“He never makes himself that pretty for me.” She went to the cart. The chicken was neatly sliced. She put a piece of the brown skin into her mouth.
“Newrose is still your thing,” Tanuojin said to her.
She tried eating cranberry sauce with her fingers and switched to a spoon. Tanuojin came up to the cart to feed. Junna followed him. They stood around the roast chicken and the pots of gaily colored vegetables, eating.
“He’ll believe anything you tell him,” Tanuojin said.
“Don’t you ever get tired of thinking, Papa?” Junna said. “There must be something more important than thinking.”
“Why don’t you tie up your hair like a man?”
Junna flicked back the loose lock of his hair. He was Tanuojin’s height and build, supple, bonelessly graceful. His father had been that way once. Now Tanuojin was stiffening, slackening, as he used his body more and more only to carry his head around. Paula ate meat. The Emperor walked away through the room, his back to her. She imagined him in his final phase, a great soft brain resting in a chair.
“Why do you want to go to the Earth?” Junna asked her.
“It’s my home.”
“You mean you want to stay there?”
“She’s crazy.” Tanuojin sat down in a corner of the couch.
Paula wiped her hands on a white napkin. Junna frowned at his father, one hand on his hip, his body curved like a bow. He turned to her.
“I’ll take you.”
“You stay out of this,” Tanuojin said.
“Why? She’s your oldest friend. She saved your life. Vida died for you. Why shouldn’t I help her?”
The Emperor settled into the couch, one arm across the back, his head down. “Is that your substitute for thinking?”
Paula hung the white napkin over the handle of the cart. “He’ll take me himself,” she said to Junna. She went back for her glass, on the floor beside the couch. “Sooner or later.”
Junna was scowling at Tanuojin. Paula held out her empty glass, and he took it and went to the cart full of drink.
“Sooner or later,” Tanuojin said to her, “you’ll do as I say.”
She went to sleep alone in the wide cool bed. Presently she woke, or seemed to wake. The back of her neck crawled with nerves. Tanuojin stood beside the bed. His eyes were like mirrors. She felt unable to move, as if in a dream. He lay down on the bed next to her.
“Paula—” He took her face between the cold blades of his hands. “Pauliko, now you submit.” She thought, It is a dream. His narcotic touch lulled her. She closed her eyes. His mouth touched her. A dream. He disappeared. Silence and darkness closed around her. Restless, she tried to waken. Her mind was scattered. She struggled to think. It was no dream; Tanuojin had her.
She collected her mind, floating in a black emptiness like deep space. Without her senses she was confused and could not decide what was actually happening, or what she should do. Perhaps nothing. Other people panicked and fought uselessly until they died or were too tired to resist. If only she could see, she would have something to hold on to. She strained to see.
A green world spread out around her, trees and meadow grass yellowed with sunlight. That was her imagination. She could go in there and rest. With an effort she wiped it away. The black blindness fell around her again. She had to keep away from that trap of telling herself what to see. She organized her mind to use her eyes.
A light flashed so bright it dazed her. Her mind stopped, stupid, in the grip of a gray after-image. It faded. She mastered herself again, encouraged; she must have almost broken out, to be driven back like that. She pitched herself against the dark.
This time the brilliance shattered her. Five or six of her circled aimlessly around each other, like voices talking at once, all numb. What happened? Give up, one voice said, loudest. Give up. Give up. She was lost in the midst of herselves, helpless. Two brushed together, saying the same thing, and she made them lap and fit together. Several after-images of the light flash hung around her. As she formed her mind together again all the images blended into one, and she focused on that. The cogent loud voice telling her to give up faded away. That was Tanuojin. She fastened her attention on the after-image, dying in the black.
The image was not featureless, like the first time. In it she saw white on white a doorway, another room. A roll of light showed in the background, the bright false fire in the hearth of the sitting room of her suite.
The dark closed over her. She rested, hoarding her strength. All her selves had melded again, and she could not find the seams between them. This time she had to keep trying, she could not let him drive her back. She gathered herself up and went forward into the dark.
Suddenly, without the blast of light, the corridor of the hotel lay before her. A Styth coming toward her stopped and saluted her. She relaxed, triumphant. The corridor was darker than before, and the colors strange, muted to halftones, the shading between dark and light more distinct than she was used to. It was a Styth image. Styths saw that way; he was tricking her. She refused to see what he was feeding into her mind, she forced it to dissolve.
The light struck her, dazzling, destroying her. In the sheet of light figures moved. She strained toward them. The light pierced her, merciless, she was glass, she was sheer to the brilliance, and she passed through into a dim room, where a white Martian face hung before her, concerned, mouthing words she could not hear.
She was in some other part of the hotel. The Martian, looking reassured, went out a side door. She had no physical control over the single eye she occupied, and it blinked and she was blind. Not the same dark as before: blood tinged the eyelid. When the eye opened, Newrose was there in front of her.
He talked, smiling all over his pink face, and she apparently answered him. They passed into another room. On the left was a plush stuffed couch and on the right a desk. She went straight between them to a window and stood staring out over the garden, one story below her. She could see nothing of Newrose; she might as well have been blind again.
She needed to hear. She reached out, struggling to hear. Newrose’s voice sounded faintly somewhere behind her, and she snatched for it. It was a bait. She was thrown back. Like a knife the black fell across her sight. The sound was gone. She was locked tight in her mind again.
He was in here with her. It was her body. She had done it wrong, the first time, stupidly attacking the dominant, most disciplined sense. She had to move fast. Collecting her will and her concentration, she flung herself out along all her nerves.
Feeling sprang alive in her hands and feet and along her back, spread over her face and her belly, running hot like blood under her skin. She shut her blind eyes and doubled up, falling. Her cheek and hip hit the yielding floor. Her stomach clenched in a cramp. Something clawed at her, deep in her body. She almost weakened. She nearly yielded. Gasping for breath, she struggled to hear, and sound burst alive in her ears.
“Miss Mendoza—” Newrose squeaked. “I’ll get help.”
“No! Leave me alone.”
She blinked, panting. Her guts and belly were knotted, like the fierce cramps of labor. The light hurt her eyes. She forced herself to see. The floor stretched away shiny past a pair of modish two-tone shoes. Over there was the couch. She pushed herself up to her knees and the claws ripped her as if he were trying to tear a way out through her stomach. She could not straighten. Newrose held his pink hands down to her. His eyes were round as a Styth’s. She shook her head at him.