“Radu —”
He did not turn. As her eyes grew more accustomed to the dimness, Laenea saw his breath clouding the glass.
“I applied to pilot training,” he said softly, his tone utterly neutral.
Laenea felt a quick flash of joy, then uncertainty, then fear for him. She had been ecstatic when the administrators accepted her for training. Radu did not even smile. Making a mistake in this choice would hurt him more, much more, than even parting forever could hurt both of them.
“What about Twilight?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice unsteady. “They refused” — he choked on the words and forced them out —”they refused me.”
Laenea went to him, put her arms around him, turned him toward her. The fine lines around his blue eyes were deeper, etched by distress and failure. She touched his cheek. Embracing her, he bent to rest his forehead on her shoulder. “They said I’d never even make it through the training. I’m bound to our own four dimensions. I’m too dependent… on night, day, time… My circadian rhythms are too strong. They said…” His muffled words became more and more unsure, balanced on a shaky edge. Laenea stroked his hair, the back of his neck, over and over. That was the only thing left to do. There was nothing at all left to say. “If I survived the operation… I’d die in transit.”
Laenea’s vision blurred, and the warm tears slipped down her face. She could not remember the last time she had cried. A convulsive sob shook Radu and his tears fell cool on her shoulder, soaking through her shirt.
“I love you,” Radu whispered. “Laenea, I love you.”
“Dear Radu, I love you too.” She could not, would not, say what she thought: That won’t be enough for us. Even that won’t help us.
She guided him to a wide low cushion that faced the ocean; she drew him down beside her, neither of them really paying attention to what they were doing, to the cushions too low for them, to anything but each other. Laenea held Radu close. He said something she could not hear.
“What?”
He pulled back and looked at her, his gaze passing rapidly back and forth over her face. “How can you love me? We could only stay together one way, but I failed —” He broke the last word off, unwilling, almost unable, to say it.
Laenea slid her hand from his shoulders down his arms and grasped his hands. “You can’t fail at this, Radu. The word doesn’t mean anything. You can tolerate what they do to you, or you can’t. But there’s no dishonor.”
He shook his head and looked away.
Laenea wondered if this were the first time he had ever failed at anything important in his life, at anything that he desperately wanted. He was so young… too young not to blame himself for what was out of his control. Laenea drew him toward her again and kissed the outer curve of his eyebrow, his high cheekbone. Salt stung her lips.
“We can’t —” He pulled back, but she held him.
“I’ll risk it if you will.” She slipped her hand inside the collar of his shirt, rubbing the tension-knotted muscles at the back of his neck, her thumb on the pulse-point in his throat, feeling it beat through her. He spoke her name so softly it was hardly a sound.
Knowing what to expect, and what to fear, they made love a third, final, desperate time, exhausting themselves against each other beside the cold dark sea.
o0o
Radu was nearly asleep when Laenea kissed him and left him, forcibly feigning calm. In her scarlet and gold room she lay on the bed and pushed away every concern but fighting her spinning heart, slowing her breathing. She had not wanted to frighten Radu again, and he could not help her. Her struggle required peace and concentration. What little of either remained in her kept escaping before she could grasp and fix them. They flowed away on the channels of pain, shallow and quick in her head, deep and slow in the small of her back, above the kidneys, spreading all through her lungs. Near panic, she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until blood-red lights flashed; she stimulated adrenaline, until excitement pushed her beyond pain, above it.
Instantly she forced an artificial, fragile calmness that glimmered through her like sparks.
Her heart slowed, sped up, slowed, sped (not quite so much this time), slowed, slowed, slowed.
Afraid to sleep, unable to stay awake, she let her hands fall from her eyes, and drifted away from the world.
Chapter 4
When Radu woke, Laenea had gone. He slid his hand across the cushions. The place where she had lain was cold. Radu got up. Slowly, he dressed.
Outside Laenea’s room, he hesitated. He opened the door very quietly. Laenea slept soundly, dappled in blue by the light of the aquarium. When she was ill he had sat by her side for hours, watching her sleep, but now he felt like an intruder. In silence, he moved into the room and picked up his duffel bag.
He hesitated, wanting to kiss her one last time, wanting her to awaken and tell him she had magically discovered a way for them to stay together. But there was no point in waking her, no point to prolonging their good-byes. Nothing he and Laenea could say to each other could change anything now. Pilots did not mix with ordinary human beings. Laenea was a pilot, and Radu was an ordinary human being. The documents from the pilot selection committee proved he would never be anything more.
So Radu Dracul closed the door and walked away from Laenea Trevelyan, whom he had known for such a short time yet loved for so long.
He left Kathell Stafford’s apartment and entered the elevator. It rose smoothly toward the surface of the sea. No one joined him, for which he was grateful. He felt incapable of even civility, much less conventional social pleasantries.
He felt more alone than he had at any time since Twilight’s plague. After it, he had grown so used to being alone that loneliness had ceased to bother him; and he had had his dreams. All that was changed. Reality had overtaken the dreams, fulfilled them, then shattered them completely.
Outside, in the dark, the sea wind caressed Radu’s scarred face and ruffled his hair. The smell of rocket fuel tinged the breeze, but not too strongly to destroy its freshness. The tangy and, to him, quite alien winds of earth made him homesick for the deep forests and cloud-laden, crystalline atmosphere of his home world.
He felt he had to get away from the spaceport and away from earth.
A tram waited for passengers on the perimeter track, but Radu decided to walk. He had plenty of time to get to the control office before the next shuttle liftoff to Earthstation. He set off down the footpath.
Damp metal surfaces gleamed beneath the powerful lights. Radu moved from areas of harsh illumination toward patches of pure dark grazed by moonlight. He was glad of the long walk. It helped him think — though he knew he would not suddenly come upon some magical idea that would allow him and Laenea to remain lovers. Nothing would help him do that, but walking fast, pushing himself, stretching his muscles, felt far better than sitting at the shuttle gate, waiting and chasing himself in mental circles. Besides, he needed the exercise. He was used to much more physical labor than he ever did as a member of a ship’s crew.
He brushed his hand across his hair and his fingers came away damp with dew or sea spray. That brought him a sudden vivid image of Laenea, her long dark hair glistening as they walked together through the fog, their arms around each other, wrapped in her velvet cape. They had stopped at Kathell Stafford’s party —
Radu halted abruptly, blinking, suspecting a hallucination. Kathell had packed up the fog-catchers and gaudy pavilions, her friends, and her servants, and taken the whole party to some other unlikely spot. Yet a single black-and-silver tent, alone and forlorn, still stood on the gray deck. The faint night breeze swayed its heavy fringe.
Radu walked toward the tent. It was real. A silver cord held the front flap open. Inside, Kathell knelt on the satin floor next to her white tiger.
The great creature’s rough breathing filled the tent. Radu’s shadow fell over Kathell. She looked up.
“Hello, Radu Dracul,” she
said, without surprise. Radu wondered if anything ever surprised her, or if she had seen and experienced everything he could imagine, and many things he could not.
Radu entered the tent and sat on his heels beside her. She stroked the tiger’s shoulder, but it did not respond.
“Why are you out here all alone?” Radu said.
She gestured toward the tiger. “As you see.”
“I mean, why didn’t you come back to your home?”
“My home?” she said, her voice distracted. “Do you mean the apartment? But I loaned it to you and Laenea.”
Her matter-of-fact reply prevented Radu from questioning a statement he thought distinctly odd. He let the subject drop.
“Do you need help?”
Kathell shrugged. “I made everyone else go away, because I didn’t want them to have to see him die. But I don’t want him to die, either.”
Kathell’s white tiger was the only member of the species Radu had ever encountered, so when he had first seen it, he assumed its color was normal. Perhaps for that reason he noticed the animal’s more serious mutations, while others saw only its unusual coloring. No healthy creature walked as the white tiger did, with poor control of its hind legs and its spine very much too curved; and no carnivore would evolve cross- eyed. To Radu, the tiger was another example of the extravagance of earth, of things valued for their appearance rather than for their usefulness or efficiency. He could not now think of anything to say. His sympathy would sound insincere, for while he was sorry for Kathell’s distress he saw no reason to regret her deformed pet’s death. Its passing would release it.
The tiger’s breathing grew rougher and more labored.
“My friends won’t understand,” she said. “I could still keep him alive —”
“No, you mustn’t!” Radu felt his face and throat color with embarrassment. If she talked herself into keeping the animal alive, what business was it of his? Yet he could not stand the thought that the creature, who should be so magnificent, might be forced to stumble through its life for another year, or two, or ten, because people wanted to absorb its uniqueness.
“I’m sorry,” Radu said.
“No,” she said. “Don’t be. You’re right.”
The tiger stopped breathing. Radu and Kathell both stared at it. Radu held his breath. All he could hear was the passing of the sea.
The white tiger shuddered and convulsed, jerking its hind feet up against its belly. Foam dripped from its mouth. Then its muscles slackened and it lay motionless. It breathed only intermittently. Kathell did not move or speak while its life was passing. Radu flinched every time the creature gasped for one more straining breath. The intervals lengthened.
The tiger took so long to die that Radu wanted to grab Kathell and shake her and demand that she call a veterinarian, even a doctor, to put the animal out of its pain. But finally, just when he thought he could stand it no longer, Kathell felt for the creature’s pulse. She let her hand drop; her shoulders slumped.
“Poor damned thing,” she muttered. Her voice shook. Her face was nearly in darkness, but tears glistened on her cheeks. Radu laid his hand over hers in the comforting, asexual way by which one crew member helped another wake. Kathell stiffened and pulled away. Radu drew back in turn, a little hurt, but embarrassed, too, feeling that she must have mistaken his gesture.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I’ve known long enough that this had to happen.” She looked over at him, her movement abrupt. “I shouldn’t have let you stay,” she said. “I shouldn’t have inflicted this on you.” She sounded neither regretful nor sad, but angry and frightened. Laenea had said Kathell never asked anything of anyone, but surely she would accept sympathy freely given.
“You’ve shown me only kindness,” he said. “Staying was little enough for me to do.”
“I didn’t ask you to do anything!” She got up and loosened the tent’s heavy satin floor, detaching it from the walls. Radu got up to help, but she motioned him back.
“I’d like to help,” he said. “I’ve taken things from you, it’s only fair —”
“If you can’t take what I offer without burdening me with gratitude,” she said, ripping the last corner from its fastenings, “there’s no need for you to take it at all!”
She took a vial from her pocket, opened it, and spilled its contents over the tiger’s body. A thin film of dust dulled its coat.
“It’s different where I come from,” Radu said. “We have to depend on each other more.”
She gathered up a corner of the satin. Radu stepped over the edge of the floor and found himself ankle deep in crushed bracken.
“I depend on no one,” Kathell said. “I never accept gratitude.”
“You’ll have to excuse an ignorant barbarian,” Radu said with irritation.
Kathell flung the thick material around the tiger’s body.
“Nor guilt.” Even her tone did not relent. “I don’t want your gratitude and you have no right to try to make me feel guilty.” She folded her arms. Head down, she gazed at the tiger’s shroud.
Speechless, Radu waited beside her, slightly hunched in the low tent. He searched for something to say. The temperature began to rise.
“Come outside,” Kathell said.
She led him onto the deck, then turned back to face the tent’s dark interior.
Sudden intense flames erupted from the shadowed shroud, spilling down its sides like liquid. The bracken ignited, burning with a dry, harsh crackle. Radu stepped back from the heat, but Kathell did not move. Smoke billowed out, and the tiger’s body imploded. The fire died.
The heat faded rapidly; the night breeze dispersed the smoke.
The tent itself remained unscorched. Kathell went back inside and unfolded the satin shroud. In its center lay a scattering of gray dust. She gathered it up in a small cloth bag.
“Go away now.” She was shivering. “Go —” The bravado trembled and broke. She turned away, silently crying, fighting for control.
Radu touched her shoulder, brushing the soft fabric of her gown with his fingertips. She flinched away from him, then abruptly flung herself around and against him. Radu held her, stroking her hair and comforting her as he might a child. She felt like a child, she was so small and frail. For a moment he was back on Twilight, hugging his younger sister, who had come to him terrified and ill with the plague’s first symptoms. She died the next day. The fear and pain and grief of those terrible weeks returned.
Kathell struggled against every tear she shed. Then, in a change as abrupt as all her other changes, she shrugged Radu’s hands from her shoulders and stepped out of his reach. Silhouetted by the light behind her, she wiped her face roughly on her sleeve.
“I told you to leave me alone!” she said, angry and resentful. “I never asked for your help. What do you want?”
Radu shook his head, startled and confused. “I don’t want anything.”
“I owe you now! I won’t leave debts unpaid!”
“I want nothing from you,” he said, feeling as if he had given an unwelcome gift, then demanded reciprocation. “You are Laenea’s friend, and you were kind to me as well.”
“That wasn’t kindness,” she said sharply. “I didn’t even notice it. That has nothing to do with this.”
“Nonsense,” Radu said. “If you feel that a few minutes of time and sympathy need to be repaid, then I am repaying you.”
“I don’t permit anything I give to be repaid!” she said.
“Then permit me the same courtesy.” The conversation had evolved into a strange and disquieting game, which he expected at every move to be ended with Kathell’s being convinced that he had no secret motives.
“No,” Kathell said. “Courtesy has nothing to do with it. I owe you. I do not like to be in debt. Is that so hard to understand?”
“You are not in my debt,” Radu said. He felt as if he had been repeating himself for a long time. “This is trivial. This is silly! Why are you insisting that I demand s
omething of you when I want nothing?”
“Because if once I accept something, I’ll never stop!” she shouted. She took one quick step toward him with her fists clenched and her eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ll not be accused of that ever again!”
The outburst shocked him. “Who accused you of such a thing? And why would you believe it?”
“You don’t know me,” Kathell said. “You never will, and gods willing neither will anyone else.”
“I ask you to forgive me this debt,” Radu said. “That’s all I want, for you to believe I want nothing.”
“Don’t insult me!” she cried. “You’re saying my reasons are meaningless and they are not!”
Radu reached out to her, in supplication, but she struck his hand away. Angry at her for misunderstanding his motion, Radu stepped back and gradually unclenched his fists.
“I want nothing from you,” he said again. “I will accept nothing. I’m leaving earth. With any luck I’ll never see it, or you, again.” He walked around her, staying well out of reach, to continue on his way.
“I owe you. And I intend to pay you and be done with it.”
Radu flushed scarlet in anger and humiliation, but he kept on walking.
“Choose,” Kathell said behind him. “And pick something soon, or you’ll have made yourself an enemy.”
Radu did not look back.
Trams passed him several times, moving silently through the darkness along their magnetic tracks. Toward the center of the spaceport bright lights waxed and waned among clouds of vapor from supercooled fuel.
He was still angry and upset when he reached the control office, which lay nestled in a low complex of buildings at the corner of the landing port. Radu reserved a place on the next shuttle to Earthstation, then requested the transit schedule. Several flights listed crew berths open. As Radu was about to apply to a ship traveling as far as New Snoqualmie, a colony world not unlike Twilight, he noticed the ship was piloted.
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