"He always wanted to call me Yugiri," Jan said. "But Yugiri wasn't Murasaki's child, only Genji's." He laughed, without much humor. "He never gets anything right."
Jan shook back his wet blond hair and returned himself to the present. Mischa was leaning against the wall of the pool, her face flushed with the heat.
"What about your family?" Jan asked suddenly. "Won't you be leaving anyone?"
She did not answer for a moment. "No," she said finally. "I won't be leaving anyone."
Jan breast-stroked to the edge of the pool and levered himself out. Standing on the edge, dripping on the flagstones, he reached down to give Mischa a hand. "Come on out. You shouldn't stay in too long if you're not used to it."
She took his hand, put her foot on the side, and let him pull her out. As she leaned forward, Jan caught a quick glimpse of white scars across her back. He drew in his breath involuntarily. "Gods, Mischa. who did that to you?"
Wrapping herself in a towel, Mischa shrugged. "It was a chance I took."
"A chance at what?"
She smiled, but it was not a pleasant expression: it was sardonic and self-mocking. She told Jan what had happened, why Madame had been chasing her, though she left out the ice-eyed administrator and the deprivation cell. He could not keep his gaze from slipping to her scarred wrists.
"And after that," Jan said, when Mischa had finished, "even after that, you could still come here?"
"After that I had to come here," she said. "It was the last place. I haven't got anywhere else to try."
Jan wanted to put his arms around her and comfort her, but Mischa seemed to have no need of comfort. Jan realized it was he himself who needed reassurance, against the slow shattering of his basic assumptions of human rights and human dignity. He found Mischa watching him with something like understanding in her expression and her deep green eyes.
"It's over," she said softly. "Never mind. That's all over."
Wrapped in terrycloth, padding barefoot down the hall, Mischa felt deliriously sleepy. She was more content than she had been in a long time, though she recognized contentment and overconfidence to be dangerous. But she knew that with this one chance she could prove herself worth training. That was the hard step; compared to that, asking Subtwo to let Chris come with them would be easy.
Outside her room she started to say good night to Jan Hikaru, but hesitated. For the first time since she had met him, his seemingly impervious, glassy inner calm felt shimmery and penetrable. She could feel only quick refracted rays of his true emotions, and any flaws in his defenses had begun to fuse already, hiding him from her again. Still, Mischa had felt enough and seen enough to know that despite his apparent self-sufficiency and invulnerability, he was troubled.
He glanced over at her. "Do you want some tea?"
She did not, very much; the steaming pool had relaxed and even enervated her, but she accepted and followed him inside. He sat cross-legged on the rug and prepared the tea in silence, not speaking again until he had handed Mischa the fragile cup.
"When people die in Center, what happens?"
His question was not completely clear, but Mischa put together things he had said with his sorrow. "Their friends put them in the river."
"Is there a ritual, or someone to perform one?"
"No. Nothing like that."
"Are coffins used?"
"People use shrouds, if they can afford them."
Jan put his fingertips together and stared between his hands. "I promised my friend I would put her body back into the earth. Will you show me what I should do?"
"Of course."
In the blockhouse, near the rack where the suits were kept folded inside their helmets, Mischa watched Jan dress for outside. She could hear the sand skittering against the walls of the blockhouse above. "I'd like to come too," she said, trying to temper her eagerness.
Jan seemed ready to make some formal protest about necessity and discomfort, but he said nothing, stood, and picked over the suits until he found a small one. Mischa put it on, mimicking actions she had carefully watched Jan make. The suit was cut for a body fuller than hers, but it was not uncomfortable.
Jan glanced over the controls and pressed a button. The squeal of the door in its tracks was wiped out by the unbaffled scream of the storm, and the air around them filled with sand. Jan plunged into it; Mischa hesitated in the doorway and stared out into the swirling blackness. She had never seen the storms before. The air seemed hidden by a glittering black curtain shot with unordered streaks of color.
"Come on."
She started at Jan's voice, so close to her ear, saw the tiny microphone near her mouth, and laughed at herself. She moved from the sparse shelter of the blockhouse into the full force of the wind. She staggered, but caught herself. Jan placed a contact key against the entry panel, and the door closed slowly.
A writhing rope led away into the gloom. Mischa recognized the material as an extremely durable plastic, but in the wind, the strands had begun to fray. Holding the rope, pushed against it, Mischa followed Jan into the desert. When she looked back she could see nothing but the black sand and the rope, which struggled like an eel in her hand. She could hear the individual grains of sharp sand pecking against the sheltered side of her helmet.
She understood, now, why the contours of the land around Center changed so drastically every year, and why the caravannaires never lingered near the city into the fall, but began their trek across the desert before summer seemed nearly over.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes." They seemed to have been walking for a long time. The rope slid past Mischa's side as she pulled herself along. Their path was perpendicular to the wind. Jan walked on ahead of her, bent forward, shoulders hunched.
Then Mischa saw a darker spot in the blackness ahead, a dull darkness behind the sparkling obsidian. The sand thinned and they entered the lee of a great ship. Mischa stood looking up at it, unable to make out its lines. She knew what it looked like, low and wide and sharp-edged. She had seen others skimming into view, but had never realized they were so large. This one balanced on spraddled stilts and a central shaft, against which sand piled high on the leeward side.
Jan opened the hatch, and they entered the ship in a cloud of sand that settled to the floor around them. The hatch slid closed, and the small room drew them into the ship.
Jan threw back his helmet. Small drops of perspiration slid down his temples. Mischa took off her own helmet, and when the cool air touched her face she realized she was sweating too.
Jan opened the other side of the airlock. Mischa peered beyond, into the ship, at walls of pale, self-luminous plastic. She was mildly and indefinably disappointed, though she could not have said what she had expected. Her shoulders ached and her hands were sore from gripping the rope.
She followed Jan into the ship. Touching the walls, she could feel only smoothness through her gloves: no heat, no vibration, nothing.
Jan finally stopped outside a closed door. He reached for it, and hesitated, eyes half-closed, somber. Mischa wanted to prevent his opening that door, for a little while at least, long enough for her to see the ship, but she felt that to do so would be cruel and selfish. Mischa could be either or both, but she did not want to hurt Jan Hikaru.
Jan opened the door.
Cold air seeped out of the room and surrounded him. It was tinged with the unpleasant smell of death. Beside him, Mischa shivered.
Jan approached the figure that lay on a narrow bench inside. It was covered with an embroidered satin cloth. He stroked the black silk gently.
"She liked to touch it, because she could feel the designs," Jan said, "so I gave it to her. She was blind." He lifted the cloth and looked down at the lined, relaxed face, still both frail and strong. His friend's expression was peaceful. The cloth sank slowly down, falling across her features, blurring them.