She frowned, suddenly conscious of how frail, how small he was beside her, how her hand enveloped his, her strong, slender fingers thicker, longer than his. Like a mother with her child.
His face was serious, unsmiling now, his eyes still questioning her. Then, unexpectedly, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, brushing it with his lips gently before releasing it. Again she shivered, then turned away quickly, a sweet but painful sensation filling her, physical in its intensity. And as she turned, the memory of her dream came back to her, so that she saw it vividly—saw again that small, dark creature, whose eyes burned like coals and whose wet, dark skin shone with an inner light. She saw it climb from the darkness of the cracked and scarred earth and lift the mirror at the tower. Saw it and gave a small cry, as if in pain. But it was recognition.
She turned back. He was watching her, concerned, not understanding why she had made the sound.
"Are you all right?"
She made to speak, but at that moment there were noises in the hallway outside. Kim was still watching her, confused, unable to comprehend the pain, the sudden intentness of her glances at him. "I . . ." she began, but it was all she could say. It was him. Now, the dream returned to her, she saw it. Saw how his eyes saw through her to the bone and the darkness underneath. Saw it and knew—even as her maid came into the room—that this was her fate. This childlike man. This fierce and gentle creature.
"Jelka?" He was looking at her strangely now. "Are you all right?"
She took a breath and nodded. "I... I'm fine." But she felt faint, felt both ice cold and fiery hot, as if a sudden fever had taken her.
Forcing herself to be calm, she looked across at her maid and smiled, as if to reassure the girl.
"You'll stay for dinner, Shih Ward?"
"If you want me to."
She nodded. "I... I must go now," she said, looking down. "But please, make yourself at home. My maid. . . my maid will see to you." Then, with one final glance at him, she turned and left the room.
And after, as she lay on her bed, thinking back on what had happened, she saw him differently: saw not the man nor the creature of her dreams, but the two transposed, inextricably mixed. And knew, with a sudden certainty that surprised her, that she wanted him.
THREE HOURS had passed and now Kim sat there in the Marshal's study, listening to her talk. Jelka was standing on the far side of the room, beside the huge window wall, staring out into the artificial depths of the past and re-created country of Kalevala, a wistfulness in her face that seemed to mirror the light in the other land. And as she talked, he leaned in toward her, entranced, hanging on her every word.
"You can't help yourself, that's the worst of it. It's like a constant betrayal of yourself. You feel nothing, and yet you go on smiling, talking, laughing, all to fill the vacuum, to mask the nothingness you're feeling all the time." She glanced at him. "At least, that's how it was." She laughed, showing her perfect teeth, her chin slightly raised.
Kim, watching her, caught his breath, pained by the beauty of that one small movement. She was like something from a dream; so tall and straight and lovely. Her hair was like a screen of golden silk, her eyes the blue of the sky in the land beyond her. And her mouth . . .
"As for the rest of them, they don't even seem to notice how things are. It's as if they're dead to it all. I mean, perhaps they really can't tell the difference between this and real life. I don't know . . ." She shrugged, her eyes suddenly pained, "But it seems to me that there's a falseness, an intrinsic flaw in them. It's as if the City's swallowed them. Eaten them up, souls and all. And yet they seem happy with that. It's as if they really don't need anything more."
She turned, facing him, a fierce determination in her eyes. "That's how it is here, Kim. Like a living death. Yet when I saw you I knew at once that you were different." She shivered, the intensity of her words forcing her face into a grimace of pain. "Do you understand what I'm saying? It's not your size. It's not even what you do—that talent that my father values so highly. It's you. You're different from the rest of them. And I want that. I want it so much that it hurts me to think that I might not have it. . ."
She looked away, her eyes releasing him. But her words had seared him. He looked down at his trembling hands, then answered her.
"You have it," he said, meeting her eyes. "All of it." He laughed strangely. "I think I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. Your eyes . . ."
She turned, surprised. "Then it wasn't just me? You felt that too?"
"Yes . . ." He was silent a moment, then, quietly, "I love you, Jelka Tolonen. I have done from the first."
"You love me?" She laughed, surprised. "You know, I thought all that was done with. That nothing would ever touch me again. I thought. . ."
Again she shivered, but this time she came across and knelt beside him, taking his hands.
"You see, I wasn't expecting anything. I didn't think that anything more could happen to me. There was the engagement to Hans Ebert, of course, but, well, it was as if I was living inside a kind of shell, in a magic theater where things only seemed to happen, and nothing real ever took place. I thought that that was all there was ever going to be. And then I saw you . . ."
He turned his face, meeting her eyes. It was like looking into the sky. He could sense the depths of blackness beyond the blue and remembered suddenly his vision—of that great web of brightness spinning out through the surface of her eyes into the darkness beyond.
"And your father?"
Her eyes moved away, then came back again. "Papa . . . ?" She shook her head, real anguish behind the tiny movement. "He's a darling really. I just can't tell you . . ."
He nodded. He had seen for himself how Tblonen doted on his daughter. "And yet?"
"Well, it's just that he can't see that there's a difference. To him it's all politics. Deals. Who's in and who's out. And death underpinning everything. I love him, but. . ."
He saw just how much that "but" had cost her and touched a finger to her lips to prevent her from saying more. She smiled, grateful to him, and gently, tenderly kissed his fingers. It was the prelude to a proper kiss. Their first. He broke from it, surprised, his eyes wide, seeing his own astonishment mirrored in the perfect blue-black of her pupils.
"You're beautiful," she said, her fingers touching his cheek. "So dark and perfect."
He laughed softly. "And you're mad. Utterly mad."
She nodded, but her eyes were filled with that same fierce determination he had witnessed earlier. "Maybe. But I'd fight the whole Above to have you."
THE TWO MEN stood before the unmarked door, waiting to be admitted. Soucek turned, reading the plaque on the wall nearby. LEVEL ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX it read; NORTH 2 STACK, CANTON OF DUSSELDORF. He looked about him, trying to get some clue as to what they were doing, why they were here, but there was nothing. This far up the levels the Seven were still firmly in control. Things were neat and tidy. As if the chaos of the lowers were a dream and nothing else but this existed.
For a moment Soucek stared past his feet, trying to picture the levels stacked up beneath him, layer above layer; to imagine all those people—young and old, Han and Hung Moo—eking out their lives in the packed and degenerating strata of the City. Narrow, blighted, desperate lives. He had not really thought of it before, not until he had begun to travel between the levels on Lehmann's business, but now he could not shake it from his mind. He had seen the City from outside; had gone up the levels and seen what existed up Above, and knew—with a certainty he had never had before—that it was wrong. There had to be a better way.