At the Narrow Passage (24 page)

And, as I said before, I thought there was more to my feeling for Sally
than just the hot urges I felt below my waist.
"Thanks," the skudder pilot was saying as she handed him the bundle of
clothing, and he looked at her with something in his eyes that wasn't
hard to read. He'd like to have been in my place.
"I'll be back for you in a month," he went on. "You two have a nice time."
He paused, then said, "Oh, by the way, Kar-hinter said to tell you that
he'd probably drop in on you in the next few days, if that's okay with you."
"Yes, I suppose. Thanks," I said.
Moments later the pilot closed the skudder's hatch, waved to us through the
bubble. Then a time-wrenching buzz filled the air. The skudder vanished.
"Let's go take a look at the cabin," I said to Sally.
"Let's get something straight right now," she said, holding still. "I know
exactly what my status is here. I'm your prisoner, and you can make me do
whatever you want. Because I know that, I'm not going to put up a fight
every time you tell me to do something. I don't have that kind of fatal
pride. I'll do what you say." She paused for breath. "But get this straight,
Eric Mathers or whatever your name is, and get it straight right now. I'll
only be doing what I do because I have no choice, because you and your
goddamned Kriths can make me do it -- and not because I want to. Do you
understand me?"
There was no point in arguing at this stage of the game, so I simply said,
"Yes, I understand. Now let's go look at that cabin."
I took her by the hand and led her.
The field in which the cabin sat consisted of perhaps half a dozen acres
of cleared land, green and gently rolling, each rise topped with fruit
trees of different kinds, apples, cherries, peaches, oranges. you name
it. Bushes grew in profusion, many of them flowering and all of them
carefully trimmed. Paths ran between the trees and bushes, rock-bordered
and lined with other types of flowering plants. The grass was a bright,
rich green, closely cropped and soft as an expensive carpet under our
naked feet.
The cabin itself sat just to the left of the center of the carefully
tended clearing and reminded me of a brick and glass model of the planet
Saturn, cut in half, or maybe half-buried in the earth. The ring was a
low wall that circled the house and the planet was the brick and glass
dome of the structure, a hemisphere sheltered by the wall that circled it
and the trees that rose above it, shadowing the cabin under their leaves.
Inside was a single room, divided by low partitions into four roughly
equal sections. One was the sleeping area, containing two big double
beds, the second the autokitchen and indoor dining area, the third was a
living area with library access console, video tape player, multi-channel
music gear and miscellaneous games and things. The final section of
the house was a huge sunken bathtub and a toilet cubicle. It was done
in soft pleasant earth colors, and sometimes it was hard to tell where
the walls ended and the broad expanse of windows looking out into the
gardens began. It was a nice place to be marooned with a beautiful woman,
even one who wanted to see me dead.
"Sit down," I told Sally, gesturing toward the comfortable-looking furniture
in the living area. "I'll see if I can get us something to eat."
"I'm not hungry," Sally replied, sitting, but refusing to look at me.
"Okay, then, I'm ordering you to eat."
She didn't protest, at least not out loud, so I went into the kitchen
and studied the menu. The autokitchen had been programmed to suit the
culinary tastes of men from hundreds of different cultures, everything
from the obscure and involved vegetarianism of some of the Indus Lines
to the cannibalism of the Dramalians, though in this case the "long pig"
was synthesized. The Aegean squid appealed to me since it was one of
my favorites and a delicacy I hadn't tasted in years, but I gave way
to my concern for Sally and punched out something that her Anglo-Saxon
upbringing would have found more tasteful: roast beef, baked potatoes,
etc.
A few minutes later the plates popped out of the oven, and I wheeled
the trays into the living room, where Sally sat in the same position,
apparently having moved nothing but her eyes during my absence.
"Now here it is," I said. "I won't try to force you to eat, but you
won't be hurting anyone but yourself if you don't."
I sat down across from her and began devouring my meal. After a while
Sally began to eat as well, but without any great gusto.
"Pretty good, isn't it?" I asked between mouthfuls.
Sally nodded morosely.
After a while, having eaten perhaps half of her serving, Sally put down
her fork, looked up at me, and said slowly, "Why did you bring me here?"
I looked back at her for a long while before I answered. "You know,
I'm not really sure. Kar-hinter suggested it, more or less, and it seemed
like a good idea."
"Kar-hinter?" she asked. "The Krith?" The way she said it made it sound
like a dirty word.
"Yes."
"Hasn't he done enough to me?"
"Did he harm you?"
"You wouldn't understand," she snapped.
"Maybe I would. Try me."
"What does a man like you know about honor?"
"More than you might think," I said. When she didn't speak again, I went
on. "I suppose you're referring to the mind probe he had used on you?"
"Of course."
"Okay, so he forced your mind to divulge everything you know about the
Paratimers. You had nothing to do with it really. I mean, it's not as
if you betrayed them voluntarily. Kar-hinter just . . ."
"He invaded my soul!" Sally said angrily. "He raped my mind!"
"Now wait a minute. All he did was . . ."
"I know what he did and you can't explain it away. He made me betray
everyone and everything I love." She paused for a moment, fought with
her emotions. "Why did you let him do it, Eric? I . . . I thought we
could trust you. Mica did too. We all did. We . . ."
"I'm sorry about that, Sally, but I did what I had to do."
"What you had to do!
Why?
I can understand your working for
them
before, when you didn't know any better. But . . . but how could you
after you
knew
, after we told you what
they
are?"
"Just calm down for a minute and listen to me."
Sally crossed her arms below her naked breasts, her fingernails digging
into her upper arms, her face a complex of unreadable expressions.
"All I had was the word of the Paratimers as opposed to the word of the
Kriths. Mica was never able to offer me any real proof of his claims.
I know that
you
believe what he told you, and I think he believed it
too. But belief isn't proof, no matter how strongly the belief is held
and no matter by how many people. It's just a belief unless there's
objective proof -- and I never saw any really objective proof that
couldn't have been faked."
"Are you saying that Staunton and Mica and Scoti and all the others
and the books and tapes and all that are, well, built on lies? Can you
believe that's true?"
"Aren't you and Mica trying to tell me that everything I've seen in my
own Lines is based on a Lie?"
"Yes, of course. . . . Oh."
"You see? It was easier for me to accept Mica and his world as a lie
than it was for me to accept the experiences of my whole life as a lie."
For a moment I almost thought I had got through and that she was going
to be able to see it from my point of view, but then she said, "How can
you be so blind?"
"I could ask you the same thing. Just look around you. Does this look
like the work of man-hating monsters?"
"It's just a part of their scheme to lull you into trusting them."
"Here we go again," I said, rising and looking out the vast expanse
of window. "Our arguing won't convince either of us that the other is
right. I spent six weeks in your world. Now you spend a month in one of
mine. Maybe you'll see why I couldn't accept what I was told."
"No," Sally said. "You won't be able to brainwash me that easily. I know
better. I know what the Kriths are, and I won't believe their Lie."
I suddenly wished that I knew what the Kriths were and what they wanted,
what they really wanted from us. And I realized then, maybe for the first
time, that Sally and Mica and Scoti and the others in Staunton had planted
some serious doubts in my mind, doubts that I would, sooner or later,
be forced to resolve.
In the garden behind the cabin was an enormous swimming pool, a great
free-form thing some hundred yards long and maybe fifty yards wide at
its widest point. One end was no more than a few inches deep, but the
other, where the diving boards were, was at least fifteen yards to the
bottom. And the water was a clear crystal, pure, reflecting the cloudless
blue sky above.
Along the sides of the pool ran a wide strip of soft, spongy green
material, a vast mattress for sunbathing. Here and there were reclining
chairs and two extensions of the autokitchen for dialing meals and drinks.
We had been there for three days by then, and Sally had begun to relax
some, at times even seeming to forget where she was and why and that
she was, by her own definition, my prisoner. We had been swimming in
the pool, diving and splashing and even occasionally laughing at our own
foolishness. Finally, exhausted, we had climbed out of the pooi onto the
sun-deck and lay dripping with water. I dialed us drinks and lay back
looking up at the clear blue sky of this Earth, a world uncluttered by
the more obvious works of civilization.
"Eric," Sally said suddenly, a sharp edge of seriousness to her voice,
"we can't go on like this."
How many times across the Lines have women said that and for how many
different reasons?
"Why?" I asked in all seriousness.
"I'm beginning to like you too well," she said. "I really believe you're
sincere about what you say." She paused. "Sometimes I even forget
and just, well, enjoy myself and then I remember and . . . Well, when
I remember what I am and what you are and what this place is and why
we're here, when I remember these things I hate myself for enjoying it
and I hate you for making me enjoy it. And I think that sooner or later
I will come to hate you enough to kill you."
"I wouldn't want you to do that," I said, jealously thinking about her
relationship with Mica. Back in Staunton she had told me that she was
his mistress. I somehow just couldn't bring myself to imagine her in bed
with that cold fish, and I wondered just what it was that she felt for
him. I couldn't believe it was love or even real sexual attraction to him.
Why then, I asked myself, had Sally been his mistress? Well, maybe you
could attribute it to hero worship, gratitude for what she believed he
and his Paratimers were doing for her and her people. If she could marry
Count Albert von Heinen to advance the American rebel cause, couldn't she
be bedding with Mica for just about the same reason? It seemed sort of
likely to me -- especially when she had never shown any real affection
toward the Paratimer leader -- and it did help my ego a lot to thiink
it was so, as if I didn't have to compete with the man if I could show
him up for what he was -- whatever he was.
Then she brought me out of my thoughts.
"Listen to me," she said, sitting up. "One of us is right and the other
is wrong. Do you agree?"
"Well, yes. There must be objective proof somewhere."
"Then if we learn what's true, can't we both accept it?"
"Yes, I'll accept it if we can find real proof."
"Can you call your Kar-hinter some way?"
"No, but the skudder pilot said that he'd be coming here to see us in
a few days. Why?"
"Ask him about this Cross-Line Civiibation you talk about. Ask him to take
us there and show us that it really exists and that it's as wonderful as
they claim it is. And then, if he does, I'll believe that the Kriths are
really what you think they are and that the Paratimers are as mistaken
as you believe."
Perhaps Sally and her friends had made me doubt the Kriths, I thought,
but it also looked as if I had somehow made Sally begin to doubt what
she had been told. We were both doubting the verities by which we had
lived -- but they could be proved, one way or the other. Kar-hinter could
take us to the Cross-Line Civilization, show us how men and Kriths worked
together to build a perfect world -- and that would solve our problems,
destroy my own growing doubts, and show Sally that everything I had told
her was true. It was so simple. Why hadn't I thought of it before?
"Okay," I said. "We'll do that. We'll get Kar-hinter to take us there.
Four more days went by before Kar-hinter arrived.
It was night. The yard-tending robots had completed their work and the
carefully controlled nightly rain had begun to fall. Sally and I were
inside the cabin watching a videotape of the classic
Pirates of Avalon
,
with English dubbed, when I heard a rapping at the door.
"What's that?" Sally gasped, almost leaping to her feet.
"I'll see," I said, rising and crossing to the door.
When I told the door to open and the cabin's light spilled through it
out into the darkness, I saw the tall, naked form of a Krith.
"Kar-hinter?" I asked, not sure that I recognized him in the poor light.
And all Kriths do look pretty much alike to a human.
"Hello, Eric," Kar-hinter replied, water running down his face from
the steady rain, dripping from his chin, trickling down his nearly
olive-colored, hairless body. "May I come in?"
"Of course," I said. "We've been expecting you."
As Kar-hinter came into the room, shook water from his body like a dog,
and found himself a chair, I cut off the video player and turned up
the lights.
"Hello, Sally," he said. "I hope that you are finding Eden to be a
pleasant place of captivity."
"There are worse prisons," Sally said, forcing herself to smile just a
little despite the revulsion she must have felt. She moved back in her
chair, trying to cover herself with her arms and legs as if there were
some reason she should not let the alien see her naked, though I have
never known a Krith to find any human being sexually attractive. I have
the impression that their ideas of sex bear little resemblance to ours,
but I don't know anything about them.