“What are your talking about?” I whispered back, my lips very close to his bent head. “Why will it be necessary to do it more than once?”
“I can’t keep you permanently awake the way I thought I could,” he answered in a murmur, beginning to move just a little under me. “We’re liable to run into Ank-Soh at any time, with at least one meeting already guaranteed, and he’ll know at once if you’re awake. I’ll have to turn you on before every class and then turn you off again, then on again here in the apartment so you can practice. If for some reason it doesn’t work, I’ll have to think of something else.”
“But why can’t I shield?” I asked with difficulty, almost completely lost to what he was doing to me—and what I was doing to him. I knew the conversation we were having was important, but my body considered other things even more important. If I’d had the attention to spare I would have cursed that injection, but I was much too far beyond the ability to curse.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he came back, nearly forgetting to keep on enjoying himself. “What sort of shield are you talking about?”
“I don’t know, but I think I’ll know when I’m awake,” I said mostly in a moan, kissing at him in between the words. “No one will know my mind is active . . . I don’t think they’ll know . . . Let’s wait and see, Kel-Ten, and do something else now rather than talk. Please move a little more, and harder, Kel-Ten, please harder. ”
I took his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his, but it seemed like a very long time before he began to respond the way he usually did. If I hadn’t been so far gone I would have known he was thinking about something, but I didn’t understand that until we had finished up and he had left me to rinse himself off under the shower. By then it was too late to discuss whatever had been bothering him, but not too late to worry about it. I didn’t know myself what I had meant by a shield, the thought had just come without my looking for it, but if it made him change his mind about awakening me I’d bite my tongue out. I ran a weary hand through my hair as I sat on the floor waiting for Kel-Ten, trying to tell myself it wasn’t yet time to be depressed. If the next day came without my being awakened, that would be the time to start thinking actively about suicide.
Dressing for dinner was more of a distraction than I’d expected it to be, since Kel-Ten wasn’t the only one who had something to dress up in. He must have told someone what he wanted at some time during the day when I wasn’t around; when he slid a mirrored door aside at the end of the wall, it was all there and waiting for him. More than half a dozen different creations hung on a rack behind the door, for the most part flimsy things that fluttered in the breeze generated by the door being opened, all of them one shade or another of gold. Kel-Ten inspected them for a moment before choosing one, carried it over to me, then helped me put it on. I’d been expecting to be pleased when I no longer had to wear that shirt, but the new outfit was not what might be called an improvement. The wide jeweled collar had a broad strip of gold material attached front and back, and although the material was solid rather than see-through and came down to my ankles, that’s all there was to it. No belt, no ties, and nothing at all under it aside from me. When Kel-Ten took my hand and began to stride out of the apartment the back panel billowed out like a cape, something he found a good deal more amusing than I did.
Dinner was a glittering affair with everyone in one sort of finery or another, but I couldn’t help noticing that the men were dressed to please themselves while the women were dressed to please the men. I decided to ignore it all and concentrate on eating, but the table chef didn’t deliver the sort of plain meal I was expecting—and hoping for. Plain food is much better when you’re in the mood to brood rather than enjoy yourself, but what I got was sauteed valmin and creamed sinrows mixed with unsalted nuts, tessin soup and dreff salad, baked gimels and glazed finfaws. Again there was just enough of each, something I could tell simply by looking at the portions, and behind the rest of it was a very involved, very high-calorie dessert. That in itself would have been enough to depress me, but the whole thing together was simply too much. I didn’t know if I was being rewarded for proper behavior or simply fattened up for the eventual kill, but it made no difference. I ate no more than half of the food and none of the dessert, also refusing the glass of wine Kel-Ten said I could have. He threatened me half-heartedly when he saw the food left over, saying something about how unhappy everyone would be with me, but he was too distracted to pursue the matter. His mind was very clearly on other things, which meant mine was, too.
After the leisurely dinner was over we joined a number of other people in the “open” section of the floor, standing or sitting around with rain pouring down outside while the men discussed the best ways of achieving this or that desired effect when practicing on a target. Kel-Ten’s advice was asked more often than anyone else’s, which meant he had no trouble letting the discussion distract him. I, on the other hand, was not quite as fortunate, and watching the rain batter mindlessly against the windows all around did nothing to raise my spirits. Again I felt as though the situation was familiar, that I’d watched the pouring rain once before as I waited for something important to happen, something that wasn’t guaranteed to go well. Kel-Ten let his hands move over me beneath the cloth as he spoke to the others, but that, too, was becoming easier and easier to ignore. All I could think about was the next day, and because of that regretted the little I’d eaten.
The discussion was interrupted after a while by the same sort of gentle chiming I’d heard that morning, and the wonderfully free and fearsomely powerful Primes immediately broke off what they were saying and began heading for the lifts. They still talked to one another as they moved, just as they’d been talking all along, but they obeyed the chime without the least argument or sense of rebellion. It seemed obvious they were being sent to beddy-bye like the good little children they were, but not a single one of them realized that. The men were too conditioned to notice, and the women were too intent on the men for it to penetrate the fog. I wondered briefly what they would do if someone was able to make all of them understand what was happening, but then the lift doors opened and I let the pleasant get-even wish simply slip away.
We shared the lift part of the way up with others, but when we reached Kel-Ten’s floor we were all alone. The First Prime didn’t only stand above everyone else he also lived above them, a fact my companion got a lot of pleasure from. There was no trace of his introspection left as he pulled me out of the lift and along the corridor to his apartment, my dinner costume flying out behind me again, and he even chuckled as he watched.
“There are a lot of men in this building who are going to have an easier job of it tonight because of you,” he said, taking my left hand as well to keep it from capturing the flying cloth. “The front section of that thing teases you about what’s under it, the back of it lets you see only enough to tease even more, and all that soft, bare skin to either side makes you lick your lips. The ones with rings to cover will be seeing you instead of the rings, just the way I’ll be doing, but the difference is once tomorrow comes it will be you under me. It’s too bad it can’t be tonight.”
“You’ve got another date?” I asked, finding the news more than heartening as I followed him into the apartment. “What a terrible, awful, horrible, crying shame. Will you be gone all night, I hope?”