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+Project Gutenberg's The Indulgence of Negu Mah, by Robert Andrew Arthur
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+Title: The Indulgence of Negu Mah
+
+Author: Robert Andrew Arthur
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2007 [EBook #23688]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INDULGENCE OF NEGU MAH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet, July, 1941.
+Extensive research did not reveal any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _In silence Negu Mah and Sliss stood silent gazing
+at the moon drenched field._]
+
+
+
+
+The Indulgence of Negu Mah
+
+by ROBERT ARTHUR
+
+
+In his garden, Negu Mah, the Callisto uranium merchant, sat sipping a
+platinum mug of molkai with his guest, Sliss the Venusian.
+
+Nanlo, his wife, pushing before her the small serving cart with its
+platinum molkai decanter, paused for an instant as she entered the
+shell of pure vitrite which covered the garden, giving it the illusion
+of out-of-doorness.
+
+Negu Mah sat at his ease, his broad, merry, half-Oriental face
+good-humored, his features given a ruddy tinge by the light of rising
+Jupiter, the edge of whose sphere was beginning to dominate the
+horizon. Sliss, the intelligent amphibian, squatted across from him in
+the portable tub of water which he carried with him whenever absent
+from the swamps of his native Venus.
+
+The amphibian's popping eyes turned toward her, the wide frog-face
+split in a smile of appreciation as Nanlo approached. She refilled
+their mugs deftly and withdrew. But before she reentered the house she
+could not resist hesitating to glance toward rising Jupiter and the
+slim shaft of the rocketship silhouetted now against its surface.
+
+The ship was the cargo rocket Vulcan, newest and swiftest of Negu Mah's
+freighter fleet. Fully fueled and provisioned, storage space jammed
+with refrigerated foods that in space the cold of the encompassing void
+would keep perfectly for generations were it necessary, she would take
+off in the morning from the close-by landing port for Jupiter's other
+satellites, then go on to the Saturnian system, returning finally with
+full holds of uranium for Negu Mah's refineries on Callisto.
+
+She was a beautiful craft, the Vulcan, and one man could manage her,
+though her normal crew was seven. She had cost a great sum. But Negu
+Mah was wealthy.
+
+Nanlo's face, sylph-like in its beauty, hardened. Negu Mah was wealthy
+indeed. Had he not bought her, and had she not cost him more, much
+more, than the Vulcan?
+
+But no, it was not quite accurate to say that Negu Mah had bought her.
+However, since time immemorial beautiful daughters had been, if not
+sold, yet urged into marriages to wealthy men for the benefit of their
+impoverished families. And though science had made great strides,
+conquering the realms of the telescope and invading those below the
+level of the microscope, finding cures for almost every disease the
+flesh of man was heir to, there was one ailment it had not yet
+conquered--poverty.
+
+Nanlo's father had been a rocket port attendant. Once he had been a
+pilot, but a crash had crippled him for life. Thereafter, his wages had
+been quite insufficient to sustain him, his brood of half a dozen
+children, and their hard-working mother.
+
+But Nanlo, growing up, had developed into a mature beauty that rivaled
+the exotic loveliness of the wild orchids of Io. And in debarking at
+the rocket port on a business trip to earth, because hurricanes had
+forced him to land far south of New York, Negu Mah had seen her.
+
+Thereafter--But that is a story as ancient as history too.
+
+It was a truth Nanlo conveniently overlooked now that she had not been
+unwilling to be Negu Mah's bride. It was true she had driven a sharp
+bargain with him--her father's debts paid, and sufficient more to ease
+her parents' life and educate her brothers and sisters. Plus a marriage
+settlement for herself, and a sum in escrow in the Earth Union bank,
+should she ever divorce him for cruelty or mistreatment. But that had
+been only innate shrewdness. She would still have married him had he
+refused her demands for her family. For his wealth fascinated her, and
+the prospect of being a virtual queen, even of a distant outpost colony
+such as that on Callisto, appealed to her.
+
+And she had thought that she was taking little risk, for if she were
+dissatisfied, the law these days was very lenient toward unhappy
+marital relationships. It required only definite proof of misconduct,
+mistreatment, or oppression of any kind to win freedom from an unwanted
+partner. Nanlo had been confident that after a year or two she would be
+able to shake free of the bonds uniting her to Negu Mah and take flight
+for herself into a world made vastly more pleasant by the marriage
+settlement remaining to her.
+
+But now she had been married, and had lived on Callisto, for a full
+five years, and her tolerance of Negu Mah had long since turned to
+bitter hate. Not because he was a bad husband, but because he was too
+good a one!
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+There was an ironic humor in the situation, but Nanlo was not disposed
+to recognize it. Lenient as the law was, yet it required some grounds
+before it could free her. And she had no grounds whatever. Negu Mah was
+at all times the model of courtesy and consideration toward her. He
+granted every reasonable wish and some that were unreasonable--although
+when he refused one of the latter, it was with a firmness as
+unshakeable as a rock.
+
+Their home was as fine as any on earth. She had more than adequate help
+in taking care of it. She had ample time for any pursuits that
+interested her. But she used it only to become more and more bitter
+against Negu Mah because she could find no excuse to divorce him.
+
+So great had her bitterness become that, if she could have gotten off
+Callisto in any way, she would have deserted him. This would have meant
+forfeiting her marriage settlement and the sum that was in escrow. It
+would also have left her father in debt to Negu Mah for all that Negu
+Mah had given him. But Nanlo's passionate rebellion had reached such a
+state of ferment in her breast that she would have accepted all this to
+strike a blow at the plump, smiling man who now sat drinking molkai in
+their garden with their guest from Venus.
+
+The answer to that was--Negu Mah would not let her leave Callisto. The
+journey to earth, he logically argued, was still one containing a large
+element of danger. There was no reason for her to visit any other
+planet, and law and custom required that she look after their home
+while he himself was away on business.
+
+In this he was unshakeable. There was a stern and unyielding side to
+him, inherited perhaps from his Eastern ancestors, that left Nanlo
+shaken and frightened when it appeared. She had seen it the one time
+she had seriously gone into a tantrum in an effort to make him let her
+take a trip to earth. It had so startled and terrified her that she had
+never used those tactics again.
+
+But now, as she wheeled away the molkai decanter and left Negu Mah and
+Sliss to themselves, joy and exultation was singing in her. Doubly. For
+she was going to run away from Negu Mah, run away with the man she
+loved, and in their flight they were going to steal the Vulcan. Thus
+Negu Mah would be doubly punished. He would be hurt in his pride and in
+his pocketbook. And all through the Jupiter and Saturn systems, where
+his wealth, his position, and his beautiful wife were openly envied, he
+would be laughed at and derided.
+
+Humming lightly under her breath, Nanlo put the molkai decanter away in
+a little pantry and hurried on to her own apartment. Molkai was a
+powerful, though non-habit-forming drink. Under its influence one
+became talkative, but disinclined to movement. Sliss and her husband
+would remain as they were for hours, leaving her free to do as she
+would. The servants were asleep in another part of the building, and
+there was no one to note as she changed her clothes swiftly for a
+light, warm travelling suit, caught up two small bags, one holding her
+personal things, the other her jewels, and let herself out through her
+own private entrance into the darkness of the rear gardens.
+
+Where in the shadows the tall, blonde young engineer, Hugh Neils, was
+waiting for her....
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Negu Mah, when his beautiful wife had left the garden, sighed and put
+to one side his mug of molkai.
+
+"Sliss, my friend," he said to the Venusian, who was regarding him with
+large, unblinking pop-eyes, "I am troubled in my mind. Tonight I must
+dispense justice. Justice to myself and justice to another. To be just
+is often to be terribly cruel."
+
+Sliss blinked, once, a film moving horizontally across his large eyes
+and retracting, to show that he understood. Due to the difficulty of
+using his artificial speech mechanism, he refrained from speaking until
+speech was necessary.
+
+"My wife, Nanlo," Negu Mah said heavily, "is unhappy. I have done all
+that is in my power to make her happy, but I have failed. She has made
+some requests that I have denied, namely, to be permitted freedom to
+visit earth. That I denied because I knew the paths she intended to
+tread would not have led her to happiness either, and I hoped that in
+the end, here she would find contentment. I have hoped in vain. Tonight
+she intends to take matters into her own hands."
+
+Sliss blinked again, politely, to indicate that he was interested if
+Negu Mah cared to tell him more. Negu Mah rose.
+
+"My friend," he said, "if you will come with me, I will show you what I
+mean."
+
+Sliss grasped the edge of his tub with webbed hands and swung his
+webbed, yellow-skinned feet free from the water which kept the
+sensitive membranes from drying, and at the same time supplied his body
+tissues with liquid. Falling upon all fours, like a great, misshapen
+pet, he waddled awkwardly after his host.
+
+Negu Mah led him to an elevator within the house. This took them to a
+higher floor, and there they followed a corridor to the rear of the
+building. Here Negu Mah, without showing a light, opened a door, and in
+silence they moved out upon a small balcony overlooking the rear
+gardens, which were shrouded in darkness because rising Jupiter was on
+the opposite side of the building.
+
+They had stood there only a moment when below them a door opened, and a
+small figure slipped through. Another figure appeared from beneath the
+shadows of a cluster of slender, purple neklo trees and moved forward
+to greet the first. They met in the center of a tiny open space, where
+a fountain spurting through holes in crystal made a sweet murmuring
+music. And to the two watchers rose whispered words--"Nanlo! Nanlo, my
+darling!" "Hugh! Oh, Hugh, my love, hold me close and tell me that
+everything is ready for us to leave!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Hugh Neils' arms held her close, and his lips were hot on hers. That he
+was here as they had planned meant that he had succeeded in the other
+plans they had agreed upon. Exultation soared higher in Nanlo's breast.
+
+"Then we can go? Go now?" she asked eagerly, as Hugh Neils released
+her. "The crew is asleep? You were able to arrange it?"
+
+The young engineer looked down at her, his thin face a pale blur in the
+darkness.
+
+"In five minutes, just five minutes, Nanlo, my own," he whispered. "I
+left the guard half an hour ago, drinking molkai into which I put a
+sleeping powder. Give him five more minutes to fall asleep, then we can
+go to the ship unseen, unchecked. Until then, we can wait here in the
+garden."
+
+He led her toward the trilling fountain and they sat down upon a bench
+before it, of rare Callisto crystal. They still were in darkness, but
+the flame-like Jupiter light touched the tops of the neklo trees above
+them with a ruddy light which brought faint glimmerings from the
+radioactive leaves.
+
+Hugh Neils was a recent college graduate whom Negu Mah had hired as an
+assistant supervisor in the refining mills on Callisto, where the
+precious uranium 235 was separated from the ordinary metal. It was not
+a desirable job, but the best Hugh Neils could get. His college record
+of reckless scrapes and entanglements with women had been against him.
+Indeed, this position had only come to him because his home was in the
+same section as Nanlo's, and Negu Mah had thought that perhaps his
+company on occasion would help alleviate Nanlo's restlessness.
+
+It had--but to an extent Negu Mah had not foreseen.
+
+"In less than a quarter of an hour, Nanlo my darling," Hugh Neils
+whispered now, "we'll be gone from here, and you'll belong only to me.
+We'll leave this infernal barren satellite to spin itself dizzy out
+here in no place. We'll leave that humpty-dumpty husband of yours and
+his hypocritical good-nature to whistle for his wife and his ship. We
+won't care. We'll be together, always together from now on, and he'll
+never see us again."
+
+Nanlo leaned against his shoulder, the prospect that he painted seemed
+very sweet to her.
+
+"You're sure you can manage the ship alone?" she asked. "But of course,
+I can help, a little anyway. You can teach me."
+
+"Of course," Hugh Neils answered confidently, and bent to kiss her
+again. "I've been studying her for a week, asking questions, making
+friends with the crew. I can handle her one-handed. We'll take off and
+circle Jupiter first. They may think we landed on the other side, in
+the Outlaw Crevice. Or they may figure that we went on to Saturn, and
+will hide somewhere in the system there.
+
+"But we won't do either, and they won't know where to look for us.
+Instead of turning back on the other side of Jupiter, we'll make a
+tangential angle out into space. We'll hold it for a month, for
+safety's sake. We could hold for fifty years, or a hundred, if we
+needed to. There's fuel and provisions, meant for the mines, enough to
+last that long.
+
+"At the end of the month, we'll swing back, cut into the path of the
+sun, and pick up Mars as she comes in from behind Sol.
+
+"On Mars, we can sell the Vulcan. There's an outfit in the Equator
+Zone, in the mountains west of the Great Canal, that will buy her and
+no questions asked. I learned about them from a fraternity brother
+while I was in college. He'd run into some hard luck, they gave him a
+job, and he was making money hand over fist. They're asteroid miners.
+The work they do is illegal, but it's perfectly justified morally. What
+right have men with more money than they know what to do with to own
+everything in the Solar System? How can a young fellow get a start any
+more, when corporations and rich old fogies own everything?
+
+"Maybe I'll join up with this outfit. After we've sold the ship I'll
+see. How does that sound to you?"
+
+"Wonderful, Hugh," Nanlo whispered. "But I don't care about that. All I
+want is for us to be together. Always. You and me, and our love,
+together for eternity. That's all I want."
+
+"That's all I want, too, darling Nanlo," Hugh Neils told her passionately,
+and kissed her. "Together, forever. Just you and me."
+
+Nanlo sighed, with luxuriant happiness, and peered at his radiumite
+wrist watch.
+
+"The five minutes are up," she murmured. "Can't we go now?"
+
+Hugh Neils nodded.
+
+"We've waited plenty long enough," he decided. "The guard will be
+asleep by now. The crew were that way when I left them, in the
+dormitory. I saw that they had plenty of spiked molkai at dinner.
+Pretended it was my birthday celebration. And the ship's all ready and
+waiting for the take-off. All we have to do is lock the port and close
+the rising switch."
+
+The two on the bench by the fountain rose, and for a long minute were
+locked in an embrace. Then they turned toward the dark-shadowed trees
+and disappeared beneath them, in the direction of the nearby space
+port.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+Negu Mah silently turned back into the house. Sliss shuffled after him.
+The uranium merchant led the way back to the vitrite covered garden and
+there, a little wearily, resumed his seat and picked up his mug again.
+Sliss climbed back into his tub of water, sighed gratefully at the
+comfort it gave him, and then turned his pop-eyes toward his host. He
+blinked once, inquiringly, and Negu Mah understood that the intelligent
+amphibian was asking if he intended to do nothing to stop the pair who
+were running away.
+
+Negu Mah sipped pensively at his drink.
+
+"If she had only told me," he murmured. "If she had only come to me and
+said she desired her freedom. If they had only both come together and
+faced me, saying that though it meant giving up all they had, they
+wanted only each other! I would have been generous. I would have been
+indulgent. But they did not. They had not the courage. They were afraid
+of me. And they hated me."
+
+Negu Mah was silent for a moment. Both he and his guest stared toward
+the graceful shaft of the Vulcan, now fully silhouetted against the
+whole tremendous bulk of Jupiter, sitting like a titanic scarlet egg
+upon the horizon of Callisto. The Jupiter light flooded the vitrite
+garden, gave the plants there, chosen with an eye to this, strange,
+exotic, glowing colors, flushed Negu Mah and Sliss with a ruby
+radiance.
+
+Towards that dark, waiting craft the two they had watched were even now
+stealing, tense with the weight of their daring and their crime. In a
+moment they would reach her, enter her, actuate machinery that was
+miraculous in its complex simplicity, and be gone then on the wings it
+gave them into the concealing embrace of universal space.
+
+"You see, my friend Sliss," Negu Mah said finally, "Nanlo is beautiful,
+but there is nothing within. Her beauty deceived me. I thought that
+where such loveliness existed, there must be a soul to animate it. I
+was wrong. She is like an imitation gem--beautiful on the surface,
+paste within. Yet the mistake was mine, and I did not blame her. I
+indulged her, and still hoped that something real would bloom within
+her."
+
+He drained the molkai in his mug, one great gulp, and slumped back.
+
+"The young man, too, Hugh Neils. I thought he would be a companion for
+her. But he too is weak. Yet they say they love each other. They
+swear--we heard them--that they want only each other and their love for
+all time."
+
+Sliss blinked, twice, and Negu Mah nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said. "If they carry out their plans as we heard them, that
+feeling will soon go. The sale of the Vulcan, even as stolen property,
+would give them many credits. After that--luxury, self-indulgence. And
+their natures are too weak to withstand the ravages of such things. So
+I have been troubled to know what to do.
+
+"You see, my friend from Venus, though I would have let Nanlo go had
+she asked me, my own honor is at stake when she seeks to deal me an
+injury by slipping away in the night, and stealing from me the Vulcan.
+She is doing evil, and must be punished. The young man, too--indulgent
+as I am, I can not let him dishonor me thus without paying any
+penalty."
+
+Sliss' eye membranes shut, questioningly.
+
+"Yet," the uranium merchant went on, "I have a fondness for Nanlo. I
+will not prevent her from doing as she has chosen to do, for the intent
+would still be there, and knowing it as I do, all between us is over. I
+can not aid her to fulfill her plans, either, for that is to injure her
+and myself too. But there is another course. I have chosen that."
+
+He gestured with one plump hand toward the silhouetted ship.
+
+"I believe they have entered the Vulcan," he announced. "I saw light as
+the entrance port opened then."
+
+The amphibian's great, frog head nodded agreement.
+
+"So," Negu Mah continued, "I have decided to exercise what indulgence I
+can in the face of the injury they would do me. They shall have their
+chance."
+
+He fell silent again. Sliss leaned forward in his tub. Both of them
+watched intently. A flare of greenish light had sprung up beneath the
+black pillar that was the Vulcan. For just an instant the freighter
+stood there, green radiance expanding around her. Then she leaped into
+the sky.
+
+With her leap, she seemed to suck the radiance along. It became a great
+cone of glowing light that, arrow-like, raced away upward. For a long
+instant the black length of the ship, and the greenish fan of flame,
+were outlined against the scarlet background of Jupiter. Then the
+freighter rocket, flinging herself upward at three gravities or better,
+passed the edge of the planet and vanished.
+
+Negu Mah sat very quiet for some moments. But at last he stirred again.
+Sliss' eyes turned toward him, immobile.
+
+"Sometimes love transforms the weak," the uranium merchant said slowly.
+"Like fire giving temper to soft metal. Sometimes a mutual love will
+endure for all eternity, and the two who share it will gain from it a
+soul they did not have before. Nanlo and Hugh Neils have this chance.
+Both said they wanted only the other, and their love, for all eternity.
+To gain this, both were willing to cheat, to steal, to dishonor me and
+themselves.
+
+"So, Sliss, my understanding friend, they have paid the price, they
+shall have what they ask for.
+
+"As the man, Hugh Neils, said, there is fuel and food in the holds of
+the Vulcan to run the motors and last the lifetime of a man--or a man
+and a woman. Indeed, two lifetimes, or three, for I was aware of their
+plans, and secretly I placed aboard the craft many additional supplies.
+Fuel, and food, and books, and tools. And one additional thing the two
+who flee now there in space have not counted upon.
+
+"Into the controls of the Vulcan one of my engineers has placed a small
+device. After two hundred hours, or when they are well beyond Jupiter,
+this device will swing the Vulcan straight toward Proxima Centauri, the
+nearest star. In that position the controls will lock. And for twenty
+years, a generation, it will be impossible either to alter the course
+of the Vulcan or to shut her blast motors off.
+
+"At the end of that time the last tank of reserve fuel will be
+exhausted, and they will cease automatically. Then once more the Vulcan
+may be controlled by those aboard. They may switch the motors onto the
+tanks of fuel in the cargo holds, and continue onwards. If they were
+celestial navigators, they might try to turn, and seek earth again. But
+they are not navigators, and the sun will be but a tiny spark in the
+limitless darkness, one with a million others, not to be told apart.
+They will know that only Proxima Centauri in all space may the Vulcan
+hope to reach in their lifetime, or perhaps even in that of their
+descendants, for a message to that effect they will find presently.
+
+"So it may be that they will continue onward of their own choice. If
+they make no choice, momentum will carry them onward, perhaps forever.
+
+"But in any case, Nanlo and Hugh Neils will have exactly what they have
+asked for--each other, for all eternity. If truly that was what they
+wanted, a great destiny may be theirs. A lifetime of travel can bring
+them to the stars. They or their descendants can be the first humans to
+bridge the gap of nothingness that has thus far daunted the stoutest
+hearts."
+
+As they watched, the green dart of light dwindled and was gone. And
+quite invisible at last in the arms of outer darkness, the Vulcan sped
+its two passengers onward toward the stars.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Indulgence of Negu Mah, by Robert Andrew Arthur
+
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