“What sort of woman are you?” he demanded as I came up to him. “What sort of woman would subject a man to conscienceless indignity? How could you have...”
“Just as easily as you did!” I snapped, cutting off his tirade. “You gave me to him, to be beaten and used by him, and it didn’t bother you a bit! But now that your—friend—has had a taste of the same thing, you’re up in arms. Well, that’s too bad about you, but it’s too late to stop it. It’s done and I’m glad!”
His face twisted even more at the venom in my words, and his cold, grey eyes seemed made out of stone.
“We shall see how glad you are if he can’t be pulled out of it,” he said in a low, deadly voice. “If I hadn’t had you followed and watched, I would never have known about it. Stupid, vindictive woman!”
He turned away from me then, dismissing my presence as he watched the two strange men help Tammad out of the speedster. The barbarian moved as if in a dream, causing the men to struggle to direct him. They took him past me into the house and down the hall to my party room, Murdock McKenzie following painfully behind them with his twisted body. The door was closed, shutting me out, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t care if the barbarian never came back to himself! I ran upramp to my bathroom, bathed hurriedly, then went bed. I struggled out of the dream, bathed in a sweat I couldn’t control. I’d been lying in bed in my dream, and Tammad had come to me. I’d felt the fury I usually did, thinking he would use me as always, without my permission, but I’d been wrong. He lay in the bed next to me, staring at me fearfully, and he’d quivered and moaned when I’d turned toward him. He lay stretched out flat, his hands behind his head, but he wasn’t relaxed. He was tense and almost terror-stricken, his hands not resting behind his head but almost chained there. I’d put my hand out to him, feeling revulsion and a strong sense of wrongness, and he’d whimpered and turned his face away I’d been sick then, knowing I’d destroyed the mighty barbarian forever. He’d never be the same, and it was my fault, my fault, my fault ....
The queasiness was too much to bear. I ran to my bathroom and threw up, guilt emptying me of everything within. I’d wanted to have vengeance on Murdock McKenzie, using the barbarian to strike at him as he had used Tammad to strike at me. But Tammad was the one who had been struck, for no other reason than being himself. He behaved as a barbarian because he was one, and it was no fault of his. If he had been raised on Central, he would have been different.
When the spasms passed, I leaned weakly against the tub, transparented the wall, and looked out. The sky was dark with the loneliness of night, empty of the life that day seemed to bring. I hadn’t lighted the bathroom so I sat in the dark, in it but not part of it. My loneliness was a separate thing and I’d never be free of the guilt I felt.
“The sunless time is for sleep,” a voice said. “Why do you sit here awake?”
I gasped at seeing Tammad in the doorway, then got quickly to my feet and ran to him. “Are you all right?” I demanded, my hands flat on his chest to prove to myself that he really was there. “How do you feel? Are you changed in anyway?”
“How would I be changed?” he asked in amusement. “I have spoken with Murdock McKenzie for a longer time than is usual, but such a thing has no power to change me.”
“But the real!” I insisted.” Didn’t it hurt you?”
“I remember nothing of the real,” he murmured, folding his mighty arms around me. “The experience was of so little consequence that it is gone completely. When the next sun comes, you may remind me if you wish. For now, I have no desire for talk.”
He picked me up and carried me to the bed, and my relief was so great that I barely resented his use of me.
5
I was annoyed, but I tried to control my annoyance. It wasn’t Tammad’s fault that he was a barbarian. I knew it was my place to try civilizing him, but the job wasn’t going to be easy
“You just can’t, that’s all,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “It isn’t done on most of Central, and people will be offended.”
“How will my action with you offend others?” Tammad asked patiently “I may do as I wish with that which belongs to me.”
“But that’s just the point!” I said in exasperation. “I do not belong to you, and those people out there know it! If you try to make me sleep in your cabin, they’ll complain to the captain.”
We were aboard the Central Starshine, the transport that would take us to Rimilia, and we stood in my cabin. Tammad had had all memory of the real removed from his mind, and Murdock McKenzie had called before we’d left for the Port to tell me how lucky I was. I’d listened to the first of his words coldly and then had cut the call the way I’d done the time before. Murdock McKenzie had nothing to say that I cared to hear.
My cabin was right next to Tammad’s, one of twenty around the circle of the middle deck. The center of the middle deck was devoted to tables for eating and couches for socializing, and was spacious enough for a medium-sized transport. With the crew’s quarters above on the control deck, and the cargo below on the lower deck, the passengers could spend their travel time undisturbed by anything other than minding everyone else’s business.
“Of what will they complain?” Tammad the Innocent asked. “I do not take any women to my cabin but my own.”
“It’s not the men who will be doing the complaining.” I said sharply, annoyed all over again that he still considered me his woman. “Didn’t you see how that Paulamin Tumley looked at you? She’s a Neighborhood Chairman in her district, and the other passengers look up to her. She already disapproves of you on general principles—the rest of Central is much more provincial than Tallion City. If she sees you taking me to your cabin, she’ll explode.”
“This is not clear to me,” he insisted, shaking his head “The woman can say nothing on the actions of a warrior. Is this captain a warrior that he will fight me for possession of you? Do you fear that I will lose you to him?”
I groaned feelingly then threw myself on my bed. The legs of the bed were secured so tightly to the deck that the bed didn’t even quiver. “You’re a barbarian and can’t be blamed for your lacks.” I recited, trying to keep the thought firmly in mind. “You know nothing about the workings of civilization, and I haven’t the time to teach them to you. We will each sleep in our own cabins, and do nothing to upset Paulamin Tumley. It will be hard staying inconspicuous if I have to use my Prime status to counter her narrowmindedness.”
“Is this your word on the matter?” he asked in amusement, coming over to sit on the bed next to me. “Will you punish me if I fail to obey you?”
“You can’t refuse to do as I say” I insisted, starting to sit up again, but I found my hair tight in his grasp, which kept me firmly in place. I reached up to see if I could loosen his fingers, and my wrists were abruptly held instead.
“No, you may not refuse to do as I say,” he corrected softly those blue eyes directly on me. “It is a warrior’s place to say a word, a woman’s place to obey that word. Do you again wish to disobey me?”
“You’re impossible!” I snapped with resentment, completely out of patience. “I don’t know why I bothered. If you want to tangle with Paulamin Tumley go right ahead. People like her never learn anything, and they never change their minds. I hope you end up in the brig.”
“Should that eventuate,” he said, grinning, “you will yet be with me. I know not the meaning of `brig.’ but I will require my woman wherever I be. What is the meaning of that sound?”
He was talking about the gentle gouging that could be heard from the one-way on the wall. “It’s to notify passengers that food will be available five minutes from now,” I told him. “We can go out now and get a table.”
“We may seek our table later;” he said, stroking my side with his hand. “For now, I find that having discussed requiring a woman has given me hunger of a different sort. I shall deal with this hunger first.”