Robert Silverberg - In Another Country

He slept, and dark dreams came that he could not abide: the remorseless meteor crossing the sky, the city aflame and shrieking, Christine’s wonderful old house swept away by a searing blast of destruction, the piano lying tumbled in the street, split in half, golden strings spilling out.

Wearily Thimiroi dosed himself with the drug that banishes dreams, and lay down to sleep again. But now sleep evaded him. Very well: there was the other drug, the one that brings sleep. He hesitated to take it. The two drugs taken in the wrong order exacted a price; he would be jittery and off balance emotionally for the next two or three days. He was far enough off balance as it was already. So he lay still, hoping that he would drift eventually into sleep without recourse to more medication; and gradually his mind grew easier, gradually he began the familiar descent toward unconsciousness.

Suddenly the image of Laliene blazed in his mind.

It was so vivid that it seemed she was standing beside him in the darkness and light was streaming from her body. She was nude, and her breasts, her hips, her thighs, all had a throbbing incandescent glow. Thimiroi sat up, astonished, swept with waves of startling feverish excitement.

“Laliene?”

How radiant she looked! How splendid! Her eyes were glowing like beacons. Her crimson hair stood out about her head like a bright corona. The scent of her filled his nostrils. He trembled. His throat was dry, his lips seemed gummed together.

Wave after wave of intense, overpowering desire swept through him.

Helplessly Thimiroi rose, lurched across the room, reached gropingly toward her. This was madness, he knew, but there was no holding himself back.

The shimmering image retreated as he came near it. He stumbled, nearly tripped, regained his balance.

“Wait, Laliene,” he cried hoarsely. His heart was pounding thunderously. It was almost impossible for him to catch his breath. He was choking with his need. “Come here, will you? Stop edging away like that.”

“I’m not here, Thimiroi. I’m in my own room. Put your robe on and come visit me.”

“What? You’re not here?”

“Down the hall. Come, now. Hurry!”

“You are here. You have to be.”

As though in a daze, brain swathed in thick layers of white cotton, he reached for her again. Like a lovestruck boy he yearned to draw her close, to cup her breasts in his hands, to run his fingers over those silken thighs, those satiny flanks—

“To my room,” she whispered.

“Yes. Yes.”

His flesh was aflame. Sweat rolled down his body. She danced before him like a shining will-o’-the-wisp. Frantically he struggled to comprehend what was happening. A vision? A dream? But he had drugged himself against dreams. And he was awake now. Surely he was awake. And yet he saw her—he wanted her—he wanted her beyond all measure—he was going to slip his robe on, and go to her suite, and she would be waiting for him there, and he would slip into her bed—into her arms—

No. No. No.

He fought it. He caught the side of some piece of furniture, and held it, anchoring himself, struggling to keep himself from going forward. His teeth chattered. Chills ran along his back and shoulders. The muscles in his arms and chest writhed and spasmed as he battled to stay where he was.

He was fully awake now, and he was beginning to understand. He remembered how Laliene had gone wandering around here the other day while he was brewing the tea—examining the works of art, so he had thought. But she could just as easily have been planting something. Which now was broadcasting monstrous compulsions into his mind.

He switched on the light, wincing as it flooded the room. Now Thimiroi could no longer see that mocking, beckoning image of Laliene, but he still felt her presence all around him, the heat of her body, the pungency of her fragrance, the strength of her urgent summons.

Somehow he managed to find the card with Christine’s telephone number on it, and dialed it with tense, quivering fingers. The phone rang endlessly until, finally, he heard her sleepy voice, barely focused, saying, “Yes? Hello?”

“Christine? Christine, it’s me, Thimiroi.”

“What? Who? Don’t you know it’s four in the morn—” Then her tone changed. The sleepiness left it, and the irritation. “What’s wrong, Thimiroi? What’s happening?”

“I’ll be all right. I need you to talk to me, that’s all. I’m having a kind of an attack.”

“No, Thimiroi!” He could feel the intensity of her concern. “What can I do? Shall I come over?”

“No. That’s not necessary. Just talk to me. I need to stir up—cerebral activity. Do you understand? It’s just an—an electrochemical imbalance. But if I talk—even if I listen to something—speak to me, say anything, recite poetry—”

“Poetry,” she said. “All right. Let me think. ‘ Four score and seven years ago— ’” she began.

“Good,” he said. “Even if I don’t understand it, that’s all right. Say anything. Just keep talking.”

Already Laliene’s aura was ebbing from the room. Christine continued to speak; and he broke in from time to time, simply to keep his mental level up. In a few minutes Thimiroi knew that he had defeated Laliene’s plan. He slumped forward, breathing hard, letting his stiff, anguished muscles uncoil.

He still could feel the waves of mental force sweeping through the room. But they were pallid now, they were almost comical, they no longer were capable of arousing in him the obsessive obedience that they had been able to conjure into his sleeping mind.

Christine, troubled, still wanted to come to him; but Thimiroi told her that everything was fine, now, that she should go back to sleep, that he was sorry to have disturbed her. He would explain, he promised. Later. Later.

Fury overtook him the moment he put the receiver down.

Damn Laliene. Damn her! What did she think she was doing?

He searched through the sitting room, and then the bedroom, and the third room of the suite. But it was almost dawn before he found what he was looking for: the tiny silvery pellet, the minute erotic broadcaster, that she had hidden beneath one of his Sipulva tables. He pulled it loose and crushed it against the wall, and the last faint vestige of Laliene’s presence went from the room like water swirling down a drain. Slowly Thimiroi’s anger receded. He put on some music, one of Cenbe’s early pieces, and listened quietly to it until he saw the first pale light of morning streaking the sky.

Casually, easily, with a wonderful recklessness he had not known he had in him, he said to Christine, “We go anywhere we want. Anywhen. They run tours for us, you see. We were in Canterbury in Chaucer’s time, to make the pilgrimage. We went to Rome and then to Emperor Augustus’ summer palace on the island of Capri, and he invited us to a grand banquet, thinking we were visitors from a great kingdom near India.”

Christine was staring at him in a wide-eyed gaze, as though she were a child and he were telling her some fabulous tale of dragons and princes.

He had gone to her at midday, when the late May sun was immense overhead and the sky seemed like a great curving plate of burnished blue steel. She had let him in without a word, and for a long while they looked at each other in silence, their hands barely touching. She was very pale and her eyes were reddened from sleeplessness, with dark crescents beneath them. Thimiroi embraced her, and assured her that he was in no danger, that with her help he had been able to fight off the demon that had assailed him in the night. Then she took him upstairs, to the room on the second floor where they had made love the day before, and drew him down with her on the bed, almost shyly at first, and then, casting all reserve aside, seizing him eagerly, hungrily.