Angry and alarmed, he tore off that veil. Had he been trapped into—
Her hair was dull, her eyes gray. She resembled more the Captain than the nymph. She was smiling still, but blankly.
I am a fool, he thought. If she had understood my spoken words, she would not have smiled. This is a native girl, trained to react to harshness with a forgiving smile.
Yet the man who loved her had been tortured to death.
“You may think of me as ‘Stone Heart’,” he said, adopting the evident custom of the planet. He was still angry, as perhaps the native men were angry—at her, at the system she represented, the enormity of it and its somber mystery. At the awful memories this situation evoked by being unfairly similar.
“Why aren’t you beautiful?” Now he was being deliberately unkind, and his anger turned against himself. Must fury beget fury?
She only smiled.
“Take off your clothing,” he ordered. He could hardly see her now. “First light the candle. I want to see you.” She obeyed slowly.
Her body was glorious. The long hair flowed over shoulders and sculptured breasts, and his eye followed the fold of the space suit as it peeled away from her narrow waist and swelling hips and thighs. Alone with her, entirely alone, for the first time.
But this is the memory! he thought. It is Misery I am looking at, not Malice! Not Malice. Not—
Not, not subject to the laws of any planet, but here, in the inviolate privacy of the spotel, the rented transitory lodging of newlyweds and wealthy travelers of space. A luxurious retreat, a luxurious body, unfettered at last.
Misery!
I love you, Malice, and you are mine.
Misery!
Why don’t you respond, Malice?
Memory…
Why are you silent?
Malice…
Why have you withdrawn? Are you ill? Malice, Malice…
But she was in radiant health, hair burning, burning, eyes never so deep; natural, normal, except that she seemed to have no awareness of him.
Speak to me!
She would not. What unseen hand had placed a spell upon her, made her mute, in the hour of triumph? Had some post-hypnotic state been invoked, some command inflicted by an unknown enemy intent on his destruction? Was it now his duty to break her out of it, a sleeping beauty, with a single splendid kiss?
He kissed her, but she did not wake to him. Her lips were mushy, unresponsive.
Or was a greater effort required? Should he make love to her?
When he had not yet given her the hvee?
He took her in his arms, one elbow beneath her shoulders, the other under her knees, carried her limp body to the couch, and spread it out.
Misery! With a terrible shock Aton wrenched himself back to the present. Misery lay on the straw pallet, nude and lovely, open to the caress of his hands. He had thought his Malice to be unique, but here was a duplicate form, one of dozens in this village alone, and hundreds, thousands on the planet. He had mistaken the standard attributes of the species for beauty, duping his emotion all his life.
Misery smiled again, twisting her body in pleasure. How strange that this woman, the one he did not desire, reacted so positively to his careless touch, while Malice…
Malice—was it amnesia? Yet she showed no distress, no alarm, no confusion. She saw him, recognized him—as an article of furniture, not as a man. She was not catatonic, nor did she collide with him when she moved.
Could her love for him have failed? Had it ever existed at all? Her bright hair and measureless eyes denied both. Her love was strong. It had to be for him; the minionette did not glow in the company of the wrong man. She would never have come with him, without love.
She had been a captain in space, enormously capable. Never would she do a thing without excellent reason. There had to be a motive. Did she know something that he did not? Something that she was unable to tell him?
He had a vision of the elemental drama for children: behind the lock there stands a criminal, blaster in hand, about to rob and ravish the heroine. At the entrance is her lover: muscular, handsome, intelligent. But if she makes known her plight, that lover will be the first to die. And so she must be silent, and try to signal to him in some manner that the hidden intruder will not intercept. If she is able to convey the message, however obscurely, the resolution is assured.
Malice lay exposed, arm hanging down, legs gently spread, astonishingly lovely. Her breathing was regular, her eyes closed.
Where was the villain? The airlock had borne the unbroken seal of the proprietor. There could be no third party here, not on an isolated airless asteroid, pressurized only upon their entry. There could be no secret monitoring device, no remote-control threat. Privacy, above all else, was what the proprietors sold. YOU CAN DEPEND ON PRIVACY AT THE SPOTEL, the company advertised, and it had the means to protect its reputation.
Malice lay passive. The mystery was deeper than that… and he could not bring himself to perform an act upon a mannequin. He was baffled.
His mental censor balked. Memory would not go further. Relieved, he returned his full attention to Misery.
Her hair, in the candlelight, was brighter now. This woman, if he understood the signs, was learning to love him already—and all he had done was to aggravate her. Suddenly he felt remorse, felt warm respect for her suffering.
Misery recoiled.
This time he had neither signaled nor spoken, yet she had reacted. The minionette was telepathic! He had suspected this before; why had he forgotten? She could read his thoughts, or at least, his emotions, and was responding to these, not his words.
There remained one oddity.
Aton gathered his mental forces and sent a blast of emotional ferocity at her, hate and fury as sheer as he could make them.
Surprised pleasure lighted her features. She bounced up, caught his shoulders, pressed herself against him, kissed him passionately.
Her emotions were inverted! His hate was her love!
Things fell into place: the villainy of the little man on the road, the response to any male irritation. And Malice—she had been most affectionate when he was angry or miserable, and cold when he felt romantic. No wonder she had been impossible to get along with!
Misery was close to him, her hair brightening by the instant. He hit her. She rocked with the force of the blow, smiling dazzlingly. He grasped her flaming tresses and brought her roughly to him, smiting her with hate. She leaped to meet his savage kiss. He bit her soft lip, hard, to bring blood; she moaned with pleasure and did not bleed.
Aton locked an arm over her neck, pinning her securely. Then he brought to mind an image of gentle fields of hvee, the waiting love overflowing, selflessly desiring an object.
Misery twisted and struggled, her face a mask of pain. “Yes,” he said, “it hurts you, doesn’t it? How much more would it hurt if I were to love you, yourself, not just the hvee?” A strangled cry broke from her.
He held her still, though she was very strong. “Don’t you see, Misery—I’m actually being more sadistic than you can imagine. I know it hurts you to be near love—therefore I hurt you most by loving you. And you must return with joy the love of the man who hurts you most.”
She ceased her struggles and looked up at his face with confusion. She could not understand his spoken words, but the mood behind them was devastating.
“I will have mercy on you,” he continued, not releasing her. “I will spare you, as my darling did not spare me. Because I cannot directly feel your emotion, not in the sense you can feel mine. Because you cannot comprehend the paradox of your make-up. Because I know the sincerity of your intent, and the necessity of your widowhood. Because I want to make you happy in the brief time available to me. I shall reward you by taking out on you all the fury I feel for what your sister has made of me.