"More time?" Brim asked. "What else have I got to do this afternoon?"
"Beats me, Mr. Brim," Drummond said, leading the way along a side corridor, "but 'Is 'Ighness evidently thinks you'll be busy with someone. 'E 'as me standin' by for as long as it takes."
"I'll try not to keep either of you too long," Brim said to Moulding.
Drummond stopped by a door at the end of a hall and put his hand on the latch. "Lieutenant Moulding and I have got all the time in the Universe this afternoon, Brim," he said with an abrupt change of character. "I wouldn't want to think you'd wasted even a click of it worrying about either of us—or anything else for that matter." With that, he opened the door and swept Brim inside with a firm hand in the small of his back. "You can ring when you need me—the bell's on a chord in the bar."
As the door clicked shut, Brim found himself in a darkened, paneled lounge off a side corridor. Except for a tiny, well-stocked bar, the room was small and intimate. The kind of room, he guessed, where real diplomacy was carried out, not the opulent ballrooms where phony conferences were posed around ornate tables for public consumption.
Squinting while his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he jumped when a woman's figure rose from a shadowed chair on the opposite side of the room and started toward him. "Margot!" he gasped, his heart suddenly pounding as if it would burst from his chest. "Margot!"
Then his arms were abruptly filled with perfumed softness, her lips smothering his with warm, wet kisses, and for a long time, his mind went whirling aimlessly. When at last he opened his eyes, hers were still closed. He paused while her breathing steadied, then gently kissed her eyes, salty and wet with tears.
"Margot," he whispered. "Sometimes I thought I'd never see you again."
She nodded silently, then opened her eyes and seemed to peer directly into his very spirit. "And I was so afraid for you—every waking moment. It seemed like a million years."
Brim pressed her cheek to his. "I survived—for this day," he said gently.
She hugged him tighter. "Oh, Universe," she whispered, "I've missed you so much, Wilf." After that, she became silent for a long time, as if fighting some terrific force within herself. Finally, she bit her lip "Can you still love me now that things have changed so...?" she asked. Then her voice trailed off into silence again as if she were afraid to finish.
"You mean now that you have a child?" Brim asked, puzzled.
"Something like that, Wilf," she said vaguely, moving her head back slightly so she could focus into his eyes again. "There is now another part of me—an important part, and one that most likely will last as long as I exist. Can you accept that?"
Brim unexpectedly felt something seize inside himself. Here, in this room, he found he couldn't answer the question as he'd expected he might. He'd certainly thought enough about her motherhood over the last year or so. He knew he could accept it. But this child? Involuntarily, he raised his hands in supplication.
"I-I don't know, Margot," he stammered in a sudden agony of emotion. "I never took him into consideration that way."
"You've got to, Wilf," she said, pushing herself gently from his embrace. "I tried to tell you about me in the letter Onrad smuggled out. I guess I didn't do a very good job."
In the light, Brim could see that she was dressed in a white silk blouse and black velvet skirt with high-heeled boots. Her blond hair was piled loosely on her head, and she wore a single strand of pearls around her neck. As usual, she looked stunning. He shook his head, "I simply read into your words what I wanted to hear," he heard himself admit, "not what you were trying to say." He led her to a small sofa and they sat in silence for what seemed to be ages. Finally, his mind formed the one simple question at the root of his problem. "I wonder," he said, "do I really know you anymore, Margot?"
She nodded sadly. "A fair question, Wilf," she answered, again looking deeply into his eyes. "And the answer is partially yes. But only partially."
"Do you still love me?" he asked.
"More than ever, I think," she answered. She smiled and frowned in her own unique way. "Yet I love Rodyard, too. Differently, of course. The important part is that I find my affection for him doesn't subtract from some finite 'love pool' within me. It's an extension—an increase, if you will." She looked at him beseechingly. "Does that make any sense at all?"
Brim thought a moment. It seemed to make sense; but then, he wanted it to. What he failed to understand was how he felt about the child. He shuddered when he remembered how he had been affected by Rogan LaKarn's child long before he had even been born. After a long moment of silence, he took her hand. "How do we get things started again?" he asked. "I mean..." He shook his head. He couldn't put his thoughts into words.
She laughed ruefully and nodded her head. "I don't know," she said. "I'm not even sure what 'getting started' means." She turned to him with a sad little look in her eyes. "Perhaps if I were to take off my clothes here?" she asked.
Brim took a deep breath. "Well," he admitted, feeling a familiar stirring in his loins, "I suppose that's part of it. At least it always was—before I... I couldn't that night."
Margot laughed quietly. "Wilf," she said, turning to place the softness of her hand against his cheek,
"forget about that night back on Avalon. It wasn't your fault—the whole Universe had ganged up on you.
Besides," she added with a look of distress, "this time, it has nothing to do with you. It's me." She shook her head. "Do you think for a moment that I'd be sitting here like this if I were my normal self? You know me better than that. We'd be noisily rutting on this couch right now—and I wouldn't even care who watched us through the spy peepers."
"You mean you don't want to anymore?" Brim asked.
Margot frowned and shifted in her seat. "I'm not sure that's a proper way to put it, Wilf," she answered with a serious little smile. "It's almost as if we'd just finished doing it—and I was at the relaxed end of some great, protracted orgasm. I guess my body's still all taken up with, well, other things right now. It's simply not very conducive to... well... to having the kind of affair we'd been having—like sneaking halfway across a galaxy for one night in bed." She looked at him imploringly. "Do you have any idea what I'm trying to say to you Wilf?" she asked.
Brim tenderly put his arm around her shoulder. "No," he said, "I don't suppose I do."
"Can you live with that?" she asked.
He frowned. "I'm not really sure," he admitted, astonished by his own words. Something very basic had changed since that night in his shabby apartment, but as yet he couldn't completely define what it was, or perhaps didn't want to.
Margot suddenly looked frightened. "Th-then what's to become of us?" she asked.
"Eventually," Brim said, again utterly surprised by his own lack of emotion, "everything we ever wanted in life." He folded her hand in his. "So long as I really love you and you really love me, Margot, it seems to me that all we have to do is wait. Eventually, we'll be together again."
Margot suddenly threw her arms around his shoulders. "Do you mean that, Wilf?" she asked. "Really?"
"I can only prove it to you some time in the future, Margot," Brim answered. "And," he added, probing deeply into her eyes, " you will have to tell me when that time has come—for it will be you who determines it."
After that, they stood silently, wrapped in each other's embrace until the tiny chime of Margot's timepiece sounded from her purse.
"I've got to go," she said.
Brim nodded. "Until then," he said with a strange, empty feeling in his stomach. "You'll let me know."