He touched buttons in quick succession on the console intercom behind him. After a few moments, Mischa heard a voice from the speaker, but the volume was too low for her to make out the words.
"I have a task for you," Subtwo said. "I do not think it will conflict with your ethics." The statement could have been sarcastic, but was not.
The response sounded tired, but not sleepy; not bored, but affirmative. Subtwo shut off the intercom. "You should have come during the day," he said.
"I didn't think I'd get in."
"Hm." His expression seemed slightly amused. "Would you have come if you had known I was watching?"
"I don't know. I guess so. You'd've had to see me sooner or later."
They waited in silence until a barefoot young man came in. He wore black pants and a black robe with a green and gold embroidered dragon crawling up the shoulder. He glanced at Mischa and faced Subtwo with something of a defiant air.
Physically, he resembled a few other offworld people Mischa had seen: pale tan skin, very dark eyes that appeared slanted because of the structure of the eyelids. But his uncombed hair, instead of being black, was bright gold.
"Yes?" If he had been awakened, he did not seem annoyed by it, but he looked very tired.
"I have a new crew member. I would appreciate your teaching her as much mathematics as you can. Start her in xenobiology. And the other basic subjects—her education has been neglected."
"All right."
"Very good."
Subtwo turned to his console, and they were obviously dismissed. The young man gestured toward the doorway with his head, not peremptorily but pleasantly, without taking his hands from his pockets. They left Subtwo's quarters and walked together down the hall to the foyer.
"I'm Jan Hikaru," the young man said, sitting on the edge of the fountain. The light-fibers brushed his shoulder and shimmered into orange.
"My name's Mischa."
He took his hands from his pockets and rested his forearms on his knees. His hands were narrow and bony, and, like his movements, graceful and strong. Mischa admired the lines of his body.
"What do you want to learn?"
"Everything."
He smiled, pleasantly enough but superficially, preoccupied. "Calculus, then, to give you the feel of things. Number theory and machine communication and enough astronomy to get you around. And the xeno. Do you know any of those?"
"No." If he had not been so serious, she would have believed he was mocking her and she would have grown angry; even so, her tone was sharp.
He glanced up, paying real attention for the first time. "I'm not fit to be a teacher," he said. "I know too little. But I will do the best I can."
Mischa followed Jan Hikaru; he took her to a room across the hall from his own. It was less garish than most of those she had seen, for which she was grateful. The tapestries were blue and the thick rug a deep dark green. Jan showed her around briefly and left her alone to sleep. She found herself prepared to like him.
Mischa could not sleep under the ornate blankets or on top of them or even on the floor. She lay in darkness for long slow minutes that seemed more like hours. The silence was alien after the echoing exchanges in the corridors where she had lived. Half-awake, half-dreaming, she imagined herself already on another world, one peopled by figures from the drapes in the Palace, clothed in precious gems and metals or in more precious furs and leather, passing like silent spirits between the curiously substantial ghosts of trees that had not been seen on Mischa's part of earth in centuries. She walked toward them, but they receded, beckoning, smiling. Leaves brushed dew against her face. The sky was purple-black; stars crowned one horizon while the clear streaks of dawn cleansed the other.
A feeling like terror, a cold draft in a wave from her face to her stomach, drove her out of her fantasy. She sat up with her fingers clenched in the
carpet. The visions disappeared.
So had ended all her dreams, real or construct. She feared for the one she lived in now, for if it shattered, it would be the last.
Mischa rose and looked into the hall through a narrow gap in the curtains. She could detect no one, so she crept out to explore. The corridor into which her room opened continued for a short distance, then, after a short purposeless curve, stopped. For a moment she thought she would ask for a different room, one not on a dead-end hall, then she shrugged. If Subtwo neglected to keep his word and she had to flee again, she did not think she would care if she had escape routes or not. There was nowhere to escape to.
At the open end of the hallway the light-fountain was dimmer, as though it, like people, needed rest. It glowed softly. Mischa walked across the softly lit central node and brushed her fingertips against the strands. They sparked brightly and faded again.
"You—"
Without thinking, Mischa fled from the voice of the slave steward, who came without warning, sound, sight, or aura. She ran until she reached her room, stopped outside it, and turned to face Madame. "Stay away from me. I'll kill you this time."
"You are persistent," Madame said. "There is no need to speak of killing. Put away your knife and I will take you out of here."
"I'm working for Subtwo. You can't touch me."
Madame arched one eyebrow. "We must go to him, and he will confirm or deny you."
"That isn't necessary."
The door-curtain of Jan Hikaru's room draped across his shoulders like a cape as he leaned against the wall with his legs crossed at the ankles and his arms folded on his chest. "She's telling the truth."
"Do you take responsibility?"
"I already have it."
"Very well." Absently, she flicked her short whip against her skirt and started away.
"I told you I wasn't here to steal."
Madame looked back skeptically. "That," she said, "remains to be seen."
Mischa reddened; her pride was hardly salved by Jan's enigmatic half-smile. It was as though he knew everything that had ever happened or ever would happen, as though he were just observing the motions for his own amusement.
"What's so damn funny?"
"Nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter. I'm sorry. Since we're both up, do you want some tea?"
"I don't know what that is."
"Subtwo was right," Jan said. "Your education has been neglected."
Mischa sat on the carpet in Jan's room, sipping hot tea and staring down into the cup at the small remnants of the leaves from which it was brewed.
"Couldn't you sleep?"
Mischa shrugged. "I like to know what's around me."
He swirled his cup slowly. "Ah."
As they drank together, Mischa could see him watching her through the steam of his tea. The wall-curtains of his room were brown and unadorned; against them, sitting cross-legged on the bronze-colored rug, he was for an instant a mysterious and very alien figure. All Mischa could feel of him was a deep, sad quiet; there was much more, but she could not reach it.
"Do you know what you're doing?" he asked abruptly.
"Yes."
"Is it what you want?"
She could not answer immediately; he had asked exactly the right thing. "It's the only way I can leave earth."
He sipped his tea. "Is it worth it?"
"What do you care?" she snapped, but the familiarity of the exchange sprang up and hurt her. "What gives you the right to talk? You're doing the same thing."
"Well, not quite."
"You're with Subtwo—what else can you be but a raider?"
"I was with a friend who wanted to return to earth. This is the only way to get here or to leave."
"What happened?" She felt she already knew, because though she could not feel his pain, she could see it in his eyes and in his face, too new and too deep to hide.
He finally answered. "She's dead."