She waved her hand over the control box, and the volume diminished to a bearable level. She stood up and came to meet him.
"I thought you sounded upset when you called," she said, kissing him. "Sit here. Put your feet up. Have you had anything to eat?"
"No," said Spangler. "I couldn't; I'm too tired for food."
"I'll have something up. You needn't eat it if you don't want to."
"Fine," he said with an effort.
She dialed the antique food-selector at the side of the couch, then came to sit beside him.
The voice was still shouting, but as if it were a long distance off. It rose to a crescendo, there was a dying gasp from the orchestra, a moment's pause, and then another song began.
"Why don't you have that translated?" he asked irritably.
"I don't know; I rather like it as it is. Shall I turn it off?"
"That's not the point," said Spangler with controlled impatience. "You like it as it is—why? Because it's incomprehensible? Is that a sane reason?"
The food-selector's light glowed. Joanna opened the hopper, took out a tube of broth and a sandwich loaf, and put them on the table at Spangler's elbow.
"What are you really angry about, Thorne?" she asked quietly.
"I'll tell you," said Spangler, sitting erect. The words spilled out of him, beyond his control. "Do you think it isn't obvious to me, and to everyone else who knows you, what you're doing to yourself with this morbid obsession? Do you think it's pleasant for me to sit here and watch you wallowing in the past, like a dog in carrion, because you're afraid of anything that hasn't been safely buried for five hundred years?"
Her eyes widened with shock, and Spangler felt an answering wave of pure joy. This was what he had come here to do, he realized, though he hadn't known it before. It was what he should have done long ago. She blushed furiously from forehead to breast, then turned ivory-pale.
"Stop it," she said in a tight voice.
"I won't stop," Spangler said, biting the words. "Look at yourself. You're half-alive, half a woman. You let just enough of yourself live to do your work, and answer when you're spoken to, and respond to your lover. The rest is dead and covered with dust. I can taste it when I kiss you. How do you think I feel, wanting you, knowing that you're out of my reach—not because…"
She got up and started toward the door. Spangler reached her in one stride, pushed her backward onto the couch and held her there with his whole weight.
"… not because you belong to anyone else, or ever will, but because you're too timid, too selfish, too wrapped up in yourself ever to belong to anybody?"
She struggled ineffectively. Her eyes were unfocused and glazed with tears; her whole body was trembling.
Spangler tore open her gown, pulled it away from her body. "Go ahead, look at yourself! You're a woman, a living human being, not a mummy. Why is that so hateful? Do you get any pleasure from killing yourself and everything you touch?" He shook her. "Answer me!"
She gasped, "I can't…"
"What can't you? You can feel, you can speak, you can do anything a normal human being can do, but you won't. You wouldn't leave that smug little shell of yours to save a life. You wouldn't leave it to save the Empire—not even to save yourself."
"Let me go."
"You're not sick, you're not afraid, you're just selfish. Cold and selfish. Everything for Joanna, and let the rest of the universe go hang!"
"Let me go."
Her trembling had stopped; she was still breathing hard, but her pale lips were firm. She raised her lids and looked at him squarely, without blinking.
Spangler raised his open right hand and struck her in the face. Her head bobbed. She looked at him incredulously, and her mouth opened.
Spangler hit her again. At the third blow, the tears started again. Her face crumpled suddenly and a series of short, animal sounds came out of her. At the fourth, she stopped trying to turn her head aside. Her body was limp, her eyes closed and without expression. Her sobs were as mechanical and meaningless as a fit of the hiccoughs.
Spangler rolled away from her, stood up and went to the chair. He felt purged and empty. There was a heavy tiredness in his limbs; he could feel his heart beating slowly and strongly. He said tonelessly, "You can get up now. I won't hit you again."
After a moment she sat up, spine curved, head hanging. When she got to her feet and turned toward the bathroom door, Spangler followed and stepped in front of her, grasping her arms.
"Listen to me," he said. "You're going to marry me, and we're going to be happy. Do you understand that?"
She looked up at him without interest.
"You fool," she said.
She stood motionless until he let her go, and then moved without haste through the doorway. The door closed behind her, and Spangler heard the lock click.
V
Spangler entered his office, as he usually did, half an hour before the official opening time. He had sat up for a long time after leaving Joanna's tower the night before, and had slept badly afterwards. This morning he had a headache which the pick-me-ups would not entirely suppress; but his mind felt cold and clear. He knew precisely what he wanted to do.
Last night's blunder was not irreparable. It was all but disastrous; it was criminally foolish; it had set him back at least six months; but it had not beaten him.
His first move would be to send her a present: something she would prize too much to reject—old paintings, or books or recordings. Very likely there would be something of the sort among the property seized by the Department in treason cases; if not, he would get it from a private collector. He had already composed the note to go with the gift: it was humble without servility, regretful without hope. It implied that he would not see her again; and he would not—not for at least a month.
The last three weeks of that time Spangler had allotted to grand strategy—planting rumors, sure to reach Joanna: that he was overworking; that he never smiled; that he was ill but had refused treatment. That sort of thing, details to be worked out later.
The first week was dedicated to an altogether different purpose. His ruinous outburst last night had at least had one good effect; it had taught Spangler that he could not fight both battles at once. Commencing today, his total energies would be aimed at one objective: to crush Pembun.
It could be done; it would be done. He had underestimated the man, but that was over. From now on, things would be different.
"Ten hours," said his thumbwatch.
On his desk was a spool of summarized reports addressed to him from Keith-Ingram. The activities of the Rithians had now been partially traced: eight of them, traveling together, had reached Earth as passengers aboard a second-rate tramp freighter, docking at Stambul, on the evening of December 10th. From Stambul they were known to have taken the stratosphere express to Paris, but no further trace of their movements had so far turned up until seven of them appeared in Albuquerque on the 18th, with one exception: the eighth Rithian had shipped out aboard a liner leaving for the Capri system on the 12th, only two days after the group had arrived. It had disembarked at Lumi, where its trail ended.
Doubtless, Spangler thought, it had changed its disguise there and continued by a devious route. By now it was back in the Rithian system.
Its return before the others' was puzzling. Obviously the group had not finished its collective task, or the others would have got out too; either it had had a separate assignment, which it had completed before the others, or some single item of information had been turned up which the Rithians thought sufficiently important to send a messenger back with immediately.