molecules could not restore the past.
Taleen? Taleen - -the ghost came then, for a breath, a shimmer of golden girl flesh, a savage little mouth slashing at his, an imperious cry of passion somewhere in limbo.
Zoe said: 'You don't answer me, Richard.' She had been calling him Richard all day, not Dick.
He could not answer her. The brief carnal phantom vanished and he did not know who Taleen was. Had he ever known?
'I don't know anyone named Taleen,' he said. 'Should I? Why are you asking?'
When he touched her again she went rigid and pulled away, but her voice was calm. Zoe was always calm, except in passion.
'Really, Richard, I wish you wouldn't try to deceive me. I deserve better than that. So do you. We're neither of us fools, nor lying children. If you've found another woman for God's sake tell me, just simply tell me, and that will be that. I am not a clinger, you know. I don't make scenes. But after what we have had of each other I think I deserve honesty. That's why I am so puzzled and hurt, really. I know you are honest, just as I know you are a gentleman - and that is why I cannot understand.'
'Can't understand what, Zoe? For God's sake! What is this all about? You have been sulking underneath all day, and when I ask why, suddenly you come up with a name! Taleen? I suppose it's a name. And I don't know what in hell you're talking about!'
Did he know? What just now, faster than light, had pressed against his brain? A golden-orbed and blue - painted breast? Gone.
He pulled Zoe to him in an embrace that was nearly savage. She cried out. 'Dick! Please - you're hurting me.' For the first time today she had called him Dick.
'I'm sorry, honey.' Yet he held her firmly, made her turn to face him so their eyes glinted close in the moonlight. 'But you've got to tell me what this is all about, Zoe. It is all getting a little crazy, you know. Barmy as hell!'
Lord L would know, of course, and Lord L must be asked and made to tell. Was the giant computer, and the subsequent, memory treatments, affecting his brain permanently? That could wait. Right now he was in deep trouble with the woman he loved.
'All right,' said Zoe. Some of the hurt left her voice. 'Maybe it was only a nightmare. Maybe I'm only a jealous fool. After all, Richard, I have never known you to lie to me.'
She still called him Richard.
'Last night, Richard, after we had been in bed an hour or so, you began to make love to a woman named Taleen. You woke me up by threshing about and calling her name. You were going through the actual physical motions of love - sweating and groaning and crying. And you - you...' She broke off her words and looked at' him.
Blade stared at her, stunned and a little afraid. 'Why didn't you wake me, for God's sake?'
'I couldn't. I tried. Don't you think I tried! But I was afraid of you, afraid of being smashed. I know how powerful you are, and how gentle you are, at least always with me, but last night you were a different man. I had never seen that man before and I did not like him. I hated him! You were a great ravening savage brute, Richard, and I was frightened to death. Finally I just slipped out of bed and watched from a corner until it was over.'
'How long?'
'At least half an hour. When you had finally spent, actually spent, you sighed and rolled over and went back to sleep like a tired baby.'
He had had time to think now and knew that this scene was only an entry into another - to others. This storm had been brewing for a long time and now it was going to break. He tried the light note.
'All it means, love, is that I had a particularly realistic nightmare, an erotic dream, and you had the bad luck to witness it.'
He smiled at her, so close, their eyes mirroring. The smile that J, with his acerbic tongue, sometimes alluded to as the coup de grace.
'It also means,' said Blade, 'that I am a lousy lover. A selfish pig that cares only for my own satisfaction. A pig that rolls over and snores without even a goodnight kiss. Now I ask you, darling, is that the Blade you know? Even if there were another woman, which there isn't - and I swear that on the Queen and my own sainted mother - would I treat her like that? Even in a dream? So you see it was only a nightmare. Someone else's nightmare. Not me at all. I think we had best just forget it. Come sweets, and give a kiss, and I'll pay you back threefold.'
This time the quote did not work. The smile did not work. The famous Blade charm did not work. Zoe turned her face away from his.
'I think we had best not forget it, Richard. The nightmare, yes. You are probably right and it was only that. I am a little fool and there is no other woman named Taleen. It is an odd name, though. To imagine, dream up, even in a nightmare!'
Even the best, the sweetest, of them have nasty claws.
Blade sighed and closed his eyes against the moonlight, plucked a stalk of heather and chewed on it, and silently goddamned Lord L and all the boffins, and computers, and J and M16A, and especially damned himself as far back as Oxford for having let himself be recruited there. He damned the concept of duty and knew he could never refute it. Most especially he damned, to the nethermost regions of the darkest pit, the Official Secrets Act. There was never any release from it. Not ever. Even if duty and country and decency did not deter - the Act did. They had you forever. You opened your mouth once, one faint whisper, and they hung you. Even J would do it. And J loved him like a son.
Zoe was speaking quietly. 'Until a few months ago, Richard, you were asking me to marry you.'
And so he had been. He had loved her then and he loved her now. He gritted his teeth and was silent. The gulls fluttered on their ledge. The moon sailed away to adventure. Blade waited. He might yet get out of this one, but it was going to be a near thing. Christ! He didn't want to lose this woman.
'I wouldn't at first,' she went on, 'because of a number of things. There was no rush, I didn't know very much about you, and I wasn't sure if I loved you enough for marriage. Then, when I was sure, and loved you
