She laughed. "But you know him very well, Viktor. Who did you think Dekkaduk was?"
The next time Viktor saw Dekkaduk he looked at the man with new interest. Dekkaduk did, Viktor decided, more or less resemble Nrina—but then, all these people resembled each other to his eyes, in the same way that all Westerners looked alike to most Chinese. What Dekkaduk didn't look like at all was anyone young enough to be a child of Nrina's.
There was an answer to that, too: Viktor realized he had no idea at all of Nrina's age. She could have been a youthful, good-looking forty—Newmanhome years, of course. She could equally well have been a very well preserved hundred or more. None of these people ever looked old.
In bed she was definitely ageless.
Viktor took much pleasure in that part of their intimacy. Still, there were times when he felt a kind of submerged resentment that his main reason for living was to provide a little sexual excitement for a woman he hardly knew. There were even times when he remembered that he had once had a wife. Then, sometimes, a gloom descended over him that was like the suffocating withdrawal of all air, like all the light in the world going out at once.
But there were other times that were not gloomy at all. Nrina was a splendid aspirin for all those passing aches of the soul.
Apart from all her other virtues, Nrina was deeply fascinated with Viktor's body. It wasn't just sex she wanted from him. She wanted to prod and squeeze and feel his archaic flesh, though of course she often wanted sex, too. She could be happy for half an hour at a time as they lay naked together, experiencing the flexing of his muscles. Not just his biceps, but his forearm, his thigh, his neck, all the muscles he could flex at all, while she held her hand on them to feel them swell. "And they're natural, Viktor, truly?"
Grunting. "Of course they're natural. Only please, Nrina, don't squeeze so hard on my sore leg."
"Oh, of course." And then a moment later, "And this hair here? Did everyone have it in your time?" But Viktor had always been ticklish in the armpits, and of course that ticklishness led to tickling back, which led to other things. Or she would minutely inspect the brownish spots on the back of his hand, touching them gently in case they were painful. "What are they, Viktor?" she asked, stretching behind her to reach for something he could not see.
"We call them freckles," he grinned. "Although—well, maybe those are a little more than just freckles. People get them when they get older. They're what we call 'age spots' then. They're perfectly natural—hey! Ouch!" But she had been too quick for him, jabbing the back of his hand with the sharp little metal probe she had pulled from nowhere.
"Don't make such a fuss," she ordered, carefully putting her cell sample away. "Here, let me kiss it."
And then, after a little study in her laboratory, she told him they were simply degenerated collagen. "I could clear those spots up for you if you wanted me to, Viktor," she offered.
He reached out to touch her body, not naked this time, but with only the flimsy gauze and the cache-sex to modify it. She turned comfortably beside him, taking her ease on a fluff of airy pillows beside him. Her skin was quite flawless. "Do they offend you?" he asked.
"Of course not! Your body does not offend me!"
"Then why don't we just leave them alone?" And wryly Viktor reflected that this was a strange relationship, in which she was almost entirely absorbed in his body, while he was desperate for everything that was in her mind.
Her body she let him have almost any time he chose—usually she chose first, in fact. Her mind was another matter. Viktor didn't feel that Nrina closed him out, or went out of her way to keep information from him. It was simply that so many of the things he wanted to know bored her. "Yes, yes, Viktor," she would sigh, while he was thumping excitedly on the desk screen. "I see what you are showing me. There used to be more stars."
"Many more!" he would answer, scowling at the impoverished sky below him. But she would yawn, and perhaps put her hand in a place that made him pay attention to other things again. What was thrillingly, even frighteningly, strange to Viktor was only the natural order of things to Nrina. It was as if someone from Tahiti had seen snow for the first time: The Eskimos wouldn't have understood his feelings.
When Nrina came back from her lab and found Viktor absorbed over the desk she was tolerant about it, usually. She stripped off her robe and sat beside him. He could certainly feel bare body touching bare body, but it did not keep him from concentrating on the desk instead of the touch of flesh. "It's nice that you have an interest," Nrina observed philosophically.
He tried again. "Nrina, I'm certain that some very strange things have happened. Don't you want to know about them? Don't you even wonder?"
"It's not my line of work, Viktor," she said, looking slightly ruffled.
He said in bafflement, "The universe has died around us. We've been kidnapped. Time stopped for us—"
She was yawning. "Yes, I know. The other savages—sorry, Viktor. The other people from the freezer talk about that sometimes, too. They call it 'God the Transporter' or some such thing. A silly superstition! As if there were some supernatural being who moved stars around just for fun!"
"Then what is the explanation?"
"It doesn't need an explanation. It just is." She shrugged. "It just isn't a very interesting subject, Viktor. No one really cares except— Oh, wait a minute," she said, suddenly sitting up and looking pleased. "I almost forgot Frit!"
Viktor blinked up at her. "What's a frit?" he asked.
"Frit isn't a what, he's a who. Frit and Forta. I designed their son for them. They're old friends of mine. Matter of fact, it's Balit—that's their boy—who I made that kitten for; he'll be twenty soon, and it's time for his coming-of-age presents." She thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, I'm sure Frit knows all about that sort of thing. He'd be interested in you, probably. And he and Forta have been together nearly thirty years now, and we still keep in touch."
Viktor sat up straight. He had the tingling, electrical feeling that all at once, without his having anticipated it at all, a goal for his life had been given to him. "How can I reach this Frit?" he demanded.
She looked doubtful. "Well, he's very busy, but I suppose you could call him up," she said, then suddenly brightened. "I know!" she cried. "Why don't we go to Balit's party?"
"Balit's party?"
"Balit's Frit's son. They live on Moon Mary. No, wait a minute," she corrected herself. "They do live on Mary, but I think they told me they're having the party on Frit's family's habitat." She nodded to herself as the details of her inspiration were coming clear to her. "Dekkaduk can handle things here for a couple of days. It would be a nice trip for you, and I ought to take Pelly's gillies there anyway—that's where his ship is. And I'm sure they'd be glad to have us, and then you can talk to Frit all you want." She gave Viktor's thigh a decisive pat, pleased with her idea. "We'll do it! And don't ask me any more questions now, Viktor. Just believe me, it'll be fun!"
CHAPTER 23
Reminiscing is a recreation for the elderly. It is what people do when they have outlived all their other occupations—people like Wan-To.
Elderly human beings at least have bodily functions to use up some hours. They have to eat, use the toilet, maybe even hoist themselves into their wheelchairs and complain to those around them. Wan-To didn't have even those ways of passing the time. Wan-To didn't just have very little else to do, he had nothing else to do. In the exhausted, depleted, moribund universe that Wan-To lived in he not only didn't need to do anything to keep on living, he had nothing much in the way of limbs, powers, or effectors to do anything with. His mind still worked—quite clearly, in fact, though at a depressingly slow speed. But everything stayed within his mind. He didn't have any useful appendages anymore to convert any of his mind's impulses into action.