Now was the time, Nick decided, to ask the question which had been bothering him since the day in the hospital. It took a bit of courage.
“Do you”—he cleared his throat—“have psychic powers?”
And the unvoiced question: Had his innermost soul been open to her all this time? Had she glimpsed the frightened child who dwelt within the big, handsome, easygoing shell that people believed to be Nick Harmon?
Hali smiled. “No, no more than you humans.” (Evasive remark, that.) “But you erect barriers. Each of you carries around his own little fortress and an armory of arguments to defend it. On Alta-Tyberia we . . She searched for the word. “Meld.”
“And there's never one Alta-Ty who wants to control all the rest?”
“On rare, rare occasions.”
“What happens then?”
“We try to heal him.
“We do have leaders,” she said, a while later.
“Ah.”
“But they are not political, not in the human sense. They do not wield power, except the power accorded to them by their age and experience. Mainly they advise.”
“I see,” Nick said. “Elders of the tribe, sort of?”
“Sort of.”
“How old are they?”
“Oh, thousands and thousands of years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They return from beyond the chasm of death to help us in times of crises. Alas, they come only rarely, for it is a great suffering to be born into a body of flesh.”
Weird, Nick thought, but said nothing.
Hali continued. “It was one of these advisers who told us to seek help after the comet came and our infants began to . . . change.”
“You needed an adviser to tell you that?”
“Yes. We had intended to perish, but the adviser told us it was not yet time. He told us to seek your help.”
“And you would have just perished otherwise?”
“We are a very old people,” Hali said. “Everything has a time to die.”
VII
“Good evening, Mr. Harmon,” the doorman said, opening the cab for them.
"Hello, William," Nick said. “How’s stuff?”
“Fine, and yourself?”
“No complaints.”
“You haven’t been to the mansion in a long time. Your father will be pleased to see you.”
“That, William, I doubt.”
Nick helped Hali from the cab and up the front steps. The senator’s mansion was a rambling ivory castle of towers and arches which merged in soft curves and sculptured loops, as if pulled from toffee.
“How splendid!” Hali whispered as they entered the vestibule. Their feet sank into swirling carpetgrass from Altair, and overhead a fabulous chandelier of Cebeian rain crystals seemed suspended by magic. A winding staircase carried them to the second floor, and they strolled toward an enormous room at the end of the hall. From it issued gay voices, and a Bucla band playing rich sine-wave harmonies.
“Are you well?” Hali asked with concern. “You seem to be in pain.”
“I dread going in there. I dread seeing my father and all his bullshit politico friends.”
“You mustn’t feel that way.”
“You’ve never been to one of these receptions,” Nick said.
“Oh yes, growing up on Terra I was often invited to political receptions.”
“And you like them?” Nick asked in disbelief.
“It is my duty as emissary. The sweaty hands, the platitudinous conversation, the dreadful little meatballs—yes, I enjoy them immensely.”
Nick laughed. “Those meatballs! You mean they have them on Terra too?”
“Mr. Harmon, I am sure that everywhere in the galaxy man goes he brings with him little meatballs.*’
“Anytime you feel like leaving,’’ Nick said, “just give me a nod.’’
Reaching the ballroom, they hesitated at the entrance, like swimmers reluctant to plunge into icy waters. Men and w'omen in opulent evening dress were gathered at the side of the room exchanging choice gossip; others crossed the center of the floor in sedate file, performing a dance which was the latest thing from Terra. All the best families were there, the pick of Averyville society. Nick saw many women he knew being wooed by troops of handsome gigolos, hired for the occasion, while their husbands and fathers talked business in the “smoke-filled room” across the hall. Such were the conventions of Averyville entertaining.
He took Hali’s arm. and together they entered. Heads turned, conversations ceased in mid-anecdote. He heard somebody whisper, “Look . .
They were a striking couple all right, blue skin and white, white hair and black, both of them over six feet tall. But that wasn’t it. Most of the guests didn’t know that Hali was Nick’s “assignment”; they thought the involvement was romantic, at least they hoped so, for a scandal of that proportion would fuel the fires of Averyville gossip for the next year.
Senator Harmon’s son and an alien . . .
Nick saw a figure cutting through the crowd. “Oh no,” he murmured.
“Nicky, where have you been?”—she was eighteen, a bubble of blond hair, a pert, turned-up nose and a rosebud mouth. Her eyes were baby-blue and calculating, her dress pink chiffon. “We’ve missed you at the club.”
“Well, you know . . .” Nick waved his hands vaguely.
“And who is this? You must introduce me.”
“Hali Hasannah. Althea Clinger.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Althea said. “I’ll bet you’re one of those exotic species the probe turned up. Do you do outrageous things like eat your children?”
“Only when we are extremely hungry. And what species are you, my dear? Tyrannosaurus rex, I would say, judging from your claws.”
Althea gasped. “Why, I really—I never—”
“Later,” Nick said and pulled Hali away.
“That,” he continued, when they were out of earshot, “is the daughter of the chief of police, one of the ten most important men on the planet.”
"And she is also your lover, yes? I will go apologize.”
She turned brusquely and started back. Nick grabbed her by the wrist.
“Not necessary,” he whispered. Everybody was watching.
“Oh? And why not? Perhaps you too think she is a tyrannosaurus?”
“Look, it’s none of your damn business what I think about Althea,”—a grin broke through, he couldn’t help it—“though there is something a speck reptilian about her. You know, one night there was a dance at the club and I took another girl instead of her. She got so angry she had this friend of hers, Dorce, charge me with rape and assault. I spent twenty-four hours in jail before she announced it was a joke. Another day or two and they would have brain-wiped me.”
Nick shook his head at the memory. “Let’s pay our respects to my dad,” he said, “and get out of here.”
The “smoke-filled room” across the hall was half the size of the ballroom and twice as crowded. True to its name, gray tendrils rose from half a hundred joints and cigars and made a ceiling of soft blue smog. Datura inoxia was, judging from the bitter odor, the drug of the evening. In one corner a lifesize holoprojection was in progress, a drama involving a half-dressed woman astronaut and an “alien”—actually a human male painted, embarrassingly enough, blue, with a shaven pate and a penis so long it trailed the ground like an airhose.
A butler passed with joints on a silver tray. Nick stuck two in his mouth, lit them from a silver lighter and offered one to Hali. She shook her head.
“You’re sure?” he said. “It’ll make the evening a little more bearable.” He filled his lungs with smoke and nearly coughed his head off.
Now that their eyes had adjusted to the darkness they could see the men crowding the tables, smoking and drinking, playing cards and discussing the coming election and how it would affect their financial holdings.
The two of them worked their way across the room, tripping through the dense undergrowth of feet, stopping now and then while Nick greeted friends of the family.