The woman’s voice faded away into the distance as the hand on my shoulder directed me out of the dining room through the doors the men had used to enter, the man belonging to the hand still nothing but a disembodied presence behind me. The Sees had turned me loose so fast the woman in yellow hadn’t had a chance to give them the order, and the fact that they had actually looked frightened added to my confusion. I was so relieved I wouldn’t be going with them that I wanted to tremble, but unbelievably I was also beginning to feel angry again. I’d been claimed by one of those-men, one of those so-called Primes, and my emotions were running in so many different directions I didn’t know how to feel.
“Don’t harm yourself rushing to thank me for getting you out of that,” the deep voice said once we were through the doors and out into a wide, lobbylike area, one that seemed at that moment deserted. “You have very little to be grateful for, after all, so why be fanatic about it? Or are you still so frightened that you’re not capable of anything more than putting one foot in front of the other?”
The last part of his commenting was an afterthought that took the dryness out of his tone, but all it did for me was add burnables to that inner fire that was giving me so much trouble. Everyone in that place was made of solid arrogance, and I’d long since had more of it than anyone might be expected to want.
“So you’re waiting for me to thank you for appropriating me,” I said, trying to pull loose from that hand still on my shoulder. “As soon as I’m able to recall asking you for the honor, I’ll be sure to show my gratitude as fully as I can. If by some chance you’re also waiting for me to beg you not to send me back, I think I ought to mention that you’re wasting your time. I fully expect to end up back with those sadists eventually, so I’ve decided not to waste good begging. And now that I’ve insulted you as well, we can just turn around and . . .”
“If you don’t mind, I’m the one who :s supposed to be giving the orders around here,” he said, his big hand refusing to turn me loose. “If I decide I’m getting tired of it, then you can take over, but until then it stays my privilege alone. That, of course, includes deciding when and if I’ve been insulted. And you really should understand I can’t take you back yet. We have to work on getting you to remember when you asked me to help you, so you’ll have the opportunity to be fully grateful.”
He sounded so very amused that my core of anger grew furious, just as though it were a separate, living person inside me. The rest of me was also more than mildly annoyed, and both together gave me a good enough reason to begin struggling to free myself from his grip. I swung wildly with my arms and managed to hit the arm of the hand holding me, and very briefly I was rewarded with being entirely free. I used the opportunity to start to run, to what destination I had no idea, but being free and alone was a good enough intention to begin with. I must have taken three or four steps before a hand closed on my arm, and then I was pulled back to a broader chest than I’d been picturing.
“You’re trying to leave already?” he asked, looking down at me with laughter in his eyes as his arms held me to him. “Without first showing me how grateful you can be? People have always told me how beautiful and desirable I am. Are you trying to say they were lying?”
At that exact moment I wasn’t trying to say anything, most especially because I couldn’t seem to find the words. Seeing his face had been something of a shock, but I couldn’t understand why. Rather than being boyish-featured he had a broad, manly face, one that was really quite handsome. It made me feel very odd to look at him, almost fluttery inside and the next thing to shy, but I didn’t understand why that should be. After all, it wasn’t as though Iii never seen a handsome, blond, blue-eyed man before.
5
“This is it,” Kel-Ten said after opening the door and pulling me inside by the hand he held, then closing the door behind us. “What do you think of your new cage?”
The room we had entered was Just short of enormous, and was more opulent than anything I’d seen in a very long time. Deep, luxurious carpeting and expensive drapes in gold, shimmering crystal decorations and accompaniments, couches, chairs, tables, sideboards-everything perfectly matched in varying tones of gold, a visitors’ room unlikely to find its equal anywhere but Central’s State House. Getting to the apartment had been like moving through the most expensive and exclusive visitors’ Residence ever built, and remembering the dormitory room and narrow corridors of .the women’s section of that facility, I couldn’t help but find my new surroundings annoying.
“I believe it would be more accurate to say that this is your cage,” I answered, pretending to dismiss the room after the single glance around. “After what I’ve seen, I can’t deny that you and those like you need cages; it would just be more appropriate if there were heavy bars and keepers with whips to go along with the rest.”
“What makes you think there aren’t?” he asked, looking down at me with that amusement lurking behind the light of his eyes. “This isn’t my apartment, it’s the apartment of the highest ranking male Prime, whoever that happens to be. Right now I’m it, but that could change the very next time I’m challenged. Take my word for the fact that the next lower apartment is about a third the size of this one. ”
“Oh, you poor thing,” I commiserated, shaking my head with the tragedy of it all. “If you lose you have to move into an apartment a full third smaller than this. Why, that would make its visitors’ room only ten or fifteen feet square, with a mere eight-foot ceiling. However would you stand it?”
“I get the feeling you’re not experiencing much in the way of sympathy for me,” he said, folding his arms as he tried to look stern, the effort doing nothing to extinguish his continuing amusement. “And after I went to all the trouble of finding and rescuing you from the bad guys. I think I’m going to have to remember the promise I made to punish you, but first there are other things to be taken care of. Right this way.”
He unfolded his arms to take my hand again, and then I was pulled after him toward an arch in the somewhat distant right-hand wall. The arch gave onto a short hall containing three closed doors, one directly ahead at the end of the hall, one to the left a bit before that one, and one to the right which was also the closest. The one to the right turned out to be our destination, and once we were through the doorway it also turned out to be a bathroom. Not your simple, ordinary bathroom, though, but one that went well with the acre of visitors’ room.
“The first thing you need is a bath,” my appropriator said, dropping my hand to go toward the giant’s tub sunk halfway into the thickly carpeted floor. “Water won’t do anything to counteract the reagent already absorbed through your skin, but it will get rid of what’s crystallized and clinging to the outside. The crystallized portion isn’t being diluted and washed away by your bloodstream, so that’s what’s continuing to cause you most of the pain. When we get rid of that, you’ll find yourself feeling a good deal better.”
So that was why they’d used sonics to clean me instead of taking me to the shower area. I remembered wondering about that, and now I’d been given the answer. But I’d also been given another question or two, and there was no reason not to ask them.
“How do you know what they did to me?” I asked his back as he studied the bathtub dials set in the wall behind and to the right of the tub. “I wasn’t aware of the fact that their procedures were general knowledge. And why should you care whether or not I’m in pain? Your-own kind-by the name of Jer-Mar was delighted to have me that way, and would have been more delighted still to have the pain increased. I don’t see that much of a difference between you two.”