Abruptly Dallen felt that he was drowning. He dismissed the feeling as a psychological effect, then realised he had breathed out and had actually omitted to initiate the next inhalation, as though his autonomous nervous system had gone on strike. He snatched air in two noisy sighs and sprang to his feet, feeling trapped within the confines of the cabin. The time display on the wall showed that it was not yet eight in the morning. Food? Would breakfast help? Dallen felt his diaphragm heave gently at the thought of eating, but coffee seemed a reasonably inviting prospect, a way of getting through a few minutes.
He made sure that Cona and Mikel were not likely to awaken, let himself out of the cabin and went upstairs to Deck 4, the first full deck. There was nobody in the mealomat area, although he could hear some crew members talking in the adjoining canteen.
Dallen drew himself a cup of black coffee, considered taking it into the canteen, then on impulse walked up another flight of stairs and went into the small observation gallery. It was deserted. Such vantage points tended to be used only during normal-space manoeuvring in the vicinity of Earth or Orbitsville — in mid-voyage, cocooned in a ship's private continuum, there was little to see outside. The universe presented itself as an intense spot of blue ahead of the ship and an equally bright locus of red astern. On the rare occasions when a vessel passed dose to a star an ultra-thin ring of light would expand out of the forward spot, slide by the ship on all sides like a conjurer's hoop and shrink into the speck of ruby brilliance behind.
Unconcerned about the lack of spectacle, Dallen dropped into a chair and sat in the theatrical darkness sipping his coffee, his thoughts still dominated by the future. Fixing the time of Mathieu's execution seemed to have removed a short-term goal which had acted as a barrier. Now the shutters had been lifted and decades lay ahead of him in a blur of shifting probabilities — and from what he could see of the temporal landscape it looked bleak. To be more analytical, without Silvia London it looked bleak. To be even more analytical — and to add a dash of honesty and self-interest — without Cona and without Silvia it looked bleak. And that came the insidious thought, is a circumstance that can easily be changed.
All he had to do was quit being stubborn and accept what qualified physicians had been telling him all along — that Cona Dallen, author and historian, no longer existed. That meant he had no moral obligations to her, that all contracts were nullified. The body Cona had inhabited was entitled to good care, to the comfort and security in which a new personality would be able to develop within its own limitations, but there was no logical reason for Carry Dallen's own life to be subordinated to the process. He should be concerned, but not interned. He had placed himself in a prison whose walls were made of mist, and all he had to do was walk free…
Fine! QED! Welcome to the bright, shadow-free world of rationality!
Dallen felt a surge of elation and wonderment over how easy it had been to put his life into logical order, a sense of giddy uplift which was immediately followed by the plunging realisation that he had achieved precisely nothing. He was building castles of romantic dreams around Silvia London — all on the strength of a few ambiguous words and enigmatic looks. What he needed was hard information, a straight yes or no from the woman in question, but right from the beginning he had behaved like a tongue-tied yokel in Silvia's presence…
"In the name of Christ," he whispered savagely, swept by a sudden boiling surf of impatience over a state of mind in which he could calmly arrange the death of a fellow human being and at the same time cower back from asking one question of a woman. He crushed the empty cup in his right hand, producing a loud crackle which caused a barely-seen figure to glance in his direction from the opposite end of the gallery. The other person was a woman, and he had no idea how long she had been sitting there. He identified the thick-set, middle-aged figure as Doctor Billy Glaister, the Foundation officer who shared a cabin with Silvia, and he found himself moving towards her with no conscious sense of volition. She looked up in surprise, her face an indistinct glow in the darkness, as he halted at her side.
"Hello," Dallen said. "Restful in here, isn't it?"
"Usually," she replied coolly. "I come here when I want peace to think."
"Hint taken." Dallen tried an ingratiating chuckle. "I'll clear off and leave you to it. By the way, is Silvia in her room?"
"I expect so. Why?" The doctor had ceased being distant and now was openly hostile.
The notion that here might be another rival for Silvia immediately appeared in Dallen's mind, but something — all the more momentous for being unanticipated — had happened inside him and he welcomed the extra challenge. He hunkered down beside the woman, deliberately invading her personal space.
"I want to have a word with her. I presume she's allowed visitors?"
"Don't be impertinent. Silvia has had many stressful factors to contend with lately."
"It was decent of you to step out and give her a break." Dallen stood up, left the observation gallery and walked quickly towards the nearest stair. The time was 8:50, leaving him more than two hours before his preordained rendezvous, and he felt a vast relief over the knowledge that he was at last committed to positive action. He was alert and competent, as though he had shaken off an enervating spell. He descended to Deck 5 and, not sparing a glance for the netherworld of scaffolding and tights visible in the central well, went to the box-like cabin being used by Silvia and tapped the door. She opened it, immediately sprung away from him with a swirl of a blue cotton dressing gown, then froze in mid-stride and turned back.
"I thought you were…" Her eyes were wide with surprise, seeming darker than usual against a morning paleness he had never seen before and which gave him a stabbing sexual thrill of such power that he almost gasped.
"May I come in?" he said steadily.
Silvia shook her head. "It's too… I'm not even dressed."
"I've got to come in." He crossed the threshold and closed the door. "I have to talk to you."
"About what?"
"No more games, Silvia. I know I shouldered my way in here uninvited. I know fm being bad-mannered and that my timing couldn't be worse, but I have to know about us. I need a direct statement from you — a simple yes or a simple no."
"You make it seem like a business transaction." Silvia appeared to have recovered her composure, but her colour had heightened.
"Is this better?" He took the single pace that was necessary to close the distance between them and, very slowly, allowing her ample time to twist away, placed a hand at each side of her waist and gently drew her towards him. She came to him, yielding with a peculiar sagging movement which brought their groins together first — sending a shockwave of sensation racing through his body — followed by a leisurely meeting of bellies, breasts and mouths. Dallen drank the kiss, gorging himself until its natural ending.
"I've still got to hear you say it," he whispered, touching his lips to her ear. "Yes or no?"
This isn't fair."
"To hell with fair — I’ve had enough fairness to last me a lifetime. Yes or no?"
"Yes." She thrust herself against him almost aggressively, with a force he had difficulty in matching. "Yes!"