I must see you at every moment. The dark would take away half of the pleasure. I want to see you in love.'
She reached upward to adjust the angle of the bedlamp, her breasts rising with the movement and sending an almost intolerable pang through him.
'There. Now I can see your face. Especially, at the moment when I will know best that you love me.'
She extended a foot and touched his knee with her toe. Skin upon skin... it drew him forward as if it were the finger of an angel gently directing him toward destiny. He knelt upon the bed, and she drew back her leg with her toe still placed upon his leg as if it had grown roots into his flesh and could not be dislodged.
'Hal, Hal,' she murmured. 'What have they done to you? What have they done to all your men? I know from what you have told me that they are like you. What have they done? Made you hate instead of love, though they call hate love. Made you half-men so you will turn your drive into yourself and then outward against the enemy. So you will become fierce warriors because you are such timid lovers.'
'That's not true,' he said. 'Not true.'
'I can see you. It is true.'
She removed her foot and placed it beside his knee and said, 'Come closer,' and when he had moved closer, still on his knees, she reached up and pulled him down against her breasts.