He was also taught the social advantages of conspicuous desensitization.
He learned many things about physical love which he had dimly suspected, and still more things which no one had suspected.
It was intimidating knowledge. Toms had imagined himself to be at least an adequate lover. Now he found that he knew nothing, nothing at all, and that his best efforts had been comparable to the play of amorous hippopotami.
“But what else could you expect’” Varris asked. “Good lovemaking, Toms, calls for more study, more sheer intensive labor than any other acquired skill. Do you still wish to learn?”
“Definitely!” Toms said. “Why, when I’m an expert on lovemaking, I’ll—I can—”
“That is no concern of mine,” the old man stated. “Let’s return to our lessons.”
Next, Toms learned the Cycles of Love. Love, he discovered, is dynamic, constantly rising and falling, and doing so in definite patterns. There were fifty-two major patterns, three hundred and six minor patterns, four general exceptions, and nine specific exceptions.
Toms learned them better than his own name.
He acquired the uses of the Tertiary Touch. And he never forgot the day he was taught what a bosom really was like.
“But I can’t say that!” Toms objected, appalled.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Varris insisted.
“No! I mean—yes, I suppose it is. But it’s unflattering.”
“So it seems. But examine, Toms. Is it actually unflattering?”
Toms examined and found the compliment that lies beneath the insult, and so he learned another facet of the Language of Love.
Soon he was ready for the study of the Apparent Negations. He discovered that for every degree of love, there is a corresponding degree of hate, which is in itself a form of love. He came to understand how valuable hate is, how it gives substance and body to love, and how even indifference and loathing have their place in the nature of love.
Varris gave him a ten-hour written examination, which Toms passed with superlative marks. He was eager to finish, but Varris noticed that a slight tic had developed in his student’s left eye and that his hands had a tendency to shake.
“You need a vacation,” the old man informed him.
Toms had been thinking this himself. “You may be right,” he said, with barely concealed eagerness. “Suppose I go to Cythera V for a few weeks.”
Varris, who knew Cythera’s reputation, smiled cynically. “Eager to try out your new knowledge?”
“Well, why not? Knowledge is to be used.”
“Only after it’s mastered.”
“But I have mastered it! Couldn’t we call this field work? A thesis, perhaps?”
“No thesis is necessary,” Varris said.
“But damn it all,” Toms exploded, “I should do a little experimentation! I should find out for myself how all this works. Especially Approach 33-CV. It sounds fine in theory, but I’ve been wondering how it works out in actual practice. There’s nothing like direct experience, you know, to reinforce—”
“Did you journey all this way to become a super-seducer?” Varris asked, with evident disgust.
“Of course not,” Toms said. “But a little experimentation wouldn’t—”
“Your knowledge of the mechanics of sensation would be barren, unless you understand love, as well. You have progressed too far to be satisfied with mere thrills.”
Toms, searching his heart, knew this to be true. But he set his jaw stubbornly. “I’d like to find out that for myself, too.”
“You may go,” Varris said, “but don’t come back. No one will accuse me of loosing a callous scientific seducer upon the galaxy.”
“Oh, all right. To hell with it. Let’s get back to work.”
“No. Look at yourself! A little more unrelieved studying, young man, and you will lose the capacity to make love. And wouldn’t that be a sorry state of affairs?”
Toms agreed that it certainly would be.
“I know the perfect spot,” Varris told him, “for relaxation from the study of love.”
They entered the old man’s spaceship and journeyed five days to a small unnamed planetoid. When they landed, the old man took Toms to the bank of a swift flowing river, where the water ran fiery red, with green diamonds of foam. The trees that grew on the banks of that river were stunted and strange, and colored vermilion. Even the grass was unlike grass, for it was orange and blue.
“How alien!” gasped Toms.
“It is the least human spot I’ve found in this humdrum corner of the galaxy,” Varris explained. “And believe me, I’ve done some looking.”
Toms stared at him, wondering if the old man was out of his mind. But soon he understood what Varris meant.
For months he had been studying human reactions and human feelings, and rounding it all was the now suffocating feeling of soft human fit ii. fie had immersed himself in humanity, studied it, bathed in it, eaten and drunk and dreamed it. It was a relief to be here, where the water ran red and the trees were stunted and strange and vermilion, and the grass was orange and blue, and there was no reminder of Earth.
Toms and Varris separated, for even each other’s humanity was a nuisance. Toms spent his days wandering along the river edge, marveling at the flowers which moaned when he came near them. At night, three wrinkled moons played tag with each other, and the morning sun was different from the yellow sun of Earth.
At the end of a week, refreshed and renewed, Toms and Varris returned to G’cel, the Tyanian city dedicated to the study of love.
Toms was taught the five hundred and six shades of Love Proper, from the first faint possibility to the ultimate feeling, which is so powerful that only five men and one woman have experienced it, and the strongest of them survived less than an hour.
Under the tutelage of a bank of small, interrelated calculators, he studied the intensification of love.
He learned all of the thousand different sensations of which the human body is capable, and how to augment them, and how to intensify them until they become unbearable, and how to make the unbearable bearable, and finally pleasurable, at which point the organism is not far from death.
After that, he was taught some things which have never been put into words and, with luck, never will.
“And that,” Varris said one day, “is everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, Toms. The heart has no secrets from you. Nor, for that matter, has the soul, or mind, or the viscera. You have mastered the Language of Love. Now return to your young lady.”
“I will!” cried Toms. “At last she will know!”
“Drop me a postcard,” Varris said. “Let me know how you’re getting on.”
“I’ll do that,” Toms promised. Fervently he shook his teacher’s hand and departed for Earth.
At the end of the long trip, Jefferson Toms hurried to Doris’ home. Perspiration beaded his forehead and his hands were shaking. He was able to classify the feeling as Stage Two Anticipatory Tremors, with mild masochistic overtones. But that didn’t help—this was his first field work and he was nervous. Had he mastered everything?
He rang the bell.
She opened the door and Toms saw that she was more beautiful than he had remembered, her eyes smoky-gray and misted with tears, her hair the color of a rocket exhaust, her figure slight but sweetly curved. He felt again the lump in his throat and sudden memories of autumn, evening, rain, and candlelight.
“I’m back,” he croaked.
“Oh, Jeff,” she said, very softly. “Oh, Jeff.”
Toms simply stared, unable to say a word.
“It’s been so long, Jeff, and I kept wondering if it was all worth it. Now I know.”
“You—know?”
“Yes, my darling! I waited for you! I’d wait a hundred years, or a thousand! I love you, Jeff!”