Robert Silverberg - Thorns

“Put it on. We’re going back to the dome.”

She was the incarnation of raw hunger. She writhed in what could have been self-parody of desire. She called hoarsely to him.

“We’re going back,” he said. “And we aren’t going back naked.”

Reluctantly she dressed herself.

She would have opened the roof, he told himself. She would have gone swimming with me in the methane lake.

He started the sled and sped back to the hotel.

“Are you really leaving for Earth tomorrow?”

“Yes. I’ve booked passage.”

“Without me?”

“Without you.”

“What if I followed you again?”

“I can’t stop you. But it won’t do you any good.”

The sled came to the airlock of the dome. He drove in and returned the sled at the rental desk. Elise looked rumpled and sweaty within her breathing-suit.

Burris, going to his room, closed the door quickly and locked it. Elise knocked a few times. He made no reply, and she went away. He rested his head in his hands. The fatigue was coming back, the utter weariness that he had not felt since the final quarrel with Lona. But it passed after a few minutes.

An hour later the hotel management came for him. Three men, grim-faced, saying very little. Burris donned the breathing-suit they gave him and went out into the open with them.

“She’s under the blanket. We’d like you to identify her before we bring her in.”

Subtle crystals of ammonia snow had fallen on the blanket. They blew aside as Burris peeled it back. Elise, naked, seemed to be hugging the ice. The spots on her breast where his fingertips had dug in had turned deep purple. He touched her. Like marble she was.

“She died instantly,” said a voice at his elbow.

Burris looked up. “She had a great deal to drink this afternoon. Perhaps that explains it.”

He stayed in his room the rest of that evening and through the morning that followed. At midday he was summoned for the ride to the spaceport, and within four hours he was aloft, bound for Earth via Ganymede. He said little to anyone all the while.

She had come, washed up by the tides, to the Martlet Towers. There she lived in a single room, rarely going out, changing her clothes infrequently, speaking to no one. She knew the truth now, and the truth had imprisoned her.

…and then he found her.

She stood bird-like, ready for flight. “Who’s there?”

“Minner.”

“What do you want?”

“Let me in, Lona. Please.”

“How did you find me here?”

“Some guesswork. Some bribery. Open the door, Lona.”

She opened it for him. He looked unchanged over the weeks since she had last seen him. He stepped through, not smiling his equivalent of a smile, not touching her, not kissing. The room was almost in darkness. She moved to light it, but he cut her off with a brusque gesture.

“I’m sorry it’s so shabby,” she said.

“It looks fine. It looks just like the room I lived in. But that was two buildings over.”

“When did you get back to Earth, Minner?”

“Several weeks ago. I’ve been searching hard.”

“Have you seen Chalk?”

Burris nodded. “I didn’t get much from him.”

“Neither did I.” Lona turned to the food conduit. “Something to drink?”

“Thanks, no.”

He sat down. There was something blessedly familiar about the elaborate way he coiled himself into her chair, moving all his extra joints so carefully. Just the sight of it made her pulse-rate climb.

He said, “Elise is dead. She killed herself on Titan.”

Lona made no response.

He said, “I didn’t ask her to come to me. She was a very confused person. Now she’s at rest.”

“She’s better at suicide than I am,” Lona said.

“You haven’t—”

“No. Not again. I’ve been living quietly, Minner. Should I admit the truth? I’ve been waiting for you to come to me.”

“All you had to do was let somebody know where you were!”

“It was more complicated than that. I couldn’t advertise myself. But I’m glad you’re here. I have so much to tell you!”

“Such as?”

“Chalk isn’t going to have any of my children transferred to me. I’ve been checking. He couldn’t do it if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to. It was just a convenient lie to get me to work for him.”

Burris’s eyes flickered. “You mean, to get you to keep company with me?”

“That’s it. I won’t hide anything now, Minner. You already know, more or less. There had to be a price before I’d go with you. Getting the children was the price. I kept my end of the bargain, but Chalk isn’t keeping his.”

“I knew that you’d been bought, Lona. I was bought, too. Chalk found my price to come out of hiding and conduct an interplanetary romance with a certain girl.”

“Transplant into a new body?”

“Yes,” Burris said.

“You aren’t going to get that, any more than I’m going to get my babies,” she said flatly. “Am I killing any of your illusions? Chalk cheated you the way he cheated me.”

“I’ve been discovering that,” Burris said, “since my return. The body-transfer project is at least twenty years away. Not five years. They may never solve some of the problems. They can switch a brain into a new body and keep it alive, but the—what shall I say—soul goes. They get a zombi. Chalk knew all that when he offered me his deal.”

“He got his romance out of us. And we got nothing out of him.” Rising, Lona walked around the room. She came to the tiny potted cactus that she had once given to Burris and rubbed the tip of one finger idly over its bristly surface. Burris seemed to notice the cactus for the first time. He looked pleased.

Lona said, “Do you know why he brought us together, Minner?”

“To make money on the publicity. He picks two used-up people and tricks them into coming part way back to life, and tells the world about it, and—”

“No. Chalk has enough money. He didn’t give a damn about the profit.”

“Then what?” he asked.

“An idiot told me the real thing. An idiot named Melangio, who does a trick with calendars. Perhaps you’ve seen him on vid. Chalk used him in some shows.”

“No.”

“I met him at Chalk’s place. Sometimes a fool speaks truth. He said Chalk’s a drinker of emotion. He lives on fear, pain, envy, grief. Chalk sets up situations that he can exploit. Bring two people together who are so battered that they can’t possibly allow happiness to take hold of them, and watch them suffer. And feed. And drain them.”

Burris looked startled. “Even at long range? He could feed even when we were at Luna Tivoli? Or on Titan?”

“Each time we quarreled … we felt so tired afterward. As if we’d lost blood. As if we were hundreds of years old.”

“Yes!”

“That was Chalk,” she said. “Getting fatter on our suffering. He knew we’d hate each other, and that was what he wanted. Can there be a vampire of emotion?”

“So all the promises were false,” he whispered. “We were puppets. If it’s true.”

“I know it’s true.”

“Because an idiot told you so?”

“A very wise idiot, Minner. Besides, work it all out for yourself. Think of everything Chalk ever said to you. Think of all that happened. Why was Elise always waiting in the wings to throw her arms around you? Don’t you think it was deliberate, part of a campaign to infuriate me? We were tied together by our strangeness … by our hatred. And Chalk loved it.”

Burris stared at her quietly a long moment. Then, without a word, he went to the door, opened it, stepped out into the hall, and pounced on something. Lona could not see what he was doing until he returned with a struggling, squirming Aoudad.