Robert Silverberg - In Another Country

Therefore he schooled himself to patience. He dared not be too hasty, for fear of ruining everything.

Christine appeared astounded by what she saw in his rooms. She wandered through them like a child in a wonderland, hardly breathing, pausing here and there to look, to reach out hesitantly, to hold her hand above this or that miraculous object as though afraid actually to touch it but eager to experience its texture.

“You brought all this from your own country?” she asked. “You must have had fifty suitcases!”

“We get homesick very easily. We wish to have our familiar things about us.”

“The way a sultan would travel. A pasha.” Her eyes were shining with awe. “These little tables—I’ve never seen anything like them. I try to follow the weave, but the pattern won’t stand still. It keeps sliding around its own corners.”

“The woodworkers of Sipulva are extremely ingenious,” Thimiroi said.

“Sipulva? Is that a city in your country?”

“A place nearby,” he said. “You may touch them if you wish.”

She caressed the intricately carved surfaces, fingers tracing the weave as it went through its incomprehensible convolutions. Thimiroi, smiling, turned the music sphere on—one of Mirtin’s melodikias began to come from it, a shimmering crystalline piece—and set about brewing some tea. Christine drifted onward, examining the draperies, the glistening carpets, the pulsating esthetikon that was sending waves of color through the room, the simso screens with their shifting views of unknown worlds. She was altogether enthralled. It would certainly be easy enough to seduce her now, Thimiroi realized. A little sensuous music, a few sips of euphoriac, perhaps some surreptitious adjustments of the little subsonic so that it sent forth heightened tonalities of anticipation and excitation— yes, that was all that it would take, he knew. But easy conquest was not what he wanted. He did not intend to pass through her soul like a frivolous tourist drifting through a museum in search of an hour’s superficial diversion.

One cup of tea for each of them, then, and no more. Some music, some quick demonstrations of a few of the little wonders that filled his rooms. A light kiss, finally, and then one that was more intense: but a quick restoration, afterward, of the barriers between them. Christine seemed no more willing to breach those barriers today than he was. Thimiroi was relieved at that, and pleased. They seemed to understand each other already.

“I’ll walk you home,” he said, when they plainly had reached the time when she must either leave or stay much longer.

“You needn’t. It’s just down the street.” Her hand lingered in his. Her touch was warm, her skin faintly moist, pleasantly so. “You’ll call me? Here’s my number.” She gave him a smooth little yellow card. “We could have dinner, perhaps. Or a concert—whatever you’d like to see—”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll call you.”

“You’ll be here at least a few more days, won’t you?”

“Until the end of the month.”

She nodded. He saw the momentary darkening of her expression, and guessed at the inward calculations: reckoning the number of days remaining to his visit, the possibilities that those days might hold, the rashness of embarking on anything that would surely not extend beyond the last day of May. Thimiroi had already made the same calculations himself, though tempered by information that she could not conceivably have, information which made everything inconceivably more precarious. After the smallest of pauses she said, “That’s plenty of time, isn’t it? But call me soon, Thimiroi. Will you? Will you?”

A little while later there was a light knocking at the door, and Thimiroi, hoping with a startling rush of eagerness that Christine had found some pretext for returning, opened it to find Laliene. She looked weary. The perfection of her beauty was unmarred, of course, every shining strand of hair in its place, her tanned skin fresh and glistening. But beneath the radiant outer glow there was once again something drawn and tense and ragged about her, a subliminal atmosphere of strain, of fatigue, of devitalization, that was not at all typical of the Laliene he had known. This visit to the late twentieth century did not seem to be agreeing with her.

“May I come in?” she asked. He nodded and beckoned to her. “We’ve all just returned from the Courtney birthplace,” she said. “You really should have gone with us, Thimiroi. You can feel the aura of the man everywhere in the place, even this early, so many years before he even existed.” Taking a few steps into the room, Laliene paused, sniffed the air lightly, smiled. “Having a little tea by yourself just now, were you, Thimiroi?”

“Just a cup. It was a long quiet afternoon.”

“Poor Thimiroi. Couldn’t find anything at all interesting to do? Then you certainly should have come with us.” He saw her glance flicking quickly about, and felt pleased and relieved that he had taken the trouble to put the teacups away. It was in fact no business of Laliene’s that he had had a guest in here this afternoon, but he did not want her, all the same, to know that he had.

“Can I brew a cup for you?” he asked.

“I think not. I’m so tired after our outing—it’ll put me right to sleep, I would say.” She turned toward him, giving him a direct inquisitorial stare that he found acutely discomforting. In a straightforward way that verged on bluntness she said, “I’m worried about you, you know, Thimiroi. Keeping off by yourself so much. The others are talking. You really should make an effort to join the group more often.”

“Maybe I’m bored with the group, Laliene. With Denvin’s snide little remarks, with Hollia’s queenly airs, with Hara’s mincing inanity, with Omerie’s arrogance, with Klia’s vacuity—”

“And with my presumptuousness?”

“You said that. Not I.”

But it was true, he realized. She was crowding him constantly, forever edging into his psychic space, pressing herself upon him in a strange, almost incomprehensible way. It had been that way since the beginning of the trip: she never seemed to leave him alone. Her approach toward him was an odd mix of seductiveness, protectiveness, and—what?—inquisitiveness? She was like that strangest of antique phenomena, a jealous lover, almost. But jealous of what? Of whom? Surely not Christine. Christine had not so much as existed for him, except as a mysterious briefly-glimpsed face in a window, until this afternoon, and Laliene had been behaving like this for many weeks. It made no sense. Even now, covertly snooping around his suite, all too obviously searching for some trace of the guest who had only a short while before been present here—what was she after?

He took two fresh cups from his cabinet. “If you don’t mind, Laliene, I’ll put up a little more tea for myself. And it would be no trouble to make some for you.”

“I said I didn’t want any, Thimiroi. I don’t enjoy gulping the stuff down, you know, the way Kleph does.”

“Kleph?”

“Certainly you know how heavily she indulges. She’s euphoric more often than not these days.”

Thimiroi shrugged. “I didn’t realize that. I suppose Omerie can get on anyone’s nerves. Even Kleph’s.”

Laliene studied him for a long moment. “You don’t know about Kleph, then?” she asked finally. “No, I suppose you don’t. Keeping to yourself this way, how would you?”

This was maddening. “What about Kleph?” he said, his voice growing tight.

“Perhaps you should fix some tea for me after all,” Laliene said. “It’s quite a nasty story. It’ll be easier for me with a little euphoriac.”

“Very well.”

He busied himself over the tiny covered cups. In a short while the fragrant coiling steam began to rise through the fine crescent opening. His hands trembled, and he nearly swept the cups from the tray as he reached for them; but he recovered quickly and brought them to the table. They sipped the drug in silence. Watching her, Thimiroi was struck once more by the inhuman superfluity of Laliene’s elegance. Laliene was much too perfect. How different from Christine, whose skin had minute unimportant blemishes here and there, whose teeth were charmingly irregular, whose hair looked like real hair and not like something spun by machines. Christine probably perspired, he thought. She endured the messiness of menstruation. She might even snore. She was wonderfully real, wonderfully human in every regard. Whereas Laliene—Laliene seemed—scarcely real at all—