Venus on the Half-Shell (19 page)

Home is where the tail is
goes an old Dokal proverb.

There was a good reason for this. The Dokalians looked much like Earthpeople except for one thing. They had long prehensile tails. These were six to seven feet long and hairless from root to tip, which exploded in a long silky tuft.

Simon was grabbed by some tough-looking males and hustled off to a hospital. They did not treat him roughly, however. Their attitude seemed to be that of doctors who had found a patient suffering from a hideous disease. They felt sorry for him and wanted to do something for him. At the same time, they could barely endure looking at him and could not abide handling him directly. They prodded him gently with short swords, driving him before them. The dog trotted along at his heels while the owl sat on his right shoulder. Simon hoped that Chworktap would look out through the viewscreen and see what was happening. But she was probably intent on searching through the parts of Tzu Li for the greater-than-the-whole.

“Good luck, Chworktap,” Simon muttered. “By the time you get around to looking for me, I may be only unreassemblable pieces.”

Simon was then hurried into a large building of stone, square with a gigantic red onion-shaped dome and flying buttresses shaped like dragons. An iron cage lifted by a steam engine carried him and his guards up to the seventh floor. From there he was taken down a long corridor with walls covered with bright murals and a many-colored mosaic tile floor. He and his animals were put inside a big room at the end, and the door was locked. Simon looked through one of the large diamond-shaped iron-barred windows. The plaza nearby was crowded with people, most of whom were looking up at his window. Through two tall slender towers, he could see the nose of the spaceship. Around it were guards armed with spears and another crowd some distance from the ship.

Between two other buildings he could see a paved road coming in from the country. On it were trucks and passenger vehicles driven by steam.

Presently, the door opened, and a cart holding food was pushed in. The pusher was a good-looking young woman wearing only a thin scarlet robe and a very short topaz skirt. The robe was slit up the back so her tail would not be impeded. She removed the covers of three dishes at the same time, two with her hands and one with the coiled end of her tail. Steam rose from the food. Anubis drooled, and Athena flew down into the edge of a dish and began eating. After the woman left, Simon gave the dog a dish and sat down to eat with gusto. He did not know what the meats were and thought it better that he didn’t know. In any event, he was unable to ask their nature. He also drank from a tall cut-crystal goblet. The liquor was yellow, thick, and sweet. Before he had finished it, he felt his brain beginning to get numb.

At least, they weren’t going to starve him.

In the morning, men came in and cleaned up the room, and the woman brought breakfast in about ten o’clock. An hour later, the cart was taken out, the dog and owl excrement was removed, and a tall middle-aged woman entered. She sat down at the table and motioned to him to sit across from her. She took a number of objects out of a red-and-black striped leather bag and arrayed them on the table. These consisted of a pen, pencil, comb, a small box containing another box, a cutaway model of a house, a book, a photograph of a family: father, mother, a boy, a girl, a dog-like animal, and a bird. She picked up the pencil and said, “Gwerfya.”

“Gwerfya,” Simon said.

She shook her head and repeated the word.

Simon listened intently and said again, “Gwerfya.”

The woman smiled and picked up the pen.

“Tukh-gwerfya.”

Simon felt more at ease. A planet that had its own version of a Berlitz school of language couldn’t be all bad.

At the end of the week, Simon could carry on a simple conversation. In three weeks, he was able to communicate well enough to ask when he could be free.

“After your operation,” Shunta said.

“What operation?” Simon said, turning pale.

“You can’t be allowed on the streets until you’ve been equipped with a tail. No one is allowed to be deprived in our society, and the sight of you would repulse people. I’m a doctor, so I’m not bothered—too much—by a tailless person.”

“Why should I want a tail?”

“You must be kidding.”

“I’ve always gotten along without a tail.”

“That’s because you didn’t know any better,” Shunta said. “Poor thing.”

“Well,” Simon said, reddening, “what if I refuse?”

“To tell the truth,” Shunta said after a moment’s shock, “we thought you had come here just so you could get one.”

“No, I came here to get answers to my questions.”

“Oh, one of
those!”
Shunta said. “Well, my dear Simon, we won’t force you. But you’ll have to leave this planet at once.”

“Do you have any wise men here?” Simon said. “Or wise women,” he hastily added, seeing her eyebrows go up.

“The wisest person on this planet is old Mofeislop,” she said. “But it isn’t easy to get to him. He lives on top of a mountain in the Free Land. You’d have to travel through it alone, since it’s forbidden to send soldiers there. And you might not come back. Few do.”

The Free Land, it turned out, was a territory about the size of Texas. It consisted mostly of mountains and heavy forests, wild animals, and wilder humans. Felons, instead of being put in jail, were sent into it and told not to come back. Also, any citizen who didn’t like his government or the society he lived in was free to go there. Sometimes, he was asked, not very politely, to emigrate there.

“Hmmm,” Simon said. “How long has this institution existed?”

“About a thousand years?”

“And how long has your civilization been in its present stage? That is, how long have the same customs and the same technology existed?”

“About a thousand years.”

“So you’ve made no progress since a millennium ago?”

“Why should we?” Shunta said. “We’re happy.”

“But you’ve been sending not only your criminals, but your most intelligent people, the most discontented, into the Free Land.”

“It works fine,” she said. “For one thing, we don’t have to use tax money to feed and house the criminals. Nor do we have to face the ethical problem of capital punishment. The Free Landers kill each other off, but no one is forcing them to do that. As for your imperceptive remark about the ‘most intelligent,’ that’s easily disproven. An intelligent person adapts himself to his society; he doesn’t fight against it.”

“You might have something there,” Simon said. “Though I don’t know just what. In any event, I have a clear-cut choice. By the way, have you heard from my spaceship?”

“The woman won’t let us into the ship, but she is taking language lessons through the port. We explained why we were holding you, and after she quit laughing she said she’d wait for you. She also sends her love.”

“Some love!”

He sighed and said, “O.K. I consent to the operation provided you’ll amputate the tail before I leave. I must talk to Mofeislop.”

“Oh, you’ll love your tail!” Shunta said. “And you’ll see how foolish your talk of amputation is. Your attitude is like that of a two-dimensional being who fears the third.”

Simon came out of the anesthesia the evening of the next day. He had to stay face down for several days but on the third was allowed to totter around. On the sixth, the bandages were removed. He stood naked before a mirror while nurses, doctors, and government officials oohed and ahed around him. The tail was long and splendid, rising from a massive group of muscles which had also been implanted at the base of his spine. He could only flick it a little, but he was assured that inside a week he’d be able to handle it as well as any native, short of hanging from a branch by it. Only children and trained athletes could do that.

They were right. Simon was soon delighted to find that he could wield a spoon or a fork and feed himself with it. He had to send Anubis to another room, however, because the dog got upset. And Anubis several times could not resist the temptation to grab the tail in his teeth. Simon had to learn to keep it extended straight up whenever the dog was around.

Dokal life was arranged to accommodate the tail, of course. Chairs had to have a space between the seat and the upper part of the back so the tails could go between. The backs of auto seats were split for the tails to slide through. A secretary not only typed but swept the floor at the same time. And long brushes were not needed to scrub one’s back. Masons could handle five bricks to every three an Earthman could. A Dokalian soldier was a terrible fighting man, swinging a sword or an axe at the end of his tail. Simon, watching some in mock combat, was glad that a tailed species had not existed on Earth alongside his own. If it had, it would have exterminated Homo sap long before the dawn of history. Not that that would have made any difference in the long run, he thought. For all practical purposes, Homo sap was extinct anyway.

A week later, Simon found out another use for his tail, though it did not surprise him. He was invited to a feast given by the ruler of the nation in which he had landed. He was seated at the huge table at the right hand of the ruler, The Great Tail Himself. As a sign of the esteem Simon was now held in, he was fed with a spoon wielded by the tail of The Great Tail Himself. On Simon’s right side the daughter of the ruler, a lovely juvenile named Tunc, acted as his goblet-filler. After numerous toasts, Simon wondered if he was losing control over his tail. He felt a hairy tuft sliding up and down his thigh and then, when he made no move, he felt the hairs tickle his crotch. He felt around behind him with a hand that seemed to have gone numb, grabbed the root of the tail, and slid his hand along it. It was sticking straight out behind him.

Tunc smiled at him, and it penetrated his wine-frozen brain that she was playing tailsey with him. He had a fleeting thought that he would be false to Chworktap if he responded to Tunc. Still, it wasn’t his fault that she had practically kicked him out of the
Hwang Ho
and had refused to join him later. With some difficulty, he guided his tail under the table and moved it up Tunc’s thigh. At least, he thought it was hers. The woman sitting next to Tunc, The Great Tail Himself’s mother, gasped and sat up. But then she smiled at him. Probably, she’d had a gas pain.

He had not been in bed in his luxurious apartment in the palace more than ten minutes when his door was opened. Tunc entered, shed her robe and skirt, and crawled into bed with him. Simon had by that time reconsidered the ethics of the situation. Chworktap was being true to him, even if she had temporarily exiled him. So could he, in conscience, be untrue to her?

On the other hand, did Chworktap give a damn?

And, back to the first hand, he disliked hurting Tunc’s feelings.

She snuggled up against him, kissed him, and the end of her tail caressed his throat, his chest, his stomach, the insides of his thighs, and tickled his genitals.

From dislike, he went to hate, hate of hurting her feelings.

Simon rolled her over and got on top and he found that the tail had indeed added another dimension. How had he ever been so content without it? Wait until he told Chworktap about this; no, he’d better not do that.

Tunc’s tail came up from between her legs and its end slid into the nearest orifice. This was a new, though pleasant, in fact, ecstatic, experience for him. He used his tail to reciprocate.

Tunc moaned and gasped, did all the things that lovers do over and over without the novelty seeming to wear off. Simon did likewise, though he tried to avoid her tail when she stuck it in his mouth. Orgasm, however, could care less about fastidiousness, and so he overcame his momentary repulsion.

When Tunc staggered out through the door, he watched her go, glad to see her go. One more demand, and the honor of Earth would have been blackened. Tarnished, anyway.

He heaved himself out of bed to wash his teeth. Halfway across the immense room, he heard a knock. He stopped and said, “No more, Tunc!” But the door, opening, revealed Agnavi, Tunc’s grandmother.

Simon groaned and said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Your Majesty. But I can’t even stiffen my tail.”

Agnavi was disappointed, but she smiled when Simon said he could schedule a command performance for tomorrow. Meantime, sweet dreams. She was a pleasant woman who had the patience of middle age.

Simon did not, however, sleep well. He had another of the recurring nightmares in which thousands of people seemed to be speaking to him all at once. And the faces of his father and mother were getting closer.

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