Part 43 (2/2)

”You mean, in light of your determination to pa.s.s into the future world of the Galactic Milieu?”

She cried, ”We're going to do it or die in the attempt! There's no way you can understand what we've been through, how desperate we are to escape!”

”I know you didn't hesitate to destroy most of my own race when we seemed to stand in your way.”

”Yes,” she admitted, and the screen thinned to translucency, showing the flush of guilt overlying resolution. ”And you'll never forget that. But that's only one part of it.”

”I love you in spite of everything. We'll go together to the Milieu.”

She let slip a little choking cry. An image peered from her brain, childishly comical, which she tried vainly to suppress.

”What,” he enquired with bemused dignity, ”is a basketball player?”

She burst out laughing, and then wept and threw her arms around him as he knelt. ”It's a joke,” she said miserably. ”A vicious, cruel joke. That d.a.m.ned Hagen ... speculating on what our life together might be-especially if we both went to the Milieu.”

”I don't understand,” he said, holding her. But his mind sang.

She had lied!

”We're too different,” she said, pulling away, and he saw a persistent dark core of denial in the heart of the brightness.

”And for all his brutal attempts at humour, Hagen was basically correct. Sooner or later we'd end up despising each other ... or worse.”

”In Afaliah,” he reminded her, ”the physical differences were nothing compared to the affinity of our minds.”

She drew away, began to walk back the way she had come.

”When we were in Skin, we were two wounded creatures in need. Licking each other's hurts. Both lonely. Both ... bereaved. It was natural that there be an attraction. Inevitable.

But now the need has pa.s.sed. We're finished, Kuhal! I'm going now.”

He followed. She went more quickly, almost running, but his exotic legs kept pace with her easily. They came into the shadows of the trees where moonlight was as spa.r.s.e as a flung handful of coins. He seized her with both hands, looming like some fearsome woodland spirit, and she shrank away from his desperation. ”Nothing you've said touches on the real reason for your rejection of me! Why, Cloud?

Why?”

She said, ”Fian.”

There was wonder in his voice as he asked, ”You would deny me because of my dead twin?”

”He was more than your brother!”

”He was the mind of my mind ... and he is dead.”

”I won't take his place,” she said. ”Never!” Her redactive thrust caught him off guard, and when he recovered he was standing alone with only the shawl in his hands.

The King wearied of his party, which if truth be told was not much of a success. The young North Americans cared little for dancing and drinking and the preliminaries to sweet houghmagandy, preferring to talk shop with the scientists and technicians who had been a.s.sembled for the Guderian Project. Along about midnight, when things should have just started getting a glow on, the ballroom was half empty and the orchestra playing for itself. Those guests who did remain were mostly human, engaged in depressingly earnest conversation.

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