The Fugitive Worlds (15 page)

"You want me to bring you a drink?" Toller said, aware of sounding slow-witted.

"Yes—if you don't mind." Vantara sat down and made herself comfortable on the bench. "I'll wait here for you."

Feeling slightly bemused, Toller made his way back to the refreshments table and obtained another huge bumper of brandy for himself and a normal-sized one for Vantara, to the accompaniment of much nodding and winking from Kettoran and Wotoorb. While he was on his way back to the bench a ptertha came drifting across the garden, its bubble-like structure glinting but scarcely visible in the uncertain light. It was ascending in the updraught from one of the fires when it was noticed by a group of the revelers. Whooping with glee, they began throwing large twigs and pebbles at it. One of the sticks flailed through the ptertha and it abruptly ceased to exist. A cheer went up from the onlookers.

"Did you see that?" Vantara said as Toller approached
her. "Just listen to them! Overjoyed because they managed
to kill something."

"The ptertha killed many of us in their day," Toller replied,
unmoved.
Including twenty-one unborn babies.

"So you approve of killing them for sport?"

"No, no," Toller said, sensing a return of Vantara's old
antagonism and feeling unable to cope with it. "I don't
approve of killing anything, for sport or any other reason. I've seen enough of the butchers' handiwork to last me a
lifetime." He sat down, handed Vantara her glass and took
a sip from his own.

"Is that what's wrong with you?"

"There is nothing wrong with me."

"I know—that's what is wrong with you. Having something
wrong is a natural state with. ..." Vantara paused. "I'm
sorry. As well as being too involuted, that was uncalled
for."

"Did you ask for that drink merely to occupy your hands?"
Toller took a gulp of his brandy, suppressing a grimace as
the excessive quantity of the fiery liquid washed into his
throat.

"Why are you so determined to get drunk tonight?"

"In the name of. . . !" Toller gave an exasperated sigh.
"Is this your normal mode of conversation? If it is I'd be grateful if you would go and sit elsewhere."

"Again, I apologize." Vantara gave him a placatory smile
and sipped from her glass. "Why don't
you
lead the conver
sation, Toller?"

The informal and quite intimate use of his given name
surprised Toller, adding to the mystery of her change of
attitude towards him. He gazed thoughtfully at Vantara and
found that in the half-light her face was impossibly beautiful,
a concordance of perfect features which might have existed
only in the mind of an inspired artist. It occurred to him that
one of his fantasies had suddenly and unexpectedly been
translated into reality—
she,
with all of her incredible woman
liness, was close beside him. And it was a night for romance.
And there was a thrilling softness in her voice. And it was the
duty
of every human to seize what happiness he could whenever he could—no matter how many tiny skeletons
he had looked upon—because nature produced millions of
beings of every species for the precise reason that some of
them were bound to be unfortunate, and if a member of the
lucky majority failed to savor life to the full that would be a betrayal of the few who had been sacrificed on his behalf.
It was now up to him to make the maximum effort to win the object of all his desires by attracting her to him with
his qualities of strength, courage, consideration, fortitude,
knowledge, humor, generosity. Perhaps a well-turned com
pliment would be the best way to begin.

"Vantara, you look so. ..." He paused, aware of the
scrutiny of eyes that no longer existed in twenty-one fist-sized
skulls, and listened like a bystander to the words which were
issuing from his mouth. "What is happening here? Usually
when we meet you behave like an arrogant bitch, and now —all of a sudden—we're on first-name terms and the very
air is suffused with warmth and friendliness. What private
scheme are you about?"

Vantara laughed and gasped at the same time. "Arrogance! You talk to me about
arrogance*
You who always
approach a woman with your male armor clanking and your
phallic sword swinging through the air!"

"That is the most twisted and. . . ."

Vantara silenced him by raising one hand, fingers spread
out, as a barrier between their eyes and mouths. "Say no
more. Toller, I beg you! Neither of us is wearing armor on
this night and therefore either of us could easily be wounded.
Let us accept things the way they are for this single hour; let
us have this drink together; and let us
talk
to each other. Will you agree to that?"

Toller smiled. "How could any reasonable man refuse?"

"Very well! Now, tell me why you are no longer the Toller
Maraquine I have always known."

"We've returned to the same subject!"

"We never left it."

"But. . . ."Toller gazed at her in perplexity for a moment,
and then the unthinkable happened—he began to speak
freely about what was in his mind, to confess his newly discovered weaknesses, to admit his growing belief that he
would never be able to live up to the example set for him by
his grandfather. At one point, while he was describing the
tragic find at the pumping station in Styvee, his voice faltered
and he experienced a terrible fear that he would be unable
to continue. When he had finished he took another drink of
his brandy, but found it was no longer to his taste. He set
the glass aside and sat staring down at his hands, wondering
why he felt as shaky as a man who had just emerged from
the most harrowing ordeal of his life.

"Poor Toller," Vantara said gently. "What has life done to you that you should be ashamed of having finer feel
ings?"

"You mean, of being weak."

"It isn't weakness to feel compassion, or to experience
doubt, or to need human contact."

Toller thought he glimpsed a way of repairing some of the cracks in his personal facade. "I could do with
lots
of human
contact," he said wryly. "Provided it's the right sort."

"Don't talk like that, Toller—there is no need for it."
Vantara set her own glass down and swung one leg over the
bench so that she was sitting facing him. "Very well, you
may touch me if you want to."

"This is not the way I. . . ." Toller fell silent as Vantara
took his hands and guided them on to her breasts. They
felt warm and firm, even through the thickly embroidered
material of her captain's jupon. He moved closer.

"Pray do not misunderstand," Vantara whispered. "I am not going to share your bed—this degree of human contact
is sufficient for the needs of the hour." Her lips parted slightly, inviting him to kiss, and he accepted the invitation as in a dream, scarcely able to believe what was happening. The utter femininity of her swamped his senses, reducing the sounds in the garden to a remote murmur. Vantara and he held the same position for a long but indeterminate time, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps twenty, repeating the kiss over and over again, tirelessly, feeling no need to vary or advance the act of physical communion. And when finally they separated Toller felt replenished, restored to completeness. He smiled at Vantara and she responded, his smile grew wider and suddenly they were laughing. Toller was aware of a sense of relief and relaxation akin to that which followed sexual congress, but it was more pervasive and had a component which hinted at greater permanence.

"I don't know what you did to me," he said. "An apothecary could grow rich if he could put such a remedy in a jar."

"I didn't do anything."

"But you did! I had become so weary of this old planet that even the circumnavigation flight was beginning to pail on me. Now, all at once, I'm looking forward to it again. We will not actually be together when we take to the skies, but I'll be continuously in sight of your ship, day after day, and at night there'll be no landing in graveyard cities. I'll see to that. We can. . . ."

"Toller!" Vantara looked oddly wary. "I told you not to misinterpret what has taken place between us."

"I am presuming nothing, I assure you," Toller said quickly and easily, knowing he was lying, filled with an exulting new certainty that in this respect he knew Vantara better than she knew herself. "All I am saying is—"

"Forgive me for interrupting," Vantara cut in, "but you
are
making one rather large presumption."

"And that is. . . ?"

"That I will be taking part in the flight."

Toller was jolted. "How can you
not
take part? You're
here because you're an air captain, and the round-the-globe flight is the most important part of the entire mission. Sky-
commodore Sholdde will not excuse you from it."

Vantara smiled in a way that was almost shame-faced. "I confess that I was anticipating some difficulty in that direc
tion, but it transpires that my beloved grandmother—the
Queen—had foreseen this kind of thing happening, and had given the commodore instructions that my requests were not
to be denied." She smiled again. "I have a feeling he will
shed very few tears when I leave."

"Leave?" Toller understood exactly what Vantara was
saying, but his lips framed the question nevertheless. "Where
do you intend to go?"

"Home, of course. I despise this tired and gloomy world even more than you do, Toller—so tomorrow I will escape
from it by flying to Overland, and I doubt if anything will ever persuade me to come back here." Vantara stood up, symbolically breaking the bonds of Land's gravity, putting
the interplanetary chasm between herself and Toller, and
when she spoke again her voice contained a note of casual
insincerity which he felt like a blow to the face.

"Perhaps we will meet again in Prad—in some future
year."

Divivvidiv floated near the viewing post of an electronic
telescope and waited until the Xa had completed all adjust
ments in the aim-and-focus circuits. When the image on the
screen had steadied a comparatively small area of the planet below remained as background, the rest having flowed outwards and vanished. He seemed to be looking vertically downwards through a window, the view from which was
crossed by swirls of cloud superimposed on ochre us land
patterns.

In the exact center of that view was a small silvery crescent,
resembling a miniature moon which had somehow been
frozen in place. Closer examination of the object revealed
that it was a brownish sphere illuminated on one side by the
sun. It appeared solid enough to be a rocky asteroid, but
Divivvidiv knew he was looking at one of the fabric balloons
used by the Primitives for travel between their worlds. As it
was still ascending towards the weightless zone the ship's gondola was optically invisible, but the Xa could "see" the
crew very well by other means.