Accompanied by a tiny, unobtrusive mech guide, she was free to roam the vast compound — though many doors were closed to her, and she could only imagine what went on behind the steel.
She spent much time in the well-equipped gymnasium, using the devices there to restore her body to perfection. After several vigorous hours, her regrets would surrender to the anesthesia of exhaustion, and she could be happy for a while.
Nearby she found a self-service euphorium, but she felt no interest in the drugs it could dispense. Down the corridor from the gymnasium was an alcove full of sexual toys, including autonomous simulacra of various sorts, which winked and smiled at her from their preservative niches. The glass door was locked against her. For some reason she was reluctant to ask Memfis why that was so; perhaps she feared he would say that his purposes were well served by her growing sexual frustration. In all her long life, she had never been without ready companionship, and now she had another resentment to bear.
Still, late at night in her empty bed, she couldn't help thinking about Memfis and his beauty, so that her annoyance was increasingly tinged with involuntary lust.
She swam in the large bubble pool, luxuriating in the warm, supporting water. One of her favorite diversions was a zero-gravity, intelligent maze, which reordered itself before each of her many attempts to penetrate to its heart. Its narrow tubes were spun from an empathic plastic, and as she flew slowly through the branchings and turnings, the plastic altered color in coruscating washes — and sang a low, wordless, ever-changing music.
She discovered that her holotank could be tuned to the Dystan dream, that vast tangle of story and myth, and found that the melodramatic lives of the dream-dwellers still held the same fascination for her, even in her changed circumstances. Over the hundreds of years, her old favorites had been replaced by new characters, but the dream was as vivid as before.
She was surprised to learn that Memfis was also a watcher, and they spent several evenings together in her rooms, in the glow of the dream-screen. He spoke little, and she found undignified the thought of making friendly overtures to the slaver, so that the evenings passed uncomfortably. Still, it seemed more interesting than watching alone.
Memfis favored the doings of the lowland wizards who held fiefs at the south end of the dream's greatest island. Currently, a handsome woman of unknown ancestry and motives was wreaking havoc in princely hearts (hroughout the region.
In the spell of the dream, Memfis seemed to grow younger and less driven.
"Oh yes," he said one night, sitting beside her on her couch. "They know how to love there. If only I could reach into the dream and steal that one." The black-haired dream-dweller lay in a glade, naked on her cloak, her white body dappled with sunbeams. She drank green wine and listened to a young prince with a lute. From the forest a huge, hideous troll watched in fascination; clearly, significant events were in the offing.
Arriangel felt vaguely insulted. Here she sat, at least as beautiful as the dream-dweller — within easy reach and perhaps even willing. In her old life, she might have attempted to demonstrate her desirability; now she bit her lip and spoke peevishly. "That's silly," she said. "She was bred to her role by the dream designers; she acts as she must. She's not real, in the way we are."
Memfis turned and looked at her, appraisal flickering behind his eyes. "You're right," he said. "Sometimes I lose my perspective. The dream-dwellers are too simple and direct for my purposes — after all, what's love without introspection?"
She shrugged, still irritated. He got up and left, and didn't return again.
She came to the conclusion that she had been foolish.
In all her wanderings about the compound, she met no other slaves, and sometimes she wondered if she and Memfis were alone in the compound. She grew attached to this pleasant delusion, until the day she met Tafilis.
Arriangel was returning to her rooms from the bubble pool, still naked and wet, toweling her hair vigorously. She followed her mech guide blindly around a corner, and almost ran into Tafilis.
The towel still obscured her vision, and for an instant she thought he was Memfis. But he stepped close and touched her at the waist. He ran his hand up her flank, detouring to brush his fingers along the swell of her breast. "Very nice," he said.
She stepped back and wrapped the towel about her. He laughed an awful laugh, full of ugly merriment.
"You must be Tafilis," she said, struggling to conceal her alarm.
"None other!" Tafilis resembled Memfis to a remarkable degree — they even dressed alike — but the physical resemblance seemed only to heighten the differences in their characters. The grace she found attractive in Memfis seemed in Tafilis a spiderish agility. The smile that in Memfis seemed so unforced and direct was in Tafilis a rictus of gloating — yet the shape was the same. She shook her head, confused. Had she imagined those virtues in Memfis? It seemed suddenly possible, looking at his twin.
He laughed again, but then the smile went out like a switched-off lamp. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "You wonder how we can be so different, my brother and I. I'll tell you a secret: we're not so different."
"Oh?"
"Indeed. Oh, he prattles about love... and he plays the mooncalf well I'll give him that. But he's a fool. Love... What is love? It's a phantom, a fashion. No one knows what it is, and it's never the same thing twice. What sort of passion is that? A jellyfish passion, fit only to comfort weaklings. Memfis struggles to trap the wily creature, but he never succeeds, never. All he can do is take whatever poor thing he's netted and make it look pretty." Tafilis snorted derisively.
She tried to edge past him, to return to the relative security of her rooms, but he moved to block her, darting out his hand and gripping her shoulder.
"I, on the other hand, am very good at my craft, which leads to the major difference between me and my dear brother. I always succeed, while lie always fails." He released her, but kept his hand on her, touching her collarbone with delicate fingers. "Would you like to know which of the passions I cultivate?'
She nodded jerkily, afraid to speak.
He dropped his hand and turned away. "Hate," he said, in an oddly soft voice. "The deepest passion, the most obdurate passion, the passion everyone can understand." He glanced back at her as he walked away, and lust for a moment, his smile seemed identical to the smile of his handsome brother.
"Again?" asked Tafilis. "You're so earnest, Brother. I wish I had your devotion. Of course, my job is vastly easier than yours —this I freely admit!"
Memfis ignored his brother's mockery, giving his attention to Arriangel's memories, searching among the strands of remembrance for just the right place to begin his next attempt.
"Ah well," said Tafilis. "I have faith in you.... You won't succeed in your own estimation, but your chips will be salable, as always — and that's the important thing. Tell me: when will you admit defeat?"
Memfis glanced up at his brother's vulpine features, and suppressed a shudder. His loathing for Tafilis threatened to rise up and overwhelm him, but he fought it back. How could he expect to cultivate love and faith in Arriangel when he was himself so full of hate and despair? He rubbed his hands over his face and took a deep, calming breath.
Tafilis laughed.
ONDINE WAS the only human person Arriangel had ever met who was indisputably more beautiful than Arriangel.
For all her astonishing beauty, Ondine lived as sparely as an acolyte of the Dead God, without friends or lovers, in a rundown and dangerous sector of Bo'eme.
Ondine's apparent poverty was an affectation. She was the leading collateral portraitist on Dilvermoon, and had been for centuries. Now her portraits brought such fabulous prices that the hyperwealthy of Dilvermoon were compelled to commission her services, if for no other reason than to demonstrate their status.