Aware of her eagerness, he kept his explanations brief. He realized suddenly how few written signs he had seen in Center, and how easily he might have shamed Mischa if she had not been able to read. He said nothing, but felt great relief that he had by luck avoided a blunder.
He pointed out the title of an elementary book on xenobiology. It was somewhat out of date, but it had begun his own interest in the field, and he had never found one better for that purpose. 'Read this, and when you're finished, come back and we'll talk.'
She left him alone in his dim room. He felt a vague sense of disquiet. His time-sense was deceived by the lack of diurnal rhythm in the Palace. He felt as though he had been on earth much longer than a very few days. However short the time was since the pseudosibs' ship had landed, Jan had no rational excuse for his neglect of his single responsibility. The promise he had made, to bury his friend here, was unfulfilled; she lay cold and shrouded on the ship. Jan did not want to consign her body to dust and decay; he did not want to admit she was dead. His sleep had been troubled since her death. He reached for her in the darkness, and grasped only air; he heard her voice in the night, and awoke to silence. He had given too little thought to death in his lifetime. Lately, the possible solace of belief in an afterworld had become very attractive.
He slid out of his dragon-robe, pulled off his boots, stood in the center of the cool room, and began to do isometric exercises. Moving only to change position, he showed very little evidence of the violence of his exertions, but sweat soon ran down his sides and soaked into the waistband of his pants. His hair stuck to his face with perspiration that slid into his eyes, stinging. Only when he finally began to tremble with exhaustion did he stop to rest. He lay down on his bed for a moment; without meaning to, he dozed.
'Jan?'
He sat up abruptly, startled by the soft voice. 'What?' It was more an expression of surprise than query.
'I'm sorry,' Mischa said from the doorway. 'Go back to sleep. I'll come later.'
'No, wait.' He combed his sticky hair with his fingers and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Stiff with abrupt activity and cooling, his muscles ached fiercely. He kneaded his biceps with his thumbs. 'I didn't mean to go to sleep. Is anything wrong?'
'No, you just said to come when I was finished.'
'What time is it?' He did not feel as though he had slept so soundly so long.
'Almost midday.'
'You're done?'
'Yes.'
'Very good.' He ran his fingers through his hair again. 'I'll be right back. I don't make sense before I wash my face.'
When he returned, with clean water dripping slowly from the hair at the back of his neck, he felt considerably more awake and slightly less dirty. He sat down on the rug and gestured for Mischa to join him. She put the extension on the carpet between them, as though returning a loan.
'What did you think of it?'
'Is that all real?'
'Yes,' he said. 'Of course.'
'I had to ask,' Mischa said. 'It's just that compared to the places in that book, it's empty here.'
'Yes, well.' Empty: most of earth, but not all of it. He smiled a little. 'I'll be giving you things to read that are true or not depending on your point of view, but I won't try to fool you.'
They began to talk, and Mischa spoke without self-consciousness, without first probing to see what Jan believed, with a kind of directness that revealed self-confidence lacking egotism: undidactic and able to consider alternatives. Jan had not known quite what to expect. He knew Mischa must have a considerable amount of innate courage and cleverness; her lack of information on subjects he considered basic had appalled him. He had not expected the keen and logical and perceptive intellect she revealed. He
was astonished.
Their conversation did not cease until they realized, almost simultaneously, that they both were hoarse. Jan stopped talking; Mischa said something that came out as a sort of croak. They looked at each other and suddenly laughed. If Mischa laughed seldom, she laughed well; Jan liked the sound of her delight.
'Are you hungry?'
'Yes,' he said, with some surprise. 'Yes, I am. Let's go.'
It was quite late; Jan and Mischa were the only ones in the dining hall.
'You argue well,' Jan said, straining tea into two cups. 'I don't know about you, but I'm tired.'
'You don't seem as tired as you were last night. Or this morning.'
Steam from the tea swirled around Jan's face with the exhalation of his breath. 'A different kind of tired,' he said. 'Better.' He leaned back, staring up at the rock ceiling. 'No one in the Sphere thinks about earth anymore. They've put it out of their minds. It's quite a shock to visit a place you've always been taught was dead.'
'No,' Mischa said, and Jan thought he might have offended her, but she continued. 'It isn't dead, it's dying. And that's worse.'
'I'm going to take a bath,' Jan said abruptly. 'Want to come?'
'Sure.'
Jan had been pleasantly surprised to find a Japanese-style bath in the Palace. He had spent so many years at school, avoiding going home for any reason, living in places where the only bathing facilities were small showers, that he had almost resigned himself to giving up the luxury of soaking in a deep, hot tub of water. Since leaving school, living in cheap and sometimes squalid places, he had done most of his bathing from the basins of public washrooms.
In the dim, steamy bathing grotto, he and Mischa stripped, soaped and rinsed themselves, and slid into the sunken pool. Mischa was even thinner than he had thought. There was a deep, old scar on her left forearm, and a newer one across her ribs beneath her left breast. He wanted to ask her about the scars, but did not know how. He lay on his back, floating. The water filled his ears; he could hear the circulation, the faint low splashes of wavelets against the side of the pool, his own heartbeat. The heat soaked into him, producing a pleasant, languorous feeling.
'Can I ask you something?'
'That's your job,' Jan said. 'Mine's to answer.'
'Where are you from?'
Jan raised his head and was momentarily startled by the illusion that her eyes reflected the light like a cat's. He shook the water out of his face; then Mischa's eyes simply seemed black in the dim light.
'I come from a planet called Koen,' he said. 'It's very beautiful.' The very name meant 'park.' Nearly the whole world was parklike, in an infinity of ways. Recalling it, he described it and its inhabitants. It had been colonized by people who had for centuries felt a comradeship with the land; they did not violate their new earth. But the world was in some ways too pleasant, and too easy; it provided insufficient challenge, and the people grew self-indulgent and too concerned with the minute details of life. 'My father used to spend a lot of time trying to grow bonsai trees,' Jan said. 'They're supposed to stay very small, and grow as you direct them, but his always kept growing until he had to plant them outside.' This far away, this removed in time, he could even smile about his father's eccentricities. 'He used to write poetry too. It was terrible, whatever language he tried.'
'Why did he keep on with it?'
'He doesn't realize it's bad. And there's no point in telling him. If he believed it, he'd be hurt, but he wouldn't believe it in the first place.'
'Oh.'
'He's quite. unusual.' Jan took a deep breath of the damp air. 'He sometimes thinks he's a character from a very old novel. Genji Hikaru wrote poetry, so Ichiri does too.'
'You don't have to read it, do you?'
'There are days when it's the only way he'll communicate.'
Mischa laughed softly and Jan found himself smiling. On this level, it was amusing. 'The poetry's not all of it,' he said. 'Mixing perfume was a social grace when the novel was written, so of course Genji excelled at it. But sometimes our house smells so bad you can't sleep in it.'
'That must be uncomfortable if you have storms in the winter.'
'There isn't any winter on Koen.'
