"It's good of you to come," she said. "Everyone's anxious to meet you."
"We are pleased to be invited," Subtwo said by rote, as Clarissa inspected first him, then Subone, with an unhurried gaze. The iris enhancers gave her a strange appearance of blindness.
Clarissa released Subtwo's hand, and stroked Subone's furry tunic. "How exquisite," she said. "It must have been very expensive. It suits you well." She let her hand rest just above the hem, which reached barely halfway down Subone's thigh. Subone smiled at her; his teeth were as white and shiny and sharp as the fangs strung in his black hair.
"In such a historical place, what else should I wear but fur?"
Clarissa laughed. "But what does one wear under it?"
"Why, nothing. That would reduce its barbaric impact."
The guests in range of his voice laughed uneasily, unsure of Subone's aim, compliment or insult.
"You must let me wear it sometime," Clarissa said. "It would make me feel primal."
"You may wear it now, if you like," Subone said, and reached for the lacings. Shocked, Subtwo reached out to stop him, but Subone's quick glare held him back. The Lady Clarissa watched until Subone had unlaced the tunic past his groin. "Ah, no," she said. "I spent too much time on my own garments, and they might not flatter you."
"Another time, perhaps."
Clarissa introduced them to the nearby guests, and pointed out each individual of the assembled company, who lay on thick cushions around the long table. Subtwo made appropriate sounds of greeting, filing their names and faces away in his mind should he ever need the information. They were all related to Clarissa in one manner or another, and each was served by at least one personal attendant. The attendants were not introduced, though Subtwo had included them in his original tally.
He involved his full attention in the social ceremonies only when Clarissa announced Blaisse's brother Kenton, who had been sent to Clarissa's people to seal the alliance between the Families and Stone Palace. A few years younger than Blaisse, he was a sullen man who muttered an unintelligible response and turned back to the ministrations of the youth behind him. Subtwo shuddered and averted his gaze: the slave's hormonal balance was disarranged, Subtwo supposed purposely. The result was not pleasing to his eye. But Kenton both interested and repelled him, for Subtwo had found that all Blaisse's statements about the Families were true. If the pseudosibs had tried to carry out their original plan, one of them would now have been in Kenton's place, dissipated, trapped, turning in boredom to perturbing other people's lives.
Clarissa finished the introductions and grasped Subone's hand. "Sit here by me." He sprawled next to her, his bare thigh against her leg. Clarissa glanced up and spoke to Subtwo, as though in afterthought. "Blaisse wishes you to take the place to his left."
Subtwo walked to the other end of the room, aware of the stares of the other guests. They reminded him of another uncomfortable entrance he had made, when he was first presented to the outside world as a successful experiment. The world's first experience with him was his first experience with the world, and he had wished only to flee back to the safe and constant environment in which he had been raised. That day had held the beginnings of his guilt.
He looked around. These people were nothing to him. He would not even remember their names. If he refused to remember, their pitted stupid faces might blur together in his memory. Except for their foolish dress, they looked ordinary enough individually. But collectively, their physical similarities revealed so much inbreeding that Subtwo felt distress, with simultaneous relief that he had prevented Subone from completing the Palace takeover. Subtwo knew that he could never have considered a permanent sexual alliance with one of these high-bred, inbred, radiation-exposed people. He could imagine their chromosomes leaping and twisting and breaking and rejoining in some mad intoxicated dance, to a rhythm counted by free subatomic particles. The possible results of a partnering were too disgusting to contemplate, though Subtwo did not doubt that their gene pool would benefit from an infusion of new traits.
He reached the end of the table, shuddering, but having avoided touching anyone, slave or lord. By then, they had all gone back to their pleasures or their duties, and Blaisse's alien consort was the only one to observe Subtwo's approach. She watched him, wide-eyed, frightened.
Blaisse looked up languorously and gestured to a pile of cushions. He was already under the influence of some drug, Subtwo did not know and did not care which one. "Sit down, sit down," Blaisse said, motioned for a drink to be poured, and turned back to his conversation with the gilt-gray-haired woman on his right. The serving slave moved forward, sidling very close, and poured three layers of different colored fluids into a heated goblet that mixed them slowly. The effect was revolting. The slave rubbed her naked hip against Subtwo's shoulder. Subtwo ignored her and she went away. A male slave replaced her, but Subtwo ignored him as well. At the other end of the table, Subone and Clarissa whispered and laughed together and put their hands inside each other's clothing.
Subtwo sat in the midst of golden cushions, still with distaste, hiding his dislike with rigidity. The people nearby began to watch him covertly, but none addressed him. The noise of conversation became almost white in its meaninglessness. The crystal chandeliers broke the light into spectra, giving the impression of underwater illumination. The serving of food began. Accustomed to artificial fare, Subtwo had no taste for natural products. Unruly textures disturbed him; chewing the meat made his jaws ache. The probable cost of the banquet did not impress him. He ate slowly and cautiously, tasting every mouthful of each course for suspicious inclusions, wishing for distilled water to wash away the taste of spices. He looked for Madame, but she was not in the room. He knew she must be within calling distance, but he did not know how to call her, and she was one person, perhaps the only one, whom he did not wish to command.
As the evening progressed, the clamor made by the revelers rose toward his threshold of pain. Subtwo was bored, but too uncomfortable to let his thoughts take a path away from this gathering of animals. He noticed Blaisse's slave girl watching him again, always watching, with those round, jeweled, silver-blue eyes, with her hair brushed back like a mane, with her breasts only half-covered, lying behind Blaisse, peering over his shoulder.
Blaisse turned to Subtwo and smiled as though his guest had just arrived. "Do you have what you want? Does your attendant please you?"
"I can feed myself," Subtwo said.
"Ah, but we all need someone to watch over us at these gatherings," Blaisse said. "In the event that we are incapacitated in our play." The beverage he sipped sparkled with a silver drift of some compound Subtwo assumed would work synergistically with alcohol.
"I prefer not to submit my body to such indignities, even in play."
"What difference does it make? What else is life for, but to play with? Others understand that. Your brother—"
"We are not brothers," Subtwo snapped.
Some rare spark of curiosity seemed partially to sober Blaisse. "Not brothers? What, then?"
"The correct term is 'pseudosib.' We were raised identically, separately, without human interference. Our reactions were linked."
"I would have thought you were twins."
"No, we are only distantly related. We were intended to represent the behavioral equivalents of genetic twins." Subtwo knew, but thought it strange, that people found distinguishing between himself and Subone difficult; he saw only general similarities. Still, he was trained to observe minute detail, while ordinary people fumbled through their lives with generalities. He glanced down the table at Subone. "Obviously, the same parallels do not hold."