Part 49 (1/2)

She turned back to him, more composed, and wondered only why he made no attempt to aid her: to dim the cutting laser of his eyes.

But he was through with hiding, and playing the part of the weak and wors.h.i.+pful lover. LET HER SEE! rang the twisted chime of his thoughts, distorted and horrible. Let her walk into the jaws of death with eyes wide open. And this choice also was correct: that his eyes and intentions were obvious, only made them the more impossible to believe.

She merely said, 'Shall we go?' And she couldn't understand why at that moment she should think of the black widow that her father had found in her bedroom as a child, killing it as she cried at his cruelty.

Kalus sat on a piece of broken stone with his head in his hands, unable yet to look up and go on. Alaska stood before him, puzzled. Her young mind had continued to develop, so that now she was aware of her existence as clearly, if without the same complexity, as any human adolescent. In the preceding weeks she had realized that such a choice might come: a choice between the two people she loved. And for reasons no more complicated than simple feeling, she had chosen Kalus, had remained with him as he lay helpless on the floor, and not followed when Sylviana called to her angrily.

It was his one compensation. He knew that if he left the colony the cub would go with him, regardless of what lay ahead. It was that simple, and that beautiful. And in that moment, alone and forlorn among the ruins of yet another tortured depression, this singular act of giving broke his heart. Because he saw in her pure, animal innocence the thing that he had always wanted from a woman, but had not dared to ask:

Loyalty, which so many have forgotten, and for which there is no other word. And not the pale imitation of it found in some marriages, which demand that each cut off and subvert some part of themselves, to be joined like hobbled twins at the place of amputation. What he wanted was nothing more and nothing less than the bond of true allies: not half a woman, because of him, but a whole woman, for the same reason. Not to enslave but to enrich, not to question in time of crisis, but to love and support, not blindly, but freely and fully. All these things he had offered her; but he knew they meant nothing if she was unwilling to give the same in return. Because there is no such thing as one-sided love.

He did not know how he understood these things, or why they had come to him now, only that he knew them, and that their truth was unbending.

Yes. He would wait for her at the designated time and place. If she came to him and said she could not do it, and asked his help to rebuild the things that they had lost, he would remain with her forever.

But if she came to him in mocking triumph---if she ever again spoke to him as she had---all was finished between them. He would leave her, leave this place, and never look back. There was no middle ground.

Because he knew finally, defiantly, that he was physically incapable of being other than himself, and should never have tried to be. The consequences of rejection would be devastating, and in the cold light of day he did not know how he would find the will to go on, without her.

But this no longer mattered. Nothing mattered, but that this agony and fear must end. There was no other way.

He rose and walked the remaining distance. To the Vale of the Obelisk.

To wait.

SO FAR IT'S GONE WELL ENOUGH, she told herself, though she still could not look at him, or one second further than the present. They sat together on the sunlit slope of a wide, gra.s.sy recession. Its quiet symmetry would have been lovely and serene, but for a single thrust of gnarled stone which pierced its center, ringed about the base by a matting of jagged weeds. The company called it Devil's Thumb. It was a protrusion of the devil to be sure, but she wasn't at all sure that ?thumb' was the correct metaphor. She kept her eyes away from it, concentrating instead on the white sheet spread beneath them, on the bread and wine before them.

He had brought the wine, for which she was grateful, and she drank of it probably more than she should. But it gave her confidence, and helped dull the edge of her rebelling senses. Perhaps half an hour had pa.s.sed from the time of her first ready mouthful; and he smiled each time the gla.s.s touched her lips. If an eerie contraction of taut face muscles can be called a smile.

'Have you ever done hallucinogenic drugs?' He tried to ask carelessly, but could not quite pull it off.

'What on earth made you ask that?'

'Oh, nothing really. Just curious.' She wished he would stop looking at her that way.

'Yes I have. Once, with Kalus. We..... It was peyote.'

'How much did you do?'

'Two b.u.t.tons each. One right away..... Why are you laughing?'

'Two peyote b.u.t.tons, and you think you've seen it all. Ha! That wouldn't be enough to open your pretty little eyelids.' She wondered why she suddenly felt restless and irritable.

'What makes you think it's only how much, and not how pure? Or maybe we just didn't need to have our whole consciousness blown away to get something meaningful from it.' She felt angry, defiant, and horribly uncomfortable. 'I could do LSD if I wanted to.'

'Could you now? We're going to find out.' She felt the touch of an icy hand inside her.