The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis

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      Chapter Seven

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      In all the circumstances it would have been reasonable to expect that Weston would be much more taken aback at Ransom’s presence than Ransom could be at his. But if he were, he showed no sign of it, and Ransom could hardly help admiring the massive egoism which enabled this man in the very moment of his arrival on an unknown world to stand there unmoved in all his authoritative vulgarity, his arms akimbo, his face scowling, and his feet planted as solidly on that unearthly soil as if he had been standing with his back to the fire in his own study. Then, with a shock, he noticed that Weston was speaking to the Lady in the Old Solar language with perfect fluency. On Malacandra, partly from incapacity, and much more from his contempt for the inhabitants, he had never acquired more than a smattering of it. Here was an inexplicable and disquieting novelty. Ransom felt that his only advantage had been taken from him. He felt that he was now in the presence of the incalculable. If the scales had been suddenly weighted in this one respect, what might come next?

      He awoke from his abstraction to find that Weston and the Lady had been conversing fluently, but without mutual understanding. “It is no use,” she was saying. “You and I are not old enough to speak together, it seems. The sea is rising; let us go back to the islands. Will he come with us, Piebald?”

      “Where are the two fishes?” said Ransom.

      “They will be waiting in the next bay,” said the Lady.

      “Quick, then,” said Ransom to her; and then, in answer to her look: “No, he will not come.” She did not, presumably, understand his urgency, but her eye was on the sea and she understood her own reason for haste. She had already begun to ascend the side of the valley, with Ransom following her, when Weston shouted, “No, you don’t.” Ransom turned and found himself covered by a revolver. The sudden heat which swept over his body was the only sign by which he knew that he was frightened. His head remained clear.

      “Are you going to begin in this world also by murdering one of its inhabitants?” he asked.

      “What are you saying?” asked the Lady, pausing and looking back at the two men with a puzzled, tranquil face.

      “Stay where you are, Ransom,” said the Professor. “That native can go where she likes; the sooner the better.”

      Ransom was about to implore her to make good her escape when he realised that no imploring was needed. He had irrationally supposed that she would understand the situation; but apparently she saw nothing more than two strangers talking about something which she did not at the moment understand—that, and her own necessity of leaving the Fixed Land at once.

      “You and he do not come with me, Piebald?” she asked.

      “No,” said Ransom, without turning round. “It may be that you and I shall not meet soon again. Greet the King for me if you find him and speak of me always to Maleldil. I stay here.”

      “We shall meet when Maleldil pleases,” she answered, “or if not, some greater good will happen to us instead.” Then he heard her footsteps behind him for a few seconds, and then he heard them no more and knew he was alone with Weston.

      “You allowed yourself to use the word Murder just now, Dr. Ransom,” said the Professor, “in reference to an accident that occurred when we were in Malacandra. In any case, the creature killed was not a human being. Allow me to tell you that I consider the seduction of a native girl as an almost equally unfortunate way of introducing civilisation to a new planet.”

      “Seduction?” said Ransom. “Oh, I see. You thought I was making love to her.”

      “When I find a naked civilised man embracing a naked savage woman in a solitary place, that is the name I give to it.”

      “I wasn’t embracing her,” said Ransom dully, for the whole business of defending himself on this score seemed at that moment a mere weariness of the spirit. “And no one wears clothes here. But what does it matter? Get on with the job that brings you to Perelandra.”

      “You ask me to believe that you have been living here with that woman under these conditions in a state of sexless innocence?”

      “Oh, sexless!” said Ransom disgustedly. “All right, if you like. It’s about as good a description of living in Perelandra as it would be to say that a man had forgotten water because Niagara Falls didn’t immediately give him the idea of making it into cups of tea. But you’re right enough if you mean that I have had no more thought of desiring her than—than . . .” Comparisons failed him and his voice died. Then he began again: “But don’t say I’m asking you to believe it, or to believe anything. I am asking you nothing but to begin and end as soon as possible whatever butcheries and robberies you have come to do.”

      Weston eyed him for a moment with a curious expression: then, unexpectedly, he turned his revolver to its holster.

      “Ransom,” he said, “you do me a great injustice.”

      For several seconds there was silence between them. Long breakers with white woolpacks of foam on them were now rolling into the cove exactly СКАЧАТЬ