"I'm sorry," said Memfis miserably. "I've been disappointed ... many times."
He seemed so terribly sad that her anger melted away. She came back to the bed and offered him the goblet. While he drank, she ran her fingers over the hard planes of his chest. "There's really no problem, is there? I'm still your possession."
He shook his head. "No. I couldn't own a woman I love. Tomorrow I'll satisfy your indenture to the company and buy back your Citizenship/' He grinned, suddenly boyish. "Tafilis will hate that."
And though at first she couldn't believe it, her captivity was over.
In the morning, Memfis stood by while a medunit restored her Citizen's tattoo. When it was done, and Arriangel was once again a free woman of Dilvermoon, she felt a soaring happiness — until she noticed the gloom that shrouded Memfis.
"What's the matter?"
"Will you be leaving now? I'll lend you my car, if you like." His face was full of sad expectation.
"Will you come with me?"
His eyes brightened, and he smiled uncertainly. "If you like. For a while."
"For a while," she agreed. "We'll see how it goes."
Their time together went wonderfully.
She discovered that some of her personal fortune remained untouched by Larimone's collapse and Arbrand's vengeance. She took an apartment in the best quarter of Bo'eme.
There she and Memfis lived. Away from his brother and the Garden, he seemed to bloom, becoming less driven. Occasionally he returned to his woik for a week or two — but these separations only made their reunions sweeter. Remembering her disaster with Ondine, Arriangel never asked Memfis about his work, and never asked to view any of his creations.
But when he was gone, she sometimes wondered if he worked with a new and more beautiful slave.
Still, he always returned to her, his eyes gentle with love.
Her life seemed perfect, each day flowing past, leaving nothing but just the right amount of golden remembrance.
In fact, in some subtle way she could not quite identify, her life had become streamlined, shorn of complexity, free of the niggling details of existence. It seemed almost to be a progression of high points, unmuddied by everyday banality. She attributed this in part to the contrast with her time as a slave... and to the artistic way Memfis devoted himself to her happiness.
He was very good at making her happy. She wondered if he knew her better than she knew herself, so adept was he at steering her clear of sadness. Somehow he could always make things seem different.
A year passed before she became restless.
She never ceased to love him, but she finally understood that she needed a change.
She told him in bed, after lovemaking, thinking it kinder.
The look in his eyes made Arbrand seem no more than a peevish boy.
She felt a peculiar twist in her perceptions.
* * *
"Has it gone wrong again, Brother?" Tafilis asked brightly. "Ah well. Better luck next time. I'll send you the validation, so you can pay off your wager."
Memfis muttered a curse under his breath.
It seemed to ignite a flare of rancor in his brother. "For once, Memfis, you ought to have the guts to do it yourself, instead of using all this nice clean machinery. You ought to rub your victims with your own sanctimonious flesh just once; just once stick in the knife with your own pure hands." Tafilis spoke with apparently genuine disgust.
Memfis ignored him. He shut down the probe and went away in silence.
Arriangel found herself abruptly returned to her apartment in the Garden of Passions. The hood of the probe rose from her face, and the straps released her.
She was alone in the room.
At first, she was sure it was a terrible dream, or perhaps she was mad. She sat on her couch and waited for it to pass. But by the time Memfis came through her door, she had drawn the correct conclusion.
"You didn't knock," she said. She existed in an emotional state beyond anger, beyond fear.
"I have only a moment," he said stiffly. "I've come to tell you that I must transfer your supervision to my brother." His face was as inhuman as any machine, tightened into a caricature of exhaustion and frustration.
She nodded slowly.
He seemed about to say something else, but then he turned and went away.
When Tafilis entered her quarters, she saw that he was dressed in a manner identical to his brother, and for a moment she wondered if she had somehow become trapped in a bad psychodrama — the sort where the monstrous twin turns out to be no more than a concealed aspect of the sympathetic twin. After all, she had never seen them together. But no. There was no possibility of that. Where Memfis had seemed weary almost to death, Tafilis bounced across the room buoyantly. His hair seemed spiky with ominous energy; his face glowed; his eyes glittered. He even smelled different — a pungent, yeasty sourness.
"Arriangel," he said. "It's my turn now." He snapped a collar about her throat and jerked her roughly to her feet. "Come. It won't be so bad. True, I'm not like my brother... but on the other hand, when I rape you, at least you'll see my face."
Though Tafilis was so unlike Memfis, there was something in the uncertain texture of this moment that seemed dreadfully reminiscent of the moment before Memfis had bought her ... when he had asked, "Can you love?"
But she gathered her courage. She had survived her enslavement and her memories; she would survive this. "What will happen if I cannot please you any better than I pleased your brother?"
"Then I must sell you." Tafilis spoke the words as if they meant nothing very much, but his smile was full of malicious promise.
"Oh."
The horrible smile widened, until Tafilis no longer resembled his brother at all. "Now I must ask you an important question, Arriangel."
"What is it?"
"Can you hate?"
"Yes," she answered, with a certain grim satisfaction, and answered his smile with one as ugly.