Boardman’s hand encircled Muller’s wrist in a firm greeting that incredibly turned flabby within seconds. The hand slipped away even before Muller could return the embrace. “It’s good to see you, Dick,” Boardman said without conviction, stepping back a couple of paces. His cheeks seemed to sag as though under heavy gravitational stress. Marta slipped between them and pressed herself against him. Muller seized her, touching her shoulder-blades and running his hands swiftly down to her lean buttocks. He did not kiss her. Her eyes were dazzling as he looked within them and felt himself lost in rebounding mirror images. Her nostrils flared. Through her thin flesh he felt muscles bridling. She was trying to get free of him. “Dick,” she whispered. “I’ve prayed for you every night. You don’t know how I’ve missed you.” She struggled harder. He moved his hands to her haunches and pushed inward so fiercely that he could imagine her pelvic cage yielding and flexing. Her legs were trembling, and he feared that if he let go of her, she would fall. She turned her head to one side. He put his cheek against her delicate ear. “Dick,” she murmured, “I feel so strange—so glad to see you that I’m all tangled up inside—let go, Dick, I feel queasy somehow—”
Yes. Yes. Of course. He released her.
Boardman, sweating, nervous, mopped at his face, jabbed himself with some soothing drug, fidgeted, paced. Muller had never seen him look this way before. “Suppose I let the two of you have some time together, eh?” Boardman suggested, his voice coming out half an octave too high. “The weather’s been getting to me, Dick. I’ll talk with you tomorrow. Your accommodations are all arranged.” Boardman fled. Now Muller felt panic rising. “Where do we go?” he asked.
“There’s a transport pod outside. We have a room at the Starport Inn. Do you have luggage?”
“It’s still aboard the ship,” Muller answered. “It can wait.”
Marta was chewing at the corner of her lower lip. He took her by the hand and they rode the slidewalk out of the terminal room to the transportation pods. Go on, he thought. Tell me that you don’t feel well. Tell me that mysteriously you’ve come down with something in the last ten minutes.
“Why did you cut your hair?” he asked.
“It’s a woman’s right. Don’t you like it this way?”
“Not as much.” They entered the pod. “Longer, bluer, it was like the sea on a stormy day.” The pod shot off on a bath of quicksilver. She kept far to her side, hunched against the hatch. “And the makeup, too. I’m sorry, Marta. I wish I could like it.”
“I was prettying for your homecoming.”
“Why are you doing that with your lip?”
“What am I doing?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Here we are. The room is booked already?”
“In your name, yes.”
They went in. He put his hand on the registration plate. It flashed green and they headed for the liftshaft. The inn began in the fifth sublevel of the starport and went down for fifty levels; their room was near the bottom. Choice location, he thought. The bridal suite, maybe. They stepped into a room with kaleidoscopic hangings and a wide bed with all accessories. The roomglow was tactfully dim. Muller thought of months of woman cubes and a savage throbbing rose in his groin. He knew he had no need to explain any of that to Marta. She moved past him, into the personal room, and was in there a long while. Muller undressed.
She came out nude. All the tricky makeup was gone, and her hair was blue again.
“Like the sea,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t grow it back in there. The room wasn’t programmed for it.”
“It’s much better now,” he told her.
They were ten meters apart. She stood at an angle to him, and he studied the contours of her frail but tough form, the small up-jutting breasts, the boyish buttocks, the elegant thighs.
“The Hydrans,” he said, “have either five sexes or none, I’m not sure which. That’s a measure of how well I got to know them while I was there. However they do it, I think people have more fun. Why are you standing over there, Marta?”
Silently she came toward him. He put one arm around her shoulders and cupped his other hand over one of her breasts. At other times when he did that he felt the nipple pebble-hard with desire against his hand. Not now. She quivered a little, like a shy mare wanting to bolt. He put his lips to her lips, and they were dry, taut, hostile. When he ran his hand along the fine line of her jaw she seemed to shudder. He drew her down and they sat side by side on the bed. Her hand reached for him, almost unwillingly.
He saw the pain in her eyes.
She rolled away from him, her head snapping back hard onto the pillow, and he watched her face writhe with some barely suppressed agony. Then she took his hands in hers and tugged him toward her. Her knees came up and her thighs opened.
“Take me, Dick,” she said stagily. “Right now!”
“What’s the hurry?”
She tried to force him onto her, into her. He wasn’t having it that way. He pulled free of her and sat up. She was crimson to the shoulders, and tears glistened on her face. He knew as much of the truth now as he needed to know, but he had to ask.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Marta.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re acting like you’re sick.”
“I think I am.”
“When did you start feeling ill?”
“I—oh, Dick, why all these questions? Please, love, come close.”
“You don’t want me to. Not really. You’re being kind.”
“I’m—trying to make you happy, Dick. It—it hurts so much—so —much.”
“What does?”
She wouldn’t answer. She gestured wantonly and tugged at him again. He sprang from the bed.
“Dick, Dick, I warned you not to go! I said I had some precog.
And that other things could happen to you there besides getting killed.”
“Tell me what hurts you.”
“I can’t. I-don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
“When did it start?”
“This morning. When I got up.”
“That’s another lie. I have to have the truth!”
“Make love to me, Dick. I can’t wait much longer. I—”
“You what?”
“Can’t-stand—”
“Can’t stand what?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” She was off the bed too, rubbing against him, a cat in heat, shivering, muscles leaping in her face, eyes wild.
He caught her wrists and ground the bones together.
“Tell me what it is you can’t stand much longer, Marta.”
She gasped. He squeezed harder. She swung back, head lolling, breasts thrust toward the ceiling. Her body was oiled now with sweat. Her nakedness maddened and inflamed him.
“Tell me,” he said. “You can’t stand—”
“—being near you,” she said.
SIX
1
Within the maze the air was somehow warmer and sweeter. The walls must cut off the winds, Rawlins thought. He walked carefully, listening to the voice at his ear.
Turn left… three paces… put your right foot beside the black stripe on the pavement… pivot… turn left… jour paces… ninety-degree turn to the right… immediately make a ninety-degree turn to the right again.
It was like a children’s street game—step on a crack, break your mother’s back. The stakes were higher here, though. He moved cautiously, feeling death nipping at his heels. What sort of people would build a place like this? Ahead an energy flare spurted across the path. The computer called off the timing for him. One, two, three, four, five, GO! Rawlins went.
Safe.
On the far side he halted flatfooted, and looked back. Board-man was keeping pace with him, unslowed by age. Boardman waved and winked. He went through the patterns, too. One, two, three, jour, five, GO! Boardman crossed the place of the energy flare.