He stopped along the flower-lined path and turned to her with a confused look and a glance down briefly at his naked body. “Covered?”
She grinned sideways. “Never mind.” As they continued their walk, she couldn’t help catching herself glancing and staring at the naked people milling in the town, shopping, playing, tending the gardens. Men and women and children, all quite fit and lithe. Most only gave her a curious sideways glance, then returned to what they were doing. They all looked content. And free. She grew more and more self-conscious in her
Sthanu
robe. It made her more conspicuous than her pink-brown skin, she reflected. But she wasn’t ready just yet to part with it and expose herself.
How did they pay for anything? She saw no one with a purse or money belt. Even if they used cards or some other facsimile to represent currency, where would they carry it? They were all totally naked!
Diaprepes stopped and turned to Genevieve, who’d unconsciously slowed her pace to stare at everyone and everything around her, agog with curiosity. He chuckled and pointed to a wooden bench and they sat down.
“You must have a million questions, Genevieve,” he said. “You were quiet at breakfast.”
She smiled at him and nodded. “I just have so much to take in and digest. But, yes, I do have lots of questions. For instance, how do you conduct your commerce?”
“Ah, you are referring to how we obtain things like food and such. We simply take what we need as we need it and give back as much as we can in return, when and where we can.”
“But how does your society keep track of the fairness in the exchange?”
“Oh, you misapprehend, Genevieve,” he waved a hand. “In the case of Fifa’s Café, I don’t necessarily pay Fifa back in kind. I just do a service elsewhere. Think of our community and our environment as a huge common resource, from which everyone takes and to which they contribute as they wish. As for fairness,” he waved a hand, “we practice this with the full knowledge that some are inherently more generous than others and some must take more than others. No one resents this inequity, because we recognize that we are not equally strong and capable.”
Genevieve was astounded. “But what about those who purposefully take advantage of your good will and choose to be lazy and greedy?”
Diaprepes looked at her strangely and she shifted, feeling suddenly self-conscious, as though her very question revealed a taint in her own personality. “That seldom happens, Genevieve. Because when it does it is usually quickly corrected. Such an individual would be shunned by his community, upon which he ultimately depends. You see, it is not in his favour to cheat, because he cheats himself in the end.”
He was describing a small town, she thought, where vigilance by those who knew you played a major role in shaping behaviour. He was also describing a society based on ecological mutualism. It was both clever and elegant. And what could be more natural?
Diaprepes stretched his long legs. Genevieve kept her eyes focused ahead as he wriggled on the bench and unabashedly scratched his scrotum.
“Shall we continue?” he posed.
She assented and he led her out of the market, through several narrow cobbled streets to a large two-storied circular building surrounded by stone columns and whose windows appeared to be made of translucent gemstones. It was a spectacular building and Genevieve stared at it in fascination. She’d seen its glinting shape from above as the scree had circled for a landing.
“This is the
Posedonus
, our Spiritual Temple, where we meditate and worship,” Diaprepes proudly announced.
“It’s beautiful,” she said and realized that her mouth had been gaping open.
“Do you want to see the inside?”
“May I?” she asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious and a little uncomfortable. She didn’t want to break any of their laws or codes of behaviour by entering a sacred place.
“Of course you may!” Diaprepes said. He’d shown absolutely no reservation in his response, so Genevieve nodded her agreement and intrepidly followed him inside. The interior was even more spectacular than the outside. As their sandaled steps echoed on the marble-like stone floor, Genevieve noticed that the outside light streaming through the crystal windows refracted into millions of little jewels throughout the interior. Along its inside perimeter a dozen small pillars, about a meter high, rose, upon which sat sparkling blue crystal spheres. When the jeweled light fell on these, they sparkled with swirls of gold. Genevieve couldn’t help equating the number with that of the
Sthanu
Circle but one, its
kushu
. Was it a coincidence? Or was she onto something?
At the very centre of the room on a circular slab of grey stone sat a magnificent purple crystal, whose core structure was at least two meters in diameter. Out of it emerged several long hexagonal crystals. Beside it stood another pillar, made of dark stone with articulate carvings, upon which was balanced a thick tablet like a table top. A powerful energy that pervaded the temple filled her with awestruck silence. It certainly felt as sacred to her as any church she’d entered on Earth.
Before she realized it, Genevieve threw several glances around for Azaes.
As if reading her thoughts, Diaprepes whispered, “Azaes won’t be here until the end of the day. The
Sthanu
don’t meet here until dusk. First they share a feast at one of their houses, probably Shiva’s place. Then they conduct their meeting from dusk to dawn, reviewing the pledges on this tablet and discussing the events of the week.” He turned his head, tipped to the side slightly, to look at her directly with an impish smile. “No doubt you will be their chief topic.”
“No doubt,” she agreed, though not so cheerfully.
He led her to the purple crystal and cylindrical stone table. As she approached it she noticed that the tablet was a stela, filled with a mixture of well-worn hieroglyphics and Greek-like lettering that looked like they’d been etched there long ago.
Diaprepes bowed before the tablet and murmured some Eosian words before turning to her and urging her to come beside him.
As she did, he said in a hushed voice, as one would in a church, “This is the tablet of pledges willed down to us by the Epoptes and inscribed by our
soul-drifters
from their Epoptic visions when we first arrived twelve thousand years ago.”
Despite instinctively thinking it a taboo, Genevieve gave in to a sudden violent compulsion to touch the stone and drew her finger along the foreign letters. They seemed strangely familiar and sent a shiver through her.
She barely heard Diaprepes wheeze out, “Stop! You are not allowed to touch it!”
Genevieve abruptly felt as though she’d entered a doorway into another dimension, thick with strange singsong voices and garish staccato imagery. Uttering an involuntary gasp, she shuddered and recoiled. She flung her hands to her flushed face, staggering backward and nearly falling. Though what she’d actually experienced was unclear, Genevieve felt as though she’d caught a glimpse of something profound, something she was not meant to see.
Diaprepes, rattled by her forbidden action, quickly came up beside her and suggested that they leave. He threw furtive glances around them but it seemed the few people in the temple had not noticed her transgression and went about their own business. “Come, I’ll show you our library and the
Kleitonus
Museum.”
“Okay,” she responded, hearing her voice echo as if it did not belong to her. She was glad to leave. The place suddenly seemed thick with oppressive electricity that seemed to call to her.
When they emerged outside, she practically sighed with relief and drank in the sweet air of the town centre courtyard. It was beautifully decorated with ground flowers of all colours and surrounded by a kind of grass. Still feeling rather faint, Genevieve followed Diaprepes in a slight daze as he made his way across the park toward a pyramidal structure out of whose apex emerged a very tall tree. She recognized it as the same kind of tree she’d fallen through when she’d tumbled out of Zac, the
vishna
tree. The tree of her wild dream.
Diaprepes took her first to an adjoining building with square sides, a rather dull looking edifice compared with the one she’d just been in. It turned out to be the main library. Genevieve was astonished to see no computers, holo screens or any other technological devices to aid them. There were simply shelves upon shelves of scrolls and books.
As Diaprepes studied a file that interested him, Genevieve gravitated toward the adjoining pyramidal building with the
vishna
tree at its centre. She stared longingly at the beautiful tree, whose folded buttresses coiled at least five meters out. Just looking at it stirred her loins with thoughts of Azaes, the
vishna
flower and magical sex.
“It is the only tree in the town centre,” Diaprepes broke her trance, coming beside her. “They live for thousands of years,” he continued. “We actually do not know how long they can live,” he shrugged with a grin. “We have never seen one die yet. Of natural causes, that is. Even their leaves and flowers live for half a century before finally shedding off the tree. Luckily for our
soul-drifters
, who collect the fallen flowers, they are profuse.”
As she stared mesmerized at the noble tree, he added, “They are not native to this planet.”
Genevieve turned to face him with surprise. “Really?”
“The Epoptes brought them with the seed ship. This tree is supposedly the first one the Epoptes planted on Eos.”
Genevieve craned to view the over forty meter tree, trying to observe its upper canopy with those powerfully scented purple flowers. If Diaprepes was right this tree was over eleven thousand years old!
“Legend holds that the Epoptes grew
vishnas
in our homeland too. But the
vishnas
were ill-treated as we became obsessed with technological tools and lost interest in natural things. Pollution eventually wiped them out. Our legend keepers also suggest that this was our final downfall, the demise of the
vishna
.”
As Diaprepes continued, Genevieve noticed that she was attracting a crowd of curious onlookers. She gave them a tentative smile of greeting. None smiled back. Their faces displayed a kind of mindless obsession that disturbed Genevieve. They closed in and Genevieve instantly noted the swollen state of most of the young men’s penises.
Before Diaprepes even had a chance to notice, they’d pressed in, closing a ring of people around them. Genevieve drew in a sharp breath as several drooling males lunged forward, seized her robe, and yanked it open. She jerked back from them with an angry cry and violently pulled her robe closed. As she did, a woman brazenly reached out and seized some of Genevieve’s hair. Then a hand grabbed her leg beneath the robe, tripping her. Genevieve stumbled back with a mild shriek, and felt the sudden tug of her hair ripping out of the woman’s grip.
“What are you doing?” Diaprepes demanded, trying hard to put a tone of authoritative command in his voice, but failing miserably. Panic pitched his voice into a squeal as he flashed nervous glances from Genevieve to the faces of mindless obsession. The Eosians ignored his challenge. They murmured and sighed and jostled to get close. They touched her hair, her face, her body, whatever of her flesh they could reach.
For a terrifying instant she imagined herself a piece of carrion covered in buzzing flies and being taken piece by piece. A young man lunged for her breasts and she swerved out of reach, but lost her balance. She caught sight of his engorged penis, pointing at her, as she fell backward with a shriek. She would have fallen with the man on top of her, had Diaprepes not intervened and yanked her out of the man’s way and back to her feet.
“Come, Genevieve!” he urged, gripping her hand tightly and eyes casting for a way to escape the pressing crowd of aroused Eosians. He forced his way through the ring of people, gruffly pulling her through. Rough hands seized her robe, tore it open, ripped it off her. Hands pawed her thighs, breasts and buttocks. She felt violated as she finally broke free from the throng, leaving behind a wake of drooling young men and women.
Then they were clear and running. Diaprepes whistled sharply and his scree came bounding forward on large legs, half flying and half running. With incredible energy, he grabbed Genevieve and hoisted her onto the scree, then threw himself on behind her and the scree took off.
As they circled up Genevieve gazed down at the milling crowd, several of whom were tearing at her discarded robe and bringing it up to their faces.
“What happened?” she said in a still panting voice.
“I don’t know,” Diaprepes replied, his own voice thick with confusion. “I have never seen an Eosian act like that before.”
They remained silent until the scree landed them in Azaes’s compound. As Diaprepes helped Genevieve off the scree, she commented, “They were sniffing and mauling my robe like dogs in heat”
“Yes,” he said in a strangled voice, averting his eyes from her naked body. “It is your smell. They are not used to it.”
Chapter Sixteen
“It was her smell, Diaprepes,” Azaes explained curtly, glancing at Genevieve like she was a pet dog, needing a bath. He hadn’t even left his house yet when they returned from Uruk. “They are not used to it. It brought out their madness.” He frowned and expelled a long sigh at Diaprepes. “You are not to take her to the town again, do you hear?”