The music slowed, settled; it had been met, matched, answered.Her garment, as if alive, crept back into the more sedate folds itoriginally held.

She dropped low, lower, to the floor. Her head fell upon herraised knees. She did not move.

There was silence.

I realized, from the ache across my shoulders, how tensely I had beensitting. My armpits were wet. Rivulets had been running down mysides. What did one do now? Applaud?

I sought M'Cwyie from the corner of my eye. She raised her righthand.

As if by telepathy the girl shuddered all over and stood. Themusicians also rose. So did M'Cwyie.

I got to my feet, with a Charley Horse in my left leg, and said,"It was beautiful," inane as that sounds.

I received three different High Forms of "thank you."

There was a flurry of color and I was alone again with M'Cwyie.

"That is the one hundred-seventeenth of the two thousand, twohundred-twenty-four danced of Locar."

I looked down at her.

"Whether Locar was right or wrong, he worked out a fine reply tothe inorganic."

She smiled.

"Are the dances of your world like this?"

"Some of them are similar. I was reminded of them as I watchedBraxa-but I've never seen anything exactly like hers."

"She is good," M'Cwyie said. "She knows all the dances."

A hint of her earlier expression which had troubled me...

It was gone in an instant.

"I must tend my duties now." She moved to the table and closedthe books. "M'narra."

"Good-bye." I slipped into my boots.

"Good-bye, Gallinger."

I walked out the door, mounted the jeepster, and roared across theevening into night, my wings of risen desert flapping slowly behindme.

I had just closed the door behind Betty, after a brief grammarsession, when I heard the voices in the hall. My vent was opened afraction, so I stood there and eavesdropped;

Morton's fruity treble: "Guess what? He said `hello' to me awhileago."

"Hmmph!" Emory's elephant lungs exploded. "Either he's slipping,or you were standing in his way and he wanted you to move."

"Probably didn't recognize me. I don't think he sleeps any more,now he has that language to play with. I had night watch last week,and every night I passed his door at 0300--I always heard that recordergoing. At 0500 when I got off, he was still at it."

"The guy is working hard," Emory admitted, grudgingly. "Infact, I think he's taking some kind of dope to keep awake. He lookssort of glassy-eyed these days. Maybe that's natural for a poet,though."

Betty had been standing there, because she broke in then:

"Regardless of what you think of him, it's going to take me atleast a year to learn what he's picked up in three weeks. And I'mjust a linguist, not a poet."

Morton must have been nursing a crush on her bovine charms. It'sthe only reason I can think of for his dropping his guns to say whathe did.

"I took a course in modern poetry when I was back at theuniversity," he began. "We read six authors--Yeats, Pound, Eliot,Crane, Stevens, and Gallinger--and on the last day of the semester,when the prof was feeling a little rhetorical, he said, `These sixnames are written on the century, and all the gates of criticism andhell shall not prevail on them.'

"Myself," he continued, "I thought his Pipes of Krishna and hisMadrigals were great. I was honored to be chosen for an expeditionhe was going on.

"I think he's spoken two dozen words to me since I met him," hefinished.

The Defense: "Did it ever occur to you," Betty said, "that hemight be tremendously self-conscious about his appearance? He wasalso a precocious child, and probably never even had school friends.He's sensitive and very introverted."

"Sensitive? Self-conscious?" Emory choked and gagged. "The manis as proud as Lucifer, and he's a walking insult machine. You pressa button like `Hello' or `Nice day' and he thumbs his nose at you.He's got it down to a reflex."

They muttered a few other pleasantries and drifted away.

Well bless you, Morton boy. You little pimple-faced, Ivy-bredconnoisseur! I've never taken a course in my poetry, but I'm gladsomeone said that. The Gates of Hell. Well now! Maybe Daddy'sprayers got heard somewhere, and I am a missionary, after all!

Only...

...Only a missionary needs something to convert people to. Ihave my private system of esthetics, and I suppose it oozes an ethicalby-product somewhere. But if I ever had anything to preach, really,even in my poems, I wouldn't care to preach it to such low-lifes asyou. If you think I'm a slob, I'm also a snob, and there's no roomfor you in my Heaven--it's a private place, where Swift, Shaw, andPetronius Arbiter come to dinner.

And oh, the feasts we have! The Trimalchio's, the Emory's wedissect!

We finish you with the soup, Morton!

I turned and settled at my desk. I wanted to write something.Ecclesiastes could take a night off. I wanted to write a poem, a poemabout the one hundred-seventeenth dance of Locar; about a rosefollowing the light, traced by the wind, sick, like Blake's rose,dying...

I found a pencil and began.

When I had finished I was pleased. It wasn't great--at least, itwas no greater than it needed to be--High Martian not being mystrongest tongue. I groped, and put it into English, with partialrhymes. Maybe I'd stick it in my next book. I called it Braxa:

I put it away and found some phenobarbitol. I was suddenly tired.

When I showed my poem to M'Cwyie the next day, she read it throughseveral times, very slowly.

"It is lovely," she said. "But you used three words from your ownlanguage. `Cat' and `dog', I assume, are two small animals with ahereditary hatred for one another. But what is `flower'?"

"Oh," I said. "I've never come across your word for `flower', butI was actually thinking of an Earth flower, the rose."

"What is it like?"

"Well, its petals are generally bright red. That's what I meant,on one level, by `burning heads.' I also wanted it to imply fever,though, and red hair, and the fire of life. The rose, itself, has athorny stem, green leaves, and a distinct, pleasing aroma."

"I wish I could see one."

"I suppose it could be arranged. I'll check."

"Do it, please. You are a--" She used the word for "prophet," orreligious poet, like Isaias or Locar. "--and your poem is inspired. Ishall tell Braxa of it."

I declined the nomination, but felt flattered.

This, then, I decided, was the strategic day, the day on which toask whether I might bring in the microfilm machine and the camera. Iwanted to copy all their texts, I explained, and I couldn't write fastenough to do it.

She surprised me by agreeing immediately. But she bowled me overwith her invitation.

"Would you like to come and stay here while you do this thing?Then you can work day and night, any time you want--except when theTemple is being used, of course."

I bowed.

"I should be honored."

"Good. Bring your machines when you want, and I will show you aroom."

"Will this afternoon be all right?"

"Certainly."

"Then I will go now and get things ready. Until thisafternoon..."

"Good-bye."

I anticipated a little trouble from Emory, but not much. Everyoneback at the ship was anxious to see the Martians, poke needles in theMartians, ask them about Martian climate, diseases, soil chemistry,politics, and mushrooms (our botanist was a fungus nut, but areasonably good guy)--and only four or five had actually gotten to seethem. The crew had been spending most of its time excavating deadcities and their acropolises. We played the game by strict rules, andthe natives were as fiercely insular as the nineteenth-centuryJapanese. I figured I would meet with little resistance, and Ifigured right.