“I’m leaving for Earth tomorrow,” he told her.
She lay back. Her body was receptive. “Make love to me, Minner.”
“I’m going back alone. To look for Lona.”
“You don’t need her. Stop trying to annoy me.” She tugged at him. “Lie down beside me. I want to look at Saturn again while you have me.”
He ran his hand along the silkiness of her. Her eyes glittered. He whispered, “Let’s get out of the sled. Let’s run naked to that lake and swim in it.”
Methane clouds puffed about them. The temperature outside would make Antarctica in winter seem tropical. Would they die first from freezing, or from the poison in their lungs? They’d never reach the lake. He saw them sprawled on the snowy dune, white on white, rigid as marble. He’d last longer than she would, holding his breath as she toppled and fell, as she flopped about, flesh caressed by the hydrocarbon bath. But he wouldn’t last long.
“Yes!” she cried. “We’ll swim! And afterward we’ll make love beside the lake!”
She reached for the control that would lift the transparent roof of the sled. Burris admired the tension and play of her muscles as her arm stretched toward it, as her hand extended itself, as ligaments and tendons functioned beautifully under the smooth skin from wrist to ankle. One leg was folded up underneath her, the other nicely thrust forward to echo the line of her arm. Her breasts were drawn upward; her throat, which had a tendency toward loose flesh, was now taut. Altogether she was a handsome sight. She needed only to twist a lever and the roof would spring back, exposing them to the virulent atmosphere of Titan. Her slender fingers were on the lever. Burris ceased to contemplate her. He clamped his hand on her arm even as her muscles were tensing, pulled her away, hurled her back on the couch. She landed in a wanton way. As she sat up, he slapped her across the lips. Blood trickled to her chin and her eyes sparkled in pleasure. He hit her again, chopping blows that made the flesh of her leap about. She panted. She clutched at him. The odor of lust assailed his nostrils.
He hit her one more time. Then, realizing he was giving her only what she wanted, he moved away from her and tossed her her discarded breathing-suit.
“Put it on. We’re going back to the dome.”
She was the incarnation of raw hunger. She writhed in what could have been self-parody of desire. She called hoarsely to him.
“We’re going back,” he said. “And we aren’t going back naked.”
Reluctantly she dressed herself.
She would have opened the roof, he told himself. She would have gone swimming with me in the methane lake.
He started the sled and sped back to the hotel.
“Are you really leaving for Earth tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’ve booked passage.”
“Without me?”
“Without you.”
“What if I followed you again?”
“I can’t stop you. But it won’t do you any good.”
The sled came to the airlock of the dome. He drove in and returned the sled at the rental desk. Elise looked rumpled and sweaty within her breathing-suit.
Burris, going to his room, closed the door quickly and locked it. Elise knocked a few times. He made no reply, and she went away. He rested his head in his hands. The fatigue was coming back, the utter weariness that he had not felt since the final quarrel with Lona. But it passed after a few minutes.
An hour later the hotel management came for him. Three men, grim-faced, saying very little. Burris donned the breathing-suit they gave him and went out into the open with them.
“She’s under the blanket. We’d like you to identify her before we bring her in.”
Subtle crystals of ammonia snow had fallen on the blanket. They blew aside as Burris peeled it back. Elise, naked, seemed to be hugging the ice. The spots on her breast where his fingertips had dug in had turned deep purple. He touched her. Like marble she was.
“She died instantly,” said a voice at his elbow.
Burris looked up. “She had a great deal to drink this afternoon. Perhaps that explains it.”
He stayed in his room the rest of that evening and through the morning that followed. At midday he was summoned for the ride to the spaceport, and within four hours he was aloft, bound for Earth via Ganymede. He said little to anyone all the while.
TWENTY-NINE: DONA NOBIS PACEM
She had come, washed up by the tides, to the Martlet Towers. There she lived in a single room, rarely going out, changing her clothes infrequently, speaking to no one. She knew the truth now, and the truth had imprisoned her.
…and then he found her.
She stood bird-like, ready for flight. “Who’s there?”
“Minner.”
“What do you want?”
“Let me in, Lona. Please.”
“How did you find me here?”
“Some guesswork. Some bribery. Open the door, Lona.”
She opened it for him. He looked unchanged over the weeks since she had last seen him. He stepped through, not smiling his equivalent of a smile, not touching her, not kissing. The room was almost in darkness. She moved to light it, but he cut her off with a brusque gesture.
“I’m sorry it’s so shabby,” she said.
“It looks fine. It looks just like the room I lived in. But that was two buildings over.”
“When did you get back to Earth, Minner?”
“Several weeks ago. I’ve been searching hard.”
“Have you seen Chalk?”
Burris nodded. “I didn’t get much from him.”
“Neither did I.” Lona turned to the food conduit. “Something to drink?”
“Thanks, no.”
He sat down. There was something blessedly familiar about the elaborate way he coiled himself into her chair, moving all his extra joints so carefully. Just the sight of it made her pulse-rate climb.
He said, “Elise is dead. She killed herself on Titan.”
Lona made no response.
He said, “I didn’t ask her to come to me. She was a very confused person. Now she’s at rest.”
“She’s better at suicide than I am,” Lona said.
“You haven’t—”
“No. Not again. I’ve been living quietly, Minner. Should I admit the truth? I’ve been waiting for you to come to me.”
“All you had to do was let somebody know where you were!”
“It was more complicated than that. I couldn’t advertise myself. But I’m glad you’re here. I have so much to tell you!”
“Such as?”
“Chalk isn’t going to have any of my children transferred to me. I’ve been checking. He couldn’t do it if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to. It was just a convenient lie to get me to work for him.”
Burris’s eyes flickered. “You mean, to get you to keep company with me?”
“That’s it. I won’t hide anything now, Minner. You already know, more or less. There had to be a price before I’d go with you. Getting the children was the price. I kept my end of the bargain, but Chalk isn’t keeping his.”
“I knew that you’d been bought, Lona. I was bought, too. Chalk found my price to come out of hiding and conduct an interplanetary romance with a certain girl.”
“Transplant into a new body?”
“Yes,” Burris said.
“You aren’t going to get that, any more than I’m going to get my babies,” she said flatly. “Am I killing any of your illusions? Chalk cheated you the way he cheated me.”
“I’ve been discovering that,” Burris said, “since my return. The body-transfer project is at least twenty years away. Not five years. They may never solve some of the problems. They can switch a brain into a new body and keep it alive, but the—what shall I say—soul goes. They get a zombi. Chalk knew all that when he offered me his deal.”