“You think it was inappropriate of me to have extended such an invitation,” he said finally.
“No. Not really.”
“I want only to be your friend.”
“Yes. I know that.”
“And I thought, since you live so close to the hotel, I could offer you some refreshment, and show you some treasures of my own country that I have brought with me. I meant nothing more than that, Christine. Please. Believe me.”
She seemed to shed some of her tension. “I’d love to stop off at your hotel with you for a little while,” she said.
He had no doubt at all that it was much too soon for them to become lovers. Not only was he completely unskilled in this era’s sociosexual rituals and procedures, so that it was probably almost impossible for him to avoid offending or displeasing her by this or that unintentional violation of the accepted courtship customs of her society, but also at this point he was still much too uncertain of the accuracy of his insight into her own nature. Once he knew her better, perhaps he would be less likely to go about things incorrectly, particularly since she already gave him the benefit of many doubts because she knew he came from some distant land.
There was also the not inconsiderable point to consider that it was a profound violation of the rules of The Travel to enter into any kind of emotional or physical involvement with a native of a past era.
That, somehow, seemed secondary to Thimiroi just now. He knew all about the importance of avoiding distortion or contamination of the time-line; they drilled it into you endlessly before you ever started to Travel. But suddenly such issues seemed unreal and abstract to him. What mattered was what he felt: the surge of delight, eagerness, passion, that ran through him when he turned to look at this woman of a far-off time. All his life he had been a stranger among his own people, a prisoner within his own skin; now, here, at last, it seemed to him that he had a chance of breaking through the net of brittle conventions that for so long had bound his spirit, and touching, at last, the soul of another human being. He had read about love, of course—who had not?—but here, he thought, he might actually experience it. Was that a reckless ambition? Well, then, he would be reckless. The alternative was to condemn himself to a lifetime of bitter regret.
Therefore he schooled himself to patience. He dared not be too hasty, for fear of ruining everything.
Christine appeared astounded by what she saw in his rooms. She wandered through them like a child in a wonderland, hardly breathing, pausing here and there to look, to reach out hesitantly, to hold her hand above this or that miraculous object as though afraid actually to touch it but eager to experience its texture.
“You brought all this from your own country?” she asked. “You must have had fifty suitcases!”
“We get homesick very easily. We wish to have our familiar things about us.”
“The way a sultan would travel. A pasha.” Her eyes were shining with awe. “These little tables—I’ve never seen anything like them. I try to follow the weave, but the pattern won’t stand still. It keeps sliding around its own corners.”
“The woodworkers of Sipulva are extremely ingenious,” Thimiroi said.
“Sipulva? Is that a city in your country?”
“A place nearby,” he said. “You may touch them if you wish.”
She caressed the intricately carved surfaces, fingers tracing the weave as it went through its incomprehensible convolutions. Thimiroi, smiling, turned the music sphere on—one of Mirtin’s melodikias began to come from it, a shimmering crystalline piece—and set about brewing some tea. Christine drifted onward, examining the draperies, the glistening carpets, the pulsating esthetikon that was sending waves of color through the room, the simso screens with their shifting views of unknown worlds. She was altogether enthralled. It would certainly be easy enough to seduce her now, Thimiroi realized. A little sensuous music, a few sips of euphoriac, perhaps some surreptitious adjustments of the little subsonic so that it sent forth heightened tonalities of anticipation and excitation—yes, that was all that it would take, he knew. But easy conquest was not what he wanted. He did not intend to pass through her soul like a frivolous tourist drifting through a museum in search of an hour’s superficial diversion.
One cup of tea for each of them, then, and no more. Some music, some quick demonstrations of a few of the little wonders that filled his rooms. A light kiss, finally, and then one that was more intense: but a quick restoration, afterward, of the barriers between them. Christine seemed no more willing to breach those barriers today than he was. Thimiroi was relieved at that, and pleased. They seemed to understand each other already.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said, when they plainly had reached the time when she must either leave or stay much longer.
“You needn’t. It’s just down the street.” Her hand lingered in his. Her touch was warm, her skin faintly moist, pleasantly so. “You’ll call me? Here’s my number.” She gave him a smooth little yellow card. “We could have dinner, perhaps. Or a concert—whatever you’d like to see—”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll call you.”
“You’ll be here at least a few more days, won’t you?”
“Until the end of the month.”
She nodded. He saw the momentary darkening of her expression, and guessed at the inward calculations: reckoning the number of days remaining to his visit, the possibilities that those days might hold, the rashness of embarking on anything that would surely not extend beyond the last day of May. Thimiroi had already made the same calculations himself, though tempered by information that she could not conceivably have, information which made everything inconceivably more precarious. After the smallest of pauses she said, “That’s plenty of time, isn’t it? But call me soon, Thimiroi. Will you? Will you?”
A little while later there was a light knocking at the door, and Thimiroi, hoping with a startling rush of eagerness that Christine had found some pretext for returning, opened it to find Laliene. She looked weary. The perfection of her beauty was unmarred, of course, every shining strand of hair in its place, her tanned skin fresh and glistening. But beneath the radiant outer glow there was once again something drawn and tense and ragged about her, a subliminal atmosphere of strain, of fatigue, of devitalization, that was not at all typical of the Laliene he had known. This visit to the late twentieth century did not seem to be agreeing with her.
“May I come in?” she asked. He nodded and beckoned to her. “We’ve all just returned from the Courtney birthplace,” she said. “You really should have gone with us, Thimiroi. You can feel the aura of the man everywhere in the place, even this early, so many years before he even existed.” Taking a few steps into the room, Laliene paused, sniffed the air lightly, smiled. “Having a little tea by yourself just now, were you, Thimiroi?”
“Just a cup. It was a long quiet afternoon.”
“Poor Thimiroi. Couldn’t find anything at all interesting to do? Then you certainly should have come with us.” He saw her glance flicking quickly about, and felt pleased and relieved that he had taken the trouble to put the teacups away. It was in fact no business of Laliene’s that he had had a guest in here this afternoon, but he did not want her, all the same, to know that he had.
“Can I brew a cup for you?” he asked.
“I think not. I’m so tired after our outing—it’ll put me right to sleep, I would say.” She turned toward him, giving him a direct inquisitorial stare that he found acutely discomforting. In a straightforward way that verged on bluntness she said, “I’m worried about you, you know, Thimiroi. Keeping off by yourself so much. The others are talking. You really should make an effort to join the group more often.”