'Something wrong? There's nothing that couldn't be jury-rigged in a day or so.'
'Approximations are not required, but I would like to be able to leave should that seem advantageous.'
Draco laughed, a quick short bark that annoyed Subtwo and amused Subone; Draco pretended anti- intellectualism and put on a face of contempt if anyone spoke to him multisyllabically.
'Okay,' he said. 'Five days, then?'
'Thank you.' Subtwo tolerated being annoyed because of Draco's competence. He shut off the intercom and walked through his clean, pale, soothing rooms, anxious now to speak with his pseudosib and get that ordeal over with; Subone was fully as capable of taunting him as was Blaisse.
He opened the door as Mischa was about to knock. 'Oh—you.'
'Jan said you wanted to see me,' she said.
'He does not delay, does he?'
She shrugged. 'I'll come back some other time.' She did not look like a genius of any sort, she looked like a maltreated stubborn child, wearing the same clothes she had arrived in, not exactly grubby, but far from spotless. Though self-assured, she was not arrogant, nor did her bright green eyes hold the superiority or surprise Subtwo might have expected in a newly confirmed genius.
'What did Jan Hikaru tell you when he sent you up here?'
'A minute ago he only said you wanted to see me. This morning he said
he wasn't very good in math and he thought he'd ask you to help.'
'I see.'
'I think he's good,' she said defensively.
So he had not told her all that he believed, or had not let her know how much it might mean. Subtwo wondered why he had kept his silence, and admitted, though the fact was not flattering, that Jan might not have wanted to raise Mischa's expectations without knowing that Subtwo would be of assistance. He was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that he had been very close to sending Jan and his time-consuming ideas away.
'Come in,' he said. 'I want you to do something.'
He called up the biomedical programs and uncoiled the electrode wires. 'Sit there.'
'What's that?'
'Electrodes—instruments to sense your brain waves.'
'I know that—what for?' She looked very wary, almost afraid of the simple devices.
'Just to test the responses of your brain. It takes only a moment. It doesn't hurt.'
'What's on the other end?'
'A sensor,' he said, wondering why she was asking such questions. 'A recording device, for the computer.'
'No patterns?'
'Like a lock? No, of course not. That would be pointless. This does not compare, it only examines.'
'Okay,' she said, and after that seemed quite relaxed. He fixed the electrodes at her temples with adhesive, for he did not approve of the self-attaching kind. He dimmed the lights.
'Look at that screen.'
She shook her hair back from her eyes and complied, gazing at the console. The design changed, and changed again. He turned it off and raised the light level. 'Very good.'
'Is that all?'
'Yes. You may take off the electrodes.' Subtwo glanced down at the results, and froze.
'Wait.'
And then he remembered what Jan Hikaru had said: 'I don't need to test
her neural responses. I've worked with her for weeks.'
He knew his instruments were not malfunctioning. They measured the time it took a mind to respond to the change in a pattern, an interval measured in milliseconds. It did not depend on learning, culture, motivation, any of the factors that could cause achievement above or below the average for ability. It measured only potential, and Mischa's potential was tremendous.
'Never mind,' he said, half in a daze. 'It's all right. Tell Jan Hikaru that he was correct to speak with me. Are you free tomorrow morning?'
'I can be, I guess.'
'I will see you then.'
'All right.' She was looking at him curiously; he had the strange sensation that she had felt his astonishment, but she left without saying anything else, and Subtwo leaned over the console, staring at the amazing parameter, feeling a great, deep sorrow that Mischa had not been born somewhere else, anywhere else, where she would not have wasted all the best years for learning, her childhood.
Madame walked slowly down the pale plastic corridor. She did not want to reach its end, for she had no way of knowing what awaited her there, in Subtwo's suite. She was prepared for anything; in her years at Stone Palace she had silently witnessed cruelties beyond anything she thought Subtwo could even imagine. Pain did not frighten her; she had endured and survived it when she was a child. At least, when Subtwo caused pain, it did not gratify him; nor did he intentionally cause humiliation. Madame had been prepared to endure either for many years. In Stone Palace both were, sooner or later, inevitable.
She scratched at the door, heard Subtwo's deep voice, and slipped inside as the door swung open. Before she could speak, Subtwo took a single step toward her, holding out his hands as though in supplication. 'Were you there? Did you hear? Did you understand?'
'I know you met with the Lord,' Madame said, without expression. All her experience warned her to be suspicious, to guard herself, to find some way to stop the progress of Subtwo's desire for her, and her own, gods help her, for him. Free people and slaves had only one kind of relationship, that dictated by their status. The free person ordered, the slave obeyed. And eventually the former would grow bored, or the latter would err. There was no happiness, only satiation for one, destruction for the other.
'Do you know what we talked about?'
'It is my duty to know—'
'Stop it!' he cried. 'How can you speak to me this way? I could bear it if you hated me, but you don't feel anything!'
'I feel,' she said. He was so beautiful, now assured, now vulnerable, trying to speak with his deep, deep eyes. 'I feel. I was born human.' She was saying too much: after so many years of protecting herself, she could say one unwise word and throw her life away.
'Do you understand why I tried to. to buy you?'
'It was not necessary.' Somehow, this was worse, that Subtwo would place Blaisse between them, that the Lord's permission and urging would erase her degradation from Subtwo's conscience. She was a fool to have hoped someone already possessing freedom might refuse to take advantage of another's slavery.
'No,' Subtwo said. 'Not necessary, but safer. If he thought I owned you he couldn't hurt you—you'd be safe until we could leave. Now, we'll have to be more careful.'
'. Careful?'
'I might have been foolish. He might know I. I.' Subtwo stopped, shook his head, and started again. 'He might try to avenge himself on me by hurting you. We mustn't give him a chance. But it would be dangerous to antagonize him until the ship is ready, so we must act as though everything were normal. When you go back, be careful.'
Madame had trained herself to respond as though nothing surprised or confused her; she had no nervous habits. She stood utterly still. 'What are you saying?' she whispered.
'Blaisse won't let me give you your freedom, so we must take it from him.'
She stared at him. By the rules of Stone Palace, his power over her was total. She wondered if he were trying to make her feel grateful so she would come to him willingly, though he could simply command the appearance of willingness, false or true. But his temperament was at times so ingenuous that Madame could almost believe he was sincere.
'The ship will be ready soon, and we can leave. Then you'll be free—free to. to accept me or reject me of your own will.'
'Leave earth?'
