The Reverend Cardinal Deacon James of Ys approached the Most Reverend Phillias XIV of Caduz, D.D., Archbishop of the Western Isles. He knelt, kissed The Ring, and looked up, awaiting instructions.
"Ah, James. You may stand. I have need of your thoughts. Tell me, what do you think of of the new strangers?"
"Well, Your Excellency, in the short term, they are a public nuisance. Almost everyone on the islands has been infected by their influenza. Thus far no one has been killed, but I call your attention to the many thousands who died during plagues brought to us by just such outsiders cast up on our shores in the past."
"Yes, yes, but in the long run?"
"In the long run, they are far more dangerous. In the past, it was a simple matter to keep rescued outsiders from bringing the entire outside world down upon us. We needed only to keep them away from the boats. If one still escaped despite our precautions, and somehow managed to make it home alive, he would never be believed because any ship sent in search of us would find nothing but open sea. But now, it is my understanding that the new ship contains communication devices far in advance of what the Warlock possesses, devices that could call the outsiders directly to us, no matter where we moved. Droves of outsiders with their diseases, their weapons, and their ungodly ways."
"Yes, James, and I think that last point is what bothers me the most. They tell me that not one outsider in fifty considers himself to be a Christian, and even among those few, well, have you ever listened on the Warlock's devices to what passes for a sermon out there?"
"Yes, Your Excellency. I learned the English language just so that I could understand them. For my pains, all I heard was a so-called `preacher' who was screeching about God in the most atrocious manner possible. Yet this person repeatedly claimed to be a Christian! I fear for the souls of our people if such foreign influences were let abroad on our islands."
"Indeed. And those so-called `spiritual' infamies are but a part of their bad influences. Many of our people have fallen to the sins of drunkenness when overindulging in the beer and wines made on our islands. Now, rumor has it that the two outsiders have brought in no less than eighteen new forms of drink to tempt our people. What other abominations can yet be in store for us?"
"What, indeed, Your Excellency? In truth, I fear for our little island!"
"As do I, my son. Come, let us pray . . ."
* * *
Shortly thereafter, the dancer got up, bid us a polite and somewhat formal good-bye, and left, still completely naked. Roxanna kissed me lightly on the cheek, went to her bedroom, and wasn't seen until evening.
I started to sober up.
This condition was soon combined with the grandmother of all hangovers. It was past noon before Adam and I got back to the warehouse where The Brick Royal was stored. The main reason why we went there at all that day was because we hadn't thought to bring the medical kit with us the day before.
After a long search through our scattered property, I found it at last, and the Alka-Seltzers. Felicia already had two plastic glasses of water ready and, bleary-eyed, Adam and I toasted our survival of the previous night.
Then I sent the maid home with blue packages for Roxanna, Maria, Agnes, and, almost an afterthought, for Felicia herself, since her eyeballs looked as bad as Adam's. Or my own, I suppose, though the technology hereabouts didn't run to mirrors, and I hadn't been up to shaving that morning.
"Vitamins!" I said, enunciating carefully. "The only way that I could possibly feel this bad is that I must be suffering from a severe vitamin depletion. They must not put enough vitamins in the food here. You stored lots of vitamins, didn't you?"
"Megadoses. I bought cases of the stuff when I was thinking that maybe we might actually have to spend a few years wrecked on some desert isle doing in the tons of dried beans I'd just bought. But are you so sure that you're suffering from a deficiency disease? Couldn't it have something to do with those thirty-six rums and Cokes, on top of all that wine and beer and scotch and gin and stuff? I mean, you were drinking and keeping up with four ladies, each one individually."
"Maybe," I said slowly and quietly, carefully enunciating each word so as not to be accused of inebriation. "But a hangover has definite physiological causes, like dehydration, and salt depletion, because you pissed it all away, and a depletion of the soluble vitamins, like B, C, and the rest, for the same inalienable reason. Had my vitamin and mineral levels been up there where they belong, I wouldn't be feeling nearly this bad."
I found what I had been scrounging for, and mouthed down some One-A-Days, a couple of B-50s, a gram of number C, and then some vitamin E, because it was there.
"You want some, Adam?"
"They couldn't make me feel any worse," he said, chewing up a random handful.
"We ought to give some Alka-Seltzer to your bearers," I said.
"What for? I didn't invite them to the party. Did you invite them to the party? So why should we be beholden to a bunch of party crashers?"
"Don't be that way. They're in pain, and the thing about pain is that it hurts a lot. Anyway, if they all quit you, you'll be stranded here, because I'm not going to carry you anywhere today. Furthermore, they were invited. When I invited you, the invite covered them. Local custom. Roxanna said so. So be nice to the boys."
"If I gotta."
He waved them over, handed out some of our dwindling supply of tablets, and told them how to take them.
"Maybe there is something to these people having some vitamin deficiencies. Let's get the girls on vitamin supplements and ask them in a few weeks if they really feel better."
I said, "Good idea."
About then, two gaudily dressed individuals came up to us, bowed, and presented us each with an oversized envelope. Adam had the presence of mind to open his first.
"Well. It seems that I have been formally invited to lunch tomorrow with `His Excellency, the Most Reverend Phillias XIV of Caduz, Archbishop of the Western Isles.' "
"Wonderful," I said. "Me, too. Only I get to meet the warlock, just after lunch. I wonder what you wear to a formal meeting with a warlock?"
"I don't think it much matters as long as you bring the proper gifts with you. Some bat wings would be nice, or maybe a roc's egg, and don't forget a negative pound or two of phlogiston."
"I've already sent him a positive pound of gold, and after that, he's just going to have to suffer or live with it," I said.
Not much got accomplished that afternoon, and, since it was still a two-hour walk back to his place, I invited Adam back to Roxanna's place again.
"Yeah, thanks, but you know, we can't keep doing this forever. I mean, if it was just you and me, there wouldn't be any problem, but women got these nesting instincts. Roxanna and my girls act real friendly and all, but if we force them together too much, they'll start infringing on each other's territoriality. I think I got to buy or rent someplace near this warehouse to live in."
"Seems silly to me. I mean, I got a good fifty thousand square feet at Roxanna's place. Why should we bother with getting more?"
"I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm saying we got to do it or we'll eventually have a female explosion on our hands. I don't want to lose mine, and after last night, you don't want to lose yours, either. So be reasonable and do it my way."
"If you say so. Anyway, we're rich. You can afford it."
Supper that night was quiet and subdued.
The next morning, Roxanna invited me to the local bathhouse, a weekly bath being the local norm. I'd gotten to looking forward to the sponge baths she'd been giving me, but I was out of quarantine now and I wasn't an invalid any more. Also, I thought that I'd better look my best, if I was to meet a warlock in the afternoon.
The public baths turned out to be as big an eye- opener as the party had been. There was something almost schizophrenic about the way these people were super strait-laced at some times and totally uninhibited at others.
Roxanna and I went through a curtained doorway into a small changing room. Without any preamble, Roxanna promptly stripped herself completely naked. Just not what I had expected, at all.
Her actions, that is, not her appearance. She looked just like what I'd been dreaming of for weeks. Fine, firm breasts with tiny pink nipples, a very small waist, nicely flaring hips and wonderfully long legs that went all the way down to the floor. Like the dancers of a few nights before, she was completely depilated, a custom that I found myself liking.
But this was not the right place for an erection, not when I could hear a crowd of people on the other side of the curtain. There was nothing for it but for me to strip down as well, hang my clothes up beside hers, and hope that my body wouldn't do anything embarrassing.
We went into a huge room full of naked people, and I soon started to feel less awkward. I mean, if everybody was doing it, well, why not? After a bit, I realized that I would probably have felt more awkward if I had been the only one who had clothes on.
In some ways, the bath was sort of Japanesey. I mean, you washed up first, and then you took a bath. Roxanna led the way to where a fountain squirted warm, fresh water into the air almost like a shower. We wet ourselves down, and went to the side to suds down with a soft, brown soap. She scrubbed down my newly healed back, so I returned the favor by doing the same to her back.
And to both sides, and to her front. She took it as nothing out of the ordinary, as did the people all around us. She was even talking to a lady friend of hers as I finished up. I don't know why I was so forward. I mean, I'm usually rather shy. But it seemed like a good idea at the time so I did it. After rinsing off at the fountain, we went to something that was halfway between a small swimming pool and a monster Jacuzzi.
Once we were sitting in the almost too warm water, I said, "Roxanna, why were you walking different?"
"Walking different? What do you mean?"
"Well, when you women are wearing a long dress, you sort of glide along, as if you were on skids, or skates, or wheels. Now that you're naked, you walk like everybody else I've ever known. Why is that?"
"You don't like the way I walk?"
"I absolutely love the way you walk. I only want to know why you walk one way some times, and another way at other times."
"Oh. Well, it looks nicer that way."
"I don't understand."
"All right. Look." She got out of the pool and walked away. "When your legs aren't covered, you want them to look as nice as possible, yes?"
She walked towards me in a normal fashion, her feet pointed straight forward.
"Yes, Roxanna, you have very lovely legs."
She accepted the compliment as only being her due. She walked away again, and came back walking like some comedian from a silent movie, with her toes spread out almost sideways and her knees slightly bent. It looked absolutely ridiculous, but after a bit I realized that this strange method of locomotion made her body above the waist absolutely motionless.
"You're right," I said. "I can see now why you'd want a thing like that covered by a long dress."
She had really been walking like that all the time? Well, some cultures think that a bone through the nose is the high point of beauty, and by comparison, I suppose that I lucked out.
After a long soak, Roxanna asked me if I felt like a massage, and I said yes, hoping that she meant to do it herself. Unfortunately, such things were done here by professionals, and I soon found myself stretched out on the table next to hers. The masseurs were both men, I suppose because it takes strong arms to do the job properly. I am nonetheless convinced that sometimes there is much to be said for inefficiency. After that, we took a swim in a larger, cooler pool.
Perhaps I had a misspent childhood, and was entirely too serious and formal myself, but this was my first actual experience with public nudity, at least when I was one of the nudes.
It's a very odd thing. At a stag party, where the ladies aren't wearing clothes and you are, you just naturally feel lecherous towards them. But when you're naked too, and in public, you just don't feel that way anymore. Oh, you can certainly appreciate a beautiful body, in an intellectual sort of way, but the sexy feeling isn't there anymore. Maybe that's why less than one American in a thousand is a nudist. It's not that nudists are being overly sexual with each other, but the precise opposite. And most people, given the choice, would really rather be lecherous.
Which launches another thought. In most countries in the civilized world, church and state agree vigorously in condemning public nakedness. They instill this taboo into their people with great vigor and effectiveness, to the point that people have been known to choose death by fire rather than leave a burning building naked. Many men (and some women, although they seem to be less effected than we are) would prefer torture, mutilation, and bankruptcy to walking down the street without their pants on. The prohibition of nakedness seems to be stronger than that condemning theft, or even violence. Being naked in public is probably the most common childhood nightmare, far more prevalent than bad dreams about, say, stealing from the neighbors.
I suspect that the reason for this is that the leaders of both church and state desperately want to increase the size of the populations subordinate to them. More people means more taxpayers, more cannon fodder, and more contributors to the holy cause. They say that whenever the old Indian chiefs got together, the main topic of conversation was always the relative lack of Indians.
The best way to make more people is by keeping your men sexually frustrated most of the time, and then permitting them to release those frustrations when they are locked away in private with their wives. Forcing people to cover their bodies increases the level of frustration, and thus, from a ruler's point of view, it must be a good thing.
Consider the way the populations of the Arab countries, where women are often forced to wear mobile tents, are exploding. On the other hand, in the Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, where public nudity is common, populations are actually declining.
The next time you see a particularly attractive young person undulating along across the street, and you wish that she was wearing a whole lot less, just remember that you are but the victim of yet another wretched government plot.