Robert Silverberg - In Another Country

“Well—”

“Laliene says you’ve been terribly standoffish lately, and I suppose she’s right. But look, old friend, you can’t spend the evening moping by yourself, you absolutely can’t. Lesentru’ll be here, do you know that? And Kuiane. Maybe even Broyal and Hammin, later on. And a rumor of Cenbe, too, though I suspect he won’t show up until the very last minute, as usual. Listen, there are all sorts of stories to tell. You were in Canterbury, weren’t you? And we’ve just done the Charlemagne thing. We have some splendid tips on what to see and what to avoid. You’ll come, of course. Room 941, the end of the hall.”

“I don’t know if I—”

“Of course you will! Of course!”

Antilimoin’s gusto was irresistible. It always was. The man was a ferociously social being: when he gave a party, attendance was never optional. And Thimiroi realized, after a moment, that it was better, perhaps, for him to go than to lurk here by himself, tensely awaiting the ordeals that tomorrow would bring. He had already brought more than enough suspicion upon himself. Antilimoin’s party would be his farewell to his native time, to his friends, to everything that had been his life.

He spent a busy hour planning what had to be planned.

Then he dressed in his formal best—in the clothes, in fact, that he had planned to wear tomorrow night—and went upstairs. The party was going at full force. Antilimoin, dapper and elegant as always, greeted him with a hearty embrace, and Fevra and Maitira came gliding up from opposite sides of the room to kiss him, and Thimiroi saw, farther away, Lesentru and Kuiane deep in conversation with Lutheena, Denvin, and some others. Everyone seemed buoyant, excited, energetic. There was tension, too, the undercurrent of keen excitement that comes on the eve of a powerful experience.

Voices were pitched a little too high, gestures were a trifle too emphatic. A great screen on one wall was playing one of Cenbe’s finest symphonias, but no one seemed to be watching or listening. Thimiroi glanced at it and shivered. Cenbe, of course: that connoisseur of disaster, assembling his masterpieces out of other people’s tragedies—he was the perfect artist for this event. Doubtless he was in the city already, skulking around somewhere looking for the material he would need to complete his newest and surely finest work.

I will never see any of these people again after tonight, Thimiroi thought, and the concept was so difficult to accept that he repeated it to himself two or three more times, without being able to give it any more reality.

Laliene appeared beside him. There was no sign on her face of the earlier unpleasantness between them; her eyes were glowing and she was smiling warmly, even tenderly, as though they were lovers.

“I’m glad you came,” she murmured. “I hoped you would.”

“Antilimoin is very persuasive.”

“You must have some tea. You look so tense, Thimiroi.”

“Do I?”

“Is it because of our talk before?”

He shrugged. “Let’s forget all about that, shall we?”

Laliene let the tips of her fingers rest lightly on his arm. “I should never have put that transmitter in your room. It was utterly stupid of me.”

“It was, yes. But that’s all ancient history.”

Her face rose toward his. “Come have some tea with me.”

“Laliene—”

Softly she said, “I wanted you to come to me so very badly. That was why I did it. You were ignoring me—you’ve ignored me ever since this trip began—oh, Thimiroi, Thimiroi, I’m trying to do the right thing, don’t you see? And I want you to do the right thing too.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Laliene?”

“Be careful, is what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Careful of what?”

“Have some tea with me,” she said.

“I’ll have some tea,” he told her. “But not, I think, with you.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She turned her head to the side, but not so quickly that Thimiroi did not see them.

That was new, he thought. Tears in Laliene’s eyes! He had never known her to be so overwrought. Too much euphoriac, he wondered? She kept her grip on his arm for a long moment, and then, smiling sadly, she released him and moved away.

“Thimiroi!” Lesentru called, turning and grinning broadly at him and waving his long thin arms. “How absolutely splendid to see you! Come, come, let’s sip a little together!” He crossed the room as if swimming through air. “You look so gloomy, man! That can’t be allowed. Lutheena! Fevra! Everybody! We must cheer Thimiroi up! We can’t let anyone go around looking as bleak as this, not tonight.”

They swept toward him from every direction, six, eight, ten of them, laughing, whooping, embracing him, holding fragrant cups of euphoriac tea out at him. It began almost to seem that the party was in his honor. Why were they making such a fuss over him? He was starting to regret having come here at all. He drank the tea that someone put in his hand, and almost at once there was another cup there. He drank that too.

Laliene was at his side again. Thimiroi was having trouble focusing his eyes.

“What did you mean?” he asked. “When you said to be careful.”

“I’m not supposed to say. It would be improperly influencing the flow of events.”

“Be improper, then. But stop talking in riddles.”

“Are they such riddles, then?”

“To me they are.”

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Laliene said.

“I do?”

They might have been all alone in the middle of the room. I have had too much euphoriac, he told himself. But I can still hold my own. I can still hold my own, yes.

Laliene said in a low whisper, leaning close, her breath warm against his cheek, “Tomorrow—where are you going to go tomorrow, Thimiroi?”

He looked at her, astounded, speechless.

“I know,” she said.

“Get away from me.”

“I’ve known all along. I’ve been trying to save you from—”

“You’re out of your mind, Laliene.”

“No, Thimiroi. You are!”

She clung to him. Everyone was gaping at them.

Terror seized him. I have to get out of here, he thought.

Now. Go to Christine. Help her pack, and go with her to the airport. Right now. Whatever time it is, midnight, one in the morning, whatever. Before they can stop me. Before they change me.

“No, Thimiroi,” Laliene cried. “Please—please—”

Furiously he pushed her away. She went sprawling to the floor, landing in a flurried heap at Antilimoin’s feet. Everyone was yelling at once.

Laliene’s voice came cutting through the confusion. “Don’t do it, Thimiroi! Don’t do it! ”

He swung around and rushed toward the door, and through it, and wildly down the stairs, and through the quiet hotel lobby and out into the night. A brilliant crescent moon hung above him, and behind it the cold blaze of the stars in the clear darkness. Looking back, he saw no pursuers. He headed up the street toward Christine’s, walking swiftly at first, then breaking into a light trot.

As he reached the corner, everything swirled and went strange around him. He felt a pang of inexplicable loss, and a sharp stab of wild fear, and a rush of anger without motive. The darkness closed bewilderingly around him, like a great glove. Then came a feeling of motion, swift and impossible to resist. He had a sense of being swept down a vast river toward an abyss that lay just beyond.

The effect lasted only a moment, but it was an endless moment, in which Thimiroi perceived the passage of time in sharp discontinuous segments, a burst of motion followed by a deep stillness and then another burst, and then stillness again. All color went from the world, even the muted colors of night: the sky was a startling blinding white, the buildings about him were black.