Alternate Realities (3 page)

So we set off on holiday, to play out the old game and to revel while we could, and to make Dela happy a time, which was why we existed at all.

G
riffin, as I say, was one of the strange ones my lady Dela picked up from time to time, not easy to fix which of his several natures was the real one, no. I had found him frightening from the start, truth be told. He didn’t laugh often, but much when he did, and he could be mortally stubborn and provoke Dela to rages which came down on all of us and darkened the house at Brahmani Dali for days. He interfered with Dela’s business and talked to Vivien about the books, which ordinarily Dela would never allow—but Griffin did, and had his way about it, amid storms in the country house which would have disposed of less appealing lovers. He wound himself in tighter and tighter with my lady’s business, and that disturbed us all.

He was an athletic sort, who looked rather more like one of us than he did like a born-man; but then, they play games even with born-man genes when women are rich, and Griffin certainly came from wealthy beginnings. Like Lance, Griffin seemed to fill whatever room he was in. He was very tall and slim in the hips and wide in the shoulders ... and he had an interesting, strong-boned face—not so fine as Lance, who was dark-haired and handsome and had meltingly dark eyes, but Griffin was bronzed and blond like one of the knights in the storybook tape. That answered, physically, why Dela had been attracted at the outset.

But Griffin was not, like most of her previous lovers, empty-headed; and he had not gotten pretty by spending all his time taking care of that beautiful body. He was just that way, which left the rest of his time to be doing something else—and in Griffin’s case, that something else was meddling with Dela’s business or lying lost in the tapes. He was one of the few men I ever did know who looked merely asleep under the tapes, and not lackwitted: Griffin did not know how to be ungraceful, I think it was muscle. He just did not collapse when he slept the deepsleep. And when he was awake, he was imposing. He tended to stare through the likes of me, or at very most remembered and thanked me for doing some small extra service for him—a courtesy far greater than I had gotten from most of my lady’s associations, and at the same time, far less, because he could still look through me while he was thanking me. He never bedded with me, and he was the first of Dela’s lovers who had never done that. He stayed to Dela. That fact upset me at first, but he bedded with none of the estate servants male or female either, so I understood it was not my failing: he simply wanted Dela, uniquely and uninterrupted by others—quite, quite different from the usual. I saw them together, matched, blond and blonde, storybook knight and storybook lady, a man full of ideas, a man my lady let into more than the bedchamber. He was change; and he frightened us in strange and subtle ways.

What, we wondered, when she should tire of him?

We had set out from station that morning, and Dela was taking a nap, because we had been up too many hours getting up from the world and getting settled in, and we had gone through a time change. We were, of course, under acceleration and moving a little cautiously when we walked, but nothing uncomfortable: the
Maid
rarely hurried. Griffin was still up and about, typical of the man, to be meddling with charts and tapes and comp in his cabin; and he wanted a little of my lady’s imported brandy. I brought it to his cabin, which was next to Dela’s own, and since he had not dismissed me I stood there while he sipped the brandy and fussed with his papers.

This time? I wondered. It would spoil all my reckonings of him if he asked me to bed with him now. I stood thinking about it, watching his broad back, no little distressed, thinking of all those tapes he listened to, about murdering and pain. He was altogether imposing under those circumstances. Dela was abed, drugged down; perhaps he felt he needed someone. A lot of people get nervous before jump. I waited. I blanked, finally, went null as my knees locked up, and I was in some pain; blinked alert as he stood up and looked down at me.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said. “Go. Go on. That’s all.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, wondering now if it would have pleased him had I been forward with him: some expected that. I looked back from the doorway. But Griffin had snugged down on the bed on his belly, head on his arms, and looked genuinely content enough: the brandy seemed to have had its effect. So he was happy; Dela would be. That was all I wanted. I went back and took the empty glass, set it on the tray, and left.

It might not be, I was thinking then, so bad a voyage, Griffin simply remaining Griffin: some men changed aboard, becoming bizarre in their fancies and their demands, but he did not. I diverted myself through the library, a simple jog from the corridor that joined his and Dela’s cabin and the outer hall, into the library/deepsleep lab, with its double couch. A touch of a button, the unsealing of a clear-faced cabinet, neat tucking of a tape cassette into my coveralls pocket and off and out the other door, into the same hall and out into the main corridor. Dela never minded, but then, Dela had whims: I kept my borrowings neat and quiet.

The galley then, on lowermost level, and up again to our own quarters, midway in the ship, very nice, very comfortable, after the fashion of things aboard the
Maid
. Deep, fine beds, the finest sheets, fine as Dela’s own—she never scanted us. Beautiful thick carpet, all the colors rust and brown and cream, a fine curved couch wrapped all the way around the corner, one level behind the other, with multiple deepstudy outlets, and the screens above, on the ceiling. Lance was there, not deepstudying, just sitting on the couch, arms on his knees, looking downhearted and tragic as he usually did at such settings-forth. I had had some thought of using my tapes; I gave it up, and sat down by Lance and took his hand in my lap and simply went into blank again. For us too, it had been too many time changes, and it would be better for Lance when he was rested.

Vivien came in from attending whatever business had occupied her with the station and the undocking, accounts and charges all squared, presumably. Not the least drooping, not a sleekly chignoned hair mussed, but Viv was on our schedule: she had a brittleness to her movements, all the same. And came Percy and Lynette, of the crew, who were on ship’s time and who looked like business as they usually did when we saw them. Percy was a youngish man with red hair and a delightful beard, all very close and delicately trimmed, his great vanity. And Lynn, Lynn was a flat and ethereal sort with an aquiline nose and freckles that had never seen much of any sun, brown hair trimmed as close as Percy’s.

“What sort have we got this trip?” Percy asked, reclining on the nearest bed, his booted ankles crossed. He propped himself up sidelong on his elbow. This was our haven, this room. We could say what we liked with no one listening, so it was safe for him to ask. Lynette had settled sidelong the other way, leaning against him, not flirting, but because we all like touching when we relax, which is the way we are, sexed or not. Percy and Lynn, being crew, and busy all this while, had not yet met Griffin.

I shrugged. That was the kind of impression I had to give about Griffin, that I didn’t have a clear impression, even after all this time. We had gotten used to him down at Brahmani Dali, as much as one could get used to Griffin—which meant we accepted that he would be up to something constantly, and alternately upsetting my lady and pleasing her.

“I don’t like him,” Lance said suddenly. Four months of silence, and: “I don’t like him.” He had never said that before, not even with some of my lady’s absolute worst, who had abused him and any others of us accessible. “I wish she would get rid of him.”

That frankness upset me. It was one thing to think it, but it was another to say it out like that, even here.

“This one,” said Vivien, “this one is different than the others. I think she might
marry
this one.”

“No,” I exclaimed, and put my hand over my mouth, guilty as Lance.

“Why else does she have me going over her accounts and letting him into them, and why does she have spies going over
his?
She said once she might marry him. I don’t think it was a joke. I think she’s really thinking about it. It has to do with that government business last year. This Griffin’s family has influence. And the worlds, Brahman and Sita—position for a natural alliance. The government has other concerns at the moment, can’t afford prolonged trouble in this direction. And besides—she seems to enjoy him.”

Viv looked satisfied.
Her
position wasn’t threatened. No one said anything for a while. This move seemed then to have monetary reasons behind it, which we understood: everything my lady did seriously tended to have such reasons in it, so this frightened me more and more. “He’s not so bad,” I said, not that I really believed it, but Lance was beside me and his hand was sweating in mine. “And she’ll get cooler toward him someday. If he stays—it’ll still happen that way, won’t it? And he’s never done anything to any of us, not like that Robert she took up with.”

There was a general muttering, a reflexive jerk of Lance’s hand. Robert had been the worst.

“Maybe she’ll get some favor out of him or his family,” Lynette said, “and then it’ll be like the others.”

“But she talked about marrying,” Vivien persisted, unstoppable. “And she’s never considered that. Ever. Griffin’s intelligent, she says. Someone who could run things in years to come. She’s never talked like that about the others. He’s
young
.”

More silence and heavier, even from Percy and Lynette, who were generally not bothered with estate finances and problems of that sort. After all, if another owner came into the picture, if Griffin began to involve himself permanently and changed Dela’s way of operating—then the
Maid
might not go on making such trips as she did now. So the crew faced uncertainties too.

The
Maid
might—the thought came washing over me—might even be
sold
, and so might we all, being part of a fancy Dela might tire of if she changed her life and stopped taking lovers. Being sold was ... I could not imagine it. I had heard dread whispers that it meant being taken back into the labs for retraining, and that meant they took your mind apart. It was effectively like dying. I didn’t say that aloud. We had enough troubles, all of us. And Lance ... he was old for retraining. Lance could be put down.

I was never inclined to sudden panics, but I had one. I sat there and blanked, and when I came out of it, Lance was tugging at my hand to shake me out of it.

“Elaine?” he said.

I clenched his hand in mine and said nothing.

“We’re going to make jump sooner than usual,” Lynn said. “She’s told us to keep up acceleration all the way. It has to do with
him
, maybe. Ask Wayne and Modred about particulars: but it’s Delhi.”

The regional capital. The kind of place her ladyship had stayed out of, with her wealth which she had no desire thus far to flaunt near the government.

“Griffin has property on Delhi,” Vivien said.

“What kind?” I asked, heart pounding, because I had heard of establishments on Delhi where a lot of our kind came from. Percivale was one of Delhi’s breeding, so he said; and I knew that Modred was.

“Farms,” Vivien said tautly. “And training centers. Labs. They’ve been talking about taking an interest in that. In shifting assets—Griffin’s wealth and our lady’s can pull hard weight in Delhi Council if they start playing games with banks. Those kind of maneuvers ... Griffin can do. All he has to do is free up some currency. His farms there—”

Then they all seemed to think of selling and being sold, and Percy blanked, and Lynn too, for a moment, like two statues reclining there.

“I think we should get some sleep,” Vivien said, with a stretch of her back. She had spent all
she
had to say, and in our matters, that was as far as Vivien’s interest went. She got up and left. Sleep seemed a good idea, because there was certainly nothing pleasant to think of awake. We moved to our beds, all of which were close together, and began to get undressed. Only Lance still sat there, and I felt sorry for him. They psych-set me so that I can’t stand to see someone suffering. Born-men feel; we react; so the difference runs. And Lance was reacting to everything, and especially to this most frightening of the lady’s affairs. I think maybe he would rather have had Robert aboard again. Any of them. It had already been hard on him, this involvement with Griffin, lasting now for four months and promising to go on
long
—but
marry
him ... and all this maneuvering, this trip to Delhi which seemed to make it all more and more like the truth.... All this had surely struck poor Lance to the gut. He wasn’t blanked, and it would have been healthier if he were. He just sat there like he was bleeding inside.

“Come on,” I said, walking back over to tug at his hand. “I want you”—which was a lie. I was tired, but it was his psych-set, and it gave him something to react to that would take his mind off Dela and off his own future at least for the moment. He undressed and we got between the sheets. He made love to me ... he
was
good. What handsome blond Griffin was like I had no idea, but if it were me, or if I were lady Dela, I would have preferred Lance, who was very beautiful and who did sex very well and with endless invention, which was what he was made for.

Only his eyes were sadder than ever and he was not, this time, as good as he could be. His body reacted to his psych set; and that was that, tired or not, up to reasonable limits. But there were times when Lance was
there
and times when he was not, and this time he was not. Worry, like everything else, every other disturbance in his patterns, he channelled into his psych-set outlet the way he was healthily supposed to, so he was not breaking down and he didn’t panic, but it was as close to panic as I had ever seen him.