Episode 9 of “Homage to Luxenben”

Now if the reader will indulge me in a bit of literary license, I must throw my narrative into chronological reverse, as it were, and return to the beginning of the pageant.  My reason for doing so is that, from my perspective, what happened during the intermissions was as action-filled as the show itself.

By the conclusion of the first act of the pageant, Matilda’s mood had considerably improved.  On her earlier aerial junket, she had noticed sev­eral Semi acquain­tances dispersed among the crowd.

“Isn’t that nice?” she remarked as the first intermission began. “More turn out every year.  Used to be all they cared about was gulping down three squares a day.  It’s about time they showed a little appreciation for this great planet of ours.”  And with that the old bird took to greeting a couple that she recognized.

“Yoo, hoo! Greta and Eddie!” she called to the pair who were rather unattractively seated on their hind legs, stomachs to the fore, avidly munching away at ice cream cones clutched between their forepaws.

Matty was forever concerned with what she saw as her broader responsibilities as house mother, so it did not surprise me that she felt obliged to socialize with the couple.  She invited me to join her, but I politely declined.  As I have suggested, Semis were a highly varied lot and I don’t mind saying that, despite my being one of them, I found the bulk of them rather disagreeable.  Granted the Luxanders themselves were, to the human eye, of no ordinary mien, but, being all one breed, they took less getting used to.  Once you saw one, you saw them all, so to speak.  No such consistency applied to the popula­tion of Semi-intelli­gents.  Most, to be sure, displayed a physiology and proportion not too distant from that of Earthlings and Luxanders, but one had only to view any assemblage of them to ap­preciate the degree to which evo­lution could be a matter of fit­ful happen­stance.  Just a few minutes earlier, for example, a group of hanging types had been wheeled into the amphitheater on one of their mobile racks.  Some, I noted, seemed nothing more than the most casual assemblage of organs while others, though bet­ter defined, were not, on that account, necessarily less alarming.

Whatever my prejudices, I had made several friends among my fellow boarders in the Upsem Dorm and had no trouble remaining on speaking terms with the rest.  The time might come when I would feel inclined to widen my circle of intimates but I felt under no compul­sion to do so at the present.

Left to my own devices, I turned my attention to the chocolate chip cookies that Matty had thoughtfully pro­tected in a sealed plastic bag from the two dead perch snuggled alongside it in her fanny pack.  Munching on one of the cookies, I reflected on the similarity between the way the Luxanders seemed to ritualize their history and the way we humans did so in the form of, say, Christian passion plays and Jewish Passover seders.  The question was, would this Luxan version prove any more reliable than its Earthling counterparts?  Considering the pageant’s obvious mass appeal, I had my doubts.  The best I could hope for, I decided, was that there would be less emphasis on the perpetuation of angst that played so prominent a part in the religious chronicles on Earth.  After all, the Luxanders had actually benefited from the events being portrayed-a claim that would be a good deal harder to establish on mankind’s side of the fence.

Thoughts of Judaism’s troubled history brought my young friend, Neuman, back to mind and I suddenly realized that whatever Neuman’s situation, it seemed unlikely that he would miss the pageant.  Assuming he had lost two weeks while on display as a new acquisition, he would not yet have qualified as a trusty and therefore would not be allowed to venture out on his own.  Instead it seemed probable that he would be in one of the many chaperoned groups of Semis I had seen enter the Commons and who now made up part of the crowd.  I arose from the blanket and began my search.

It turned out to be more difficult than I had supposed.  Progress through the jostling attendees was slow and questions thrown to Semi after Semi as to the boy’s whereabouts yielded no useful information.  Perhaps it was just a matter of frustration in not finding the boy, but, for the first time, I became apprehensive.  For one thing, the rebuff I received at the Grunt House two days ago had left a lasting and unpleasant impression.  Nor could I completely dismiss the caution implied by the circular I had been handed earlier, Matty’s objections notwithstanding.  Together with these concerns, the information I had received from the clerk at immigration took on a more sinister character.  She had used the word “complications,” and it was not difficult to drum up theories as to what those complications might be.

It would be ironic if I, the stowaway, had sailed through the entrance procedures and Neuman, the accredited passenger, had encountered problems undergoing the same scrutiny.  Perhaps I had been treated so dismissively simply because I was of no use to them-a stray who had wandered onto their reservation and, out of common decency, had to be fed but otherwise ignored.  Neuman, on the other hand, had presumably committed himself to the Luxanders in some way, and so his failure to identify me as an interloper might have struck them as disloyal, just as the captain of the Starbound had warned.  If so, how would the company’s dissatisfaction with its invitee be expressed?

Then there was the matter of Neuman’s impetuosity.  Had he turned his supercritical gaze upon Luxenben and voiced his complaints to one and all in his typically uninhibited fashion?  The Luxan professionals I had come to know seemed imperturbable, but I could well imagine Neuman’s straining their patience to the limit.  And finally there was Neuman’s fanatic commitment to Judaism.  Within days of my arrival, I discovered the religious views universally held by Luxanders to be uncompromisingly anti-theist-hardly an at­mosphere in which my young friend’s religiosity would be welcomed.

These thoughts produced no conclusions and, for all I knew, my fears were self-inflicted.  Neuman could just as well be having the time of his life davening  his head off somewhere.   In any case, my search was foreclosed by a horn flourish signaling the imminent start of the performance.  Although I had not as yet completed my circuit of the amphitheater, I was not at all disappointed by its curtailment.  I was tired of walking and, besides, I now had a much better idea as to how the search could be conducted.

Matilda was hopping angrily about on our blanket when I got back to it.  One look at her and I knew from experience that it would take some time for her to settle down and, for that matter, for her down to settle.  I was able to surmise from her agitated croaks that she had returned from her meeting with Greta and Eddie with doleful news, but before she could even begin to tell me about it, the second act had begun.

*    *    *

As soon as the next intermission began, Matilda could hardly contain herself.  “You just can’t tell, can you?” she protested.

I gathered from the old bird’s body language that she had barely managed to restrain herself during the performance.  Obtaining my willing agreement “that you probably couldn’t,” she went on to relate-now in more con­fiden­tial tones-what poor Greta had confided to her when Eddie toddled off to buy more cones.

“She’s decided on a divorce and now she’s trying to work up the courage to tell him later on this evening.  She says she’s done her best to forgive him but the poor dear just can’t.  Not after what happened!”

“Infidelity?” I guessed, wondering at the same time who or what on Luxenben the hairy little beast could possibly have seduced.

“Indigestion, more likely!” Matty snorted.  “He ate their entire last litter.  The curator is going to be furi­ous.  You know how hard it is to breed Semis in captivity.”

As a matter of fact, I knew very well.  Indeed, I had reached the same conclusion independently some time before.  But before I could state my agreement in appropriately wry terms Matilda impatiently hurried on.

“Well, I wouldn’t put up with it, would you?”

By nature philosophic, as the reader is already aware, my first impression was that there were important implica­tions in Matilda’s simple query that deserved more consider­ation than some knee-jerk response that a right-to-lifer would give.  Granted that Eddie’s behavior sounded extreme at first hearing, it nevertheless raised question as to the extent to which a male may properly exert authority over his progeny.  Eddie’s exercise of that authority incited immedi­ate con­demnation by Matty less, I suspected, out of genuine sorrow for the dispatched litter than out of her ideological devotion to female liberation.

As a member of the male sex, I felt it my duty to consider the issue in an entirely unemotional and impartial frame of mind.  Militant members of the fair sex are forever reminding us of their right of sovereignty over their bodies including whatsoever might be planted therein, much as a landowner would claim title to all improvements thereon.  Should they choose not to nurture, then according to these feminists, they have a perfect right to plow things under, as it were, whatever might be the objections of the industrious sower.  On the other hand, should they choose to nurture, the female prerogative is again held to be absolute and the male help­less to prevent a child he may not want from being pushed up under his very nose.

I would grant that up to the point she has delivered, the female has good argument for her unilateral decision making in these matters on the grounds of her greater biological involvement.  But she does not stop there.  Should the she elect to bear fruit, as is commonly the case, she is near certain to return to the same male whom she had deprived of all authority and thrust upon him financial liability for her license.  This is, in my opinion, morally wrong and legally inconsistent.  Financial rape may not be as reprehensible as the physical sort, but it is inarguably longer lasting.

However she might prefer otherwise, the female, in my opinion, cannot have it both ways.  If the male is expected to maintain her offspring, he is clearly entitled to a voice in the process that produces them.  If he is denied such a voice, then it follows that he is likewise entitled to be relieved of its attendant financial burden.  Given our dispositions, the battle of the sexes is probably unavoidable, but it should be conducted on a level playing field and the combatants required to fight cleanly.

Returning to the case at hand, for all I knew Eddie had been the intended victim of the very kind of myopic female behav­ior just described and that his dining on Greta’s litter had simply been a matter of self-defense.  If my assumptions were correct, then what had first appeared to be a socially unacceptable act was, in fact, courageous.  Indeed, when all the facts were in, Eddie’s response to injustice might come to be seen as having raised eating to a form of civil protest hitherto identified only with fasting-a considerable ac­complishment in its own right.  In any case, I refused to rush to judgment until there had been a more thorough investigation.

“How many?” I asked.

Matilda solemnly raised four claws.

“At one sitting?”

Matilda nodded her beak slowly in affirmation.  “With a six-pack of Old Monks’ Premium,” she added solemnly.  “I ought to go over and see how the poor little thing is coping, don’t you. . .”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Matty,” I interrupted, “but you were with Greta just a little while ago.  Maybe the two of them could use a few minute’s quiet time to work things out on their own.  Have a chance to get over their lovers’ spat.  You know what I mean?”

Having distracted Matilda from one good deed, I did my best to apply her talents to another, more constructive one.  I began by telling her of my frustrating attempt to find Neuman among the crowd.  It was not, I concluded emphatically, a task that could be satisfactorily undertaken on foot.  I paused and stared hopefully into Matilda’s eyes for some sign that she had taken the hint, but saw nothing in those featureless, opalescent orbs but a reflection of the house lights.

“Look,” I went on, “I haven’t seen the kid since we left Earth and I’m frankly worried about him.  He’s probably here tonight.  You know how big a deal the cura­tors made about all of us attending.  Would you look for him?  There’s still plenty of light.”

“I don’t know,” complained Matty.  “I came here to relax.”  In her more stiff-necked moods, she reminded me of nothing so much as a Danish light fixture, but, lest I be misunderstood, let me hasten to add that her day-in, day-out service on behalf of the Semi community surely qualified  her as the most selfless appliance I could ever hope to encounter.

“Which is why you need a little exercise to loosen up,” I argued.

“Seems to me you could use a little exercise yourself.”

“I told you I’ve taken mine already.  I walked my legs off while you were gabbing with Greta.  Now they’re aching like the dickens.”

Upon hearing of my discomfort, Matty immediately shifted into her maternal-healer mode and drew a small bottle of aspirin from her “billfold”-a pelican-like lower beak transformed through evolutionary adaptation into a neatly-partitioned container with spaces for keys, small change, paper currency, family photos, and important documents.  Included in which-if I may digress for a mo­ment-was the yellowed but still-treasured, sole-surviv­ing link with her past: a Grade-A-Ex­tra-Large label that had been found by her Luxan kid­nappers still affixed to her egg.

I gratefully accepted the aspirin tablet and lay back on the blanket to give it time to take effect allowing a low, half-stifled moan to escape my lips as I did so.

“Please, Matty.  All it would take would be a couple of spins over the amphitheater.  He shouldn’t be hard to spot in the crowd.  I bet that from the air uniheads stick out like sore thumbs.  His is covered with lots of thick black hair.  Never combs it.”

“There could be a hundred Semis out there with the same description.”  Despite her sharp tone, I sensed that the good creature was already wavering.

“I forgot to mention earlocks.  How many Semis do you know with earlocks?”

With no more persuasion than I have noted, the good old bird grudgingly accepted the assignment.  This was not the first time that she had been called upon to conduct aerial reconnaissance on missing Semis, she admitted.  Indeed, she had perfected an efficient spiral search pattern for the purpose and expressed confidence that, if Neuman were somewhere in the audience, she would spot him.  With this, Matilda wearily got to her feet, hopped around a bit to warm up, and flew off.

Now having some free time on my hands, I occupied my thoughts by reviewing what I had seen so far.  I had enjoyed it, certainly.  It was easy to commiserate with the Founder and understand why he was so eager to slough off his back-breaking responsibilities to someone, or, at least, something else.  Still, it seemed to me that he took a lot on faith when he did so.  But my qualms notwithstanding, the Luxanders had evidently profited from the trees’ advice and it was clear that the pageant was meant to ceremonialize the occasion on which it was obtained.

The question was what was this system all about?  Hopefully, I would have my answer before the last curtain rung down, but I wasn’t counting on it.  Every contemporary play I had seen on Earth ended in nothing but platitudes.  If the pageant hewed to this formula, it would end with the Founder commending every Luxander to love his neighbor and seek out his own bunch of complaisant shrubbery for further instruction.

In any case, I was more keenly interested than ever in learning about the Luxanders’ belief system, although I was beginning to suspect that it was not going to be a minor undertaking.  Perhaps, as in the scientific deduction of the laws that drove nature herself, everything was for the asking but nothing was readily surrendered for the taking.

As I posed these questions to myself, I turned my head to gaze at the clumps of trees scattered about the surrounding hillsides.  Year after year, they must have been listening to the pageant’s oratory proclaiming their superiority; yet how forbearing they seemed toward the inferior species that swarmed beneath their princely boughs.  Forbearing, I wondered, or merely reconciled to putting up with what they recognized to be a temporary, if irksome, phenomenon?

No sooner had I shifted my gaze from the trees back to the sky above than my vision was suddenly blocked by an animated black cloud immediately above my head.  It was Matty returning just moments before the beginning of the third act.  Her tired, dispirited waddle bespoke failure so unmistakably that I merely mumbled my thanks and let it go at that.  There would be plenty of time to debrief her later.

*    *    *

“Now aren’t you glad I talked you into some exercise?” I asked as the next intermission began.

Having raised the issue, I continued to watch the curtain calls on stage while inclining my head sideways in Matty’s direction to better catch her response.  When it be­came clear that none would be forthcoming, I recalled irri­tably that providing Matilda with a jest was somewhat akin to throwing a lever on a slot machine; one waited for the wheels in her brain to stop spinning and register either ab­solute silence or a chattering payout of croaks.  Something was either funny or it wasn’t, she once told me, so why invent some silly in-between expression that had no useful function?  Besides, even attempting a bemused smile made her beak feel like it was being put under traction.

Turning to face my feathered friend directly, I caught her in the act of unbending her right leg from where it had been drawn tightly across her breast.  The motion, con­ducted as unobtrusively as possible, connoted a sense of guilt.  Evidently, I had been trying to play a machine that was not plugged in.

“I concentrate better on one leg,” was her lame excuse. “Besides, I’ve seen this thing every year since I was a kid.”

Matty gave a cavernous yawn, and, shifting her weight to both legs, hopped about to rouse herself fully.  “I kept looking until the very last minute,” she said blinking apologetically.

I too was beginning to get my fill of the pageant.  It was all very well for Luxanders to sit through an introductory speech plus three long acts when, at any given time, they needed only one head to stand watch while allowing the other to remain on standby.  By alternating these functions, it was clear they could keep listening in­definitely.  The same, obviously, could not be said for Semi mentalities, mine in particular.  But for now I had other concerns.

 ”I’m surprised you couldn’t find him.  I felt sure he’d want to come and, even if he didn’t, they’d force him. They’re so hot on the pageant, you know.  Any chance you might have missed him?”

“I doubt it.  Checked out every Semi I could find.  Pin heads, ovals, bulbs, you name it.  Especially the ones in supervised groups.  From what you told me, I figured there’d be a good chance your friend would be in one of those.  I did spot this one guy in a group from Research.  I recognized their leader.  Anyway this guy was com­pletely bald but, all ’round, he had this funny ring of black hair.  Can’t even imagine what motive evolution would have had for pro­ducing a head like that unless it’s for some kind of sexual display.  Reminded me of a solar eclipse.  Nothing sexy about that.  I’ll have to ask. . .”

“The point is, no Neuman,” I interrupted.  I had heard as much as I wanted of the Semi with the fringe on top.

“You know, for a minute I was sure I’d found him.  There was this one unihead with a lot of black hair-just like you said-thick scarf around his neck though, so I couldn’t tell about earlocks.  Anyway, I swooped down and started shooting my mouth off about how you’re looking for him and how it was a shame you two Earthlings hadn’t gotten together sooner.  I had figured beforehand that he was probably one of those Semis who go into a funk when they get here on account of all the natives having twice as much brain power.  Some of those newcomers get so shook up, you know, they don’t even want to leave their rooms.  So I launch into my stock pep talk about not making a recluse of yourself and that all the Fulls expect of us is to live up to our potential.”

“You can’t resist trying to help, can you?”

“I sure didn’t help this guy.  He didn’t take it so bad but his wife threw a fit.  Turns out one of his heads used to smoke and it got cancerous so they had to am­putate a few weeks ago.  This was his first day out of the hospital and his wife was trying to cheer him up.  Let me tell you, I beat it out of there as fast as my two wings could carry me.  If looks could kill, I never would have made it down the runway.”

Characteristically, Matilda sloughed off the inci­dent without embarrassment.  “If his wife wanted to avoid incidents like that, she should have kept him in the hospital until after he got his prosthesis.”

“They can outfit somebody with a whole head?”

“Yeah.  They come up with a pretty good likeness, too, but the insurance company makes them mould in a king-size cigarette sticking out of the mouth which makes it a dead giveaway.”

“If that doesn’t discourage smoking nothing would.”

“It helps, I suppose.  Not with teenagers, of course.”

Having run out of the night’s adventures to recount, Matilda said she felt duty bound once again to take up her commiserations with poor Greta and with no further warning took off into the evening sky.

Again alone and with time on my hands, I took to musing about a cosmetic prosthesis for myself.  Given my talent for assimilation, perhaps I could one day cross over with only Matty and handful of others the wiser.  I could imagine the look on Neuman’s face when he encountered my two-headed persona strolling about in the gardens whilst examining the inmates with a detached curiosity.

Back on Earth movies invariably portrayed the disabled as having an irre­sis­tible appeal to the opposite sex.  Would this be true here as well? Could I really count on the sympathy of some sweet Luxan thing?  Then there was the problem of having my real head shifted to one shoulder-an operation that even Luxenben’s skilled surgeons might have difficulty with.  And did I really want a useless head bobbing about all the time?  As tantalizing as the idea seemed at first, I reluctantly abandoned it.

The thought of Neuman once again awoke concerns for the boy.  I had no way of accounting for his ab­sence from the pageant other than to imagine that he was in some kind of predicament.  I was considering what I might do about it when my thoughts were interrupted by Matty’s unexpectedly early return.

“How is Greta getting along?” I asked.

“I don’t know.  I couldn’t find her.  I’m really worried.”

“And I’m worried about Neuman.  That’s two missing persons in one night.  You don’t suppose they ran off together?”

“No, and I don’t suppose that’s very funny.”

“Well, don’t worry.  She’s probably around somewhere.”

“No, she’s not!  I looked everywhere,” she snapped.

“Did you see Eddie?”

“Yeah, by the concession stand.  He bought a whole dozen hot dogs all for himself.”

“Where did he say she was?” I asked, beginning to an­tici­pate her concern.

“He didn’t know.  At least that’s what he said.  Claims that where they come from nag­ging is grounds for divorce, so when she started up again about the kids, he told her to shove off.  Then by the time he came back from the stand, she was already gone.  Figures she went back to the dorm.  But I know she wouldn’t leave; Greta loves the pageant.  Anyway, the way I heard it from her, she was going to divorce him.”

“Maybe she demanded custody of the children and he wouldn’t give them up,” I said.

“That’s not funny, either,” she hissed.  “His exact words were about his ‘consummating the divorce.’ I didn’t like the sound of it.  Not one bit.”

“I know what you’re thinking, but he couldn’t have done it and dug into a dozen hot dogs after,” I argued.

“That’s what made me suspicious.   He was only toying with his third.  I’ll bet anything those hot dogs were just his cover,” she insisted.

That was the most incriminating evidence yet, and I be­gan to suspect that Matty’s fears were justified.  In my head I could hear a preacher basing the theme of his eulogy on the family’s being reunited as never before.  Momentarily, it occurred to me that Matty, too, would find the thought comforting, but, on second thought, decided she had probably heard enough of my observations on the subject.  Before I could think of something more appropriate to say, the house lights dimmed signaling the beginning of the fourth act.

*    *    *

The audience’s enthusiasm extended well past the pageant’s conclusion.  No longer contained in their seats, they stood clapping their hands and heads so resoundingly that I feared their owners might suffer concussion.  With no one else evidencing concern, however, I easily dismissed mine and went ahead to add my inconsequential efforts to the general din.  When it seemed these accolades could get no noisier, shouts of “I-am-a-Luxander” poured forth as the cast, one by one, appeared to take their curtain calls.

Confident that the pageant had at last uttered its last, I looked to Matty for some indication as to how soon we might leave, but she was more intent on adding to the clamor than escaping from it.  Poised on tiptoe with her wings partially extended and her neck craned forward, she was gamely doing her one-headed best to compete decibel-wise with her two-headed neighbors.

Moments later, volleys of rockets shot up from all sides of the am­phitheater and wrapped the sky above in satiny, glowing white ribbons of light.  These displays, plus the splattering of great, red spider-shaped flares fired off at the same time, created a huge glistening bowlful of phosphorescence that, seconds later, dumped its white, yellow, vermillion, and then cobalt contents over our heads before dying to an empty black.

Nearly unnerved by the extravagance of this first bar­rage, I watched as we were treated to a second, then a third, and finally a fourth shower of light in quick succes­sion-one for each of the four wheels that I later learned were tied into Luxan religious iconography.

The suddenly rejuvenated band struck up the ever-popular “Luxenben the Rational” and at last the crowd began to disperse.  It was time to go home.

*    *    *