No locks barred her from the gallery, and finally one day, feeling • herself secure in Ondine's affections, she decided to have a look.
The door opened to her touch, and she went inside. The walls were crowded with holofields, jammed onto every surface, a few even placed on the ceiling, so that their subjects seemed in danger of falling from their frames.
Almost immediately she knew she had made a mistake.
The men and women in the fields were all so ordinary: unremarkable faces, bland expressions, unstylish clothing. Their background windows seemed to depict events of negligible color and vigor. Nobodies.
She stepped close, peered at the nearest image. It contained a man with a narrow, sallow face and large, moist eyes. He smiled benignly, if somewhat vacantly. Behind him were a dozen faceted windows, each showing a domestic scene — the man in a small apartment, watching a dreamscreen with a woman. The man swimming in a no-grav pool with the woman. The man in bed with the woman. The woman seemed vaguely familiar.
With a shock of recognition, Arriangel identified Ondine, in an earlier and less graceful body.
She went on to the next portrait, and the next, and then she understood that she was looking at portraits of Ondine's past lovers.
She found her own portrait in a comer, where the other works had been cleared away to give it a clear space.
Except for the white frame of empty wall, it wasn’t much different from any of the others, an image of a pretty, but otherwise ordinary, young woman. Arriangel felt sick. All these portraits, including hers, lacked any trace of the power and presence that distinguished the other work in Ondine's galleries.
She stepped closer, and looked at the windows behind her image.
There was Garso-Yao, hanging from his cord. She quickly looked away.
Across from him was a boy she vaguely remembered. They'd met on a luxury safari into the jungled ruins that filled an ancient gouge in Dilvermoon s steel shell. In tiny detail, they shared a tent, tangled together happily.
Later the boy had been killed by a mutated beast.
Here was an interesting panel. ... It seemed to show Ondine and Arriangel bathing together in a huge marble tub, an event that had not yet occurred. For a moment she felt a small uplift of anticipation. But then she decided that Ondine had added the scene only for its contribution to the composition, only for the artistic effect of the two beautiful, juxtaposed bodies.
What do you thinks asked Ondine in her low, rough voice.
Arriangel whirled about, startled. Ondine leaned against the wall, arms folded, face closed. Arriangel felt her hurt give way to a brief flash of guilt, and then to a stronger pulse of anger.
"I'm not as impressed as I hoped," Arriangel said.
"Sorry."
"Is this your gallery of pets?" Arriangel indicated the jumbled portraits with a jerky gesture. '
"They were all my darlings, once." She looked about, a sudden tender smile trembling on her lips. "Don’t feel bad. Most find it impossible to love reality; not 1.1 warned you not to look."
"I see," said Arriangel icily. "Well, I suppose now I must leave your home, since I’ve broken your rule."
Ondine shook her head sadly. "Only if you wish to. I've grown too fond of you to send you away now."
This was somehow an unsatisfying response. "No," said Arriangel. "A rule is a rule."
MEMFIS REGRESSED the probe to the moment just before Arriangel had decided to enter the forbidden gallery.
Tafilis shook his head. "It's useless — you're just dealing with a surface effect. She's one of those who have a timer on their hearts. She'll never measure up to your standards... though I'm not sure anyone could."
"Leave me alone," said Memfis, sweating over his control board.
"You know, Brother, you're shamefully inconsistent. On the one hand, you chose — apparently out of sheer artistic hubris — to record an extremely unconventional romance, and on the other hand, you cling to a very rigid personal definition of love. By what convoluted inner mechanism do you resolve this?" Tafilis fixed a look of polite curiosity on his lean face.
"Love is as obdurate an emotion as hate, despite what you think."
"Oh, yes . . . you bum to reconstruct a deathless love; isn't that so? Well, you never will. Never! People live too long — no such fragile emotion can survive the centuries." Tafilis spoke as if in great earnest, but Memfis was not deceived.
"Shut up, shut up," Memfis said, so full of loathing that he could barely speak.
But Tafilis was right.
When Memfis came to tell her of their failure, he moved carefully, as if his chest were full of broken glass, and his handsome face was gray with exhaustion. He appeared to be fresh from the scene of a tragedy.
"I did my best," he said.
"I'm sure."
"Would you like to see?" Memfis asked this with such transparent pain that Arriangel agreed to look at his recording — though in fact she felt more apprehension than curiosity.
When the recording reached the point at which Ondine had forbidden her to look at her portrait, Arriangel felt a deep pang of regret.
"I guess she was afraid I'd be offended," she said.
Memfis shook his head. "Perhaps."
"What, then?"
"I think she wanted to spare you this knowledge: that you could never know her as she knew you. She was so old, and you were so young."
Arriangel looked aside at Memfis, whose attention was fixed on the screen. At the moment, despite his youthful body, he looked a thousand years old. It suddenly occurred to her to wonder how long he had been working in his Garden of Passions.
When the recording had run to its sad conclusion, he sat back and closed his eyes.
Arriangel watched him, fascinated. After a while his breathing steadied and deepened. To her astonishment, he slept.
In sleep, he regained his beauty. His face had grown smooth and guileless, and Arriangel found herself oddly moved.
She herself felt no inclination to sleep.
An hour later he still slept, and she had grown very restless. She found herself hovering over Memfis, admiring him. She thought of his kindness and courtesy, his intelligence and compassion. She looked at his strong, graceful hands, which lay open in his lap, and wondered how he might touch her, if they ever became lovers.
She sighed. "I have a history of seducing sleeping men," she muttered, and undressed.
When she laid her hand on his shoulder, he woke with unnatural speed. His eyes flew open, and for an instant, it seemed to her that they held none of the confusion that anyone else might have shown upon awaking abruptly, that he was completely aware of the situation: her hand on his shoulder, her naked body, her heart hammering.
But he took her hand and drew her into the bedroom, and she forgot about everything else for a long time.
After, lying in his arms, she asked him why he had taken so long to come to her bed.
"I thought I had good reasons," he said. "I was trying to preserve my artistic objectivity — how could I properly mine your heart, if I loved you? And even more important... you were my slave... a bad way for lovers to begin. I didn't want you to think of yourself that way. I didn't want you to act dutifully." His face still held that unmarked innocence.
"I'm not naturally dutiful," she said, laughing.
His face darkened suddenly. "Tafilis says you have a timer on your heart."
"Does he?'
"Do you?"
She swept away the bedclothes and rose. She went to the sideboard, and with shaking hands poured a goblet of green wine.
"If I do have a timer, it hasn't started yet." She spoke with a greater anger than she had intended.