At last he spied Honeybloom’s solitary lean-to. An old woman was there, chewing on a reptile hide to make it workable for clothing. Tedious labor, hard on the teeth.
Old woman? No, she was too familiar. This was Honeybloom! Her hair had faded, the once-brilliant red becoming listless brown. Her glowing green skin had faded almost to Earthly white. Her upright virginal breasts had converted to the elongated dugs of the nursing mother. Her loveliness had been masked by the early wrinkles and sags of ill health and hard work and desolation. Her teeth were stained by the juices of the hides she had chewed. She was no beauty any more.
A pang as of the penetration of a knife stabbed Flint Here was the realization of the Tarot’s Three of Gas—terrible sorrow to his loved one. A heart pierced by three swords: the loss of her lover, the birthing of a bastard, and expulsion from the tribe. She might as well have died—except for her duty to the baby.
He had deliberately put Llyana the Undulant of Spica into a similar situation, never suspecting that its horrors were being concurrently visited on his own fiancée. The alien female had deserved it, and perhaps Flint himself also deserved this retribution of fate—but why had it been visited not on him but on poor gentle Honeybloom?
At least she had shown her mettle by carrying on, by surviving despite the callousness of her society. She would have made a good, durable wife, able to endure bad times as well as good. She had had more than mere beauty to recommend her; in this the Shaman had been wrong.
Of course he could right the matter now, by coming back to her in his own body. But now he knew that the authorities of Imperial Earth would never permit that. There was no one else in the Sphere whose Kirlian aura approached Flint’s own; no one who could do the job he could do. And that job had to be done, lest the entire galaxy be destroyed by the Andromedans. Then there would be no life at all for Honeybloom—or anyone.
He could arrange to have her moved to a more civilized planet, where no stigma would attach to her. But she was a creature of Outworld; she could not be happy anywhere else. She had not even departed any farther than necessary from her tribe; how could she tolerate removal from her world?
The Tarot had spoken truly: there was nothing but sorrow here, and he was powerless to abate it. This misery had been set the moment Star Sol had projected its omen of eclipse to touch his life. He was the victim of fate. He—and those close to him.
But he could alleviate it somewhat. He moved on to the lean-to.
Honeybloom looked up listlessly. Her eyes seemed washed out, and there were cry-wrinkles around them.
“I bear a message… from Flint,” Flint said.
“Flint!” she exclaimed, and for an instant animation brought her beauty back. But it dissipated quickly. “I am weary of this teasing. Flint will never come back.”
There was only one way to end it. And it had to be ended. “He spoke to an official of Imperial Earth, just before he died—”
“Died!” she cried, horrified.
“—honorably, in the line of his duty to his Sphere. Hunting a monster.” The monster of Galaxy Andromeda—but no use to attempt to explain that to her. “He said: ‘Tell my dear wife Honeybloom of Outworld that I love her, and bequeath to my son my name and trade. Let him be a flintsmith.’ ”
“But Flint did not marry—”
That was one of her faults: she was honest. “I only repeat the message,” Flint said. “You are listed in Imperial records as his common-law wife. Because he died as an officer of Imperial Earth, you are now entitled to his pension.”
She stared, amazed. “But—”
“It will not be a great amount, but it will enable you to resume residence within the tribe. As his acknowledged widow, you have no stigma; you may marry again if you wish. In that event the pension will accrue directly to his son, until he comes of age.”
“You mock me!” she cried, tears flowing. They were not pretty tears, but grief tears. How she had suffered!
She did not believe him—and why should she? “He also said, ‘My finger is still stiff.’ I don’t know what that means.”
But she knew what it meant. She flushed—and believed. For none but the two of them knew about the stiff-finger hex she had laid on him for the too-intimate poke he had given her lush posterior as she slept among the juiceberries. And of course more had stiffened than the finger. It was the kind of detail only the real Flint would remember or remark upon.
“All you have to do is apply at the Imperial office,” Flint said. “The forms have been approved. That is the end of my message.” He turned to go.
“Wait, stay!” she exclaimed, all aflutter with the abrupt change in her fortune. “I have juiceberries… you must be hungry…”
“The bearer of bad news may not eat with the bereaved,” he said, quoting a tribal maxim.
She paused. “It is bad news.” Yet she did not seem mortified. The truth was, Flint’s unexplained absence had been worse than his death, for by his death he had given her legitimacy. She was not glad for his death, and he knew she loved him—but by accepting his death she also accepted his love for her, expressed as part of that message of death.
How truly the Tarot had spoken when it signaled death in his future—but called it also a transformation. He had thought to die in Polaris Sphere, and had not; now he knew for what his death had been saved. This transformation would right things as no ordinary death could have done. Everyone in the tribe knew he had not married Honeybloom—but she would now be a comparatively wealthy woman, if no one objected—and to object would be to call the dead Flint a liar. No one wanted Flint’s ghost to return for vengeance against that slight, so no one would say a word. Especially since the records of Imperial Earth would provide legitimacy. Flint had been a powerful man in life, quick and sure with his weapons; he would be a terror in death.
As his widow, Honeybloom would have to become the wife of the Chief, who took care of all widows in accordance with tribal custom. Since most widows were old—at least a year, equivalent to thirty Earth-years—she would receive more attention than the others. She would never be as lovely as she had been, but even her secondary bloom would be a marvelous thing, for she was full-bodied and gentle.
Now Flint’s son would be legitimate, and perhaps grow up to be the leader of the tribe, for he would be stepson to the Chief and surely among the strongest and most skillful, as Flint had been. Yes, it was best this way.
But now, too, Flint could never return, even if he completed all his missions for the Sphere. This tribal life, and indeed Outworld itself, was forever behind him. That hurt.
He left Honeybloom, made his way to the grave of Old Snort the dinosaur for a sympathetic word, and finally sought out the old Shaman. It was night before he found the half-blind Earthman on the hill, squinting at the stars.
“Shaman, I grieve,” Flint said, sitting down beside the white old man.
“All life is grief,” the other agreed. Tribesmen often came to him for advice and magic; that was his job in this primitive society. “I perceive you have suffered grievously indeed—and I regret that no spell of mine can give you back your lost arm or do more than alleviate the pain in your foot.”
“It is not for my arm I grieve, but for myself,” Flint said. “For I am dead. I died today to spare my son the shame of bastardy. Did I do right?”
“You are but a child! How can you speak of dying?”
“I speak as messenger for one far removed. I am a ghost.”
“A ghost.” The dim old eyes tried to penetrate Flint’s expression for a moment, then peered uselessly into the night sky. “We are the eye of Draco the Dragon, once the Pole Star as seen from Earth, now its farthest recognized colony. Yet there was another dragon, long ago. Draco the Greek legislator. In 621 B.C. he was given authority to codify the laws of the city of Athens, so as to alleviate the need for private individual revenge for wrongs. This he did—but his code was so severe that it was said to have been written in letters of blood.”