“Do you think a nemet is really capable of believing that? And do you think that he believes now he had no just claim on the Methi’s loyalty, whatever he does in your name? He’ll push you someday to the point where you have to choose. He’s not going to let you have your own way with him forever.”
“He knows how things are.”
“Then ask yourself why he comes running when you call him to your bed, and if you discover it’s not your considerable personal attractions, don’t say I didn’t warn you. A nemet doesn’t take that kind of treatment, not without some compelling reason. If this is your method of controlling the Sufaki, you’ve picked the wrong man.”
“Nevertheless”—her voice acquired a tremor that she tried to suppress—“my mistakes are my choice.”
“Will that undo someone’s dying?”
“My choice,” she insisted, with such intensity that it gave him pause.
“You’re not in love with him?” It was question, and plea at once. “You’re too sensible for that, Djan. You said yourself this world doesn’t give you that choice. You’d kill him or he’d be the death of you sooner or later.”
She shrugged, and the old cynical bitterness that he trusted was back. “I was conceived to serve the state. Doing so is an unbreakable habit. Other people—like you, my friend,—normal people—serve themselves. Relationships like serving self, serving—others—are outside my experience. I thought I was selfish, but I begin to see there are other dimensions to that word. I find personal relations tedious, these games of me and thee. I enjoy companionship. I—love you. I love Shan. That is not the same as: I love Nephane. This city is mine; it is mine.Spare me your appeals to personal affection. I would destroy either of you if I were clearly convinced it was necessary to the survival of this city. Remember that.”
“I am sorry for you,” he said.
“Get out.”
Tears gathered to her eyes, belying everything she had said. She struggled for dignity, lost; the tears spilled free, her lips trembling into sobs. She clenched her jaw, turned her face and gestured for him to go.
“I am sorry,” he said, this time with compassion, at which she shook her head and kept her back to him until the spasm had passed.
He took her arms, trying to comfort her, and felt guilty because of Mim; but he felt guilty because of Djan too, and feared that she would not forgive him for witnessing this. She had been here longer, a good deal longer than he. He well knew the nightmare, waking in the night, finding that reality had turned to dreams and the dream itself was as real as the stranger beside him, looking into a face that was not human, perceiving ugliness where a moment before had been beauty.
“I am tired,” she said, leaning against him. Her hair smelled of these exotic on this world, lab-born, like Djan—perfumes like home, from a thousand star-scattered worlds the nemet had never dreamed of. “Kurt, I work, I study, I try. I am tired to death.”
“I would help you,” he said, “if you would let me.”
“You have loyalties elsewhere,” she said finally. “I wish I’d never sent you to Elas, to learn to be nemet, to belong to them. You want things for your cause, he wants things for his. I know all that, and occasionally I want to forget it. It’s a human weakness. Am I not allowed just one? You came here asking favors. I knew you would, sooner or later.”
“I would never ask you deceitfully, to do you harm. I owe you, as I owe Elas.”
She pushed back from him. “And I hate you most when you do that. Your concern is touching, but I don’t trust it.”
“Nephane is killing you.”
“I can manage.”
“Probably you can,” he said. “But I would help you.”
“Ah, as Shan helps me. But you don’t like it when it’s the opposition, do you? Blast you, I gave you leave to marry and you’ve done it, you’ve made your choice, however tempting it was to—”
She did not finish. He suddenly found reason for uneasiness in that omission. Djan was not one to let words fly carelessly.
“When I came here,” he said, “whenever I come, I try to leave my relations with Elas at the door. You’ve never tried to make me go against them; and I do not use you, Djan.”
“Your little Mim,” said Djan. “What is she like? Typical nemet?”
“Not typical.”
“Elas is using you,” she said. “Whether you know it or not, that is so. I could still stop that. I could simply have you given quarters here in the Afen. No arrest decree has Upei review. Thatpower of a Methi is absolute.”
She actually considered it. He went cold inside, realizing that she could and would do it, and knew suddenly that she meant this for petty revenge, taking his peace of mind in retaliation for her humiliation of a moment ago. Pride was important to her.
“Do you want me to ask you not to do that?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “If I decide to do that, I will do it, and if I do not, I will not. What you ask has nothing to do with it. But I would advise you and Elas to remain quiet.”
12
The fog did not go out. It held the city the next morning, the faint sound of warning bells drifting up from the harbor. Kurt opened his eyes on the grayness outside the window, then looked toward the foot of the bed where Mim sat combing her long hair, black and silken and falling to her waist when unbound. She looked back at him and smiled, her alien and wonderfully lovely eyes soft with warmth.
“Good morning, my lord.”
“Good morning,” he murmured.
“The mist is still with us,” she said. “Hear the harbor bells?”
“How long can this last?”
“Sometimes many days when the seasons are turning,—especially in the spring.” She flicked several strands of hair apart and began with quick fingers to plait them into a thin braid. Then she would sweep most of her hair up to the crown of her head, fasten it with pins and combs, an intricate and fascinating ritual daily performed and nightly undone. He liked watching her. In a matter of moments she began the next braid.
“We say,” Mim commented, “that the mist is a cloak of the imiine,the sky-sprite Nue, when she comes to visit earth and walk among men. She searches for her beloved, that she lost long ago in the days when godkings ruled. He was a mortal man who offended one of the godkings, a son of Yr whose name was Knyha;—and, poor man, he was slain by Knyha, and his body scattered over all the shore of Nephane so that Nue would not know what had become of him. She still searches and walks the land and the sea and haunts the rivers, especially in the springtime.”
“Do you truly think that?” Kurt asked, not sarcastically: one could not be that with Mim. He was prepared to mark it down to be remembered with all his heart if she wished him to.
Mim smiled. “I do not, not truly. But it is a beautiful story, is it not, my lord? There are truths and there are truths, my lord Kta would say, and there is Truth itself, the yhia,—and since mortals cannot always reason all the way to Truth, we find little truths that are right enough on our own level. But you are very wise about things. I think you really might know what makes the mist come. Is it a cloud that sits down upon the sea, or is it born in some other way?”
“I think,” said Kurt, “that I like Nue best. It sounds better than water vapor.”
“You think I am silly and you cannot make me understand.”
“Would it make you wiser if you knew where fog comes from?”
“I wish that I could talk to you about all the things that matter to you.”
He frowned, realizing that she was in earnest. “You matter. This place, this world matters to me, Mim.”
“I know so very little.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Well, you owe me breakfast first.”
Mim flashed a smile, put in the last combs and finished her hair with a pat. She slipped on the chatem,the overdress with the four-paneled split skirt which fitted over the gossamer drapery of the pelan,the underdress. The chatem,high-collared and long-sleeved, tight and restraining in the bodice,—rose and beige brocade, over a rose pelan.There were many buttons up either wrist and up the bodice to the collar. She patiently began the series of buttons.