"They're kind of mad at us."
"Hold their weapons until they are calmer."
"Right."
Subtwo turned off the intercom. Subone glowered at him. "We don't need Blaisse. You're underestimating our abilities."
"No," Subtwo said. "Those are amply demonstrated. I took into account energy expenditures and our own preferences."
"And if Blaisse is lying?"
"What does he gain but a few hours?"
Blaisse, in his chair, seemed far from relaxed. "We can benefit each other," Subtwo said, putting on his artificial, practiced smile.
"I'm sure," Blaisse said. "Let us discuss terms."
They negotiated in another room. When they were finished, Blaisse reached up and pulled a silken rope. He was smiling again. Subtwo did not understand his good humor, and did not trust it.
"When you're settled," Blaisse said, "we'll have to get together. I'm. very anxious. for you to meet Clarissa."
A tall woman in black and silver entered and bowed. Subtwo had had to train himself to look for details of expression and to interpret them in a conscious way: the people around him, normal people, did it unconsciously. This woman showed no surprise; her gaze, quick and hooded, flicked over him and his pseudosib, though she seemed to keep her attention completely on Blaisse. She must have passed through the sitting room to reach this chamber, and the cloying scent of death hung close around them even here, but she did not react to that either.
"These gentlemen will be staying on the second level from now on, Madame," Blaisse said. The title was not one of respect, Subtwo realized, simply a habit, perhaps derisive.
The woman bowed slightly. "It is ready, Lord."
"They have their people with them."
"I will see to the arrangements." She spoke to the pseudosibs. "If you will come with me."
Blaisse stood up, rather lazily. "I think I'll come along."
Madame bowed again, without expression. Subtwo looked for signals of hatred or dislike or even distaste in her demeanor, but there were none. Neither were there signs of admiration or respect. The bow and the words were empty of feeling. Subtwo did not understand what the relationship between Madame and Blaisse could be.
She led the way out of Blaisse's suite, down a corridor, and into an alice tube. Subtwo experienced distress at the waste of the energy used by such a worthless toy, especially if Center's power came only from fission, rather than fusion or matter-antimatter.
Blaisse shrugged when Subtwo suggested that an elevator would be much more efficient. "I like it this way."
They descended.
The second level was similar to Blaisse's part of the Palace, and as richly appointed. Followed by his silent, obedient alien slave, Blaisse pushed back curtains and peered around corners and scuffed his sandals in the deep carpet. He found neither dust nor disorder; this level was as well kept as what Subtwo had seen of the other. Subtwo waited for Blaisse to give Madame the ritualized compliments the pseudosibs had been taught were proper. Blaisse said nothing; Subtwo felt the need to fill the vacuum of drilled-in courtesy, but remained silent.
"It stinks down here," Blaisse said. He made it sound as though they were breathing the rank odor of standing sewage.
"I regret that any uninhabited rooms gather a musty flavor, Lord. The situation will cure itself."
He grunted and forged ahead through the velvet halls. Subtwo felt himself becoming more and more unnerved. Nothing in this place was composed of straight lines. The curtains fell in waving gathers. The rooms were round, or irregular, or, worst, almost square. The angles were slightly flawed, the lines slightly crooked, the floors slightly uneven. Subtwo's feet touched minor irregularities. He felt Subone walking closer to him. He discovered a fantasy in which they walked across a rug that had nothing under it and it fell away beneath them. He shook himself out of the dream. Real people, ordinary human beings, lived this way. They did not demand living space built to the tolerances of a precision instrument.
Blaisse's inconsequential chatter infringed on Subtwo's determination to deal with the real world. Blaisse bothered him on a level even he could not analyze. He did not seem to be the same person his shipowner had told the pseudosibs about. Subtwo wished to be contemptuous, but Blaisse he could not discount.
"As you see," Blaisse said, "you don't need all of Stone Palace." Subtwo was not certain, for ordinary people were so changeable and contrary, but he thought Blaisse was amused. "Yes," Blaisse said, "we must have a party. I'm looking forward to introducing you to the Families."
They arrived at a foyer through which flowed a small stream bridged by delicate silver paths. Blaisse stopped. "If you want to inspect the barracks before your people move in—"
"The—'barracks'?"
"Yes. Separate quarters. For your people."
"Our people stay with us," Subtwo said.
"What, here?"
"Of course. There is ample room."
Blaisse frowned at them curiously, then shrugged. He slid his hand up Saita's back to her neck, and beneath her long hair. "If that's what you want." He glanced around, and suddenly seemed very bored by them and by his surroundings. "If you want anything else, speak to my steward. Don't bother me about it." He left them, without a word or glance of farewell.
" 'Madame'?"
"Yes, sir?" Her gray eyes flicked back and forth as she attempted to find from expression or word which of them had spoken.
"Is that your name?"
She caught Subtwo as the speaker, looked directly at him, then dropped her gaze and turned away. "It will do." She went down a corridor. Subtwo moved up on her right and Subone on her left to walk beside her. The programmed manners moved in. "Always learn their names," they had been taught. "Remember their names and impress them." That Madame was not someone they were required to impress did not occur to Subtwo. That she might not want to talk about herself was inconceivable.
"But it is not a name."
"I will answer to anything you care to call me, sir," she said. Subtwo noticed the tension in her. He was interested; this was the first indication of any feeling she had revealed.
"I'd rather call you by your name," he said, pushing her for the interest of
it.
"I was eight when I was captured," she said. "I have not had a name since my freedom and my childhood were taken from me."
As the mind so often works, in defiance of entropy, bits of information were shaken randomly by her words and came down in a pattern that evoked memories Subtwo would have preferred to avoid. He pulled himself back to the present. The dark woman looked away from his face when she saw that his attention had returned.
"A person should have a childhood," Subone said. The slave woman started at his voice. Subtwo composed his own expression, as he realized it must show the same emotions as his pseudosib's: a faraway look with none of the pleasant nostalgia of usual reminiscence.
They walked in silence for a distance, until they reached another alice tube. "This leads to the first level," Madame said. "One of the corridors there goes back into the Palace, the other goes upward to the blockhouse."
"Our crew will be hungry and tired," Subtwo said.
"I will have a meal prepared," Madame said. "The rooms are ready. Will you require special services?"
"That's up to them."
"Do you require slave quarters?"
Subtwo almost snapped at her, but calmed himself. "We have no slaves," he said. "Slavery is an inefficient use of energy, and a waste of human potential."
She bowed to him, from the waist, a very slight inclination.
"Come in the morning. We'll want to acquire some building materials."
"I will be available when you are ready, sir."
Subtwo led the way up the alice tube.