The Lovers   ::   Фармер Филип Хосе

'Must you be so sarcastic, even after I've been gone so long?'

Mary was a tall woman, only half a head shorter than Hal. Her hair was pale blond and drawn tightly back from her forehead to a heavy coil at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were light blue. Her features were regular and petite but were marred by very thin lips. The baggy high-necked shirt and loose floor-length skirt she wore prevented any observer from knowing what kind of figure she had. Hal himself did not know.

Mary said, 'I wasn't being sarcastic, Hal. Just realistic. Where else could you be? All you had to do was say, "Yes." And you would have to be in there – she pointed at the door to the unmentionable – 'when I come home.. You seem to spend all your time in there or at your studies. Almost as if you were trying to hide from me.'

'A fine homecoming,' he said.

'You haven't kissed me,' she said.

'Ah, yes,' he replied. 'That's my duty. I forgot.'

'It shouldn't be a duty,' she said. 'It should be a joy.'

'It's hard to enjoy kissing lips that snarl,' he said.

To his surprise, Mary, instead of replying angrily, began to weep. At once, he felt ashamed.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'But you'll have to admit you weren't in a very good mood when you came in.'

He went to her and tried to put his arms around her, but she turned away from him. Nevertheless, he kissed her on the side of her mouth as she turned her head.

'I don't want you to do that because you feel sorry for me or because it's your duty,' she said. 'I want you to do it because you love me.'

'But I do love you,' he said for what seemed like the thousandth time since they had married. Even to himself, he sounded unconvincing. Yet – he told himself – he did love her. He had to.

'You have a very nice way of showing it,' she said.

'Let's forget what happened and start all over again,' he said. 'Here.'

And he started to kiss her, but she backed away.

'What in H is the matter with you? he said.

'You have given me my greeting kiss,' she said. 'You must not start getting sensual. This is not the time or place.'

He threw his hands up in the air.

'Who's getting sensual? I wanted to act as if you had just come in the door. Is it worse to have one more kiss than prescribed than it is to quarrel? The trouble with you, Mary, is that you're absolutely literal-minded. Don't you know the Forerunner himself didn't demand that his prescriptions be taken literally? He himself said that circumstances sometimes warranted modifications!'

'Yes, and he also said that we must beware of rationalizing ourselves into departing from his law. We must first confer with a gapt about the reality of our behavior.'

'Oh, of course!' he said. 'I'll phone our good guardian angel pro tempore and ask him if it's all right if I kiss you again!'

'That's the only safe thing to do,' she said.

'Great Sigmen!' he shouted. 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry! But I do know that I don't understand you! I never will!'

'Say a prayer to Sigmen,' she said. 'Ask him to give you reality. Then, we will have no difficulty.'

'Say a prayer yourself,' he said. 'It takes two to make a quarrel. You're just as responsible as I am.'

'I'll talk to you later when you're not so angry,' she said. 'I have to wash and eat.'

'Never mind me,' he replied. 'I'll be busy until bed time. I have to catch up on my Sturch business before report to Olvegssen.'

'And I'll bet you're happy you have to,' she said. 'I was looking forward to a nice talk. After all, you haven't said a word of your trip to the Preserve.'

He did not reply.

She said, 'You needn't bite your lip at me!'

He took a portrait of Sigmen down from the wall and unfolded it on a chair. Then he swung down his projector-magnifier from the wall, inserted the letter in it, and set the controls. After putting on his unscrambling goggles and sticking the phone in his ear, he sat down in the chair. He grinned as he did so. Mary must have seen the grin, and she probably wondered what caused it, but she did not ask. If she had, she would not have been answered. He could not tell her that he got a certain amusement from sitting on the Forerunner's portrait. She would have been shocked or would have pretended to be, he was never sure about her reactions. In any event, she had no sense of humor worth considering, and he did not intend to tell her anything that would downrate his M.R.

Hal pressed the button that activated the projector and then sat back, though not relaxedly. Immediately, the magnification of the film sprang up on the wall opposite him. Mary, not having goggles on, could see nothing except a blank wall. At the same time, he heard the voice recorded on the film.

First, as always with an official letter, the face of the Forerunner appeared on the wall. The voice said 'Praise to Isaac Sigmen, in whom reality resides and from whom all truth flows! May he bless us, his followers, and confound his enemies, the disciples of the unshib Backrunner!'

There was a pause in the voice and a break in the projection for the viewer to send forth a prayer of his own. Then, a single word – woggle – flashed on the wall, and the speaker continued. 'Devout believer Hal Yarrow:

'Here is the first of a list of words that have appeared recently in the vocabulary of the American-speaking population of the Union. This word – woggle – originated in the Department of Polynesia and spread radially to all the American-speaking peoples of the departments of North America, Australia, Japan and China. Strangely, it has not yet made an appearance in the Department of South America, which, as you doubtless know, is contiguous to North America.'

Hal Yarrow smiled, though there was a time when statements of this type had enraged him. When would the senders of these letters ever realize that he was not only a highly educated man but a broadly educated one, too? In this particular case, even the semiliterates of the lower classes should know where South America was, for the reason that the Forerunner had many times mentioned that continent in his The Western Talmud and The Real World and Time. It was true, however, that the schoolteachers of the unpros might never have thought to point out the location of South America to their pupils, even if they themselves knew.

'Woggle,' continued the speaker, 'was first reported on the island of Tahiti. This island lies in the center of the Polynesian Department and is inhabited by people descended from Australians who colonized it after the Apocalyptic War. Tahiti is, at present, used as a military spaceship base.