An exotic creature entered the box with a curious prancing stride. Nisa’s first thought was, How elegant. Her next was, How strange. Her visitor was tall and broad-shouldered, with tumbling ringlets of auburn hair, wearing a knee-length shift of some light, clinging white fabric, patterned with random flecks of warm color. Below the hem, the calves were strong and smooth. The slender feet wore thin sandals, laced with lavender ribbons. Small high breasts thrust against the robe, and rounded hips swayed as the visitor moved. The naked arms were strongly muscled, the hands long and fine, the well-shaped nails striped with delicate bands of color. The chiseled face was mercuriaclass="underline" at one moment as innocent and open as a young child’s, the next suffused with a dark cynical calculation.
It spoke. “A burning paramount pleasure to serve you, noble lady.” The voice gave no clue to the creature’s gender; it was a melodious contralto.
It swept into a low bow, legs straight, curls brushing along the floor. “One rises as far above one’s station as Sooksun at his apex rises above the jungle, to introduce oneself: One is called Ayam.”
Nisa scarcely knew how to respond to such flowery abasement. “Hello, Ayam,” she said lamely.
Ayam bowed again and again, apparently overcome by hysterical joy. “Oh,” Ayam cried in a throbbing voice, “one swoons at the undeserved honor of your greeting, noble lady. One swoons with delight and wonder, both at the generosity of the noble lady, and the wisdom of my great mistress, whose name need not be spoken by such as Ayam—” Ayam seemed willing to go on in that vein for a long time, but Nisa made a gesture of impatience and the stream of hyperbole cut off.
“Why are you here?” Nisa spoke sharply.
Ayam wilted, collapsing into a mound of misery on the hard floor. “Oh, noble lady, Ayam is devastated, that one has failed so terribly to inform the noble lady properly, oh woe, woe—”
“Ayam, please!”
Ayam pulled itself together and wiped at its lovely eyes, though Nisa had seen no actual tears on Ayam’s smooth cheeks. “Yes, of course,” Ayam said in tones of shaky restraint. “Noble lady, Ayam is your helot, here to serve in any small capacity one can, to make you comfortable, to ease your ills, to fetch and carry, to warm your bed, to answer any request—”
“Yes, yes,” Nisa cut off Ayam’s speech. “Well, we won’t be very comfortable here, will we?” She gestured at the barren room.
Ayam’s eyes widened in theatrical shock, but it suddenly came to Nisa that the helot was amused. “Noble lady,” it said. “This is one of the finest of my mistress’ apartments, which you may shape perfectly to your needs. Allow one to show you, though, of course, one is unworthy to instruct the noble lady in the smallest—”
“Never mind that,” Nisa said. “Show me what you mean, Ayam.”
The helot stood, abandoning its pose of abjectness. “From the floor, then,” it said. “What manner of floor covering does my lady prefer?” Ayam stepped to the door, beckoning with one elegant hand. “Come, noble lady, place your hand here.” Ayam gestured to a hand-sized rectangle of metal set into the bland plastic of the wall.
Nisa put her hand cautiously to the plate, to feel a tingling warmth. She started to pull away, but Ayam nodded approvingly and said, “Just so. Now, if you will, think of how you would most like the floor to look, to feel. Would you prefer carpet, or pandawood puncheons, or cool earth? Just think, noble lady.”
Nisa wondered if the helot were mad, but then she considered that many strangenesses had come to seem usual to her since she had taken the path of Expiation. So she closed her eyes, and imagined that the floor was covered in the rich fur of the dust otter. She felt a tickle under her feet, and opened her eyes in astonishment. The hard floor was sprouting a downy coating! As she stared, it thickened into glossy carnelian fur. She noticed that the texture against her toes was not as soft as the real fur; as she thought it, the fur silkened into a perfect counterfeit.
Nisa was charmed and fascinated. She spent the following hours converting her cell into an opulent jewel box, with Ayam’s enthusiastic assistance. The other room was a bathhouse, and Nisa changed it into a luminous grotto, all porcelain and glass.
She caused the wall to sprout a vast canopied bed, heaped with silken coverlets, curtained with the finest gauze. At this point she detected a covert look of appraisal from Ayam. She considered only briefly before wishing a small alcove in the corner for the helot’s bed. Ayam watched impassively, but Nisa thought she’d caught just the tiniest trace of disappointment on that smooth face. That look afforded Nisa a small satisfaction — that she was desired by this elegant creature — but the helot was just too strange, far too strange.
Besides, she had become aware of a confusing and novel distaste whenever she contemplated taking another stranger into her bed. The hard enigmatic face of Wuhiya was in some way connected to the confusion, but she could not imagine how.
Several days passed, first in pleasant diversion, then in increasing boredom. Nisa bathed endlessly, enjoying the extravagance of the never-failing water, the rich soaps and lotions, the unfailing attention of the helot. She slept. She ate her meals from a cupboard in the wall that served her whatever she desired. She wished a vast wardrobe of fine gowns in colors that suited her.
Despite these diversions, she grew more and more restless. No one came, and the company of the self-abasing helot grew tedious. Ayam’s advances grew less subtle, more pressing. After her bath on the third day, the helot offered her a massage, which she accepted. The massage was a highly developed art form on Pharaoh; she lay on a heated softstone slab, eyes closed, smiling with nostalgic anticipation.
She heard the rustling sounds of the helot’s undressing with no alarm — the sweet massage oil would stain Ayam’s beautiful shift.
She felt oil pour across her back in a warm stream. The helot’s strong hands moved across her flesh, stroking, squeezing, pummeling gently. Nisa gave herself to pleasure.
Gradually, however, Ayam’s clever fingers began to stray into more intimate areas.
“What are you up to?” Nisa asked, though it was obvious.
The helot’s muscular thighs gripped her hips and the fingers teased deeper. She half-rolled under the straddling helot and opened her eyes.
Ayam’s nipples were erect and a flush of ardor mottled its breasts. Its erect penis lifted above a small vagina, where moisture glistened.
Nisa shut her eyes. “No. Get off me,” she said, in a voice full of fascination and revulsion.
The helot did so, babbling apologies, to which Nisa did not respond. Thereafter she was more cautious with the helot, and it grew slightly less deferential.
When, a day later, the door to her cell finally opened, the sound startled her. The ugly giantess pushed a wheeled litter inside, and on the litter was the motionless body of Wuhiya.
The giantess shoved the litter, and it glided smoothly up to Nisa. “Here,” the giantess said. “He’ll be your guest for a while. Leave him alone; the limpet will awaken him when the damage is repaired.” The giantess left.
Nisa bent over Wuhiya. She was at first certain he was dead. No, he was alive, but he looked terribly ill, his skin gray, the muscles sagging in unhealthy relaxation. She touched his face, and then pulled her hand away, a little repelled. His flesh was cool, too cool. On his neck was something that looked like a metal spider; on it lights burned amber. From it slender throbbing tentacles writhed out and sank into his neck. Nisa wondered if she had looked this much like a corpse when Wuhiya had first seen her, and the thought triggered a flush of tenderness. Wuhiya had tended her; now she would tend him.