It came to him that this was an opportunity he should be taking advantage of, instead of spending it necking. No matter how desperately Nefertiti Tubber might be in need of practice.
He said, “Look Nefertiti… by the way, did you know the original bearer of your name was the most beautiful woman in antiquity?”
“No,” she sighed. She snuggled his arm more tightly around her waist. “Tell me more.”
He said, “I suppose your father gave you the name because Nefertiti’s husband, Amenhotep, was the first pharaoh to teach that there was only one god.” Ed Wonder had picked up that bit of knowledge from Professor Varley Dee on the Far Out Hour one night. A religious twitch guest had been of the belief that the Hebrews had been the first to teach monotheism.
“Well, no,” she said. “Actually, it was a press agent. My real name is Sue.”
“Press agent!”
“Ummm,” she said distantly, as though impatient of talk. “Back when I was a stripper.”
“Back when you were WHAT?”
“Doing a strip tease act, on the Borsch Circuit.”
Ed Wonder sat belt upright. His eyes goggled her. “Listen,” he said desperately. “I’m hearing things wrong. I could have sworn you said you were a strip teaser on the Borsch Circuit.”
“Ummm, put your arm around me again, Edward. That was before my father rescued me and brought me to Elysium.”
Ed knew that the best possible thing he could do was change the subject. Change it to anything. But he couldn’t. Any more than he could have kept from wrigging a loose tooth with his tongue, no matter what the pain.
“You mean to tell me that your father allowed you to do a strip tease act, on the Borsch Circuit or anywhere else?”
“Oh, that was before he was my father.”
Ed Wonder closed his eyes, resigned to anything.
Nefertiti summed it up quickly. “I was an orphan and, well, sort of kid-crazy to get into show business. So I ran away from the orphanage and lied about my age. I was fifteen. And, well, finally I got a job with a troupe doing real live shows. I was booked as Nefertiti the Modest, the girl who blushes all over. But we didn’t do so well, because who wants to see real live shows any more when all the truly good acts are on TV? Anyway, to make it short…”
“The shorter the better,” Ed muttered.
“…father rescued me.” Her tone went apologetic. “It was the first time I heard him speak in wrath. Then he brought me here, and sort of adopted me.”
Ed didn’t ask what sort of adopted meant. He said, “The first time you heard him speak in wrath? What did he do?”
Nefertiti said uncomfortably, “Uhh, he kind of burned the nightclub building down. Sort of, uhh, like a bolt of lightning, kind of.”
He brought his twirling mind back to approximate place and present, with a great effort. He simply had to use this opportunity to advantage. He couldn’t sit here and blabber as these curves were thrown at him.
“Look,” he said firmly, disengaging his hand from hers and half-turning to stare at her levelly, seriously, “I didn’t come here just to see you.”
“You didn’t?” There was hurt in her face.
“Well, not entirely,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve been given a very responsible job by the government, Nefertiti. Very responsible. Part of my duty is to find out… well, to find out more about your father and this movement of his.”
“Oh, wonderful. Then you’ll have to spend a great deal of time here in Elysium.”
He kept himself from answering with an emphatic negative to that and said, “Now, to start at beginnings. I’m a little confused about this new religion your father is trying to spread.”
“But about what, Edward? It’s perfectly simple. Father says all great religions are quite simple, at least before they are corrupted.”
“Well, for instance, who is this All-Mother you’re always talking about?”
“Why, you are, Edward.”
11
After a long moment, Ed Wonder opened his eyes again. He said, slowly, “I keep getting the impression that every other sentence is being left out of this conversation. What in the name of Mountain Moving Mohammed are you talking about?”
“The All-Mother. You’re the All-Mother, I’m the All-Mother, that little bird singing out there, it’s the All-Mother. The All-Mother is everything. The All-Mother is life. That’s the way father explains it.”
“You mean, something like Mother Nature?” Ed said with a certain relief.
“Exactly like Mother Nature. The All-Mother is transcendent. We pilgrims on the path to Elysium aren’t so primitive as to believe in a, well, god. Not a personal, individual god. If we must use such terms, and evidently we do, in order to spread our message, then we must use All-Mother as a symbol of all life. Father says that woman was man’s earliest symbol when searching for spiritual values. The Triple Goddess, the White Goddess was all but universal in the first civilizations. Even down into modern times, Mary has almost been deified by Christians. Note that even atheists refer to Mother Nature, rather than Father Nature. Father says that those religions that have degraded women, such as the Moslems, are contemptible and invariably reactionary.”
“Oh,” Ed Wonder said. He knuckled his chin ruefully. “I suppose you people aren’t quite as kooky as I first had figured out.”
Nefertiti Tubber hadn’t heard that. Her face was twisted thoughtfully. “We could probably have that cottage, up next to the laboratory,” she said.
The import of that didn’t get through to him at first. “Laboratory?” he said.
“Ummm, where Doctor Wetzler is working on his cure.”
“Wetzler! You don’t mean…”
“Ummm, Felix Wetzler.”
“You mean Felix Wetzler is up here in this backwoods… that is, in this little community?”
“Of course. They had him working on some sort of pills to give women curly hair, or something. So he gave up in disgust and came here.”
“Felix Wetzler, working up here. Balls of fire, he’s the most famous… What kind of a cure is he working on?”
“For death. We could have the cottage right next to him. It will be finished in a day or two. And…”
Ed Wonder shot quickly to his feet. It had got through to him now. “Look,” he said hurriedly. “Like I told you, I’ve got this important government assignment. I have to see your father.”
She was unhappy, but she stood too. “When will you be back, Ed?”
“Well, I don’t know. You know how it is. The government. I’m working directly under Dwight Hopkins himself. Duty first. All that sort of kookery.” He began edging toward the door.
She followed him. At the door she held up her face again, for his kiss. “Edward, do you know when I fell in love with you?”
“Well, no,” he said hurriedly. “I wouldn’t know when that happened.”
“When I heard them calling you little Ed. You don’t like to be called Little Ed. But they all call you that. They don’t care that you hate it, they don’t even know you do.”
He looked into her. Suddenly everything was different He said, “You never called me that.”
“No.”
He bent down and kissed her again. She didn’t seem to need practice as much as he had thought earlier. He tried again, just to be sure. She hardly needed practice at all.
Ed said, “I’ll be back.”
“Of course.”