Alyx - Joanna Russ by Unknown Author Read Free Book Online Page A

balls of her feet, a sliver of wood in her teeth, dealing out the cards to tell fortunes (cards and money appeared in the East at exactly the same time in the old days) he thought—or thought he saw—or recollected—that goddess who was driven out by the other gods when the world was made and who hangs about still on the fringes of things (at crossroads, at the entrance to towns) to throw a little shady trouble into life and set up a few crosscurrents and undercurrents of her own in what ought to be a regular and predictable business. She herself did not believe in gods and goddesses. She told the fortunes of the crew quite obligingly, as he had taught her, but was much more interested in learning the probabilities of the appearance of any particular card in one of the five suits 1 — she had begun to evolve what she thought was a rather elegant little theory—when late one day he told her, “Look, I am going into a town tonight, but you can’t come.” They were lying anchored on the coast, facing west, just too far away to see the lights at night. She said, “Wha’?”
    “I am going to town tonight,” he said (he was a very patient man) “and you can’t come.”
    “Why not?” said the woman. She threw down her cards and stood up, facing into the sunset. The pupils of her eyes shrank to pinpoints. To her he was a big, blind rock, a kind of outline; she said again, “Why not?” and her whole face lifted and became sharper as one’s face does when one stares against the sun.
    “Because you can’t,” he said. She bent to pick up her cards as if she had made some mistake in listening, but there he was saying, “I won’t be able to take care of you.”
    “You won’t have to,” said she. He shook his head. “You won’t come.”
    “Of course I’ll come,” she said.
    “You won’t,” said he.
    “The devil I won’t!” said she.

    He put both arms on her shoulders, powerfully, seriously, with utmost heaviness and she pulled away at once, at once transformed into a mystery with a closed face; she stared at him without expression, shifting her cards from hand to hand. He said, “Look, my girl—” and for this got the entire fortunes of the whole world for the next twenty centuries right in his face.
    “Well, well,” he said, “I see,” ponderously, “I see,” and stalked away down the curve of the ship, thus passing around the cabin, into the darkening eastern sky, and out of the picture.
    But she did go with him. She appeared, dripping wet and triumphantly smiling, at the door of the little place of business he had chosen to discuss business in and walked directly to his table, raising two fingers in greeting, a gesture that had taken her fancy when she saw it done by someone in the street. She then uttered a word Blackbeard thought she did not understand (she did). She looked with interest around the room—at the smoke from the torches—and the patrons—and a Great Homed Owl somewhat the worse for wear that had been chained by one leg to the bar (an ancient invention)—and the stuffed blowfish that hung from the ceiling on a string: lazy, consumptive, puffed-up, with half its spines broken off. Then she sat down.
    “Huh!” she said, dismissing the tavern. Blackbeard was losing his temper. His face suffused with blood, he put both enormous fists on the table to emphasize that fact; she nodded civilly, leaned back on her part of the wall (causing the bench to rock), crossed her knees, and swung one foot back and forth, back and forth, under the noses of both gentlemen. It was not exactly rude but it was certainly disconcerting.
    “You. Get out,” said the other gentleman.
    “I’m not dry yet,” said she in a soft, reasonable voice, like a bravo trying to pick a quarrel, and she laid both arms across the table, where they left two dark stains. She stared him in the face as if trying to memorize it—hard enough with a man who made it his business to look like nobody in