A pleasure and a revelation. And had it been something of a disappointment, too? Yes, that too. It had not been as awesome an experience as he had hoped. It had fallen short of his vision of what it might be, but only because he possessed the Wonderstone. When you twined you could reach the soul of only one other person; with the Barak Dayir you could reach the soul of the world. Already in his early uncertain experiments with the Wonderstone he had risen above the clouds, he had looked across seas, he had peered into the time before the coming of the death-stars. What was twining compared with that?
He realized that he was being unfair. The Barak Dayir offered him an almost incomprehensible reach. Twining was intimate, personal, small. Yet one did not negate the other. If he had found some disappointment in twining, it was only because the Wonderstone had shown him already how to step beyond the boundaries of his own mind. Had he not had that experience, twining would probably have seemed overwhelming. The Wonderstone, it seemed, had spoiled him for that. But there was little reason, all the same, to take twining lightly. It was an extraordinary thing. It was an astonishing thing.
He wanted to twine again as soon as he could.
He wanted to twine with Taniane.
That thought, the thought of twining with Taniane, leaped into his mind with such force and such suddenness that he was stunned by it, as if he had been struck a terrible blow between the shoulders. His throat went dry, his breath came short. His heart began to pound, making a loud thumping sound like that of a drum, loud enough, he thought, for others to hear.
Twining with Taniane! What an amazing idea!
She was a mystery to him. He had long felt some sort of connection with her, some kind of attraction. But he had feared it as a distraction from his real work; and he feared also that it would lead him to something bad.
She was a woman now, a beautiful one, and one of unusual intelligence. And ambition. She dreamed of taking Koshmar’s place as chieftain one day: no question of that. Anyone with any sense could see that, just from the envious way she looked at Koshmar. Sometimes also Hresh caught her looking at him from a distance, staring in that curious way that women use when they are interested in a man. And sometimes, too, he looked closely at her from far away, when he thought she was unaware of him. Often she was giddy and flirtatious with him. She followed him about, she demanded to go with him on his explorations in the ruins, she plied him with questions whose answers seemed to be of the highest importance to her. He was not sure how to interpret that. Sometimes he suspected that she was only toying with him, that it was Haniman who really interested her.
That would be agonizing, to be rejected in favor of Haniman. That was one risk he did not care to take.
But today everything seemed changed. He had twined, now. The whole world of adult complexities lay open to him. He might be the old man of the tribe but he was a young man, too. And he wanted Taniane.
He went in search of her.
It was midafternoon, and the day had become sunny and clear. The roof of the sky appeared to be twanging back and forth as though on strings. The edges of everything Hresh saw were peculiarly sharp, with knife-keen boundaries between one object and another. Colors were vibrant and throbbing. It was as if the twining had opened his soul to a host of powerful new sensory impressions.
Orbin emerged from a nearby passageway, whistling, sauntering.
Hresh halted him. “Have you seen Taniane?”
“Over there,” said Orbin, pointing to a building where some recent finds of the Seekers were being stored. He began to saunter on. Then he paused for a second look at Hresh. “Is anything wrong?”
“Wrong? Wrong?” Hresh felt flustered. “What do you mean, anything wrong?”
“You’ve got a strange look in your eye.”
“You’re imagining things, Orbin.”
Orbin shrugged. “Maybe I am, yes.”
He began whistling again. He strolled away, smiling in a way that seemed disagreeably knowing and supercilious.
Am I that transparent? Hresh wondered. One glance at me, and Orbin can read everything that’s in my mind?
He hurried to the Seeker storehouse, where he found Konya and Praheurt and Taniane, but not Haniman, to his great relief. They all were bending over some unfamiliar piece of machinery with jutting odd-angled metal arms and legs, prodding it in a gingerly way.
“Hresh!” Praheurt called. “Come and see what Konya and Haniman brought back from—”
“Another time,” Hresh said. “Taniane, may I speak with you?”
She glanced up. “Of course. What is it, Hresh?”
“Outside?”
“Can’t we talk in here?”
“Please. Outside.”
“If you insist,” she said, looking puzzled, and signaled to Praheurt and Konya as if to say she would be right back. Hresh led her into the open.
The warm breeze was dizzying. He was astounded by the beauty of her thick fur and the shining splendor of her strange, haunting eyes. They stood for a moment in silence as he searched for a way to begin. Cautiously he peered about to make certain that Haniman was nowhere in the vicinity.
“You should have taken a moment to look at what we found today,” she said. “We aren’t sure about it, but—”
“Never mind that now,” he said tightly. “Taniane, I did my first twining today.”
She appeared surprised and perhaps even troubled by the sudden announcement. Her eyes looked hooded, guarded. Then her expression changed. A smile that did not seem entirely sincere appeared on her face and she said, perhaps too enthusiastically, “Oh, Hresh, how happy I am for you! It was a good twining, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. Somehow this was not going the right way. He fell silent again.
“What do you want to say, Hresh?”
He took a deep breath. “Twine with me, Taniane,” he blurted.
“Twine with you?”
“Yes. Right now.”
For one horrified moment Hresh thought she was going to burst into laughter. But no, no, her eyes were wide, her lips were drawn back, her throat bobbed strangely.
She looks afraid, he thought.
“Now?” she said. “Twine?”
There was no turning back for him now. “Come on. We can go deep into the city. I’ll show you a good place.”
He reached for her. She backed away.
“No — please, Hresh, no — you’re frightening me.”
“I don’t mean to. Twine with me, Taniane!”
She seemed shocked, or perhaps offended, or merely annoyed, he could not tell which.
“I’ve never seen you like this. Have you lost your mind? Yes. That must be it. You’ve gone out of your mind.”
“All I said was—”
She flashed anger at him. “If you aren’t crazy, then you must think I am. You can’t just walk up and ask someone to twine like this, Hresh! Don’t you know that? And that wild look on your face. You should see yourself.” Taniane shivered and moved her hands in a gesture of dismissal, and something more than that. “Go away. Please. Please. Just let me alone, Hresh.” There was a sob in her voice now. She moved farther from him.
Hresh stood motionless, miserable, appalled. A leaden sense of having bungled things began to take possession of him. He saw how hasty he had been, how clumsy, how foolish. And now all was lost for him, on this day which should have been a day of great joy.