Margaret St. Clair by The Best of Margaret St. Clair

rise of the government-sponsored cult of feminine modesty, chastity and brainlessness in the late 1980’s had put an end to all that. Nowadays a woman was a cross between a dripping sponge and a vegetable.
    Mrs. Pettit came waddling up. She had been lingering within earshot behind a tree in the park. “What have you been saying to Vela, son?” she demanded. “The poor girl! I won’t have you upsetting her.”
    “I’m not upsetting her,” Henry replied morosely. “She’s upsetting herself. Excuse me. I’m going over to the laboratory.”
    He got up and started rapidly across the grass.
    “Henry, wait 1 .” his mother shrilled after him. Fortunately he was walking so fast that it was possible for him to pretend that he had not heard.
    After lunch his brother-in-law, Denis Hardy, began on him. Denis went over the history of the last few months relentlessly, from the time the stratoliner Pelican’s life boat had been trapped in the vortex and whirled into Hathor’s universe until the present. He even made a digressi on to consider whether the vortex had been deliberately created or not.
    “Don’t you see,” he finished, “Vela can’t have her baby here. Why, she might —might even have to feed it herself.”
    “Well, what of it?” Henry replied abstractedly. “Women used to do it all the time.” He had had a most interesting morning. He wanted to get back to the laboratory.
    Denis turned an angry red. “You’re disgusting!” he said sharply. “Can’t you keep a civil tongue —” lie bit off the w ords and made an obvious effort at conciliation.
    “Why don’t you want to go home, Pettit? There’s nothing here for a man.”
    “I like it,” Henry answered simply. “Grass, flowers, air —it’s a beautiful place.”
    “That’s not the reason,” Denis replied nastily. His little ramrod of a back grew straighter. “I know what you’re up to in the laboratory. Forbidden research.”
    “Everything was forbidden at home,” Henry answered reasonably. “But we’re not home now. It’s not forbidden here.”
    “Right’s right and wrong’s wrong, no matter where —” Once more Denis controlled himself. The gold braid on his shoulders quivered with effort. “Stay here yourself if you want, then,” he snapped. “But the rest of us don’t share your peculiar tastes. We wa n t to get back to decency, normality. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t use your influence with your scaly friends to have them send us back to Earth?”
    There was — but how could he explain it to Denis? Denis had a mind which, even for the second offic er of a stratosphere liner, was limited. How could Henry make him understand how horrible mental contact with Hathor was?
    It was not that Hathor was malignant or even unkind. Henry had a faint but positive impression of benignity in his dealings with her . But the words with which the human mind bridges gulfs —when, who, where —became, when one was in contact with Hathor, the gulfs themselves.
    To ask her when something had happened was to reel dizzily into the vastest of all enigmas for humanity —the nature of time itself. The question, “What is it?” forced the questioner to contemplate the cloudy, chilling riddle of his own personal identity. And even, “Where?” brought up a panorama of planes of being stretching out to infinity.
    In between times it was not so bad. When Henry had not seen Hathor for several days he was almost able to convince himself that he was not afraid of her. Then he would need something in the laboratory, go to see her to ask for it and come back from the interview sick and sha k ing, swearing that nothing —nothing —would induce him to plunge once more into the vast icy reaches of her inhuman intelligence.
    He hunted for a reason Denis would understand. “It’s no use asking her,” he said finally. “Vela is going to have a child no w and so Hathor would never let you go.”
    “But that’s just why we want to go