"You're a gorgeous creature tonight, you witch!" said Reith.
"I endeavor to give satisfaction, Mr. Reith."
"You do, Mrs. R—Doctor Dyckman."
Reith looked embarrassed. Alicia's expression changed; her face crumpled as if she were about to burst into tears. Hastily Reith changed the subject. "Where's the necklace from the pirate ship? I'd have thought you'd wear it."
"I left it with Gorbovast to sell for me on commission."
"You did? When was this?"
"I made the arrangements while you were telling his relatives about our adventures. As an advance on the sale price, he gave me a draft for twenty-five thousand karda."
"Twen—good God! That means he must expect to get at least fifty thousand for it. He's a shrewd judge of such things. What'll you do with all that money?"
"For one thing, I may have to use some of it to pay my fare back to Earth."
A sense of impending loss overwhelmed Reith. Taking a deep breath, he asked: "When will you know?"
Alicia paused. "The decision isn't entirely mine to make."
"Oh," he said, grasping her meaning. Not knowing what to say next, he filled in the silence with more kisses. At last Alicia, recovering some of her bravado, said:
"I bought a bottle of the best falat in Majbur, and I've got it in a bucket of water to keep it cool. Why don't we have a little party with it my cabin?"
"Great idea!" said Reith, not without inner qualms. He ardently wanted to be with her but at the same time feared that events were slipping out of his control.
In the cabin, when they had drunk enough to make Reith feel expansive, Alicia ventured in a small voice: "Fergus, can't we be friends, in spite of everything?"
"I guess so. It's worth trying, anyhow."
"All right. Tell you what! Let's tell each other everything, you know, like brother and sister. No more pretenses or coquettish maneuvers."
"Okay, we'll see how it works. What would you like to know, Doctor Freud?"
"I want to know about your other women."
"Eh? Why, for goodness' sake?"
"As a xenanthropologist, I'm professionally interested."
"I am a social scientist; thou art a gossip; he is a snoop. Okay, if you insist. Do you include Krishnans?"
"Absolutely."
"Then will you be equally candid if I quiz you?"
"Oh, sure. Truth or consequences, agreed?"
"It's a bargain; though I haven't had quite your breadth of experience—"
"Fergus, that's mean! You make me sound like a half-kard whore."
"Sorry; that's not how I meant it. To tell the truth, I've had only four in my life besides you. Of these, three were Krishnans, and with two of them I was coerced literally at sword's point. As a Don Juan, I'm just a wimp."
"No excuses needed. I just want to know what happened between you and how they compared with me in bed."
Reith took a deep breath. "All right, here goes. Believe it or not, I was completely inexperienced when I boarded the Goyaz and took up with Valerie Mulroy, that nympho on my first tour. Neo-Puritan background, you know. I knew Valerie's appetite was pathological; but she was still a good, patient teacher."
"You mean it's because of her that you're such a superior lover? If I ever meet her, I'll thank her."
"We all have to start somewhere. She broke me in."
"What about the Krishnans?" asked Alicia.
"It's hard to compare them with human women, because their reactions are different—more passive. One told me they prefer Terrans to their own males, because we keep at it longer. This reputation doesn't make us popular with male Krishnans.
"On the other hand, that witch Shosti insisted she disliked it but did it as a religious duty; she thought I'd beget a demigod on her. With poor Borel's gilded skull staring down at me from a shelf in her bedroom, it was hard to keep my mind on my proper job."
"Your improper job, I'd say. How about the princess?"
"Just a sweet little nincompoop who, if she saw me so much as glance at the bed, would giggle, strip, bounce up on to the mattress, and open the way. Half the time I didn't even want it. I'm damned glad to be out of all their clutches."
Alicia said: "You're hard to please, even with a variety of choices."
"Not really. I considered everything about you practically perfect, until our battles began."
"Now you're trying to make me feel guilty for leaving you!"
"We'd better not start on that, if we want to be friends. What more do you want to know?"
"You said you'd had three Krishnan loves," she persisted. "Was the third one that little chatterbox, Qa'di, on the Morkerád?"
"No; I never followed up Qa'di's hints. It was Gashigi in Mishé. She was just a one-night stand, a couple of moons after you left. Said she wanted to broaden her education. What's an unattached gentleman to do when a lady puts it to him that way?"
"Huh! If I'd taken that attitude towards every gentleman who propositioned me, I'd have had more keys in my lock than Messalina. Do you mean this Gashigi's the only one since we— ah—"
"Yes, until you showed up at Zora."
"And only once?"
"Yes. My heart wasn't in it, whatever other ..."
Alicia gave a little sniff of laughter, then looked puzzled.
"Most divorced men would be screwing everything that would hold still."
"You've spoiled me for most women. Whenever I thought intimacy with someone might be fun, you'd rise up like a ghost and make her seem a hag. After you, any other woman would be like skim milk after the best scotch or champagne. Besides, for a while I hoped you'd come back; and I didn't want the complication of another girl friend."
"If you wanted me back, why didn't you contest the preliminary decree? I might have dropped the suit."
"I thought about that, when I got to Novo and found no Alicia, but a fat envelope of legal papers in my mail box." He paused to organize his thoughts. "I let it go through for three reasons. One: You're old enough to know what you want. If you wanted back, you'd come; if you didn't, legal maneuvers wouldn't make you. Two: If anything would poison our relationship forever, it would be our hiring Novo's two lawyers to battle it out. Each would do his damnedest to make the other's client look like a monster. And three: I didn't want to do anything until I'd talked with you and done some hard thinking. I couldn't see setting myself up for another emotional shellacking. But with you off somewhere in the outback ..." He shrugged.
"Poor Fergus! I've treated you abominably, and I'm frightfully sorry." She squeezed his hand. "If I could only make it up somehow ...I never meant to cripple you sexually."
"Don't worry about my sex drive. It's normal; it's just that you've been too much in my thoughts. I'd have begun to get over you by now if you hadn't appeared at Zora."
She signed. "I must say I enjoy being your exclusive sex object, and I think you're wonderful. So why can't we get along? If only ..." After a pause, she asked: "Why didn't you go after Qa'di?"
"It would have been embarrassing to get her fired up and not be able to perform."
"What, you?"
"Darling, I don't think you understand. When you puncture the male ego, as you often do with that razor tongue of yours, you deflate other things as well. Remember how, when we were married, and we quarreled, and you told me off, I wouldn't make a pass at you for a week or more? It wasn't that I was sulking; I was simply physically unable."
"You poor thing! I had no idea your little ego was so tender. I thought you were punishing me. You seemed so reasonable and self-controlled that petty emotions never bothered you."
"That's my facade," he said. "I hate to admit it, but underneath I'm human. After the Vizman episode, I was in the megrims for days, until the pirates gave me more to think about than feeling sorry for myself."