"Nothing. Forget it. Where have you been?"
"Moving around, talking, learning what I could. It was little enough. What did the Council decide?"
"They're still deciding. They'll let us know."
"You, Earl, not me. I abrogated my responsibility. What they decide for you will apply to me also." Kusche moved deeper into the room and stood looking down at the table with its wine and delicacies. "They're mad, all of them. Living in this maze like rats in a warren. A pity we learned too late. The chance of a lifetime and we didn't know." He poured himself wine as if yielding to an inward struggle. "And it would have been so easy."
Dumarest watched the entrepreneur as he drank. The man seemed to have shrunken a little, lost some of his oozing confidence, his easy bonhomie. Now, as he swallowed the wine, little points of reflected brilliance danced from the stone of his heavy ring.
"A chance," he said again as he set down the goblet. "You to make the claim and me to back you. You know the game as well as I do. Tell them what they want to hear. Embroider it as much as the traffic will stand and arouse their hope and greed. Sell them something you haven't got, then make them afraid of losing what they never had. Promises, speculations, hints-there would have been no need of lies. You could have given them what they wanted and named your own price."
The location of Earth. The thing he didn't have. Dryly, Dumarest mentioned it.
"You could have invented something, Earl. Fed them a line. Hell, this is no time to grow a conscience. Not when our lives are at stake."
A man in character, putting the question of easy profit first, the regret at a lost opportunity, mentioning personal danger only at the end. An act? If so he performed well-but light sparkled from the quiver of his ring as he poured himself more wine.
Dumarest left him to it, stepping from the room into the passage outside, to stand for a moment with his fingers resting on the wall, to turn finally to his right where stairs rose in sweeping curves to the upper galleries.
She came to him while he sat on a bench studying a mural depicting a wooded glade, halting to one side as her eyes searched his face. A scrutiny he ignored as she slowly came close, rising when her hand touched his shoulder to turn and look down into the wide-spaced green eyes inches below his own.
"Althea?"
Her name and a question which she chose to leave unanswered.
"You knew I was there," she accused. "How?"
"I smelled your perfume."
"I don't wear any."
"The scent of your hair," he said, and touched it with a gentle hand. "The Council?"
"Have made their decision." He was in no mood for games and she had been at fault to tease him. "You are to be given a choice, Earl, but I know which you will take. To stay here and work with us. To mingle with us and to join us in every way."
"As an equal?"
"In time, yes." Then as she saw his expression she added quickly, "You must be fair. You came here as an uninvited stranger. An interloper. The trespass alone merited death. You are still an unknown quality. After a few years in which to prove your loyalty you will become truly one of the Terridae."
And, until then, to do what? Dumarest could guess the answer. No establishment such as he had seen could operate without those to tend the machines, clean the halls, dust, sweep, clean. He would live as a menial.
"And the alternative?"
"One you would not accept. Death, Earl." Her hand rested on his own, her fingers warm, groping with a sudden intimacy. "Don't let's talk about it."
"Why not? Are you afraid of death?" She and all the rest of the Terridae, and he saw the movement of her eyes, the small signs which betrayed her fear of personal termination. More gently he said, "All things die in their season, Althea. It is the way of life-as you must know to have depicted it so well."
He turned her to face the mural, pointing out the drift of gaudy-winged insects, the birds waiting to feed on the bright allure, the faint mesh of a spider's web, the furry creature watching the bird as it was watched in turn by a lithe animal larger than itself.
A lesson in paint wrought with artistic genius like those he had seen repeated over and over in the corridors and chambers of galleries: adornment enamored of life, each wall a canvas for its depiction.
She said, "Earl! You're hurting me!"
"Sorry."
He released his grip but the pressure of his fingers remained on her arm to stir her senses with ghostly dominance. An unconscious display of his strength and she felt the reaction of her body in a flood of raw and primitive demand, which she resisted with the aid of banal conversation.
"We love life," she explained, looking at the mural and feeling it necessary to explain. "Death is so final. A total erasure. A waste." Pausing, she added, "That's why some of us wanted our caskets decorated. A fashion I think will be discontinued. At least the habit of using outside artists. The pursuit of perfection can be carried too far."
"Is your casket decorated?"
"Of course. Would you like to see it?" She stepped from him to turn, smiling, waiting for him to follow. "It isn't far."
She led him to an elevator which dropped them to lower depths where the air held a chill crispness and thick padding muffled their footsteps as it absorbed echoes, turning her words into a flat monotone. Chatter to which he paid little attention, concentrating instead on the chambers with their low roofs and thick dividing walls, the caskets set out in neat array.
"Here!" She halted beside one, turning to look at him with a smile. "What do you think of it?"
She raised the lid, a portion of the side swinging down to allow easy examination and entry. Within, the padding was of pale green, the carvings the deeper hue of natural jade. Again they depicted life but were subtly different from those he had seen in the other box. The figures were less polished, less discreet in shape and form and action. As she grew older they would probably be changed but now, in her, the tide of life and creation ran strong.
"It's snug," she said from where she stood at his side. "Warm and cozy. Once the lid is down nothing else matters, nothing else exists."
And nothing would be lacking except the one thing she now needed. Dumarest could sense it; the femininity she radiated, which carried her sexual invitation and desire. A message of which she was consciously unaware but which betrayed her inner yearnings.
"Earl!" Her hand was warm against his own. "Would you like to try it? With me, I mean? There is room for us both."
To lie and yield to the pleasure of the moment, to feel the softness of her, to respond to her passion. Time extended by the magic contained in the casket, minutes turned into hours, hours into days. A time to dream and sleep, to dream and wake to dream again. Time flowing past like a streaming river. Time he did not have.
"Earl?" Her hand closed in anticipation of his answer. "Will you go first?"
"No." He softened his refusal. "This isn't the time, Althea."
She misunderstood, the false explanation saving her from the hurt of rejection.
"Of course! You're worried about the verdict. But, Earl, you have no choice. To die or to work with us-how can you hesitate?"
The logic of a child; she hadn't even considered the other alternative. To die or to stay, she had said-what if he chose to leave?
A question he almost asked, then changed his mind as caution prickled its warning. As yet she was friendly, almost an ally; it would be madness to make her an enemy. And he could guess the answer: if he tried to leave they would kill him. At least they would try.
He stepped back, looking at her casket, memorizing the decorations, the small differences which distinguished it from the others. So many others. He counted them, added the number of rooms he had seen, guessed at others which must exist. When had it begun?