Robert Silverberg - Thorns

They looked happy side by side, Burris and the girl.

That would change, of course, as time went on.

“You see Hawaii?” Chalk asked. “And there, by the edge of the world: China. The Great Wall. We’ve had it restored, a good deal of it. See, running inland from the sea just above that gulf. Passing north of Peking, up into those mountains. The middle section is gone, the Ordos desert stretch. But then it was never very much, just a line of mud. And beyond, toward Sinkiang, see it coming up now? We have several party centers along the Wall. A new one opening just on the Mongolian side shortly. Kublai Khan’s Pleasure Dome.” Chalk laughed. “But not stately. Anything but stately.”

They were holding hands, Chalk observed.

He concentrated on picking up their emotions. Nothing useful yet. From the girl came a kind of mild, squashy contentment, a blank maternal sort of thing. Yes, she would. And from Burris? Not much of anything, so far. He was relaxed, more relaxed than Chalk had yet seen him to be. Burris liked the girl. She amused him, obviously. He enjoyed the attention she gave him. But he did not have any strong feeling toward her; he did not really think very much of her as a person. Soon she would be powerfully in love with him. Chalk thought it unlikely that the emotion would be reciprocated. Out of that difference in voltages an interesting current might be generated, Chalk surmised. A thermocouple effect, so to speak. We will see.

The ship hurtled westward over China, past the Kansu Panhandle, orbiting over the Old Silk Road.

Chalk said, “I understand that you two will be leaving on your travels tomorrow. So Nick tells me.”

“That’s right. The itinerary’s arranged,” said Burris.

“I can’t wait. I’m so awfully excited!” Lona cried.

The schoolgirl blurt of words annoyed Burris. Chalk, well attuned to their shifting moods now, dug his receptors into the flash of irritation that rolled from him and gobbled it down. The burst of emotion was a sudden rent in a seamless velvet veil. A jagged dark streak across pearly gray smoothness. A beginning, Chalk thought. A beginning.

“It should be quite a trip,” he said. “Billions of people wish you well.”

You covered ground swiftly when you were in the hands of Duncan Chalk. Chalk’s minions had conveyed them nonstop from the hospital to Chalk’s private spaceport; then, after their flight around the world, they had been sped to the hotel. It was the most magnificent hotel the Western Hemisphere had ever known, a fact that seemed to dazzle Lona and that obscurely bothered Burris.

Entering the lobby, he slipped and began to fall.

That had been happening to him more and more, now that he was out in public. He had never really learned how to use his legs. His knees were elaborate ball-and-socket affairs, evidently designed to be frictionless, and at unpredictable moments they failed to support him. That was what happened now. There was a sensation as of his left leg disintegrating, and he began to slide toward the thick yellow carpet.

Vigilant robot bellhops sprang to his aid. Aoudad, whose reflexes were not quite as good as theirs, belatedly clutched at him. But Lona was closest. She flexed her knees and put her shoulder against his chest, supporting him while he clawed for balance. Burris was surprised at how strong she was. She held him up until the others reached him.

“Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly.

“More or less.” He swung his leg back and forth until he was sure the knee was locked in place again. Fiery pains shot as high as his hip. “You were strong. You held me up.”

“It all happened so fast. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just moved and there you were.”

“I’m so heavy, though.”

Aoudad had been holding him by the arm. As if slowly realizing it, he let go. “Can you make it by yourself now?” he asked. “What happened?”

“I forgot how my legs worked for a second,” Burris said. The pain was nearly blinding. He swallowed it down and, taking Lona’s hand, slowly led the procession toward the gravitron bank. Nikolaides was taking care of the routine job of checking them in. They would be here two days. Aoudad entered the nearest liftshaft with them, and up they went.

“Eighty-two,” Aoudad said to the elevator’s monitor-plate.

“Is it a big room?” Lona asked.

“It’s a suite,” said Aoudad. “It’s lots of rooms.”

There were seven rooms altogether. A cluster of bedrooms, a kitchen, a lounging room, and a large conference room in which the representatives of the press would later gather. At Burris’s quiet request, he and Lona had been given adjoining bedrooms. There was nothing physical between them yet. Burris knew that the longer he waited, the more difficult it would be, and yet he held back. He could not judge the depth of her feelings, and at this point he had grave doubts about his own.

Chalk had spared no expense to get them these accommodations. It was a lavish suite, hung with outworld draperies that throbbed and flickered with inner light. The spun-glass ornaments on the table, warmed in the hand, would sing sweet melodies. They were costly. The bed in his room was wide enough to hold a regiment. Hers was round and revolved at the touch of a switch. There were mirrors in the bedroom ceilings. At an adjustment, they contorted into diamond facets; at another, they became splintered shards; at another, they provided a steady reflection, larger and sharper than life. They could also be opaqued. Burris did not doubt that the rooms could play other tricks as well.

“Dinner tonight is in the Galactic Room,” Aoudad announced. “You’ll hold a press conference at eleven tomorrow morning. You meet with Chalk in the afternoon. The following morning you leave for the Pole.”

“Splendid.” Burris sat.

“Shall I have a doctor up to look at the leg?”

“It won’t be necessary.”

“I’ll be back in an hour and a half to escort you to dinner. You’ll find clothes in the closets.”

Aoudad took his leave.

Lena’s eyes were shining. She was in wonderland. Burris himself, not easily impressed by luxury, was at least interested in the extent of the comforts. He smiled at her. Her glow deepened. He winked.

“Let’s look around again,” she murmured.

They toured the suite. Her room, his, the kitchen. She touched the program node of the food bank. “We could eat here tonight,” he suggested. “If you prefer, we can get everything we need.”

“Let’s go out, though.”

“Of course.”

He did not need to shave, nor even to wash: small mercies of his new skin. But Lona was more nearly human. He left her in her room, staring at the vibraspray mounted in its cubicle. Its control panel was nearly as complex as that of a starship. Well, let her play with it.

He inspected his wardrobe.

They had stocked him as though he were going to be the star of a tridim drama. On one shelf were some twenty sprayon cans, each with its bright portrayal of its contents. In this one, green dinner jacket and lustrous purple-threaded tunic. In this, a single flowing robe decked with self-generating light. Here, a gaudy peacock thing with epaulets and jutting ribs. His own tastes ran to simpler designs, even to more conventional materials. Linen, cotton, the ancient fabrics. But his private tastes did not govern this enterprise. Left to his private tastes, he would be huddling in his flaking room in the Martlet Towers, talking to his own ghost. Here he was, a volunteer puppet dancing on Chalk’s strings, and he had to dance the proper paces. This was his purgatory. He chose the epaulets and ribs.

Now, would the sprayon work?

His skin was strange in its porosity and other physical properties. It might reject the garment. Or—a waking nightmare—it might patiently undo the clinging molecules, so that in the twinkling of an eye his clothing shredded at the Galactic Room, leaving him not merely naked in a throng but exposed in all his eerie otherness. He would chance it. Let them look. Let them see everything. The image crossed his mind of Elise Prolisse putting a hand to a secret stud and obliterating her black shroud in an instant, unveiling the white temptations. These clothes were unreliable. So be it. Burris stripped and inserted the sprayon can in the dispenser. He stepped beneath it.