Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (5 page)

She was shaking her head. “I have no answer to that question. I do what I do.”

“And I did what I did. I cannot explain, but I can tell.” Arrin Gilden’s eyes fixed on the Teller as he tried to see within himself. “I do not know why. I know that I had no choice. I could not help myself. I was
compelled
to observe, to find a way to observe. I believe I was good at it.”

“From everything that I have been able to discover, you are the best. Certainly the best in the records of the Empyrium.” The lights brightened and yellowed. The chair with its wrist and ankle cuffs became a soft couch. The brace at Gilden’s head vanished.

“Real reality.” The Teller’s voice dropped half an octave. Gilden found himself facing a dark-haired, smooth-faced woman not much older than his own twenty-five years.

“When you stop explaining, and just tell, it makes things so much easier.”

“How do you know when I am telling?”

“I cannot force truth. But I can detect lies. Perhaps that is why I am a Teller.” She came across to sit next to Gilden on the couch. “And sometimes—very rarely—I can offer an alternative to eternal agony. This is such a time. You must leave Earth, and go to Lucidar.”

She gazed at him with calm blue eyes. Gilden found himself unable to remember their color as it had been in that other reality.

She smiled. The Teller had even white teeth, a mouth slightly asymmetrical, the left side higher than the right. “I am sure that I am not the first person to suggest that you are a mental cripple, a person who might have been helped in his youth but who is now incorrigible. Your role as voyeur is the most important thing in your life. That is a statement, not a question.”

“It is not a statement. It is an understatement.” Gilden breathed deep and again looked inward. “Voyeurism is the
only
important thing in my life.”

“Even so, you should have treatment. But not until your return to Earth—assuming, of course, that you do return.”

“Treatment? Not torment?”

“Perhaps. You will go to Lucidar on official business of the Mentor. If you succeed at that, you will be pardoned upon your return. A man of your outstanding skills, suitably channeled and monitored, has much to offer the Empyrium. If you fail, you will serve your original sentence, strong agony until your final breath. The Mentor offers inducement to succeed.”

“I don’t understand what I am being asked to do.”

“Of course. It has not been explained, and it is not my position to do that. I am merely empowered to make the offer. Let me say only this: it is a difficult task, but one for which I believe you are supremely well suited. From your point of view, events far from Earth have provided a happy accident of timing. Your unique services are required on the rebel world of Lucidar.”

“I have no decision to make. It is either leave here for an unknown purpose, or suffer torture until I die.”

“Bravo, Gilden! At last you comprehend, and state things exactly. We are agreed then, you are going?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then I have but one more official duty.” The Teller reached out. Again she was holding a stubby cylinder with a flat end. When she pressed it against Gilden’s upper arm the grooved disk flared white-hot. Gilden roared with pain and jerked away.

“No derived reality this time. Look at that brand often, Gilden, as a reminder for you to do your best. That pain was a pale shadow of what awaits you on your return if you fail. And the next time you will not be able to pull yourself away.”

Gilden rocked to and fro with tears in his eyes. The skin had been seared off his arm in a circle as big as the palm of his hand. His nostrils were full of the stink of burnt flesh and hair. But he had seen the rapturous look on the Teller’s face as she pressed that fiery circle into his tender skin.

He knew, even if she did not, why she would never give up her position as Teller.

* * *

The Mentor was absolute ruler of Earth. The idea that there were places on the Linkworlds where intelligent beings lived beyond the Mentor’s control, that many of those creatures were not human in any way—it was a revelation to Arrin Gilden. He wondered if this was just another derived reality.

For surely this was not the real world. Surely he would emerge to something more plausible. He was supposed to be in space, but there was no sign of the familiar stars of Earth. Instead a bubbling lava, dull-red and chaotic and flecked with orange sparks, stood outside every port of the sealed ship. A faint churning and trembling inside Gilden matched the seething exterior. Two more days of flight through this fiery maelstrom of nonspace, and according to his shipboard companions they would emerge in the Lucidar system. He would meet the representatives of the alien Sigil. And his work would begin.

Or was it all a dream? The woman across the table from him, the only female on the ship, seemed absolutely real and solid. But was she? Or was he still in the interrogation chamber, awaiting the Teller’s next question?

Derli Margrave was fair-haired, small-boned, and delicately built. Her eyes seemed too pale and piercing for an Earth native. She sought Gilden’s company, as much as her partner (husband? mate? brother?) Valmar Krieg seemed to avoid it. The first few meetings with her had made Gilden profoundly uneasy. His adult intimate encounters with women had numbered in the hundreds but they had been one-sided. A voyeur was not required to endure scrutiny as well as observing, to make conversation as well as listening. A voyeur did not have to worry about his own appearance, about the impression that he was making on another.

By his fifth meeting with Derli, his feelings had changed. She was deliberately seeking his company. Her appearance at his side whenever he happened to enter the communal recreation area was too unfailing to be an accident. But when she was with him she made no demands. If he gave any hint that he did not choose to talk, she remained quiet. If he wanted to speak, she listened to his every word. She groomed her hair and face in his presence unself-consciously, aware of but not displeased by his close attention. And she did not, like the women of his childhood and youth, dismiss, dominate, scorn, or command him. The one tender incident of infancy, when as he watched unnoticed a woman had given birth and held the tiny baby to her naked breast, was more dream than memory. But that woman had been like Derli, small, fair, and gentle.

She was talking now, answering his questions at the same time as she braided her long amber hair.

“You think you don’t know much about the Sigil, but actually you know almost as much as anyone. Their exploration ship appeared in orbit around Lucidar only two months ago, and they landed a few days later. Just two of them. That’s apparently the way they prefer to travel. The world of the Sigil, wherever it is, seems to be far off toward the center of the Galaxy. This couple are way outside the usual Sigil territory.”

“Then why are we so interested in them?”

Derli paused, peering quizzically into the mirror at Gilden past a thick twisted lock of fair hair. “Define ‘we.’ I am a biologist, naturally I’d like to know the Sigil physiology—something that so far has been completely denied to us. They keep to themselves, stay in their ship most of the time, avoid all direct physical contact.”

“What about Valmar? Is he a biologist, too?”

“He is, but that’s not why he’s here. Lucidar is a rebel world, close to breaking point with Earth. Valmar is one of the Mentor’s most trusted advisers. The Mentor wants to know if there is anything else going on with the Sigil—are they what they claim to be, simple explorers? Or are they something else, part of a subversion that the Mentor needs to worry about? Valmar is convinced that they are hiding something.”

“From what you say they seem to be hiding everything.”

Derli was applying a smooth coat of cream to an area below her right cheekbone. Gilden noticed a slight discoloration.

“It’s nothing.” Somehow she still had one eye on him. “It will be gone in a day or two. You’re right, though, the Sigil do seem to hide everything now. They were not like that when they first made contact. But that’s where you come in. It should be a real challenge.”

“They never leave their ship?”

“Briefly, for special occasions. But they have to wear suits. No one has been able to obtain a tissue sample—not even a flake of skin. And naturally their ship remains totally sealed all the time, to hold its atmosphere.” She inspected herself in the all-around mirror, then to Gilden’s disappointment stood up. “I have to go. Valmar will be waiting for me.”

Gilden stood up too, on the brink of a question: Is Valmar Krieg your husband, or your lover? He did not ask it, but waited until she was gone and the last trace of the perfume that she wore had been sucked away by the room’s air purifiers.

Then he went to his own quarters. Most of his specialized voyeur equipment was stowed away, inaccessible until the arrival on Lucidar. But what he carried with him in his personal luggage should suffice for such a simple job.

Gilden told himself that it was necessary work. In another two days his skills would be taxed to their limit. He could not afford to be out of practice.

* * *

Valmar Krieg was long-limbed and powerful, with a jutting red beard and golden-red hair over his whole body. He proved to be aggressively sexual, a brutal stallion of a lover who obviously hurt Derli and took no notice of her discomfort. She endured the violence of his passion without a murmur. When he was finished she stroked his body, fondling him and holding him in her arms, seemingly taking her own pleasure from his sated stillness. Only after he was asleep and quietly snoring did she ease away from him to examine the bruises on her neck, arms, and tender thighs.

Gilden watched everything in total absorption. And misery. For the first time in his life he had observed a sexual encounter in which he knew and
liked
the woman. It changed everything. He had experienced no vicarious thrill. Instead he had shared the pain felt by Derli. His only pleasure had come in observing her afterward, when she explored and tended to herself. And then it had been an impossible transference, Gilden’s virginal self becoming explorer and gentle nurse of Derli’s abused body.

He felt that he could not bear to meet her again, nor to act as voyeur for her lovemaking. But the urge to do so grew on him steadily for the next day and a half. He was almost relieved when it was Valmar Krieg rather than Derli who sought him out.

“Been enjoying yourself?” Krieg’s self-confidence matched his physical presence. He sat down at the table opposite Gilden. “Come on, man, don’t act innocent. You’ve been watching Derli and me.”

Denial was the immediate reaction. But it was overridden by another concern.

“How did you detect the presence of the voyeur? No one else has ever managed to do that.”

“Relax. I didn’t. One of my jobs is to keep an eye on you. I reviewed all your records back on Earth, and I’ve seen you ogling Derli. You have no work to do until we get to Lucidar. Put all those together, you had to be watching us. I don’t mind.”

“Derli—”

“Doesn’t know. And doesn’t care right now. She’s sick.” Krieg laughed at Gilden’s expression. “Oh, nothing to get excited about. Space doesn’t agree with her, makes her want to throw up. But I didn’t come here to talk about her. I came to talk about you.”

“You saw my records. You know all about me.”

“I do. But I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand what you are.”

“You think my records are wrong?”

“Not at all.” Valmar Krieg leaned back and hooked his hands over one knee. “The records are fine. But everyone has missed their significance. Did you know that your pulse went from below sixty to way over a hundred when you invaded the Mentor Presumptive’s bedchamber?”

“The Teller informed me of that.”

“Ah, but did she mention that the peak value, one hundred and thirty-eight, was attained
before the voyeur was in position
? By the time you were able to see the Presumptive and his bride, and the actual sex act began, your pulse rate was already dropping.”

“I did not know that.”

“I thought so. And the Teller could not interpret it. But I can.” Valmar Krieg laughed again, with the dominant self-confidence that Arrin Gilden could never feel. “You see, man, you’re no different from me. You’re as big a stud as I am. It’s just that you operate in a different area. Show you a protected, forbidden zone, like the Presumptive’s bedchamber, and it has all the challenge of a reluctant virgin. You can’t rest until you’ve eased your way in past the barriers, broken down all her defenses, and she lies wide open and helpless before you.
That’s
the exciting part. It’s the penetration of
defenses
that gives you your kicks—not when she says yes, and the screwing starts.”

Krieg stood up. “And you know what? You’ve got the time of your life waiting for you on Lucidar. Because according to what I’m hearing, the Sigil ship is hermetically sealed and totally impenetrable. The ultimate virgin.” He slapped Gilden on the shoulder. “Rest up, swordsman, and conserve your testosterone. You’re going to need it in another couple of days.”

* * *

Derli had been wrong. Gilden’s first meeting with the humans on Lucidar convinced him of that. They knew far more about the Sigil than anyone from Earth, and they had their own theories.

“Something changed.” The man responsible for briefing the new arrivals had an unpronounceable Lucidar name, glottal stops and deep throat consonants spoken through a mouthful of gravel. “Something we told them, or maybe they told us. After the first two weeks we had a translation program that made sense most of the time. So we started to exchange information. We were doing fine, talking physics and linguistics and getting into biology and social structure and philosophy. Then one evening the two of them went off to their ship. Next morning they didn’t come out. They’ve emerged only for short intervals ever since. And they will no longer swap information with us.”

Gilden was nodding agreement, but he was having trouble absorbing information. Even without the alien Sigil, Lucidar provided an overload of strangeness. Gravity, sun, air, exotic flora and fauna. People. The gravel-voiced Bravtz’ig—the nearest that Gilden could come to his name—was tall and broad enough to have qualified as a giant on Earth, but here he didn’t draw a second glance. It was tiny Derli and Gilden himself who would make the Lucidar freak show.