"So witty and intelligent," he reminded her.
"And so handsome."
"Do you really think so?"
"Oh yes," she said, "I especially like your dueling scar, that"s a nice touch."
"Thank you," he said, gratified. ""Sfeu"re the first person who"s ever mentioned it I"ve been waiting for years for someone to ask about it. Sometimes people think it"s dirt on the projector lens."
She grinned. "It goes well with the baseball cap."
He paused a moment, unsure, "Um..."
"No, really," she a.s.sured ftim, "That projection"s a perfect portrait of your personality. It"s not based on a chromosomal extrapolation, is it?"
"Naw," he said, putting a grin in his voice. "It"s me as I want to be. I"d have hated it if an extrap of me came out with a receding chin and a big nose, so 1 never tried to find out. I"m Simeon, the self-created!"
"Wise," she agreed, "very wise."
The door opened and Amos stood on the threshold. "Channa!" he cried out in a pa.s.sionate voice.
She sat bolt upright on the bed, her lips parted in surprise. "I thought you"d left."
He rushed to her side and drew her into his arms. "How can I leave you like this?" he said, stroking her hair.
Simeon cursed under his breath. Leave it to Amos to undo all his hard work. Just when fve got her cheered up and back to something near hernffrnud-forher-frame of mmd.
Channa put up a hand, found Amos" face and leaned forward to kiss him, smiling because she had caught the corner of his mouth and was working her way into a position that satisfied her.
When the long kiss ended, Amos said with a sigh, "You want me!"
No, you a.s.s! She wants a double malt and a ticket to "Death in the Twenty-First." Would that I had hands, Oh Amos ben Sierra Nueva, to clout you up alongside the head with.
Channa didn"t answer but held her head as though looking at Amos through her bandages. Amos smiled at her, the smile of a man who believes he can accomplish anything, a smile that proclaimed the beai^r to be the recipient of a miracle. " I came to ask you to come with me," he said, laughing. "You did?" she said ina dreamy tone. They kissed again, more deeply, Channa burrowed deeper into his embrace, sighing like someone relieved of a pain they did not know they suffered. "I love you, Channa," he said. "I love you, Simeon," she murmured. Amos stiffened. Channa raised her blind face to his and whispered huskily again. "I love you."
He released her and moved back. She hesitated and turned her head from side to side. "Amos? What is it? Is someone here?"
"Yes,"he said stiffly, "someone who comesbetween us," Puzzled, Channa reached out blindly with one hand, the other resting on Amos"s chest. "There"s no one here but us. What are you talking about?"
"Simeon," he said the name with a hiss. "For whom you have just declared your love."
Her face altered abruptly fromjoy to chagrin. "I... I..." shebegan in confusion.
"A gentleman of the Sierra Nueva does not intrude. I am in the way," Amos said, flinging off her hands and jumping to his feet. "I will leave you alone together." And he was gone.
Channa swung her legs from the bed and lunged after him. She moved with unexpected speed and before Simeon could warn her, she crashed into the wall, just beside the door. Weeping, she stepped to the right point and the door opened for her.
"Amos! Wait!" she shouted and this time Simeon opened the outside door but she paused on the threshold to get her bearings and heard, all too dearly, the elevator"s dosing.
"Amos! Don"t go!" she cried, and heard it engage. She stood leaning her head against the metal, sobbing gently, tears soaking the adhesive synthetic of her bandages.
Inside the descending lift, j4teios leaned his head against the wall, Channa"s desperate voice echoing in his mind. Almost, but not quite louder than her whisper - "I love you, Simeon."
"Where do think you"re going?" Simeon asked him. He straightened and gritted his teeth. "To the docks," he said crisply. "I>must return to Bethel!"
Simeon gave a dramatic sigh. "And who"s to go between Bethel and SPRIM and MM? Who saves the saved from the savior?"
Amos was aghast at hearing his own thoughts come back at him from Simeon.
"Someone has to handle them," Simeon continued. "Rachel can. She"s a trained infosystems spe..." "Rachel!" Simeon roared in surprise. "She wouldn"t know how to handle them. They"d twist her up into little knots. Not that she isn"t twisted right now." "They say they cannot interfere..." "They say, they say," Simeon chanted back at him. "Use your wits, Amos, and don"t suggest Joseph. He"s the guy you need on the planet, coaxing your people out of whatever lairs they"ve hidden in. No, you"re the only one who can be johnny-on-the-spot here!"
"What I do now is my business," Amos said in a snarling tone. "You have no right to interfere either ..." Only then did Amos notice that the elevator had stopped moving. He crossed his arms. "So, do you mean to hold me prisoner here until Joseph, Rachel and the others have left?"
"Emotionally you"ve been a prisoner since you got here. Why do think I went to so much trouble to get SPRIM and MM involved with Bethel?"
"You did. But the Admiral and the Commodore..."
"Listened to what I had to tell them, which is more than you ever do. You"ve got to be here..."
Outrage, indignation, disgust and fury raced unchecked across Amos" fece. "So? You admit it** "Huh?" * "You admit that you only wish to make of me a s.e.x toy," Amos cried pa.s.sionately, "a surrogate for yourself with Channa!"
"I what?" Simeon"s voice reverberated in the confines of the small chamber. "You are bughouse! Which is probably why it"s such an interesting idea," he added in a reasonable, half-amused tone, "but you said it, I didn"t. However, it"s not on my behalf you"ve got to be here. It"s Channa"s. She really is in love with you, Amos. Can"t you get that through your arrogant to-the-manor-born head?"
"Loves me? Loves me? Then why does she embrace me and say, I love you, Simeon?"
"And, of course, she hasn"t been calling you Simeon Amos for the past intense two weeks, has she?"
"BanchutT Amos smacked his forehead with the fiat of his palm, his expression one of utter dismay.
"It sure wasn"t me, or my holo, or even the sh.e.l.l of me she was kissing just now! Cut her a litde slack. She"s been blinded, dammit! She"s scared, she"s exhausted, she"s under pressure. Don"t cut the heart out of her for a slip of the Up!"
"A slip?"
"A slip! You ego-centric rag-head selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
"But you love her, too!" Amos brandished his fist, glaring about him to find a target for his frustration and wrath.
"Yes, I love her. Just as much as you do. No, probably a lot more. And yes, she"s in love with me a little, and I treasure that But I can"t touch her, Amos. I can"t hold her no matter how much I would like to. What are you worrying about?** "That she dreams of you and wonders what it would be like to be inyour arms." In the confines of the elevator Amos heard the sound of his angry jealous words echo back at him. "I think that she would Hke to close her eyes and hear your voice whisper to her as I make love to her. I will not be that fantasy for her, no$for you."
"Well, I"ll tell you what / think. I think that you are a dirty-minded, fat-headed, parochial, small-minded, jealous hunk of pig fat. Just let me give you a taste of what she"s going through and you stalking off and leaving her alone with it."
Simeon turned off the lights in the elevator. Amos was plunged into pitch blackness; just long enough to reach the stage of imagining lights and colors to console himself. The human eye is not meant for complete darkness. Even on an overcast night with eyes dosed there is some ambient light The darkness and motion were disorienting.
And frightening, the Bethelite admitted to himself.
"Stop it" Amos said calmly, but firmly. Simeon didn"t answer. "Stop it, I said," a trace of unease creeping into his voice. An accident, who would doubt his word?
Simeon brought the elevator to a halt "It"s unpleasant, isn"t it?" Simeon asked quietly.
"Yes," Amos said shordy, sullenly. "Please, would you turn on the lights?"
"Channa can"t," Simeon observed. "It"s possible they won"t come back on and she"ll have to get a prostheses, one of those devices they set into your face. Yup, things could look like this to her forever."
"What do you want me to do?" Amos demanded. "I would give her my sight if 1 could."
"That"s a safe offer," Simeon observed contemptuously, "she wouldn"t accept such a sacrifice even if it was needed."
"Then what would you have me do?" Amos was nearly shouting now, flapping his arms hard against his sides.
"Something a lot easier. Hold her. Just put your arms around her and hold her close. You softsh.e.l.ls need that. I never had it so I don"t miss it"
Amos shifted position, silent "{ would hock my shel^if I could physically comfort her B ut I can"t. I can make sure she gets what she needs from the one person she"ll accept it from. And let me tell you something, lordling, even to comfort Channa, I wouldn"t want to stay a softsh.e.l.l. You"re cripples next to usl You realize that? We have senses, abilities, that you can"t even begin to imagine. But yes, in this one area, I am jealous of you. Despite that, I arranged... yes, n.o.ble being that / am... arranged for you to have to stay on this station to handle all the detaik the Bethelite leader will have. So that you could also comfort the woman we both love. There I"ve said it aloud!
"I"ve done all I can, Amos," and now Simeon"s voice was tinged with a helpless note. "I"ve been with her since she was brought to the hospital I haven"t left her. When she wakes up, I wish her good morning and mine is the last voice she hears at night I"m die one who guides her safely across a room. I"m the one who tells her that what she"s looking for is a litde to the right I"m the one who makes sure she gets her meals. I"ve put up with her bouts of temper and self-pity and I"ve talked her through her moments of panic I"m with her constandy. But you walk into the room - at long last I might add - and it"s like I"ve never existed. Did you see her? She lit up like a star going nova. Andyou have the gall to walk out on her!"
Simeon turned the lights back on and Amos squinted briefly as his vision adjusted.
The door opened and Channa raised her head, halfdisbelieving she heard the sound of his step, the eagerness with which he approached her.
"Oh, Amos!" She reached out her arms tentatively toward him.
"Ah, Channa," and Amos took her hands and pulled her into the circle of his arms. This only I may do, he thought possessively, proudly and yet, because of that brief darkness, sadly, too, because Simeon would never have this. I"m sorry. Forgive me," he whispered, stroking her hair.
Channa sobbed once and tried to apologize, the words stumbling over his, but he stopped her with a kiss.
Simeon watched them enter the lounge, but decided not to follow them. This is going to be tough enough, he thought, / think I"U work up to it gradually. But wasn"t it a great game I played ?
"Before... 1 came to tell you that I must stay longer on the station than we had thought," Amos said. "When I must return to Bethel..."
"Stay?" and the gladness in her face and voice rea.s.sured Arnos as no argument from Simeon ever would, how much Channa did indeed love him.
"Stay ... for now," he said, trailing caressing fingers around her lovely face. This, too, I may do that he caTtnot.
"For now?" Then a return of her deep and genuine fear caught at his heart.
"I must return to Bethel," he said slowly. "I have obligations there."
"I have them here. I can"t leave Simeon or Joat," Channa said piteously.
And Amos knew that she also meant these quarters which she knew even in her blindness, and this station which was surely now as much her heart"s home as Bethel was his.
"Neither can I leave my people, my planet Nor do I ask such sacrifice of you," he said, using die force of his personality to rea.s.sure her. He smiled down at her, thumbs caressing the velvety skin of her temples. She searched his face with her fingertips and smiled in response.
"But several times in every year, I must return to this station on the business of my people and my world," he went on. "That, I may in all conscience do." A wry shrug. "If my people cannot do without their prophet now and then, then I will not have taught them well. Perhaps the day will c&ne when they need no man to stand between them and G.o.d, and I will be free to raise my horses and roses in peace."
Her face lit. "And I could visit sometimes, couldn"t I?" she murmured.
"With Joat," Amos said, and then in a far more persuasive and loving tone, "although it is not well for a child to be alone, without brothers and sisters..."
"Yes," she laughed as she sensed the change in his stance, falling formally to one knee but before he would speak. She held him upright with her hands.
"In a matter such as this, I should ask permission of your father," Amos said, rising and drawing her close. "But Simeon will do."
She fisted him lightly under the short ribs. "I"ll speak to Simeon on my own behalf."
"We will then both address Simeon the Father. But," Amos said in her ear, after a time. "There is one condition."
"What?"
"You must never call me Simeon again." She drew her head back and nodded solemnly. He touched her chin gently. "You may, however," he went on, wishing for once that Simeon was listening, "call me Persephone."
EPILOGUE.
The chills were less now, and the survivors recovering, although a quarter of the crew had died of the fever and more gone mad.
Belazir t"Marid clenched his rattling teeth against a paroxysm as he fay in the darkened bridge, while the Dreadful Bride fled outward all alone.
"Someday," he whispered
THE END.