It worked; she gagged and shuddered and then she was convulsed with a terrible fit of coughing.
“Easy,” Nick said. “Easy.”
She looked so fragile he was afraid she would cough herself to pieces. He put an arm around her shoulder and held her while she sipped some more.
“The blood . ..” she whispered.
“Don’t think about it.”
“It was not an illusion, was it? Not part of the performance?”
Nick shook his head.
“Then he is dead?”
Nick nodded. “I think so. Is there anything I can get you?”
“Sleep—let me sleep.”
He covered her with a blanket and watched as her breath slowed and finally became rhythmic, the healing breath of sleep. Then he waited a little longer. What he had to do next he didn’t look forward to at all.
Upstairs on the second deck he plugged a holocube into the phone interface—eye contact might make it easier—and punched Scolpes' personal code at Mutagen. Nick identified himself to the robo-sec and in a moment the bald smooth face filled the screen, the wise gray eyes smiled at him. In the background Nick could hear the frenzied violins of a classical Terran orchestra and a woman howling in some foreign tongue. He felt miserable at having interrupted Scolpes during one of his rare moments of relaxation.
“Hey, Doc, I'm sorry to disturb you . . .”
“Don’t be silly, Nicholas, it’s always a pleasure. What do you think? Von Karajan conducting Wagner’s Die 58
Gotterdammerung. Exquisite, yes? The fall of the gods, the destruction of Valhalla. Listen to that woman’s voice!”
It sounded to Nick as though she were in terrible pain. He had never been able to understand the aesthetic of Terran music with all its emotional excess, its thunderings and weepings and moanings. But he nodded anyway.
‘‘Just great, but could you turn it down a little? I’ve got something very important. . .”
“Of course! One minute.”
Scolpes’ head vanished and the music ceased abruptly. His head reentered the cube and Nick continued against the even more difficult background of silence.
‘‘I’m here at Lex’s temple—”
“You went backstage after services and he told you he’d forgotten entirely why he called me—am I correct? They are such children! I hope you passed on my regards?”
“Please, let me finish. I didn’t pass on your regards because, you see . . .” Nick hesitated, first phrasing it carefully in his mind. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. During services he was ... he was killed. I don’t know if it was an accident or what.”
“Killed? No.”
“Yes, I saw it with my own eyes. There’s no possibility of mistake. I’m sorry.”
“My God. Excuse me, Nicholas.”
The head turned gray and faded from the cube; however, a yellow light showed that the circuit had not been disconnected.
“Are you still there?” Nick asked.
“Yes, yes.” The voice was one of anguish; he was a father who had lost a favorite son, an artist who had seen a work in which he had participated slashed to ribbons; and the emotions of his face must have been such that he did not wish to display them on the cold circuitry of a holocube.
“How did it happen?” he said, after a long silence.
Nick described all he had seen. At a certain point Scolpes stopped him.
“A bracelet of green light around his wrist?”
“As far as I could tell. It all happened very fast. Does that suggest anything to you?”
“As far as I know a phenomenon of that description could only be produced by a psychic field amplifier.”
“I thought the psych field amp was just a theoretical concept,” Nick said.
“Gracious, no. I was invited to consult on the prototype. It was successfully constructed but nobody had sufficient concentration to operate it.”
“Then you think it could be murder?”
“Most assuredly.” Scolpes’ voice had regained some of its composure. “And I suspect that Lex was murdered to prevent him from telling me whatever it was he had planned to tell me. If only I had taken his request more seriously.”
“Didn’t you say nobody had the concentration?”
“Nobody we could find. But the galaxy is a big place with many sentient inhabitants. Do me a favor, Nicholas. Go to Sir Etherium’s temple as soon as you can. See if he knows what was troubling Lex. After all, they were very close friends.”
Nick asked how the antidotal virus was progressing, hoping for some good news to tell Hali, but all Scolpes would say was that work was coming slowly.
Nick promised to leave for Sir Etherium’s temple that night and made other efforts to console Scolpes. He had never been very good at consoling others for their losses, since he himself was so terrified by the thought of the life machinery grinding to a stop, the cessation of consciousness, the endless black nothingness he believed to be death. Occasionally the realization that he was not excluded, that he was mortal, that it would someday happen to him—the realization of this made his head reel.
IV
Nick was sitting in the galley on the second deck drinking stimu-caff and plotting a course to Sir Etherium’s temple when Hali came up the stairway. Her bare feet were silent, her blue skin almost invisible in the shadows; but the huge almond eyes, gathering ambient light, shone like suns. She cleared her throat and he jumped, spilling stimu-caff all over the maps.
“I am sorry if I—”
“Forget it,” he said, mopping up the liquid. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. I would like some fresh air.”
“Good idea. Let’s take a walk.”
It was chilly as they set off across the landing strip. Although the sun had set, several MagLev wagons and campers were still parked while families ate picnic suppers and savored the evening air. Soon they were walking along the rough sandstone, the lights from the pyramid fading behind them. Overhead the Milky Way was fabulous. Schleiden, the larger of the two moons, sat on the horizon glowing a mystical yellow while small red Schwann raced madly across the heavens as it did four times a night.
Nick told her about his call to Scolpes and asked if she would mind continuing the tour as planned; otherwise he could ferry her back to Averyville and continue by himself.
“No, no, it is not necessary,” she said. “I feel better now. The night is beautiful and the air clears my head.”
After a while she continued, “It was simply the sight of him trapped there and wounded and helpless, with nothing to do but wait while the blood ran out of him. ... It reminded me of my own people, trapped . ..”
She began to shake again. Nick put his arm around her and she melted into his breast. She raised her face, a blue oval of a moon, her eyelids fluttering, closing. The lips of her “beak” were hard and smooth—yet pliant—when he kissed her. She opened them slightly and the inside of her mouth had a salty taste. His tongue entered hesitantly, ignorant of the rules. Her teeth felt broad and flat; they parted slightly and the rough tip of her tongue, uncoiling like a snake, touched his.
He felt a tremor pass through her. He tried to kiss her again but she pulled away, shaking her head. “Come,” she said, and taking his arm, began back toward the cruiser.
“Did I do something wrong?” Nick said.
“No.”
They walked and walked and Nick felt a desperate desire to say something, anything. Finally, stupidly:
“Have you ever kissed a human before?”
“No, certainly not. For the ten years I lived on Terra I practiced on oranges.”
“I forgot about—”
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Harmon, I have kissed innumerable humans.’’ Her voice was getting shrill. “In school the little boys found me a welcome change. When they grew bored with their human girl friends they all came to Hali— she was so exotic. And you too, yes? You come to Hali when you are bored with Althea Clinger and her pretty friends. Or is your interest simply professional—making sure the visiting alien has a good time?”