"Don't be impertinent. Silvia has had many stressful factors to contend with lately."
"It was decent of you to step out and give her a break." Dallen stood up, left the observation gallery and walked quickly towards the nearest stair. The time was 8:50, leaving him more than two hours before his preordained rendezvous, and he felt a vast relief over the knowledge that he was at last committed to positive action. He was alert and competent, as though he had shaken off an enervating spell. He descended to Deck 5 and, not sparing a glance for the netherworld of scaffolding and tights visible in the central well, went to the box-like cabin being used by Silvia and tapped the door. She opened it, immediately sprung away from him with a swirl of a blue cotton dressing gown, then froze in mid-stride and turned back.
"I thought you were…" Her eyes were wide with surprise, seeming darker than usual against a morning paleness he had never seen before and which gave him a stabbing sexual thrill of such power that he almost gasped.
"May I come in?" he said steadily.
Silvia shook her head. "It's too… I'm not even dressed."
"I've got to come in." He crossed the threshold and closed the door. "I have to talk to you."
"About what?"
"No more games, Silvia. I know I shouldered my way in here uninvited. I know fm being bad-mannered and that my timing couldn't be worse, but I have to know about us. I need a direct statement from you — a simple yes or a simple no."
"You make it seem like a business transaction." Silvia appeared to have recovered her composure, but her colour had heightened.
"Is this better?" He took the single pace that was necessary to close the distance between them and, very slowly, allowing her ample time to twist away, placed a hand at each side of her waist and gently drew her towards him. She came to him, yielding with a peculiar sagging movement which brought their groins together first — sending a shockwave of sensation racing through his body — followed by a leisurely meeting of bellies, breasts and mouths. Dallen drank the kiss, gorging himself until its natural ending.
"I've still got to hear you say it," he whispered, touching his lips to her ear. "Yes or no?"
This isn't fair."
"To hell with fair — I’ve had enough fairness to last me a lifetime. Yes or no?"
"Yes." She thrust herself against him almost aggressively, with a force he had difficulty in matching. "Yes!"
"That's all I need to know." Intensely aware that the dressing gown was no longer fully lapped around her torso, he closed his eyes to loss Silvia again and found himself looking at Gerald Mathieu's broken corpse.
"Trouble is," he said, floundering and distracted, "I'm not sure what to do next."
She smiled calmly. "How about locking the door?"
"Good thinking." Dallen thumbed the door's security button and when he turned back to Silvia the dressing gown was around her ankles on the floor. Dry-mouthed and reverent, he surveyed her body, then took her extended hand and went with her to the bed. She lay down at once and locked herself on to him, now trembling, as he positioned himself beside her. They clung together for a full minute, he still clothed, simulating the sex act in a way which by every law of nature should have aroused him to near-orgasm, but each rime he allowed his eyes to close there was Mathieu's serene-smiling death mask with the tridents of blood at each corner of the mouth and the anaesthetic coldness was gathering in his own loins, emasculating him, denying him any stake in the game of Life. Without waiting for Silvia to sense what was happening, he rolled away from her and dropped into a kneeling posture at the side of the bed. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at him in puzzled reproach.
"It's all right," he said, almost grinning with relief at the clarity of his understanding of the situation. "This won't make any sense to you, Silvia, but I was trying to be two people at once, and it can't work."
"That makes perfectly good sense to me." Her understanding was intuitive, almost telepathic. "How long will it take you to become one people?"
Dallen gazed at her in purest gratitude. "About two minutes. There's something I have to do. Would you please wait? Right here? Like this?"
"I wasn't planning to go anywhere."
"Right." He stood up, strode to the door of the cabin and let himself out. A life for a life, he thought, amazed at the simplicity of the psychological equations in an area where he would have expected layer upon layer of murky Freudian complexity. Being born again allowed for no half-measures. He could not take from both existences, racking up debits in each, and therefore Gerald Mathieu had to be spared.
With the after-image of Silvia's full-breasted nakedness drifting in his vision, Dallen closed the cabin door behind him, but did not lock it. He turned towards the elevator. Two men — Renard and Captain Lessen — were approaching on the curved strip of deck between the cabins and the cargo well. As usual, they were engaged in heated argument, but Renard broke off on the instant of seeing Dallen and came straight to him, his gold-speckled face solemn.
"What were you doing in there?" he said directly. "It's a bit early for visiting, isn't it?"
Dallen shrugged. "Depends on how well people know each other."
"You're not fooling anybody, old son." Renard showed his bow of teeth as he waited for Lessen to sidle by him and get beyond earshot. His gaze was hunting over Dallen's face, and each passing second brought a change of his expression — amiable contempt, incredulity, alarm and dawning anger.
"If you'll excuse me," Dallen said, "I've got work to do." He tried to walk towards the elevator, but Renard detained him by placing a hand on his chest.
"You ‘d better listen to me," Renard said in a venomous whisper. "If I…"
"No, you'd better do the listening for once," Dallen said in matter-of-fact, conversational tones. "If you don't take your hand off me I'll hit you so hard that you'll be hospitalised for some time and may even the."
Renard was trying to form a reply when Lessen called to him in an aggrieved bark from the foot of the stair to Deck 4. Dallen ended the encounter by side-stepping Renard and walking to the elevator cage.
During the quivering descent to the bottom of the hold he indulged in a moment of satisfaction — perhaps Renard's trust in the universe was somewhat misplaced — and when the elevator stopped he went confidently to the lane which ended at Mathieu's stacks, taking the solvent sponge from his side pocket as he crossed the puddled floor. Sounds of movement nearby indicated that somebody was at work on the trays, but it was not until he had actually turned the corner that Dallen realised that things were not what they should be. High in the geometric jungle, amid the scattered bars of light and shade, there were unexpected signs of movement.
Somebody was climbing to the top of Mathieu's ladder.
In the instant of recognising the climber as Mathieu himself, Dallen saw that he was in the act of reaching for the topmost rung. With a despairing grunt, knowing he was too late to prevent the calamity, Dallen hurled himself to the foot of the ladder and turned his eyes upwards, bracing himself for what could easily be a crippling impact.
He was greeted by the sight of Mathieu angled nonchalantly outwards from the ladder, the slim plastic tube of his spray hose coiling down from his waist. His weight was taken by his right hand gripping the top rung.
"What's going on down there?" Mathieu said, his attention caught by the sudden movement.
"Nothing," Dallen assured him. "I slipped, that's all." He backed up the story by pressing a hand to his side as though nursing a strained muscle.