Margaret St. Clair

“ Ericson had been able to get his fever-racked body back to civilization alive. But it had been at the cost of slavish addiction to the drug.
And now Mnathl—bless her greenish skin and queer flat eyes—was offering him a journey to the mysterious heart of the minor polar continent. Offering it to him on a silver platter. A piece of original ethnographic research. He had been ungrateful and a fool. "You like good," she had said. Well, she ought to know.
The effects of the drug she had pricked his arm with must be wearing off. Ericson found he could smile. "Why are we going to Dridihad, Mnathl?" ”

“ Ericson, at the thought, felt sweat break out on his upper lip. What he had endured had been just at the edge of what a man could stand and still live. (His ordeal, had he known it, had been very much less than it would have been had he taken the drug cure in the hospital in Penhairn. Mnathl, though she had not disdained the help of terrestrial science, knew things about the Fyhonese flora and its properties that no terrestrial even suspected. Still, the ordeal had been bad enough.) Ericson shifted his position and sighed. ”

“ He could see his actions and his movements with absolute clarity, but he had nothing to do with them.
"You like see Dridihad," Mnathl said.
"All sorts of things for eth—ethnog—for man like you to look at. Come on. You like good." She started along a shadowy, green-roofed trail.
While Ericson watched with resentful detachment, his body began obediently to follow her. Speech as well as volition had deserted him, and all he could do was to move silently in her steps.
As mile succeeded silent mile, memory and common sense came to his aid. ”

“ Ericson mounted one of them, and Mnathl, tucking up her skirts, bestrode another. With two attendants they rode circuitously through Dridihad and out into the high plain.
The variety and abundance of game were amazing. There seemed to be more animals than there were trees, and they came in all sizes, shapes, colors, and coats. There was even a big blue-hued thing that reminded the young man a little of a kangaroo. ”

“ Listen, Mnathl, I'm terribly grateful to you for what you've done for me. I never can thank you enough. But I couldn't go to Dridihad now, wherever it is. I'd need equipment—cameras, notebooks, guns, a tent. Right now I've got to go back to Penhairn, see about getting a job."
"All sorts of things to see," Mnathl said. She edged up to him. "You like. You like good." There was a prick in his arm. Mnathl had made other things in her cooking pots the last few days beside soup.
Ericson felt a peculiar glassy lethargy creeping over him. ”

“ Ericson got up obediently. "Are we going back to Penhairn?" he asked.
The corners of Mnathl's mouth twitched. "No," she said. "Way on up. On in. In Dridihad." She pointed with her thumb.
Ericson stared at her. "Dridihad?" he said. He'd heard the name before. It was ... now wait ... yes, it was the name the natives applied to the heart of the almost unknown South Polar Minor continent. "I can't go there. I've got to go back to Penhairn, now that I'm well. I've three years of byhror addiction to make up."
Mnathl's eyes narrowed. "Dridihad," she repeated stubbornly. ”

“ Mnathl—he knew, somehow, that that was her name. Didn't he remember her from the other side of the gulf in his memory, from the days when he had begged food in the streets of Penhairn? Mnathl handed him a nicely-roasted bosula rib. He ate it avidly. He had always thought the bosula was the best of the food animals of Fyhon. ”

“ It ended with the sacrifice of an animal like a bosula; while two attendants held it, Mnathl cut its throat, caught the blood in a cup, and poured it on the altar fire Then she roasted pieces of the meat over the coals and dealt them out among the celebrants of the ceremony, partaking first herself. None of the collops was offered to Ericson; but, then, he could hardly be considered a communicant of the religion of the Deidrithes, whatever it was. ”

“ Mnathl had come to him one day when he was sitting on the dock in Penhairn and told him they were going to Lake Tanais. He had got up and gone with her obediently; a byhror addict has little will of his own. ”

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