'You were like your world. You needed time to heal. And we needed time to learn more about your kind.' He paused. 'We didn't know what to think when some of your people killed themselves. Some of us believed it was because they had been left out of the mass suicide-that they simply wanted to finish the dying. Others said it was because we kept them isolated. We began putting two or more together, and many injured or killed one another. Isolation cost fewer lives.'
These last words touched a memory in her. 'Jdahya?' she said.
The tentacles down the sides of his face wavered, looked for a moment like dark, muttonchop whiskers.
'At one point a little boy was put in with me. His name was Sharad. What happened to him?'
He said nothing for a moment, then all his tentacles stretched themselves upward. Someone spoke to him from above in the usual way and in a voice much like his own, but this time in a foreign language, choppy and fast.
'My relative will find out,' he told her. 'Sharad is almost certainly well, though he may not be a child any longer.'
'You've let children grow up and grow old?'
'A few, yes. But they've lived among us. We haven't isolated them.'
'You shouldn't have isolated any of us unless your purpose was to drive us insane. You almost succeeded with me more than once. Humans need one another.'
His tentacles writhed repulsively. 'We know. I wouldn't have cared to endure as much solitude as you have. But we had no skill at grouping humans in ways that suited them.'
'But Sharad and I-'
'He may have had parents, Lilith.'
Someone spoke from above, in English this time. 'The boy has parents and a sister. He's asleep with them, and he's still very young.' There was a pause. 'Lilith, what language did he speak?'
'I don't know,' Lilith said. 'Either he was too young to tell me or he tried and I didn't understand. I think he must have been East Indian, though-if that means anything to you.'
'Others know. I was only curious.'
'You're sure he's all right?'
'He's well.'
She felt reassured at that and immediately questioned the emotion. Why should one more anonymous voice telling her everything was fine reassure her?
'Can I see him?' she asked.
'Jdahya?' the voice said.
Jdahya turned toward her. 'You'll be able to see him when you can walk among us without panic. This is your last isolation room. When you're ready, I'll take you outside.'
3
Jdahya would not leave her. As much as she had hated her solitary confinement, she longed to be rid of him. He fell silent for a while and she wondered whether he might be sleeping-to the degree that he did sleep. She lay down herself, wondering whether she could relax enough to sleep with him there. It would be like going to sleep knowing there was a rattlesnake in the room, knowing she could wake up and find it in her bed.
She could not fall asleep facing him. Yet she could not keep her back to him long. Each time she dozed, she would jolt awake and look to see if he had come closer. This exhausted her, but she could not stop doing it. Worse, each time she moved, his tentacles moved, straightening lazily in her direction as though he were sleeping with his eyes open-as he no doubt was.
Painfully tired, head aching, stomach queasy, she climbed down from her bed and lay alongside it on the floor. She could not see him now, no matter how she turned. She could see only the platform beside her and the walls. He was no longer part of her world.
'No, Lilith,' he said as she closed her eyes.
She pretended not to hear him.
'Lie on the bed,' he said, 'or on the floor over here. Not over there.'
She lay rigid, silent.
'If you stay where you are, I'll take the bed.'
That would put him just above her-too close, looming over her, Medusa leering down.
She got up and all but fell across the bed, damning him, and, to her humiliation, crying a little. Eventually she slept. Her body had simply had enough.
She awoke abruptly, twisting around to look at him. He was still on the platform, his position hardly altered. When his head tentacles swept in her direction she got up and ran into the bathroom. He let her hide there for a while, let her wash and be alone and wallow in self-pity and self-contempt. She could not remember ever having been so continually afraid, so out of control of her emotions. Jdahya had done nothing, yet she cowered.
When he called her, she took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom. 'This isn't working,' she said miserably. 'Just put me down on Earth with other humans. I can't do this.'
He ignored her.
After a time she spoke again on a different subject. 'I have a scar,' she said, touching her abdomen. 'I didn't have it when I was on Earth. What did your people do to me?'
'You had a growth,' he said. 'A cancer. We got rid of it. Otherwise, it would have killed you.'
