Joanna Russ - Poor Man, Beggar Man

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JOANNA RUSS
Poor Man,
Beggar Man
JOANNA Russ was born February 22, 1937, in the Bronx, New York. Her parents are schoolteachers,
and science, literature and books were part of her early environment. She was a Westinghouse STS
scholar in 1954. She received her B.A. degree in English from Cornell University in 1957 and her
M.F.A. degree in playwriting from the Yale Drama School in 1960. She has acted in community
theater (the Brooklyn Heights Players) and semiprofessional groups (the West Broadway Workshop).
She began writing at the age of thirteen, and her more than thirty published stories have appeared
in science fiction publications such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and the Orbit
series, and also in such general publications as Manhattan Review, Epoch, Cimarron Review, The
Little Magazine, South, Red Clay Reader and William and Mary Review.
At present she is assistant professor of English at Cornell University, teaching creative writing
end even, on occasion, science fiction reading. She also reviews books for The Magazine of Fantasy
and Science Fiction and College English, contributes an occasional article to scholarly
publications, belongs to Science Fiction Writers of America and the Modern Language Association,
and reports that the only hobby she has time for is eating. She offers as her personal philosophy:
"Women ought
to run things, as we are friendlier than men, but alas, that is only because we are not allowed to
run things."
Her two novels, Picnic on Paradise and A.-7d Chaos Died, were both Nebula Award finalists, as was
her novelette "The Second Inquisition." In the 1971 Nebula Award balloting her novelette "Poor
Man, Beggar Man" appeared on the final ballot.
A strange man, with a black cloak wrapped about him and a fold of it drawn over his head to hide
his face, with the easy, gliding step of one who no longer cares if his feet go over rough or
smooth, a man who smelled the smell of cooking at a turn in the narrow, rocky path, but to whom it
meant nothing but a signal about what somebody else was doing, nothing more, this fellow-who was
of a fairly ordinary and nonformidable appearance (though perhaps a bit mysterious)-slipped along
the winding path outside Alexander's camp near the Indus River as if he knew where he was going.
But he had no business being there, certainly not in the heat of the afternoon, though the
vegetation around him cast the path into a certain tenebrous gloom. Light and shade spotted him.
It was early in the Indian summer and petals and yellow dust dropped on the path and on the leaf
mold to either side. He shook himself free. He reached an open place and continued, not looking
round.
A quarter of a mile from the general's tent the path ascended, became rockier and more open; a
guard lounged on a rock, absorbed in a bluebottle he held between thumb and forefinger. He did not
see the stranger as he passed, nor did he return his salute. Muffled to the chin, the stranger
passed servants clearing dishes from a board table set up in the open sunlight (for the general's
tent commanded a view of the valley from an uninterrupted but therefore somewhat inhospitable
height). He stepped inside the tent, bending under the canvas flap, his black cloak trailing. He
found his man seated at a low table, calling for a map; he put one hand on his shoulder and then
he said quite diffidently-
"Come, I'm still a civilized fellow."
"Apollo guard us!" choked the conqueror, turning pale. The stranger laughed and shook his head,
still with the inoffensive and
7 friendly manner that had made him so popular, and that had ` occasioned such grief when
Alexander had murdered him at the age of twenty-eight. '
"Your teacher, Aristotle, wouldn't like that," he said, shaking his y head humorously, and he sat
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down on the edge of the table, closing his hand around a wine cup.
"Take your hands off that!" said Alexander automatically, and '- then he said, his color coming
back, "Take it."
"Oh no, thank you," said his dead friend, smiling apologetically, "I couldn't, now. You have no
idea what an inconvenience it is, to be dead-"
"Take it!" said the conqueror.
"Ah, but-- and his murdered friend put the wine cup down.
"Well?" said Alexander. The dead man smiled, the mild smile of those who provoke and endure
insult; he smiled, backing away. .: "I thought," he said, "that the novelty of my appearance-"
"Doesn't last."
"Ah, but you owe me-"
"What?"
The ghost wandered away a few steps, past the ray of brilliant f sunlight that entered the tent
through the front flap, brushing the `
canvas wall with his shoulder and causing not a ripple. "I remem-
ber," he said, "I remember." Alexander watched him intently in
the half light the light that made of the conqueror, of his hand
some face and bronze figure, a statue. a
"Ah, what I remember!" broke out the ghost, with a genuine
laugh. "I remember your amazing forcefulness when you got
drunk." The man at the table watched him. "And I remember,"
added the ghost, padding round the room, "sitting with my feet
up and my knees under my chin on some kind of marble shelf, like
a schoolboy, and watching you rant-"
`s
"I never rant."
"Rave, then. But you mustn't split hairs. My word, they tried to
hold you back, didn't they? And my sister was your old nurse what a scandal! I hear you shut
yourself up for three days." Here he paused in the darkest corner of the tent. "You know," he
said, coming out into the light, dragging his cloak carelessly off one shoulder, "you know," he
said, his whole face becoming clearer, his brow rising, his eyes opening as they do in strong
feeling when the face is about to become a mask, "you know" (with an expression almost of
amazement) "I do remember it quite well. I have analyzed it a hundred times. I had no idea what
hit me. I thought the room had turned round and the floor had come up and thrown itself against
me. And then something hit me in the chest and I bit my tongue, do you know, and I saw your face-"
Here Alexander broke into a roar of laughter that might have been heard even outside the tent, but
the tent flaps did not move; they hung quite still.
"My dear friend," he said affectionately, "really I am very sorry, but you know you might have
come back four years ago. I feel for you, I do, but I'm afraid time has rather worn the whole
affair away. You see" and he pointed to the litter of papers on his desk.
"Ah," said the ghost wisely, "but 1 don't age, you see."
"That's too bad," said the emperor, putting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands,
"and now-"
"Now?" said the ghost expectantly.
"Now be a good fellow and go away."
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"No."
"Then I shall," but when the emperor pushed back his chair and got up, he saw that the friend he
had killed was somehow sitting in it and fingering his papers and that he did not like.
"My, look at this," said his friend.
"Let that be!"
"You're going to India; how nice."
"Will you-!" and he snatched the stranger's hand, but the shock of finding it flesh and blood was
too much for him and he started back, shouting, "Guards!" No one came.
"Ah, nonsense," said his friend quietly. He sat at the table as a
secretary or accompanying philosopher sits and writes down a great man's words; his black cloak
had slipped off his shoulders and lay half on the seat and half on the dirt floor, like a pool of
ink. He picked up one document after another, carefully and respectfully. It had always been
remarkable how this man could pick things up; his hand closed around a cup, a vase, a woman's
hand, with such gentleness and such attentive curiosity that one might almost imagine inanimate
objects feeling actual pleasure at his touch. Women had liked him and he had evaded them.
"You're going to India," he said. He was looking at marks on a map. Alexander strode matter-of-
factly to the tent flap to get friends or attendants who would rid him of this annoyance, but the
tent flap hung straight as stone. He could not move it.
"What do you want from me?" he said between his teeth.
"We-ell," drawled the stranger.
"What?" shouted the king, losing his patience.
"You're growing afraid."
"Not I!"
"Yes you are, and you'll do it."
"Do what!"
"Quietly." He studied the map. "Look at this," he said. "You're going to cross the Indus, you'll
be another seven years away from home, your army will mutiny and by the time you establish another
Alexandria-how many Alexandrias are there by this time? -at the eastern edge of the world, your
government in the west will have collapsed and you'll have to begin all over again. Good Lord,
what an agenda!"
"Stop playing with me," said the king, and he sat, with considerable dignity, on a low bench near
the opening of the tent.
"Why not? You used to play with me," said the ghost reasonably. "I used to."
"Precisely. You used to."
"Death hasn't steadied your character," said Alexander.
"Or sweetened yours!"
"Those who want to get kicked will get kicked," said the king.
"Yes, precisely," said his friend, blinking. "Well, what I want is this. I want you to turn back,
go spend the next winter in Heliopolis, renamed from Babylon (what a change!), and withdraw your
borders to the edge of Persia. You're a fool. You can't keep what you've got. As it is, the empire
will fall apart three days after your death. You think you can put up a few carved pillars,
appoint a satrap and a place is yours. Nonsense."
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"And-"said Alexander.
"And," repeated the ghost, looking a little bewildered, "and well-there you are." Alexander rose
to his feet. "I'm not done-" But a sudden breeze blasted the tent flap into the air as if
someone's violent enthusiasm had flung it skyward. Grinning cheerfully, though perhaps with a
certain awkwardness, Alexander walked to his friend and embraced him.
"Would you believe me," he said, "if I told you that I had repented? Sincerely repented? Why, man,
I saw no one for three days; they thought I would abandon them in the middle of the desert. So
much grief! But you should have known enough to keep away from me." He patted, without shrinking,
his friend's unnaturally solid back. "And the story about your sister was true," he said, "though
embroidered a little, I'll admit. I was truly fond of her and hated to cause her pain. And you"
His voice thickened. "Well, you know-"
"Ah," said the ghost, helplessly blinking.
"You know," said Alexander tenderly. "You know." And then, without another word, only looking back
with smiling and compassionate regret, he walked out of the tent.
Left alone, the stranger gazed thoughtfully after him for the space of a minute. Then, with
extraordinary rapidity, he whipped his cloak from the chair near the low table, wrapped it into a
small package, and flung it into the air. Watching it as it hung suspended between the roof and
the floor, he laughed to himself, a noiseless fit that doubled him up. As soon as he took his gaze
off the cloak, it fell like any other object, gracelessly unfolding itself in a scattered bundle
like a wounded goose. He picked it up and put it on.
Nom for the other one, he thought, and he sat down on the bench near the canvas wall, quite
composed. His name was Cleitus. He had been known in life as Cleitus the Black.
In Persia, in order to secure his political position, Alexander had married (and caused two
hundred of his nobles to do likewise, although their sentiments on the matter had not been
ascertained at the time) a Persian lady of aristocratic birth. Roxane, as his wife was called, had
spent most of her childhood in a courtyard with a mosaic marble floor, either learning to read and
write (which she despised) or chasing a striped ball with several other girls who kissed her hand
in the morning and in the evening and said "my lady." When she was seventeen she was surprisingly
and suddenly married to a man famous, handsome, young and formidable Three weeks' absence from
home made her desperately sick for her courtyard, which she had always considered a prison before,
and in which she had longed to stand on a chair piled on another chair piled on a table so that
she could see out of it and view the great world.
She came into the tent five minutes after Alexander had left it and two minutes after the stranger
had seated himself on a bench.
"Eh!" she said, startled. He was down on his knees, bowing, before she could take fright and run.
Then he kissed her hand, which comforted her because that was so familiar.
"Who are you?" said she, sensibly. He only smiled at her, as vaguely and disarmingly as a man who
has never been anything else but a woman's bumbling pet, and he kissed her hand again "I, madam,"
he said, "am called Theophrastus."
"What a foolish name!" said Roxane, giggling, for she had never learned to lie or be polite
either.
"My lady," he said, suddenly affecting to look alarmed, "should you be here alone with me? That is-
I mean-I believe-" Roxane tossed her head.
"Nobody follows me around," she said, "here. Nobody would dare hurt me," she added, "I suppose."
"Yes," she said. "Are they-are they-" (she whispered this)"bloodsuckers?"
"Uh-no," said the ghost, his wits scattered.
"Oh, then it's all right," she said, relieved. "You can keep away the other kinds, but that kind-"
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Suddenly she looked at him keenly. "You don't really know, do you?" she said.
"Of course I do," he said. She frowned. "No-you-don't," she said with emphasis. Her face darkened.
"You're Greek!"
He admitted it.
"Ha!" she said. "You probably don't believe in them at all."
He protested that he did.
"No you don't," she said. "I can tell. You'll tell my husband it's a lot of nonsense. I know."
"Madam!" he protested. "On my honor-"
"Greek honor!" she cried. "You'll tell my husband it's some Asiatic foolishness." She darted to
him, grabbing his shoulders and furiously shaking him. "Yes you will!" she shouted. "You'll tell
him it's nonsense and then he'll go out there and then-" and she turned away and screwed up her
face. She began to cry.
"Now, now, now," he said.
"He'll get killed!" wailed little Roxane. "He will! He will!"
"No, no, no," said the stranger, stroking her hair. She leaned against him, sobbing a little. Then
she pulled away.
"I'm rather homesick," she said sharply, explaining her conduct.
"Of course, of course," said the ghost in the tone women used to love so when he was alive. "It's
only natural, of course."
"You shouldn't pat my head," said Roxane, sniffling.
"Yes, of course," he said smoothly, "of course.-But it calms you, doesn't it? and it does so
distress me to see you upset."
"It makes my eyes red," said Roxane, blowing her nose in her long, Persian sleeve.
"It makes you unhappy," said he, "and I don't like to see people unhappy, you know, though I have
so few feelings myself." He smiled. "I had a wife like you once; she was much cleverer than I and
she hated the court: a real intellectual."
"Nobody with any heart would," said he. She colored.
"Madam," he said quickly, "I must find the emperor."
"I don't know where he is," said she, sitting plump on the bench. She looked interested and
expectant. The ghost began to walk up and down like a man tormented in his mind by the urgency of
something. He said "Ah, but madam!" and then he shook his head to himself a few times and said,
"Madam-"
"Why, what's the matter?" cried Roxane, who was entirely ignorant and hence unafraid. The ghost
came and sat down beside her with his black cloak (looking rather foolish) dragging behind him.
"You know, madam," he said earnestly, "that your husband, his Imperial Majesty, pai dios-"
"Yes, yes," said Roxane impatiently, clasping her hands.
"Your husband," said the ghost, looking round as if afraid they might be overheard, "has no doubt
told you, madam, that he intends to cross the river in a few days' time and for this he will need
native scouts, guides, madam, to acquaint him with the towns and villages that may lie beyond."
Roxane nodded, perfectly attentive. "Well now," continued the ghost, "and, madam, I tell you-I
tell you, I am nearly out of my senses-these guides whom your husband has engaged now refuse to go
anywhere. They have scattered to the four winds, madam." He looked at her apologetically, as if
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