I know I didn’t sleep much, and sometimes, in that kind of glow the ceiling let off when eyes had gotten used to the dark, I could make out Lance’s face. He lay on his back, and I think he stared at the ceiling, but I could not be sure. I kept my arm about his; and Percy was at my right keeping me warm on that side, with Lynette all tangled up with him; and Viv sleeping on Lance’s shoulder on the other side. No sex. Not at all. All I could think of was that sound: we had fallen into something that was never going to let us go; we clung like a parasite to something that maybe didn’t want us attached to it at all; and out there ... out there beyond the hull, if I let my senses go, was still that terrible chaos-stuff.
If this was death, I kept thinking, remembering my lady’s mad hypothesis, if this was death, I could wish we had not tangled some other creature up in our dying dream. But I believed now it was no dream, because I could never have imagined that sound out of my direst nightmares.
It came again in the night, that rumbling over com: Gawain came on the intercom telling Percy and Lynn so; and all of us scrambled out of bed and ran for the lift.
So had Griffin come running from my lady’s bedroom. He stood there in his robe and his bare feet like the rest of us; but no word from my lady, nothing. It left us with Griffin alone, and that rumbling and squealing came over the com fit to drive us all blank.
“Have you answered it?” Griffin asked of Gawain and Modred, who sat at controls still in their party clothes; and Percy and Lynn took their places in their chairs wearing just the robes they had thrown on. “No,” Modred replied. He turned in his place, calm as ever, with dark circles under his eyes. “I’m composing a transmission tape in pulses, to see if we can establish a common ground in mathematics.”
“Use it,” Griffin said. “If the beginning’s complete, use it.”
Modred hesitated. I stood there with my arms wrapped about me and thinking, no, he wouldn’t, not with my lady not here. But Modred gave one of those short, curious nods of his and pushed a button.
The transmission went out. At least after a moment the transmission from the other side stopped. “I should see to my lady,” I said.
“No,” Griffin said. “She’s resting. She took a pill.”
I stood there as either/or as Modred, clenched my arms about me and let this born-man tell me I wasn’t to go ... because I knew if my lady had taken a pill she wouldn’t want the disturbance. This terrible thing started up again and the crew asked help and Dela took a pill.
An arm went about me. It was Lance. Viv sat near us, on one of the benches near the door.
“You’d better trade off shifts,” Griffin said to the crew, marking, surely, how direly tired Gawain and Modred looked.
“Yes,” Gawain agreed. He would have sat there all the watch if Griffin hadn’t thought of that, which was one of the considerate things I had seen Griffin do ... but it gave me no comfort, and no comfort to any of the rest of us, I think. It was Dela who should have thought of that; Dela who should be here; and it was Griffin instead, who started acting as if he owned us and the Maid. Until now he had looked through us all and ignored us; and now he saw us and we were alone with him.
“We’ll dress,” Lynn said, “and come up and relieve you.”
“Get back to sleep,” Griffin said to those of us who were staff. “No need of your being here.”
We went back to the crew quarters and got in bed again, except Lynn and Percy, who dressed and went topside again. Then Gawain and Modred came down and undressed and lay down with us as Lynn and Percy had—I think they were glad of the company, and worked themselves up against us, cold and tense until they began to take our warmth, and until they fell asleep with the suddenness of exhaustion.
What went on out there, that noise, that thing outside our hull—it might go on again and again. It might not need to sleep.
VII
The huge pavilion slowly yielded up,
Thro’ those black foldings, that which housed therein.
High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms,
With white breastbone, and barren ribs of Death,
And crowned with fleshless laughter—some ten steps—
Into the half-light—thro’ the dim dawn—advanced
The monster, and then paused, and spake no word.
We went about in the morning on soft feet and small steps, listening. We stayed to our duties, what little of them there were. Even the makeshift lab was quiet, where Vivien was setting things up ... running tests, that took time, and we could do nothing there. Griffin and Dela stayed together in her bed, and I walked and paced feeling like a ghost in the Maid’s corridors, all too conscious how vast it was outside and how small we were and how huge that rumbling voice had sounded.
“It’s probably trapped here too,” Dela said when I came finally to do her hair, “and maybe it’s as scared as we are.”
“Maybe it is,” I said, thinking that scared beasts bit; and I feared this one might have guns. On the Maidwe had only the ancient weapons which decorated her dining hall and the lady’s quarters and some of the corridors. Precious good thosewere against this thing. I thought about knights and dragons and reckoned that they must have been insane.
I finished my lady’s hair ... made it beautiful, elaborate with braids, and dressed her in her green gown with the pale green trim. It encouraged me, that she was up and sober again, no longer lying in her chambers prostrate with fear: if my lady could face this day, then things might be better. If there was an answer to this, then born-men could find it; and she was our born-man, ours, who dictated all the world.
“Where’s Griffin?” she asked.
“It’s eleven hundred hours. Master Griffin—asked Lance—”
“I remember.” She waved her hand, robbed me of the excuse I had hoped for to stop all of that, dismissing it all.
“Shall I go?” I asked.
Again a wave of the hand. My lady walked out into the sitting room and sat down at the console there, started calling up something on the comp unit—all the log reports, I reckoned, of all the time she had slept; or maybe the supply inventories. My lady was herself again; and let Griffin beware.
I padded out, ever so quietly, closed the door and wiped my hands and headed down the corridor to the lift as fast as I could walk. I went down and toward the gym in the notion that I had to be quiet, but quiet did no good at alclass="underline" the gym rang with the impact of feet and bodies. They were at it again, Griffin and Lance, trying to throw each other.
It was crazy. They were. I had thought of lying again, saying that Dela wanted this or that, but she was paying sharp attention today, and the lie would not pass. I stood there in the doorway and watched.
They were at it this time, I reckoned, because there had been no decision the last encounter, thanks to me. No winner; and Griffin wanted to win—had to win, because Lance was lab-born, and shouldn’t win, shouldn’t even be able to contest with the likes of Griffin.
They went back and forth a great deal, muscles straining, skin slick with sweat that dampened their hair and made their hands slip. Neither one could get the advantage standing; and they hit the floor with a thud and neither one could get the other stopped. They didn’t see me, I don’t think. I stood there biting my lip until it hurt. And suddenly it was Lance on the bottom, and Griffin slowly let him up.
I turned away, fled the doorway for the corridor, because I was ashamed, and hurt, and I didn’t want to admit to myself why, but it was as if I had lost too, like it was my pain, that Lance after all proved what we were made to be, and that we always had to give way. Even when he did what none of the rest of us could do, something so reckless as to fight with Griffin—he was beaten.