"Yes," he said. "Vodka and pechi, if you've got it." Pechi was an import, extravagant enough; and he was still in shock from the richness Ari managed inside Reseune. He looked around him at Downer statuary in the far corner beyond the bar, wide-eyed ritual images; at steel-sculpture and at a few paintings about the woolwood walls, God, he had seen in tapes as classics from the sublight ships. Stuck in this place, where only Ari and her guests saw them.
It was a monument to self-indulgence.
And he thought of the nine-year-old azi his father had mentioned.
Florian brought him the drink. "Do sit down," Florian said, but he walked the raised gallery about the rim of the room looking at the paintings, one after the other, sipping at a drink he had only had once in his life, and trying to calm his nerves.
He heard a step behind him, turned as Ari walked up on him, Ari in a geometric-print robe lapped at the waist, that glittered with the lights, decidedly no fit attire to meet business company. He stared at her, his heart hammering away in him in the panicked realization that Ari was very real, that he was in a situation he did not know the limits of, and there was no way out from here.
"Enjoying my collection?" She indicated the painting he had been looking at. "That's my uncle's. Quite an artist."
"He was good." He was off his stride for a moment. Least of all did he expect Ari to start off with reminiscences.
"He was good at a lot of things. You never knew him? Of course not. He died in '45."
"Before I was born."
"Damn, it's hard to keep up with things." She slipped her arm into his and guided him toward the next painting. "That one's a real prize. Fausberg. A naive artist, but a first view of Alpha Cent. Where no human goes now. I love that piece."
"That's something." He stared at it with a strange feeling of time and antiquity, realizing it was real, from the hand of someone who had been there, to a star humankind had lost.
"There was a time no one knew what that was worth," she said. "I did. There were a lot of primitive artists on the first ships. Sublight space gave them a lot of time to create. Fausberg worked in chart-pens and acrylics, and damn, they had to invent whole new preservation techniques up on stationI insisted. My uncle bought the lot, I wanted them preserved, and that's why the Argo paintings got saved at all. Most of them are in the museum at Novgorod. Now Sol Station wants one of the Fausberg 61 Cygni's really, really bad. And we may agreefor something of equal value. I have a certain Corot in mind."
"Who's Corot?"
"God, child. Trees. Green trees. Have you seen the Terran tapes?"
"A lot of them." He forgot his anxiety for a moment, recollecting a profusion of landscapes stranger than native Cyteen.
"Well, Corot painted landscapes. Among other things. I should lend you some of my tapes. I should put them on tonight Catlin, have you got that Origins of Human Art series?"
"I'm sure we do, sera. I'll key it up."
"Among others. That, young friend, is one of our own. Shevchenki. We have him on file. He died, poor fellow, of lifesupport failure, when they were setting up Pytho, up on the coast. But he really did remarkable work."
Red cliffs and the blue of woolwood. That was too familiar to interest him. He could do that, he thought privately. But he was too polite to say it. He sketched. He even painted, or had, when he was fresh from the inspiration of the explorer-painters. Ground-bound, he imagined stars and alien worlds. And had never in his life expected to get clear of Reseune.
Until it looked like Jordan might.
Florian came up and offered Ari a drink, a bright golden concoction in a cut-crystal glass. "Orange and vodka," she said. "Have you ever tasted orange?"
"Synthetic," he said. Everyone had.
"No, real. Here. Have a sip."
He took a little from the offered glass. It was strange, a complicated, sour-sweet-bitter taste under the alcohol. A taste of old Earth, if she was serious, and no one who had these paintings on her walls could be otherwise.
"It's nice," he said.
"Nice. It's marvelous. AG is going to make a try with the trees. We think we have a site for themno messing about with genetics: we think the Zones can accommodate them just the way they are. It's a bright orange fruit. Just like the name. Full of good things. Go on. Take it. Florian, do me another, will you?" She locked her arm tighter, steered him toward the steps and down, toward the couch. "What did you tell Jordan?"
"Just that Grant was out of the way and everything was all right." He sat down, took a large swallow of the drink, then set it down on the brass counter behind the couch, having gotten control of his nerves as much as he figured was likely in this place, in present company. "I didn't tell him anything else. I figure it's my business."
"Is it?" Ari settled close to him, at which his stomach tightened and felt utterly queasy. She laid her hand on his leg and leaned against him, and all he could think of was the azi Jordan had talked about, the ones she had put down for no reason at all, the poor damned azi not even knowing they were dyingjust some order to report for a medical. "Sit a little closer, dear. That's all right. It's just pleasant, isn't it? You really shouldn't tense up like that, all nervous." She slipped her arm about his ribs and rubbed his back. "There, relax. That feels good, doesn't it? Turn around and let me do something for those shoulders."
It was like when she had trapped him in the lab. He tried to think what to answer to something that outrageous and failed, completely. He picked up the drink and took a heavy swallow and another and did not do what she asked. Neither did her hand stop its slow movement.
"You're so tight. Look, it's a simple little bargain. And you don't have to be here. All you have to do is walk out the door."
"Sure. Why don't we just go into the bedroom, dammit?" His hands were close to shaking. The chill of the ice went right through his fingers to the bone. He finished the drink without looking at her.
I could kill her, he thought, not angrily. Just as a solution to the insoluble. Before Florian and Catlin could stop me. I could just break her neck. What could they do then?
Psychprobe me and find out everything she did? That'd fix her.
It might be the way. It might be the way to get out of this.
"Florian, he's out of orange juice. Get him another. Come on, sweet. Relax. You really can't do anything like that, you know better and I know better. You want to try it yourself? Is that the problem?"
"I want the drink," he muttered. Everything seemed unreal, nightmarish. In a moment she was going to start talking to him the way she had in the interviews, and that was all part of it, a sordid, duty business he did not know how to get through, but he wanted to be very drunk, very, very drunk, so that possibly he would get sick, turn out incapable, and she would just give up on this.
"You said you never had experimented around," Ari said. "Just the tapes. Is that the truth?"
He did not answer. He only twisted round on the couch to see how long it was going to take Florian to get him the drink, to have any distraction that might turn this in some other direction.
"Do you think you're normal?" Ari asked. He did not answer that either. He watched Florian's back as Florian poured and mixed the drink. He felt Ari's hands on his back, felt the cushion give as she shifted against him, as her hand came around his side.