Return From The Stars Part 10

"Well, then, go, if you like," she said. He parted a curtain that formed one of the walls, and left. I started to follow him.

"Please?" I heard her voice.

I stopped. From behind the curtain came applause.

"Won't you have a seat?"

Without a word I sat down. She had a magnificent profile. Her ears were covered by little s.h.i.+elds of pearl.

"I am Aen Aenis."

"Hal Bregg."

She seemed surprised. Not by my name -- it meant nothing to her -- but by the fact that I had received her name so indifferently. Now I could get a close look at her. Her beauty was perfect and merciless, as was the calm, controlled carelessness of her movements. She wore a pink-gray dress, more gray than pink; it set off the whiteness of her face and arms.

"You don't like me?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know you."

"I am Ammai -- in The True Ones."

"What is that?"

She regarded me with curiosity.

"You haven't seen The True Ones?"

"I don't even know what it is."

"Where did you come from?"

"I came here from my hotel."

"Really. From your hotel. . ." There was open mockery in her tone. "And where, may I ask, were you before you got to your hotel?"

"In Fomalhaul."

"What is that?"

"A constellation."

"What do you mean?"

"A star system, twenty-three light years from here."

Her eyelids fluttered. Her lips parted. She was very pretty.

"An astronaut?"

"Yes."

"I understand. I am a realist -- rather well known."

I said nothing. We were silent. The music played.

"Do you dance?"

I nearly laughed out loud.

"What they dance now -- no."

"A pity. But you can learn. Why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"There -- on the footbridge."

I did not answer immediately.

"It was. . . a reflex."

"You were familiar with it?"

"That make-believe journey? No."

"No?"

"No."

A moment of silence. Her eyes, for a moment green, now became almost black.

"Only in very old prints can one see that sort of thing," she said, as if involuntarily. "No one would play. . . It isn't possible. When I saw it, I thought that. . . that you. . ."

I waited.

". . . might be able to. Because you took it seriously. Yes?"

"I don't know. Perhaps."

"Never mind. I know. Would you be interested? I'm friends with French. But you don't know who he is, do you? I must tell him. . . He is the chief producer of the real. If you are interested. . ."

I burst out laughing. She gave a start.

"I'm sorry. But -- ye G.o.ds and little fishes, you thought of giving me a job as. . ."

"Yes."

She did not seem to be offended. Quite the contrary.

"Thank you, but no. I really don't think so."

"But can you tell me how you did it? Is it a secret?"

"What do you mean, how? Didn't you see. . . ?"

I broke off.

"You want to know how I was able to do it."

"You are most perceptive."

She knew how to smile with the eyes alone like no one else. Wait, in a minute you won't be wanting to seduce me, I thought.

"It's simple. And no secret. I'm not betrizated."

"Ooh. . ."

For a moment I thought that she would get up, but she controlled herself. Her eyes became once more large and avid. She looked at me as at a beast that lay a step away, as though she found a perverse pleasure in the terror that I aroused in her. To me it was an insult worse than if she had been merely frightened. "You can. . . ?"

"Kill?" I replied, smiling politely. "Yes. I can."

We were silent. The music played. Several times she raised her eyes to me. She did not speak. Nor did I. Applause. Music. Applause. We must have sat like that for a quarter of an hour. Suddenly she got up.

"Will you come with me?"

"Where?"

"To my place."

"For some brit?"

"No."

She turned and left. I sat without moving. I hated her. She walked without looking about, walked like no woman I had ever seen. She did not walk: she floated. Like a queen.

I caught up with her among hedges, where it was almost dark. The last traces of light from the pavilions blended with the bluish glow of the city. She must have heard my footsteps, but on she went, not looking, as if she were alone, even when I took her by the arm. She walked on; it was like a slap. I grabbed her shoulders, turned her to me; she lifted her face, white in the darkness; she looked into my eyes. She did not try to break away. But she could not have done so. I kissed her roughly, full of hatred; I felt her tremble.

"You. . ." she said in a low voice, when we separated.

"Be quiet."

She tried to free herself.

"Not yet," I said and began to kiss her again. Suddenly my rage turned into self-disgust, and I released her. I thought that she would flee. She remained. She tried to look me in the face. I turned away.

"What is the matter?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing."

She took me by the arm.

"Come."

A couple pa.s.sed us and vanished in the shadows. I followed her. There, in the darkness, it had seemed that anything was possible, but when it grew lighter, my outburst of a moment before -- which was supposed to have been in reprisal for an insult -- became merely amusing. I felt that I was walking into something false, false as the danger had been, the wizardry, everything -- and I walked on. No anger, no hatred, nothing. I did not care. I found myself among high-hanging lights and felt this huge, heavy presence of mine, which made my every step by her side grotesque. But she seemed unaware of this. She walked along a rampart, behind which stood rows of gleeders. I wanted to stay behind, but she slid her hand down my arm and grasped my hand. I would have had to tear it away, becoming even more comical -- an image of astronautical virtue in the clutches of Potiphar's wife. I climbed in after her, the machine trembled and took off. It was my first trip in a gleeder, and I understood now why they had no windows. From the inside they were entirely transparent, as if made of gla.s.s.

We traveled a long time, in silence. The buildings of the city center gave way to bizarre forms of suburban architecture -- under small artificial suns, immersed in vegetation, lay structures with flowing lines, or inflated into odd pillows, or winged, so that the division between the interior of a home and its surroundings was lost; these were products of a phantasmagoria, of tireless attempts to create without repeating old forms. The gleeder left the wide runway, shot through a darkened park, and came to rest by stairs folded like a cascade of gla.s.s; walking up them, I saw an orangery spread out beneath my feet.

The heavy gate opened soundlessly. A huge hall enclosed by a high gallery, pale pink s.h.i.+elds of lamps neither supported nor suspended; in the sloping walls, windows that seemed to look out into a different s.p.a.ce, niches containing not photographs, not dolls, but Aen herself, enormous, directly ahead -- Aen in the arms of a dark man who kissed her, above the undulating staircase; Aen in the white, endless s.h.i.+mmer of a dress; and, to the side, Aen bent over flowers, lilies as large as her face. Walking behind her, I saw her again in another window, smiling girlishly, alone, the light trembling on her auburn hair.

Green steps. A suite of white rooms. Silver steps. Corridors from end to end, and in them, slow, incessant movement, as if the s.p.a.ce were breathing; the walls slid back silently, making way wherever the woman before me directed her steps. One might think that an imperceptible wind were rounding off the intersections of the galleries, sculpturing them, and that everything I had seen so far were only a threshold, an introduction, a vestibule. Through a room, illuminated from without by the most delicate veining of ice, so white that even the shadows in it seemed milky, we entered a smaller room -- after the pure radiance of the other, its bronze was like a shout. There was nothing here but a mysterious light from a source that seemed to be inverted, so that it shone on us and our faces from below; she made a motion of the hand, it dimmed; she stepped to the wall and with a few gestures conjured from it a swelling that immediately began to open out to make a kind of wide double bed -- I knew enough about topology to appreciate the research that must have gone into the line of the headrest alone.

"We have a guest," she said, pausing. From the open paneling a low table emerged, all set, and ran to her like a dog. The large lights went out when, over a niche with armchairs -- I cannot describe what sort of armchairs they were -- she gestured for a small lamp to appear, and the wall obeyed. She seemed to have had enough of these budding, blooming pieces of furniture; she leaned across the table and asked, not looking in my direction: "Blar?"

"All right," I said. I asked no questions; I could not help being a savage, but at least I could be a silent savage.

She handed me a tall cone with a tube in it; it glittered like a ruby but was soft, as though I had touched the fuzzy skin of a fruit. She took one herself. We sat down. Uncomfortably soft, like sitting on a cloud. The liquid had a taste of unknown fresh fruits, with tiny lumps that unexpectedly and amusingly burst on the tongue.

"Is it good?" she asked.

"Yes."

Perhaps this was a ritual drink. For example, for the chosen ones; or, on the contrary, to pacify the especially dangerous. But I had decided to ask no questions.

"It's better when you sit."

"Why?"

"You're awfully large."

"That I know."

"You work at being rude."

"No. It comes to me naturally."

She began to laugh, quietly.

"I am also witty," I said. "All sorts of talents."

"You're different," she said. "No one talks like that. Tell me, how is it? What do you feel?"

"I don't understand."

"You're pretending. Or perhaps you lied -- no, that isn't possible. You wouldn't have been able to. . ."

"Jump?"

"I wasn't thinking of that."