“Oh, so this is the real you we are seeing?”
I nodded.
“Silent, obedient, and impassive?”
He was teasing me. It made me angry and a little frightened that he would do it in front of the visitor.
Smiling, he said, “I’m sorry, have I embarrassed you?” Since I did not answer, he turned to the alien and said, “I don’t know whether this answers your question about intelligence, but Tedla can beat me at pijico, and I was once considered an expert.”
I felt frozen. First of all, it wasn’t true—I had never beat him; he just let me win from time to time. But more than that, why would he claim such a thing, implying I thought so much of myself that I would try to compete with a learned man? He was making me a laughingstock in front of his visitor, the butt of a condescending joke—the neuter who didn’t know its own limitations and aspired to strut in front of the world, a monkey magister. I was so angry with him I snatched up a tray and turned to the graydoor.
When I was safe in the serving pantry, I slammed the tray down loudly. Britz was just coming in with a plate of puff pastries. It said, “Wow! What’s with you?”
“Britz!” I said, quickly unbuttoning my livery coat and stripping it off. “You’ve got to go in there and serve them.”
Britz’s clownish, big-eared face took on a comical look of bewilderment. “Why?”
“They’re talking about me, and I can’t stand it,” I said. I made Britz put on my coat, which made it look even more comical, since I was taller and the skirt came down below Britz’s knees. Britz would completely break the dignity of the occasion, and serve Squire Tellegen right.
“I’ll be you, Tedla,” Britz said, and took on a pose of dignified, aristocratic reserve. At that moment it was maddening to know that was how the other blands saw me. I whacked Britz on the butt with a tray. “You brainless bland,” I said.
It saw I was genuinely upset and dropped the act. “What am I supposed to say? The squire will ask for you.”
“Tell him I got sick,” I said. Sick of him and his jokes. “I’ll go do your job.”
“Here, take my apron,” Britz said, pulling it off from under my coat. I tied it on over my white silk shirt and seized up a tray of dirty dishes.
When I got down to the kitchen, they all looked at me curiously and asked what was going on. I tried to give a civil answer, but they could tell I was smarting. Britz had been assigned to scrubbing pots, so I rolled up my sleeves and set to work. The others snuck curious looks at me as I worked, since they’d never seen me do menial labor. I was grimly glad to prove I could do it.
Half an hour later we were wiping the counters and putting away the pots, when Britz came flying down the stairs shouting, “He’s coming! The squire’s coming down here!”
The consternation was as great as if aliens were invading. It was the same thing, in a way—an event so untoward and out of all ken that the only rational response was terror. In thirty seconds every bland had melted away, leaving me alone in the kitchen. I wanted to run as well, but I knew it would only make things worse. If the squire was angry enough to break all natural law by coming into grayspace, there was no place on earth where I could hide.
He entered hesitantly, as if uncertain where he was, which may have been true. I had been wiping off the stove, so I kept on as if he weren’t there. He came over to me.
“Tedla, what are you doing down here?” He sounded more bewildered than angry.
“I’m working,” I said, continuing to do so.
“Are you really sick?” he said. He laid a hand on my forehead to feel for fever.
“I’m not sick,” I said.
“Then what’s all this about?”
He truly didn’t know. Without looking at him, I said, “I don’t like being laughed at.”
Astonished, he said, “I wasn’t laughing at you. I was bragging about you. Don’t you recognize praise when you hear it?”
“For a human, that might be praise,” I said. “For a bland, it’s mockery. And it’s cruel.”
Tears were stinging my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry, so I angrily wiped them away. He was looking at me as if nothing in his life had ever been so mysterious.
“Tedla, I would never do anything cruel to you,” he said.
“I know that,” I said. Suddenly I felt terribly ashamed of myself, for being so self-centered, for making him come down here. It all became so unbearable that I began to cry. With only the slightest hesitation he took me in his arms. I clung to him, my face pressed against his shoulder. “Please forgive me,” I said in a choked voice.
He stroked my back comfortingly with one hand, the other cradling my head. “Poor child,” he whispered. “You weren’t made for this life. I wish there were something I could do to save you.”
He kissed my forehead and pressed his cheek against it. Then, as if there were nothing he could do to stop himself, he slowly kissed my lips. I knew there were probably nine pairs of eyes riveted on us, but I didn’t care. In his arms I felt completely invulnerable.
“My dear, dear partner,” he whispered. He used the word that meant “love-partner,” the word older humans use for the youths of their infatuation. It made me giddy to hear it.
I pulled away and wiped my face with the apron. “I’ll go set out your night things,” I said.
“Yes, do that,” he said. His voice was charged with the knowledge of what I meant.
When he came up to his room, I was waiting for him. This time he was ardent from the beginning, as if the abstinence had stored up feelings that had to explode out or destroy him. It was as if he couldn’t get enough of my body. I gave myself over to him completely that night. His passion burned hot into the night, fed on infatuation, guilt, and shame.
The next morning I woke with my head on his chest, his arm still around me. He was staring at the ceiling. When he saw I had roused, he kissed me, then resumed his thoughts.
“You know, Tedla,” he said thoughtfully, “there was a time in my life when I believed that the quickest way to my god was through the senses. I believed in experiencing things to the full, taxing myself to the very limit. Then I grew older, and began to doubt that I could achieve transcendence that way. Until now. Now, it’s all coming back to me, what being really alive feels like. It’s close to something—insanity, enlightenment, I don’t know which.”
He looked down at me, so I smiled at him. It made me feel blessed to see him so happy.
***
I don’t know what love feels like for humans. For me, that first time, it was like having an endless spring of water inside me. It was full, and buoyant, with a tingle of lightning always in the air. I loved the squire with the perfect trust and intensity of youth. I had no notion that the weightlessness could ever turn to vertigo, or that, floating, I might ever look down and see a chasm.
After that night, there was no longer any question of my going back to the roundroom. I became his permanent bed-partner, except when guests stayed overnight and the risk of discovery was too great.
In the months that followed, everyone noticed the change in the squire. He was more vivacious and charming at dinner, and the parties started growing more frequent. He took up old interests and projects neglected for years. He even flirted with his admirers, though it never led to anything. “Are you coming out of exile?” one woman asked him. “Tell me it’s true.”
Elector Hornaday was the one who came closest to guessing the truth. One night she looked at him and said, “I could swear you were in love.” The fear that she would guess nearly froze me to the floor. But I shouldn’t have worried. His friends’ faith in his morality was too blind. I could have stood on the dinner table and shouted out the truth, and none of them would have believed me.
The other blands scarcely knew what to make of such a scandalous situation. They might have tried all the old bland methods for keeping me in line—sabotaging my work, playing tricks with my clothes or food—if it had been anyone but their
own guardian involved. As it was, they imagined me to have power over them, whether I did or not.
The situation was particularly hard on Pelch. Before I came along, Pelch had believed it knew Squire Tellegen through and through, and loved him without the slightest reservation. Now it felt betrayed; it grew waspish and critical of everyone, its temper stretched tight as a drumhead. As time passed, it became less and less able to cope with its duties, in constant emotional turmoil as it was. The result, ironically, was that I became the conduit of information about the squire’s wishes. Not that he ignored Pelch or stopped giving it authority—Pelch just didn’t listen to him, as full of resentment and disapproval as it was.
One day when Pelch was handing out incorrect orders I dared to say, “Pelch, I don’t think that’s what he wanted.”
It turned on me in a rage. “Have you served him for forty years? Did you watch him grow up and become what he is? How do you know what he wants?”
Dribs immediately took Pelch’s side. “If he wanted you to be our supervisor, he’d say so.”
“All right,” I said, shrugging and letting it drop.
Or so I thought. Later, Pelch cornered me alone. “You are destroying him,” it said, its voice shaking. “Before you came, he was the most moral man alive. You’ve corrupted him, made him into something he’s always hated, just to get power for yourself. I’ve seen how you act with him, how you flaunt yourself and tempt him, till he can’t help but give in. If any harm comes to him, it will be your doing.”
I was terribly shaken by Pelch’s words. I brooded on them as I went about my tasks that day, wondering if it was true. Had I brought corruption into a healthy house, like some disease contracted at Brice’s?
At last, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I went upstairs. The squire was alone in the library, reading. I came in quietly and sat down on the floor at his feet, laying my head on his knee. He said quietly, “What is it, Tedla?”
“I just want to be close to you,” I said.
He stroked my hair, and smiled at me tenderly. “You are a great comfort to me,” he said.
I sat there for perhaps ten minutes, just soaking in the reassurance of his presence. It was the only reassurance left to me.
***
The isolation from my own kind drove me more and more toward the human world. It wasn’t just Squire Tellegen, either. There was Magister Galele.
He came often to Menoken Lodge, and I grew quite accustomed to having him around. There was absolutely nothing imposing about him: enthusiastic, disheveled, quite unable to keep himself in order. He treated me with an informality I found disturbing at first, then disarming. He was constantly trying to draw me out in a way no other human—not even the squire—did. I thought it was a game with him; later I learned it was what he was trained to do.
He acted as if it gave him great delight when I was impertinent, and when we were alone he often teased me to get a saucy answer. Sometimes I would indulge him; at others, I would tease him back by being solemn and proper. I was a little apprehensive how Squire Tellegen would feel about my growing friendship with the alien, so in company I concealed it under a layer of formality. To his credit, Magister Galele seemed to understand.
One evening he was there with a party of half a dozen questionaries, and managed to spill wine all over himself before dinner. He could be amazingly clumsy. As the humans were all exclaiming and dabbing him with napkins, I said, “I’ll take care of it if you’ll come with me, Magister.” He followed me downstairs, still joking at his own expense. When we got to his bedroom I made him take off his shirt so I could take it away to be washed. When I got a good look at it, I found it was all caked and spotted with the remains of other meals, besides ink and coffee.
“When did your blands last wash this?” I asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said.
“Give me your burnous,” I said. It was just as I thought. The overgarment was filthy, too—though because of the color it showed it less. Now I itched to turn him out of all his clothes and give them—and him—a good scrubbing. “I’ll clean these for you, and give you something of the squire’s to wear,” I said. “I don’t know what your blands were thinking, to let you out like this.”
“They don’t actually have much to say about it,” he said, mightily amused at my tone.
“Well, they’re neglecting you,” I said. “You shouldn’t let them get away with it.”
He laughed. “Give them a break, you tyrant. They’re not assigned to me personally. There aren’t many people as favored as your mas—guardian is.”
“I bet you could get a Personal, if you asked,” I said. Of course, I had no idea; but an alien magister seemed like a very important person to me.
“I wish I could,” he said. “I live in the order house. We all share the blands’ services. I barely even get to see them.”
“Oh,” I said haughtily, “institutional blands.”
“Definitely not up to your standards,” he said, smiling. “They’re certainly not interested in talking to me.”
I said tartly, “I daresay they’re interested in what they find in your pockets. They’re probably laughing themselves sick, behind your back.”
“Really?” He looked as if I had just revealed something wondrous. “Are you serious, Tedla? That’s how they act when humans aren’t around?”
I gave him a look as if to say, “Are you a complete innocent?”
He got terribly excited then. “Tell me more. What else do they do when they’re alone?”
I couldn’t imagine why he wanted to know, but I was instantly suspicious that it was likely to get someone in trouble—probably me. Looking down, I said, “I didn’t mean it. It’s not really true.”
There was a short silence. Then he said gently, “Tedla, what are you afraid of? Will someone punish you for talking to me?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, then?”
I couldn’t explain to him how our private world was ours alone, and no human ever came prying into it for a good reason. I couldn’t tell him how invasive his question seemed, or how I feared what he might do with the knowledge. None of this was possible to explain to a person who had no notion how the world worked.
“I’ve got to get this soaking,” I said of the wine-stained shirt in my hands. “I’ll get you some clothes.” I left hastily, and when I came back he was silent and thoughtful.
He was as lively as ever later in the evening, though. After dinner, as they were all still at the table drinking liqueurs, someone asked him how his researches were going. He said enthusiastically, “Excellent! I’m actually making some progress at last. I turned up some evidence of an asexual subculture. Up to now, everyone’s denied there is one. But did you know that blands act completely different when we’re not around? They laugh at us, and joke! They’re also socially differentiated—some of them feel superior to others. A kind of occupational stratification.”
There was a chilly silence around the table. Finally a woman said, “They laugh at us behind our backs?”
I was standing against the wall with my eyes firmly fixed on the carpet. I was praying he would have the sense not to say where he had found out, and that none of them would remember whom he had left the room with earlier.
As if he hadn’t noticed their reaction, Magister Galele said brightly, “Yes. I would love to hear a ‘human joke,’ wouldn’t you?”
Someone gave a nervous titter. “I don’t think I would, actually.”
“New horizons in humor,” a man said drily.
“Now I’ve heard everything,” another chimed in.
That night when I was lying in Squire Tellegen’s arms, he looked at me and said, “Do you really ridicule us behind our backs?”
“No,” I said.
He studied my face with a troubled frown. “Tell me the truth, Tedla,” he said.
“We talk about things that happen to us during the day, and laugh at them. Sometimes peopl
e do funny things. We’d go crazy if we couldn’t laugh.”
He relaxed. “Somehow, I couldn’t bear to think of you mocking me in front of the other blands.”
I was mortified that he would think such a thing. “I would never do that,” I said earnestly.
He smiled and kissed me. “Bless you. I thought I knew you better than that.”
But I lay awake thinking his suspicion was well founded. I lied to him and deceived him all the time, in little ways. All blands did that, to make their lives easier. There were things I would never reveal to him. I even pretended a false eagerness for lovemaking, because he got such intense pleasure from it.
He had an alien in his arms, and didn’t even know it.
***
It was not long before Magister Galele was back, this time in the afternoon, and alone. When he saw me he grinned and said, “Damn! I forgot my laundry.” But I knew Dribs was just behind the wall in the bland-run, listening to us, so I didn’t answer.
The moment I showed him into the library, Galele burst out, “Did you notice my little experiment the other night, Tellegen? Damn, but I hit a nerve, eh? Right on the face. What a reaction! I’ll tell you, it’s those sensitive spots that really show up the soft belly of a culture. You people have had armor plating up to now.”
I stood at the door trying to catch Squire Tellegen’s eye so he could tell me if they required refreshments. I desperately wanted to leave. This man was beginning to frighten me. He had no sense of danger.
The squire seemed to be thinking the same thing. He said carefully, “You need to realize, Magister, those were some of the most liberal, open-minded people in all the orders the other night. If you had said the same thing in another setting, your researches might have been shortlived.”
“Oh, I think I know how to choose my moments,” Galele said confidently. “I haven’t been studying you people all these months for nothing. Though up to now you’ve been hard eggs to crack—so urbane and humane. Even Tedla is a master of the polite brush-off.”
I could feel tension charge the room like an electric current. I was standing with my back to the door, clutching the knob so hard behind me that my fingers ached. In a tight voice the squire said, “Have you been trying to interview Tedla?”
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