He was silent a long moment. Then he said, “Maybe you figured that even if I didn’t have it, you’d give it to me, by way of making absolutely sure I’d be stuck here on Sempoanga?”
“No. I swear it.” There was shock and horror in her eyes. “You have to believe me, Helmut!”
“I could really kill you now,” he said, and for an instant he thought he would. But instead he turned and fled, running in long loping, crazy strides, across the field of octopus palms and down a garden of electric orchids that flashed indignant lights at him and rang their bells, and through a swamp of warm sticky mud filled with little furry snakes, and up the side of Stinivong Chute, thinking he might throw himself over the edge. But halfway up he yielded to exhaustion and fell to the ground and lay there panting and gasping for what seemed like hours. When he returned to his room at dusk, there was a thick packet of documents beside his bed—his responsibilities and rights under the quarantine, how to transfer assets from his home world, pros and cons of applying for Sempoangan citizenship, and much more. He skimmed it quickly and tossed it aside before he was midway through. Thinking about such things was impossible now. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against his pillow, and suddenly scenes from Waldemar burned in his mind: the Great Glacier at Christmas, the ice-yacht races, the warm well-lit tunnels of his city, his snug dome-roofed home, his last night in it with Elissa, his trim little office with the rows of communicator panels—
He would never see any of that again, and it was all so stupid, so impossibly dumb, that he could not believe it.
He could not go to the dining room for dinner that evening. He ordered a meal from room service but left it untouched and nibbled a little of it the next morning after a night of loathsome dreams. That day he wandered at random, alone, getting used to what had happened to him. It was a magnificent day, the sky pink and soft, the flame-trees glowing, but it was all lost on him now. Even though this place might be paradise, he was condemned to dwell in it, and paradise on that basis was not very different from hell.
For two days he haunted the hotel grounds like his own ghost, speaking to no one. He didn’t see Marbella again until the third evening after the zanjak had emerged in him. To break free of his depression he had gone to the cocktail lounge, and she was there, alone, apparently brooding. She brightened when he appeared, but he glared coldly at her and went past, to the bar. A newcomer was sitting there by herself, an attractive fragile-looking woman with large dark eyes and frosted auburn hair. Deliberately, maliciously, Helmut made a point of picking her up in front of Marbella. Her name was Sinuise; she came from a planet called Donegal; like so many others here, she was trying to forget a bad marriage. When they left the cocktail lounge together, Helmut could feel Marbella’s eyes on him and it was like being skewered with hard radiation.
He and Sinuise dined and danced and drifted toward the evening’s inevitable conclusion. In the casino he spotted Marbella again, watching them somberly from a distance. “Come,” he said to the woman from Donegal. “Let’s go for a walk.” He slipped his arm over her shoulder. She was delicate and lovely and beyond doubt she was hungry for warmth and closeness, and he knew that he need only ask and she would go to his room with him. But as they strolled down the leafy paths he knew he could not do it. To carry his revenge on Marbella to the point of giving zanjak to an unsuspecting woman—no. No.
Under the rustling fronds of a limberwillow tree, he kissed her long and lovingly, and when he released her he said, “It’s been a beautiful evening, Sinuise.”
“Yes. For me also.”
“Perhaps we’ll go puff gliding tomorrow.”
“I’d like that. But—tonight—I thought—”
“I can’t. Not with you, I have zanjak , you know. And unless you’ve already got it also—”
Her face seemed to crumple. The great dark eyes swam with tears. He took her hand lightly, but a convulsive quiver of disappointment and anguish ran through her, and she pulled away and fled from him, sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” he called after her. “More than you can imagine!”
Marbella was still in the casino, still alone. She looked astonished that he had returned. He shot her a venomous look and headed for the gravity-dice table, and in fifteen minutes managed to lose half the money he was carrying. He thought of lovely little Sinuise alone in her bed. He thought of Helmut Schweid, infested by bizarre alien organisms. He thought of Marbella, her energy, her passionate little cries, her quick wit and sly humor. Perhaps she was telling the truth, he thought bleakly. Perhaps she genuinely thought I had picked up a dose from the blonde from Rigel.
Besides, what choice do I have now?
Slowly, wearily, he made his way across the huge room. Marbella was playing five-chip cargo in a reckless way. He watched her lose her stake. Then he lightly touched her arm.
“You win,” he said.
They stayed together at the hotel another eight days, and then, because his money was gone and he would not take any from her, they moved to the Quarantine Center. It was, he quickly discovered, just as beautiful as the hotel, with glorious natural features every bit as strange and wonderful. They shared a small cabin and spent their days swimming and fishing and their nights making love. Over the next ten weeks Marbella’s breasts grew heavy and her belly began to swell; but when her time came she would not go to the Quarantine Center hospital. Instead she bore her Sempoangan young behind the cabin, a litter of sleek little creatures like tiny green otters, ten or fifteen of them that came sliding out of her without effort. Helmut dug a pit and shoveled them all in, and after she had rested for an hour or so they went down to the beach to watch the translucent waves lapping against the azure sand. He thought of the snows of Waldemar, and of his home there, his lovers, his friends, and it all seemed terribly long ago and more than a million light-years far away.