Robert Silverberg - In Another Country

He drew forth the little silvery pellet that he had found attached to the underside of the Sipulva table, and held it out to her in the palm of his hand.

“Do you know what this is, Laliene?”

“Some little broken toy, I assume. Why do you ask?”

“It’s an erotic,” he said. “I found it in my rooms, where someone had hidden it. It began broadcasting when I went to sleep last night. Sending out practically irresistible waves of sexual desire.”

“How fascinating. I hope you were able to find someone to satisfy them with.”

“The images I was getting, Laliene, were images of you. Standing naked next to my bed, whispering to me, inviting me to come down the hall and make love to you.”

She smiled icily. “I had no idea you were still interested, Thimiroi!”

“Don’t play games with me. Why did you plant this thing in my room, Laliene?”

“ I? ”

“I said, don’t play games. You were in my room the other day. No one else of our group has been. The erotic was specifically broadcasting your image. How can there be any doubt that you planted it yourself, for the particular purpose of luring me into your bed?”

“You’re being absurd, Thimiroi. Anyone could have planted it. Anyone. Do you think it’s hard to get into these rooms? These people have no idea of security. You ask a chambermaid in the right way and you can enter anywhere. As for the images of me that were being broadcast to you, why, you know as well as I do that erotics don’t broadcast images of specific individuals. They send out generalized waves of feeling, and the recipient supplies whatever image seems appropriate to him. In your case evidently it was my image that came up from your unconscious when—”

“Don’t lie to me, Laliene.”

Her eyes flashed. “I’m not lying. I deny planting anything in your room. Why on earth would I, anyway? Could going to bed with you, or anyone else, for that matter, possibly be that important to me that I would connive and sneak around and make use of some kind of mechanical amplifying device in order to achieve my purpose? Is that plausible, Thimiroi?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that what happened to me during the night happened to me, and that I found this when I searched my rooms.” He thought for a moment to add, And that you’ve been pressing yourself upon me ever since we began this trip, in the most embarrassing and irritating fashion. But he did not have the heart to say that to her. “I believe that you hid this when you visited me for tea. What your reason may have been is something I can’t begin to imagine.”

“Of course you can’t. Because I had no reason. And I didn’t do it.”

Thimiroi made no reply. Laliene’s face was firmly set. Her gaze met his unwaveringly. She was certainly lying: he knew that beyond any question. But they were at an impasse. All he could do was accuse; he could not prove anything; he was stymied by her denial, and there was no way of carrying this further. She appeared to know that also. There was a long tense moment of silence between them, and then she said, “Are you finished with this, Thimiroi? Because there are more important things we should be discussing.”

“Go ahead. What important things?”

“The plans for Friday night.”

“Friday night,” Thimiroi said, not understanding.

She looked at him scornfully. “Friday—tomorrow—is the last day of May. Or have you forgotten that?”

He felt a chill. “The meteor,” he said.

“The meteor, yes. The event which we came to this place to see,” Laliene said. “Do you recall?”

“So soon,” Thimiroi said dully. “Tomorrow night.”

“We will all assemble about midnight, or a little before, at the Sanciscos’ house. The view will be best from there, according to Kadro. From their front rooms, upstairs. Kleph, Omerie, and Klia have invited everyone—everyone except Hollia and Hara, that is: Omerie is adamant about their not coming, because of something slippery that Hollia tried to do to him. Kleph would not discuss it, but I assume it had to do with trying to get the Sanciscos evicted, so that they could have the Wilson house for themselves. But all the rest of us will be there. And you are particularly included, Thimiroi. Kleph made a point of telling me that. Unless you have other plans for the evening, naturally.”

“Is that what Kleph said? Or are you adding that part of it yourself, about my having other plans?”

“That is what Kleph said.”

“I see.”

“ Do you have other plans?”

“What other plans could I possibly have, do you think? Where? With whom?”

Christine seemed startled to see him again so soon. She was still wearing an old pink robe that she had thrown on as he was leaving her house two hours before, and she looked rumpled and drowsy and confused. Behind him the sky held the pearl-gray of early twilight on this late spring evening, but she stood in the half-opened doorway blinking at him as though he had awakened her once again in the middle of the night.

“Thimiroi? You’re back?”

“Let me in. Quickly, please.”

“Is there something wrong? Are you in trouble?”

“Please.”

He stepped past her into the vestibule and hastily pushed the door shut behind him. She gave him a baffled look. “I was just napping,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d be coming back this evening, and I had so little sleep last night, you know—”

“I know. We need to talk. This is urgent, Christine.”

“Go into the parlor. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

She pointed to Thimiroi’s left and vanished into the dim recesses at the rear of the entrance hall. Thimiroi went into the room she had indicated, a long, oppressively narrow chamber hung with heavy brocaded draperies and furnished with the sort of lowslung clumsy-looking couches and chairs, probably out of some even earlier era, that were everywhere in the house. He paced restlessly about the room. It was like being in a museum of forgotten styles. There was something eerie and almost hieratic about this mysterious furniture: the dark wood, the heavy legs jutting at curious angles, the coarse, intricately worked fabrics, the strange brass buttons running along the edges. Someone like Denvin would probably think it hideous. To him it was merely strange, powerful, haunting, wonderful in its way.

At last Christine appeared. She had been gone for what felt like hours: washing her face, brushing her hair, changing into a robe she evidently considered more seemly for receiving a visitor at nightfall. Her vanity was almost amusing. The world is about to come to an end, he thought, and she pauses to make herself fit for entertaining company.

But of course she could have no idea of why he was here.

He said, “Are you free tomorrow night?”

“Free? Tomorrow?” She looked uncertain. “Why—yes, yes, I suppose. Friday night. I’m free, yes. What did you have in mind, Thimiroi?”

“How well do you trust me, Christine?”

She did not reply for a moment. For the first time since that day they had had lunch together at the River Cafe, there was something other than fascination, warmth, even love for him, in her eyes. She seemed mystified, troubled, perhaps frightened. It was as if his sudden breathless arrival here this evening had reminded her of how truly strange their relationship was, and of how little she really knew about him.

“Trust you how?” she said finally.

“What I told you this afternoon, about Capri, about Canterbury, about The Travel—did you believe all that or not?”

She moistened her lips. “I suppose you’re going to say that you were making it all up, and that you feel guilty now for having fed all that nonsense to a poor simple gullible woman like me.”