Spangler swallowed deliberately and set his glass down on the wide arm of his chair. He felt the vast, cool, good-humored patience of a man who knows how to retreat from his own petty emotions. "I don't want to seem obtuse," he said, "but has this got anything to do with my problem?"
Pembun's brows creased delicately. He looked anxious, searching for words. "Nothing, specifically," he said earnestly. "W'at I mean is jus' that in general, you got to watch out for that sense of yumor. I mean, you already know that this Rithch is going to 'urt you bad if 'e can. But you got to remember also that if 'e can, 'e's going to do it some way that'll be sidesplittingly funny to 'im. It isn' easy to figure out w'ich way a Rithch is going to jump, but you can do it sometimes if you know w'at makes them lahf."
Spangler swallowed again, leaving exactly half the drink behind, and stood up. He was a trifle impatient with himself for having come here at all, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that a lead had been explored and canceled out, that an x had been corrected to a zero.
"Thank you, Mr. Pembun," he said from the doorway, "for the drink and the information. Good evening."
"You got to look out for the 'ypnotism, too," said Pembun as an afterthought.
Spangler stood in the doorway without speaking. Pembun looked at him with a politely inquiring expression.
"Hypnotism!" Spangler said, and started back into the room. "What hypnotism?"
"My goodness," cried Pembun, "didn' you know about that?”
They lay together in companionable silence, in a darkened room, facing the huge unscreened window—window in the archaic sense, a simple hole in the wall—through which a feather-light touch of cool, salt air came unhindered. On either side, where the shore thrust out an arm, Spangler could see a cluster of multicolored lights—Angels proper on the right, St. Monica on the left. Straight ahead was nothing but silver sea and ghost-gray cloud, except when the tiny spark of an airship crossed silently and was gone.
The universe was a huge, half-felt presence that flowed through the open window to contain them; as if, Spangler thought, they were two grains of dust sunk in an ocean that stretched to infinity.
It was soothing, in a way, but there was a touch of unpleasantness in it. Spangler shifted his body restlessly, feeling the breeze fumble at his bare skin. The scale was too big, he thought; he was too used to the rabbit-warren of the Hill, perhaps, to be entirely easy outside it. Perhaps he needed a change…
"That wind is getting a little chilly," he said. "Let's close the window and turn on the lights."
"I thought it was nice," she said. "But go ahead, if you like."
Now I've insulted her window, Spangler thought wryly. Nevertheless, he reached forward and found the stud that rolled a sheet of vitrin down over the opening.
It was a period piece, the window—XXI Century, even to the antique servo mechanism that operated it. So was everything else in Joanna's tower: the absurd four-legged chairs, the massive tables, the carpets, even the huge pneumatic couch. There were paper books in the shelves, and not the usual decorator's choices, either, but books that a well-read twenty-first-century citizen might actually have owned— Shakespeare and Sterne, Jones and Joyce, Homer and Hemingway all jumbled in together. If the fashion would let her, Spangler thought, I believe she would wear dresses.
A glow of rose-tinted light sprang up, and he turned to see Joanna with one slender arm around her knees, her head bent solemnly over the lighted cigarette she had just taken from the dispenser. She handed him another.
Spangler pulled himself up beside her and leaned against the back of the couch. The smoke of their cigarettes fanned out, pink in the half-light, and faded slowly into floating haze.
The room's curved walls and ceiling enclosed them snugly, safely…
The XXI Century, the Century of Peace, was a womb, Spangler thought. The comment was Joanna's, not his; she had picked it up in some book or other. "A womb with a view." That was it. A childishly fanciful description, as one would expect from that period, but accurate enough. Self-deception was not one of Joanna's vices—unfortunately. To win her finally and completely, it would be necessary to break down the clear image she had of herself—cast her adrift in chaos, so that she would turn blindly to him for her lost security. It was not going to be easy.
Joanna said, without moving, "Thorne, I'd like to talk seriously to you, just for a minute."
"Of course."
"You know what I'm going to say, probably; but just to have things clear— Do you want us to go on together?"
Matching her tone, Spangler said, "Yes."
"… I do too. You know I'm fonder of you than I've ever been of anyone. But I won't ever marry you. You've got to believe that, and accept it, or it's no good… I'm trying to be fair."
"You're succeeding," Spangler told her lightly. He turned and put his hand on her knee. "Just to be equally clear—I've been insufferable to you, and I was a maniac last weekend, and I'm sorry for it. Shall we both forget it?"
She smiled. "Yes. We will."
Her lips moved and altered as he leaned toward her: corners turning downward, pink moist flesh swelling up into the blind shape of desire. His free arm sank into the softness of her back, abruptly hard as her body tautened. Eyes closed, he heard the sibilant whisper of her legs slowly straightening against the counterpane.
Afterward, he lay wrapped in a warm lethargy that was like floating in quiet water. It was an effort to force himself out of that mindless content, but it was necessary. As he was vulnerable at this moment, so was she. When she spoke to him lazily, he answered her with increasing constraint, until he felt his tension flow into her.
Then he rolled over abruptly, got up and stood at the window, staring out at the vast, obscene emptiness of sky and sea. Now it was easier. As he had often, in his childhood, worked himself deliberately into white-hot anger—when, if he had not forced himself to be angry, he would have been afraid—now, with equal deliberateness, he opened his mind to despair.
Suppose that I failed, and lost Joanna, he thought. But that was not enough. What would be the most dreadful thing that could possibly happen? The answer came of itself: Pembun, and his Rithians with their boneless bodies and their hypnotism. Shapeless faces staring in from a sea of darkness. Suppose they won. Suppose the Empire went down under that insensate wave, and all the walls everywhere crumbled to let smothering Chaos in?
Her voice: "Thorne? Is anything the matter?"
He pulled himself back, shuddering, from the cold emptiness that his mind had fastened upon. For an instant it had been real, it had happened, it was there. He had been lost and alone, fumbling in an endless night.
When he turned, he knew that his agony showed plainly in his face. He did his best to restrain and suppress it: that would show too.
"Nothing," he said. He walked around the couch, reached past her for a cigarette, then moved to the closet.
"You're going?" she asked uncertainly.
"I've got to be in early tomorrow," he said. "And I've been going a little short of sleep."
"… All right."
Fastening his cloak, he went to her and took her hand. "Don't mind me, will you? I'm a little jumpy—it's been an unpleasant week. I'll call you tomorrow."
Her lips smiled, but her eyes were wide and unfocused.
Caution was in them, and a hint of something else—pleasure, perhaps, touched with guilt?
He rode home with a feeling of satisfaction that deepened into a fierce joy. If she learned that she could hurt him, learned to expect it, learned to like it, then in time she could endure the thought of being hurt in return. It was only necessary to go slowly, advancing and retreating, shifting his ground, stripping her defenses gradually: until at last, whether for guilt or pleasure or love, she would marry him.