Blaisse looked up languorously and gestured to a pile of cushions. He was already under the influence of some drug, Subtwo did not know and did not care which one. 'Sit down, sit down,' Blaisse said, motioned for a drink to be poured, and turned back to his conversation with the gilt-gray-haired woman on his right. The serving slave moved forward, sidling very close, and poured three layers of different colored fluids into a heated goblet that mixed them slowly. The effect was revolting. The slave rubbed her naked hip against Subtwo's shoulder. Subtwo ignored her and she went away. A male slave replaced her, but Subtwo ignored him as well. At the other end of the table, Subone and Clarissa whispered and laughed together and put their hands inside each other's clothing.
Subtwo sat in the midst of golden cushions, still with distaste, hiding his dislike with rigidity. The people nearby began to watch him covertly, but none addressed him. The noise of conversation became almost white in its meaninglessness. The crystal chandeliers broke the light into spectra, giving the impression of underwater illumination. The serving of food began. Accustomed to artificial fare, Subtwo had no taste for natural products. Unruly textures disturbed him; chewing the meat made his jaws ache. The probable cost of the banquet did not impress him. He ate slowly and cautiously, tasting every mouthful of each course for suspicious inclusions, wishing for distilled water to wash away the taste of spices. He looked for Madame, but she was not in the room. He knew she must be within calling distance, but he did not know how to call her, and she was one person, perhaps the only one, whom he did not wish to command.
As the evening progressed, the clamor made by the revelers rose toward his threshold of pain. Subtwo was bored, but too uncomfortable to let his thoughts take a path away from this gathering of animals. He noticed Blaisse's slave girl watching him again, always watching, with those round, jeweled, silver-blue eyes, with her hair brushed back like a mane, with her breasts only half-covered, lying behind Blaisse, peering over his shoulder.
Blaisse turned to Subtwo and smiled as though his guest had just arrived. 'Do you have what you want? Does your attendant please you?'
'I can feed myself,' Subtwo said.
'Ah, but we all need someone to watch over us at these gatherings,' Blaisse said. 'In the event that we are incapacitated in our play.' The beverage he sipped sparkled with a silver drift of some compound Subtwo assumed would work synergistically with alcohol.
'I prefer not to submit my body to such indignities, even in play.'
'What difference does it make? What else is life for, but to play with? Others understand that. Your brother —'
'We are not brothers,' Subtwo snapped.
Some rare spark of curiosity seemed partially to sober Blaisse. 'Not brothers? What, then?'
'The correct term is 'pseudosib.' We were raised identically, separately, without human interference. Our reactions were linked.'
'I would have thought you were twins.'
'No, we are only distantly related. We were intended to represent the behavioral equivalents of genetic twins.' Subtwo knew, but thought it strange, that people found distinguishing between himself and Subone difficult; he saw only general similarities. Still, he was trained to observe minute detail, while ordinary people fumbled through their lives with generalities. He glanced down the table at Subone. 'Obviously, the same parallels do not hold.'
'I see,' Blaisse said, and yawned. 'That's very interesting.' But he asked no more questions; he reached for his silver-laced drink, swirling the liquid before putting it to his lips. Half the people in the room had gone to sleep over the last course. Their clothes disarrayed, they nestled in the cushions, while the rest pleasured themselves with their attendants. Subtwo felt pressed down and smothered by the glutted snoring bodies and the pumping flesh. He wanted to leave, but he did not know the protocol; he wished he could overcome his early training all at once and become rude and thoughtless and sloppy, stand, shout imprecations, overturn the table, and stalk away. But he sat for another hour, stiffly, disapproving, while the activity ranged around him. It could not be called an orgy; it was closer to mass communal masturbation. None of the free people caressed or even touched each other. They lay supine and allowed their slaves to work over them until involuntary reactions set them into motion. It was as though they considered each instant's personal pleasure so important that they would not give up any of it, not to give pleasure to another human being, not to communicate, not to love. They seemed to feel the rewards would not be worth the cost. They threw away what Subtwo sought, and he despised them for it.
In the whole huge room of jeweled and perfumed people, only Subtwo was alone, and only Clarissa and Subone were together. Subtwo could hear their voices; he could not avert his ears as he averted his eyes from the Lady's bare white skin and his pseudosib's darker nude body. He could hear their commands to each other, and he reflected both that Subone had learned a great deal since their release and escape from their solitary, sexless beginnings, and that Subone and Clarissa were really no different from anyone else in the room.
He waited until almost everyone had fallen into exhausted sleep, and even the slaves dozed, awakening and glancing covertly at him every so often to see if he had left them without observers. He started to rise.
'Is there nothing you wish?'
Startled, he glanced down. Blaisse's alien slave peeked past her lord's body. She cringed at the sharpness of Subtwo's look. Almost naked now, she wore only the jewels on her eyelids and the armbands of silver and sapphire. Subtwo realized quite abruptly that she was very young.
'How old are you?' he asked gently. He remembered her name: Saita. He was almost surprised that she was not called by some animal's diminutive, like a pet, for Blaisse had not treated her as an intelligent being, but used her as an animal.
'I don't know, Lord.'
'How long have you been here?'
'The Lady Clarissa has said three years, Lord.'
He saw that she had never been taught anything but how to induce erotic pleasure. Wasted potential always enraged him. There was intelligence in her face; she was not stupid, only naive and ignorant, ignorant of the meaning of her status and surroundings, somehow untouched by them.
'No,' he said. 'No, there's nothing I want that you can give me.'
He made his way past sleeping and unconscious bodies, stepping over and around them with revulsion. At the other end of the table Subone stretched on his cushions. The Lady Clarissa lay with her head pillowed on his belly and her sparkling eyes closed.
'You don't know how to enjoy yourself,' Subone said.
Subtwo hesitated, looking down at them. Subone's muscles seemed slack, his expression greedy and foolish. Abruptly, Subtwo departed, making no response.
Chapter 7
Mischa climbed through the narrow hidden fissure that connected her cave to the larger cavern behind it. The jewels were locked away, she was well rested, she had eaten. Tossing her clothes onto the sand, she plunged into the still, dark pool and came up sputtering from the cold. The second chamber was so cool that the floor and the shadows were black, while the ceiling, warmed slightly by air currents from Center, glowed deep maroon. Mischa found this rare near-darkness restful. She floated on her back for a few minutes, until, growing chilly, she paddled closer to the edge of the pool and stood up. The bank was of fine-grained black sand, carried in from the desert outside, bit by bit, over many years. Mischa scooped up handfuls of the sand and scrubbed her body, vigorously until she was warm again, slowly until she felt clean.
It was evening when she went out again into Center. She wandered along the Circle, covertly studying the new offworld people. They did not wear uniforms, but they were readily distinguishable. They were taller and darker than Center people, most of whom had never in their lives been exposed to sunlight. All offworlders gave an impression of bigness and of solidity, but these also spoke and laughed loudly and frequently. The looming stone sky had subdued other offworlders. Mischa could understand this group's lack of fear: they had come in through the storm. They must feel special, chosen, knowing they were the only ones ever to live through that trial.
