by ALAIN DORÉMIEUX
Slovic was twenty-five when he made up his mind to buy a Vana.
Slovic lived in New Paris, in the residential suburb of Meudon.
His functional apartment was on the twenty-seventh floor of a medium-sized housing development. Here Slovic whiled away the peaceful days; he performed his civic duties by completing the two required daily hours of labor. The rest of his time was devoted to leisure.
Slovic’s nature was calm and sensible. He liked to play host to his friends of the same age, bachelors like himself. Miko, his best friend, worked in the same administration as he, but they seldom met, because their shifts rarely coincided. However, Miko and Slovic often took their meals together.
It was forbidden by law for men to live with women before the age of thirty. Miko said that a man should take advantage of his leisure in the meantime; he devoted himself to pleasure. Slovic’s tastes were more simple. He sometimes regretted that he had not lived in the past, in the twentieth century, when, he had read, a young man could begin a family shortly after he reached the age of puberty. But at that time, the planet had not yet been overpopulated. It was the catastrophic increase in the human birth rate that had brought about the decree that was now in force.
Miko made fun of Slovic when the latter admitted that he wouldn’t mind having a woman to share his life: he laughed, saying that Slovic was a retarded child, and didn’t know what he was talking about.
He urged his friend to come with him to the House of Women, in the Reserved Zone: there he would find the best means of forgetting these crazy ideas.
Slovic sometimes went with his friend. But on certain days he didn’t happen to feel like seeing Miko. Then he shut himself up at home, usually in the music room, where the three-channel hi-fi played music through the huge loudspeakers in the walls.
Slovic had tendencies that his friends called reactionary. He didn’t like the music of his own time, with its subtle assemblies of complex sound elements. He preferred the well-worn language of the mid-twentieth-century composers: Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, the ancestors of present-day musical expression. He collected the ancient, rare, expensive recordings of their works.
At other times, when he was not in the mood for music, he took his turbojet car and went for a drive on the seashore. He used the upper level of the multi-stage highway, the least crowded one. Speed gave him a sensation of half-drunken exaltation: he felt as if he were living more intensely. At such times he told himself that he hated the company of his equals.
But it was only a passing mood. As soon as Slovic found himself again in the company of Miko or his other friends, he failed to understand how he could have entertained such an idea. At any rate, he never spoke of it. He was afraid the others would look on him as an object of curiosity and disgust; and the word would go around that he was guilty of the crime of individualism; people had been locked up for less.
Slovic’s life was thus divided between his work, music, his car, the times spent with Miko or his other friends, the visits to the House of Women, or occasionally to the House of Games. Slovic did not try to puzzle out whether he was happy or unhappy. This antithesis no longer existed except in books dealing with the past. Nowadays no one was “unhappy” any longer. As for the word “happiness,” it was an archaism now; its modern synonym was “comfort.”
Nevertheless, sometimes Slovic had a sort of uneasy feeling, as if he wanted something he couldn’t have. He didn’t know what it could be, and didn’t question himself about the sensation. He lacked nothing; like everyone else, he had all he needed to live. It wasn’t that he had need of women, for he could find all he liked in the House of Women. As for living with one of them, Miko was right: there was nothing enviable in that; it was a puerile dream.
Slovic, then, would have gone on living in this way indefinitely, if it had not been for the Vanas. It was Miko who mentioned them to him for the first time. To tell the truth, Slovic had heard rumors of their existence already, but had only half paid attention. He was not interested in the news; he considered that it never brought anything really new.
The Vanas were one of the latest life forms discovered in the galaxy. An expedition had brought back several specimens from a terrestrial-type planet in the constellation of Orion. The rumors that had circulated about them had caused certain rich collectors to buy these specimens. Afterward, the rumors had spread.
The importation of extra-terrestrial life forms was restricted by many regulations. Proof must be made, by adequate tests, that such life forms did not belong to an intelligent species, and that they did not carry harmful bacteria. The Vanas satisfied these two conditions. Accordingly, a regular service had been established to their native world; demand for them had created an enormous market, and the trade in Vanas prospered.
The characteristics of the Vanas had been kept more or less secret at the beginning, and no doubt that is why Slovic had never had occasion to become interested in them. The public knew only that they were humanoid creatures, although unintelligent. But this partial blackout did not last long. The truth about the Vanas, first spread in whispers, ended by being spoken aloud. And it was Miko who let Slovic in on it.
Miko planned to buy one of these creatures for himself. He showed Slovic a tri-D photograph that a friend, well placed in the Galactic Society, had obtained for him. Slovic looked at it, and at once knew why people made such a to-do over the Vanas. For it was a woman he was looking at—or rather, the perfect semblance of a human female; and this semblance of a woman was strangely beautiful.
Slovic stared questioningly at Miko, whose eyes were burning. The latter told him in turn what his friend had explained to him: the Vanas were animals, highly evolved animals, but animals all the same, who were not endowed with intelligence or speech, but who had all the appearance and—Miko insisted—all the functions of the women of Earth. The biologists of the expedition that had discovered them had studied their race. These female beings reproduced themselves by parthenogenesis. No male individuals had ever been discovered. The name given them arose from their cry, a soft, rhythmic cry suggesting very nearly the two syllables va-na.
The habits of the Vanas were idle and vegetative. The presence of the first expedition had not alarmed them: the crew had mingled with the creatures. It was one of these crewmen who had succumbed to the attraction that many Terrans would feel in their turn. Thus men had learned that the Vanas were made for love.
After the first specimens were introduced to Earth, it was established that Vanas easily became acclimated. They were almost exclusively herbivorous. The hydroponic cultures of Earth produced vegetables similar to those of their natural habitat, and it was found that the Vanas could live on them perfectly well.
The creatures could be taught as easily as a dog or a cat, and they were amenable to their master’s slightest whim. Before long they began to give rise to certain excesses. In North America, they were the cause of a new wave of puritanism. Censors cited the case of men living with two or three Vanas at a time, and submitting them to shameful practices; it was whispered that Vanas had died as a result of cruelties inflicted by brutal and sadistic masters. The Commission of Public Morality and the Society for the Protection of the Animals of the Galaxy were simultaneously aroused.
In Europe, where the introduction of the Vanas was more recent, they posed no problem as yet. The government, which would have inflicted a severe penalty upon a man under thirty living with a woman, looked approvingly upon the same man sharing one roof with a Vana. It was population control that held the foreground of interest in Europe. At any rate, unions with Vanas remained strictly sterile.
Miko told Slovic all this, and ended by saying that he meant to order his Vana as soon as possible. He would be taken care of quickly, because of his friend in the importing company. He asked Slovic if he wanted to seize the opportunity, and order a Vana for himself through his intermediary. Slovic was about to refuse, to say that he wasn’t interested. Suddenly, his eyes fell again on the photograph Miko had showed him. The Vana was very beautiful. Slovic, without stopping to think, and almost without knowing why, answered yes.
* * * *
He received his Vana during the next week. She was delivered in a special cage, with an opaque plastic cover. When transporting Vanas, one avoided exposing them to public view. On the rare occasions when this precaution had been neglected, there had been riots.
When the deliverymen were gone, Slovic approached the cage, which was still covered. He threw back the cover in one motion—and saw the Vana.
She was sitting in a corner of the cage, looking at him. Slovic was astonished, for she was even more beautiful than he had imagined. She was like the one whose picture he had seen (all the Vanas looked alike, Miko had told him), but her physical presence was more seductive than any photograph could have conveyed.
Two things then struck Slovic’s attention: the Vana’s color, and her scent. Miko had neglected to tell him (perhaps he didn’t know himself) that the epidermis of the Vanas was not like human skin. It was in fact the one point on which they seemed to differ in appearance from the human race. This epidermis, glossy as the pelt of an animal, was of a pale saffron color, with reddish-brown highlights. As for the odor of the creature, which was very pronounced, it suggested that of musk.
Slovic opened the door of the cage. The deliverymen had told him that he had nothing to fear; that the Vana, like all her race, was perfectly inoffensive, even if she seemed at first a little wild. He put out his hand toward her and she let him caress her without flinching. Her brilliant skin was warm, and curiously soft to the touch. He sensed a secret life palpitating under that skin, sending tremors out to the surface. It was an infinitely disturbing contact; he had never felt that sensation with a woman of Earth.
The Vana watched him unblinkingly. Staring into her eyes for the first time, Slovic had a shock. The creature’s eyes were of an extremely pale turquoise, their irises were immense; their liquid stare seemed to be trying to absorb his own, to dissolve him in their depths. But the strangest thing of all was the absence of any human expression in that stare. It held neither joy, nor fear, nor sadness: it seemed empty.
Slovic left the door of the cage open, and after a few minutes the Vana got up and came out. She was short; her feet and hands were small and her joints delicate. Her naked body was that of a woman in all respects, except that it lacked any hairiness. But a mane surrounded the Vana’s face, looking less like hair than like golden fur. Her shape was harmonious and perfect, with a contrast between the curved hips and the narrow waist. The breasts, high and firm, were developed in proportion to the rest of her body; the nipples were tawny-colored.
Finally, there was the Vana’s face. That triangular face, with its two great eyes of a melting turquoise color, had an animal grace, a strange charm. The small head was carried on a long, slender neck, like a flower on its stem. The creature bent that head to one side, as if listening, watching Slovic. Her attitude seemed to invite a caress; everything about her was attractive. Slovic understood why purchasers of Vanas kept them jealously hidden from the world.
* * * *
The Vana quickly grew accustomed to Slovic. He named her Sylvie, and began her training by feeding her. He had chosen the best foods from one of the specialty stores created for the Vanas. Afterward she came over to thank him by rubbing her cheek against him. Slovic stroked her with his hand. He had been advised not to be rough with the Vana at first, to be satisfied with caressing her. Before long, it was she who sought these caresses.
Slovic took Sylvie to bed with him on the evening of the second day. Thereafter, it became his nightly custom. Afterward he would take her to the pallet that he had laid on the floor of an empty room. One night, he was too sleepy to send her off to her pallet and she slept beside him.
Slovic discovered that it was pleasant to spend the night with the Vana. Accordingly, on several succeeding nights he kept her in his bed. On waking in the morning, he smelled her musky scent. He stretched out his arm and touched her body, twined around his. With a little moan, she awoke in her turn. He drew her to him, embracing her warm, consenting flesh.
Miko came to see him. He was delighted with his own Vana. She gave him, he said, every satisfaction. He seemed surprised and shocked when Slovic told him that his sometimes slept with him. Then he regained his self-possession. “You treat her like a real woman!” he said, laughing. Slovic weighed this pronouncement and found it incongruous. Nevertheless, it was a good thing that Miko had made this remark; he resolved from then on not to permit the Vana too much familiarity.
All the same, after a few solitary nights, he noticed with a certain surprise that he missed the presence of Sylvie at his side.
One morning, he woke at dawn: the bed seemed empty and cold. He got up and went looking for the Vana. She was asleep on the pallet, curled up in her favorite posture; he woke her with a caress. She raised her eyelids, unveiling the quiet pools of her eyes. He was about to make her get up and go with him into his room. But, as she stretched herself slowly under his gaze, with a feline movement, he suddenly wanted to take her immediately. He threw himself down on the pallet, which was impregnated with her odor. She opened her body to him, with its glossy shifting highlights.
From that day on, he adopted an alternating custom: as often as he made Sylvie sleep in his bed, so often it was he who sought her in the morning on her pallet. Little by little, he also began to seek her company during the day. He no longer went to the House of Women, nor the House of Games. Miko marveled at his indifference to fun. He was hurt, too, that Slovic invited him to his home less often than formerly.
Miko was still satisfied with his Vana, and sometimes lent her to his friends, giving them the key to his apartment. One day, he asked Slovic if his Vana might not be available for an evening: his own was already promised to a friend, and he had another whom he wanted to accommodate in the same way. Slovic refused indignantly, and Miko was stupefied. A silence fell between the two friends; then Miko said, with an intonation of horror, “Slovic, you . . . you are in love with that animal!”
Slovic started, and looked at him. Miko was staring at him with repulsion. In a thin voice, without even knowing what he was saying, Slovic cried, “I forbid you to call her an animal!”
Miko simply said, “You’ve gone crazy.”
Then he went out, slamming the door. Slovic was pale. He went to Sylvie and took her in his arms, caressing her luxuriant golden mane, he said over and over, “You’re not an animal. You’re not an animal.” Sylvie rubbed her cheek against him, as she had done when he fed her the first day. She cried softly, “Va-na.” Slovic was convinced that she made this sound when she was happy.
From then on, Sylvie shared Slovic’s life. He took her with him into the music room, and she lay beside him while he listened to the music he loved. She half closed her slanted eyes, leaving a narrow slit through which she kept a watchful gaze on Slovic. Slovic even took her with him in his car. He drove down the least traveled streets, sheltered from inquisitive stares. Sylvie curled up on the seat; her mane waved in the wind. Slovic burst out laughing, realizing that he had never known before what it was to burst into laughter. He had the sense of discovering something unknown; he realized that this was perhaps what he had been confusedly seeking.
One day he took Sylvie to the seaside, to a deserted beach. He didn’t know what the sea was like on the Vanas’ planet; but Sylvie seemed joyful. She swam and frolicked in the water, then played on the sand; and her dancing body sparkled in the sun. Slovic told himself that she would undoubtedly have laughed, if she had been capable of it. Later she came to lie close beside him, and licked his neck with her rough little tongue. Then she stroked his body with her hand, whose claws he kept trimmed regularly.
Another time, he amused himself by combing her hair. She drew back when he began to pull the comb through her rebellious mane. He calmed her with soft words, and a few caresses; she allowed him to continue. He combed her hair back, fastening it with a string on top of her head. Seeing her thus in profile, he thought of an ancient picture he remembered. He found the reproduction of it in his microfilm collection: it was one of the portraits of a girl with a pony-tail, painted by Picasso in the year 1954, a geometric profile, drawn with great purity of line against a white background, reminiscent of a personage from a Cretan fresco. Slovic was delighted by the resemblance.
The days passed, and he left Sylvie no more. He realized that he was drifting away from the world he had been living in, beginning to reject that world, but he didn’t care. His friends avoided him. They talked about Slovic’s shameful passion for his Vana, his lowering himself to the level of an animal. He had become the object of a universal disapproval. Slovic went out less and less.
Miko came to see him one day, and speaking in the name of their old friendship, called on him to give up his perversity. Slovic smiled as he listened. When Miko had done speaking, he called Sylvie, and stroking her in his friend’s presence, he declared, “Miko, remember when I told you that I’d have liked to live with a woman? Here is the woman.”
Miko exclaimed, “You’re crazy, you’ve lost your grip on things! These are animals, objects of pleasure, nothing more. They’re not even as important as the creatures in the House of Women. And you dare to say you love one of these things?”
Slovic had gone pale with anger. Staring defiantly at Miko, he hugged Sylvie to him without speaking.
Miko gave up. He left Slovic, having warned him against the consequences of his attitude. “Society won’t stand for such behavior,” he said shortly. When he was gone, Slovic embraced Sylvie.
* * * *
A little while later, Slovic was fined for an offense against public morality. He was accused of displaying himself in public with his Vana. At this time, the anti-Vana leagues were beginning to form in Europe, after the example of those that were proliferating in America. Another day, as he was about to enter his apartment, Slovic was insulted and stoned by spiteful neighbors. He made up his mind not to take Sylvie outdoors any more.
Sylvie now shared his room. Slovic had thrown out the pallet he had installed. She followed him everywhere in the apartment, attentive to every movement. Slovic loved to stare deeply into her enigmatic eyes. It seemed to him that sometimes, for a moment, he could read there something strange and indefinable, like a ripple on the smooth surface of the water.
Slovic now understood what was meant by the old word “happiness.” He could spend hours in Sylvie’s company, playing with her or watching her without speaking. He did not mind her being unable to talk. On the contrary, her silence was sweet to him. In the morning, he bathed and combed her. In the evening, he went to sleep holding her in his arms, breathing her odor. Sometimes, at night, he turned on the light quietly in order to see her sleeping.
Once Sylvie fell sick, and he believed she was going to die. He stayed by her bedside day and night, overcome by this unknown illness for which he knew no remedy. Sylvie was in a strange, languid state. Her eyes were dull and seemed discolored; she did not have the strength to move. Slovic caressed her slowly, kissed her as if to breathe his own life into her: he felt as if she were his child.
She grew better without his knowing why. One night he had surrendered to sleep, and when he awoke she was pressed against him, and her gaze, brilliant once more, invited him.
* * * *
Summer came. The town was empty of its inhabitants, off on vacation to the four corners of the Earth. The great housing developments fell silent. Through the large open windows, sunlight poured into the apartment. Slovic and Sylvie lay on the floor to expose themselves to its rays. He had fallen into the habit of going as naked as she. Soon his body acquired a coppery tint that harmonized with Sylvie’s. One day when they were in front of the mirror, he told himself that he was beginning to resemble her, that he was growing like her.
Stretched out in the sun half asleep, Slovic fed on dreams. He would have liked to go away, take-Sylvie with him—take her back to her native planet. There, they would live together without any constraint. Slovic would have no accounting to make to society, or to anyone. Deep down, he knew it was only a dream, but it gave him pleasure to abandon himself to it.
More and more, he felt as if he were living in a world far away, a world where he was alone with Sylvie. The outside world, for him, retreated into the background. The city, whose geometric buildings and ranked terraces he could see through his open window, was separated from him by a frontier: it was no more than a meaningless picture. Slovic was no longer a part of that city or that world.
Occasionally it happened that in leaning over his terrace he was taken by vertigo, as if the wide avenues more than fifty meters below were suddenly rushing up to meet him. He pulled back, sweat on his forehead, feeling himself on the point of losing his balance. A hidden weakness stole into his limbs. He was about to stagger, and had to lean against a wall.
Slovic at first paid no attention to these symptoms, but after a few weeks he had to recognize that they were becoming more and more frequent. Weakness seemed to be overtaking his whole body, as if to paralyze him. Then he was forced to lie down. Sylvie came close to him and he looked at her without comprehension, overcome by a malaise that expanded inside him as if he were sinking into icy waters.
One morning, feeling worse, he did not get up. To amuse himself, he brought the television into his room. Long ago he had ceased to take any interest in it, preoccupied solely with Sylvie. From his bed, he watched the world news broadcast for the first time since he had shut himself off from all that. And it was thus that he learned the truth which the whole Earth already knew.
He watched the pictures succeed one another, hearing the speaker’s voice without stirring. The Vanas had brought death to Earth, said the dramatically inflected voice. Scientists had been disturbed when the first owners of Vanas had begun to fall victims to a strange sickness, from which they shortly died. Since then, all the Vana owners had begun to die one after another. The creatures were carriers of a virus, whose existence had escaped the experts’ notice at the time of the biological inspection. And this virus, after a long incubation period, was fatal to man.
On the screen, microphotographs showed the virus, which they had finally succeeded in isolating. The announcer continued his account. The Vanas transmitted the germ of death to man via the sexual act. Each repetition of the act augmented the contagion.
It was a contamination by an insidious poison, which mercilessly penetrated the organism, destroying it little by little. But the scientists had found a means of arresting the disease.
The epidemic had taken root in America, where the Vanas had been introduced in the first place. But it was now beginning to reach Europe, and the first victims were appearing there. Every owner of a Vana should therefore, without delay, get rid of his animal, turning it over to the Health Service, which was engaged in killing the Vanas on a large scale in gas chambers; and they should immediately begin treatment in a special clinic; otherwise the doctors would not be responsible for the consequences.
The announcer stopped speaking. Using the telecontrol keyboard, Slovic turned off his bedside television. He stayed motionless for a long time; his face showed nothing. When he tried to get up, the floor seemed to turn under his feet. He had never felt so weak. He walked, grasping every available support, his body swaying.
Sylvie was asleep on a sofa in the next room. Slovic went to her, and looked at her for a long time, his limbs shaking as if with a fever. He leaned over to brush Sylvie’s skin with his fingertips. She awoke and looked at him with those inhumanly soft eyes. “Sylvie, my little Sylvie,” he murmured: and he lay down beside her.