The Rotrox always preferred to build an enclosed corridor rather than an open road. My Rotrox driver took me in my private runabout through the maze of corridors. We came out by a side exit and there, a short distance away over the springy turf, was the tower, rising tall and slender for about a hundred feet.
I told the driver to wait and walked to the oval doorway at the base of the tower. Inside, it was all green shadow. I stepped in and felt myself being lifted up, passing through a confusion of light and shade, all green. Shortly the elevator came to a stop and a panel slid aside.
“Please enter,” a cool, musical voice said. “I have been told to expect you.”
I walked slowly into the room at the top of the green tower. It was the most beautiful room I had ever seen. It was not large, yet it gave an impression of spaciousness and airiness. The contours were all rounded, the windows broad and graceful. The walls were a pale green. The furniture and ornaments were of a darker green and of a light, glowing mauve which matched the eyes of the woman standing there.
The room I saw only in a secondary, incidental way. My eyes locked immediately on the Lady Palramara.
All Rheattite women are graceful; but she was graceful and something else with it. She didn’t run to skinniness like a lot of her countrywomen: her green flesh was full and round, and soft. Her face was gentle and kind, with stunning liquid eyes, the pupils wide from heavy use of Blue Space.
Straight away you knew she had containment: self-reliance. She was sad, but not beaten. The flowing mauve gown she wore accentuated her curves and made you notice every movement.
“You are one of the men from the unknown world, are you not?” she asked calmly. “Servants of the Rotrox?”
I tore my eyes away from her to case the room. You couldn’t put assassination past someone in her position, especially as she was a woman. I’d come across women carrying a gun for some guy before. I stepped to the window and peered out at the landscape with its odd mixture of Rheattite and Rotrox architecture.
“The light is bright for you?” she asked. “I have heard about your sensitivity. Perhaps I can be more hospitable…”
She moved to a table and did something there. The window panes suddenly shimmered and took on a sepia cast. The room was only slightly dimmer, but the quality of the light had changed somehow. I risked lifting my goggles and found that I could see without discomfort.
“Is that convenient?” she asked. “The light is adequate for me also at this level. It is a matter of selecting the right frequencies.”
I smiled at her, putting the goggles in my pocket. “That’s a neat trick.”
“Merely one more aid to creating a pleasant mode of living.” She moved to the other side of the room as if to get a better look at me, leaning back and resting her hands on a ledge.
“That matters a lot to you people, doesn’t it?” I said. “Making beautiful surroundings. Making life beautiful.”
“Better than conquest and domination. Unfortunately some qualities are always developed at the expense of others. We failed to defend ourselves against the ravages of the Rotrox, What is it you want with me?”
“I’ll be frank, Lady. Rheatt is conquered and you’ll just have to accept that. But we might be able to make things a lot easier on your people than they would otherwise be. I’m not too fond of the Rotrox myself, but we have to co-operate with them for reasons of our own. We don’t want to see your way of life destroyed if we can avoid it. According to what we hear you’re still a person who commands respect in Rheatt. Maybe you could help us. We could give you some official position. It would help the people feel safe again. In return you could help us put through the programme we want.”
“You think the Rotrox would allow that?” she said sharply.
“I believe so. They’ve accepted everything else we’ve suggested.”
“You misunderstand. A woman does not hold official positions in Rheatt, or on Merame. My influence, if I have any, is not of that kind. I cannot take my husband’s place, especially while he still lives.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “I thought your husband was killed at the outset of the war?”
Her liquid eyes seemed to look through me. Then she turned away, gazing through the wide windows. I wondered if she was always as charged on Blue Space as she seemed to be right now. The drug had the property of turning even tragedy into a poetic experience. I reflected that she was probably making things bearable for herself that way.
She began to speak in a low, detached voice. “They came at the beginning of summer. For us, it was a summer war. Big cylinders of aluminium and copper descending from the sky, shining in the sun. What was there for me to do? You clearly do not understand a woman’s role on our world. I stayed here in this room, rearranging the ornaments on successive days to create pleasing variety, as was the custom. Outside, through this window, I saw my husband’s aircraft crash to the ground.”
“But he didn’t die?”
“Many believe him to be dead, but he survived, though injured. The Rotrox dragged him from the wreck and took him to Merame, where they keep him prisoner. Once every thirty days they show him to me on television, though he does not know it.” She gestured to a circular screen in the corner. “Sometimes they torture him before my eyes.”
“And you watch?” I said, amazed.
“What should I do? If I do not watch, it takes place just the same. The Rotrox by tradition are not kind to the defeated. If you want to help me, make them release my husband.”
I shook my head dumbly. “I don’t think I can arrange that. He’s the National Leader.”
“No, of course you cannot.” She looked at me again in a glazed, gentle way. “You see how helpless I am. I hope you will make life easier for Rheatt, but you see that I cannot help you.”
So that seemed to be all there was to it. I didn’t want to leave that room, but I couldn’t think of a good excuse for staying. Reluctantly I made to go.
At the door she stopped me. “Nevertheless your… plans interest me. If you want to bring me news or if you have questions, you are welcome.”
Something in me quickened as I heard the invitation. I nodded, and left.
I couldn’t get the Rheattite woman off my mind. All the women I’d known in Klittmann had been hard and brittle. She was different: she had qualities I hadn’t met in women before.
I did go back. Then I started visiting her regularly. We talked for hours on end. I told her all about Klittmann and how we had come to arrive on Earth. But I never talked much about Becmath; the tool doesn’t want to talk about the hand that guides it.
In return she talked about her life before the Rotrox came. It sounded real good: easy, pleasant and fulfilling, with none of the strain and neurotic striving of Klittmann. I guess I wouldn’t have fitted in there — I was too set in my attitude to turn soft now — but just the same the time I spent up in that beautiful green room came to be the best part of the day.
For a long time I didn’t touch her. I’m not sure why — there was nobody to stop me and nobody she could have complained to. It’s just that it was a new experience being with a woman like her. But often she was blocked almost out of her mind with Blue Space and my chance came.
She was taking the stuff more and more heavily, I knew she was way over the norm: most people just took it occasionally. One night she passed out in mid-sentence. I picked her up off the floor. The blood surged through me as I held her there in my arms. I carried her down some recessed steps into a bedchamber below the main room.
I knew she would be all right. Blue Space didn’t do anybody any real harm. I laid her down on the sleeping couch. She stirred and opened her eyes, staring up at me with big, sleepy eyes. I realised she wouldn’t really be aware of who I was, that she might even confuse me with her husband, I struggled with the temptation for a moment, then gave way to my urges.