“That she dreams of you and wonders what it would be like to be in your arms.” In the confines of the elevator, Amos heard the sound of his angry jealous words echo back at him. “I think that she would like to close her eyes and hear your voice whisper to her as I make love to her. I will not be that fantasy for her, nor for you.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think that you are a dirty-minded, fat-headed, parochial, small-minded, jealous hunk of pig fat. Just let me give you a taste of what she’s going through and you stalking off and leaving her alone with it.”
Simeon turned off the lights in the elevator. Amos was plunged into pitch blackness; just long enough to reach the stage of imagining lights and colors to console himself. The human eye is not meant for complete darkness. Even on an overcast night with eyes closed there is some ambient light.
The darkness and motion were disorienting.
And frightening, the Bethelite admitted to himself.
“Stop it.” Amos said calmly, but firmly. Simeon didn’t answer. “Stop it, I said,” a trace of unease creeping into his voice. An accident, who would doubt his word?
Simeon brought the elevator to a halt.
“It’s unpleasant, isn’t it?” Simeon asked quietly.
“Yes,” Amos said shortly, sullenly. “Please, would you turn on the lights?”
“Channa can’t,” Simeon observed. “It’s possible they won’t come back on and she’ll have to get a prostheses, one of those devices they set into your face. Yup, things could look like this to her forever.”
“What do you want me to do?” Amos demanded. “I would give her my sight if I could.”
“That’s a safe offer,” Simeon observed contemptuously, “she wouldn’t accept such a sacrifice even if it was needed.”
“Then what would you have me do?” Amos was nearly shouting now, flapping his arms hard against his sides.
“Something a lot easier. Hold her. Just put your arms around her and hold her close. You softshells need that. I never had it so I don’t miss it.”
Amos shifted position, silent.
“I would hock my shell if I could physically comfort her. But I can’t. I can make sure she gets what she needs from the one person she’ll accept it from. And let me tell you something, lordling, even to comfort Channa, I wouldn’t want to stay a softshell. You’re cripples next to us! You realize that? We have senses, abilities, that you can’t even begin to imagine. But yes, in this one area, I am jealous of you. Despite that, I arranged . . . yes, noble being that I am . . . arranged for you to have to stay on this station to handle all the details the Bethelite leader will have. So that you could also comfort the woman we both love. There I’ve said it aloud!
“I’ve done all I can, Amos,” and now Simeon’s voice was tinged with a helpless note. “I’ve been with her since she was brought to the hospital. I haven’t left her. When she wakes up, I wish her good morning and mine is the last voice she hears at night. I’m the one who guides her safely across a room. I’m the one who tells her that what she’s looking for is a little to the right. I’m the one who makes sure she gets her meals. I’ve put up with her bouts of temper and self-pity and I’ve talked her through her moments of panic. I’m with her constantly. But you walk into the room—at long last I might add—and it’s like I’ve never existed. Did you see her? She lit up like a star going nova. And you have the gall to walk out on her!”
Simeon turned the lights back on and Amos squinted briefly as his vision adjusted.
The door opened and Channa raised her head, half-disbelieving she heard the sound of his step, the eagerness with which he approached her.
“Oh, Amos!” She reached out her arms tentatively toward him.
“Ah, Channa,” and Amos took her hands and pulled her into the circle of his arms. This only I may do, he thought possessively, proudly and yet, because of that brief darkness, sadly, too, because Simeon would never have this.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
Channa sobbed once and tried to apologize, the words stumbling over his, but he stopped her with a kiss.
Simeon watched them enter the lounge, but decided not to follow them. This is going to be tough enough, he thought, I think I’ll work up to it gradually. But wasn’t it a great game I played?
“Before . . . I came to tell you that I must stay longer on the station than we had thought,” Amos said. “When I must return to Bethel . . .”
“Stay?” and the gladness in her face and voice reassured Amos as no argument from Simeon ever would, how much Channa did indeed love him.
“Stay . . . for now,” he said, trailing caressing fingers around her lovely face. This, too, I may do that he cannot.
“For now?” Then a return of her deep and genuine fear caught at his heart.
“I must return to Bethel,” he said slowly. “I have obligations there.”
“I have them here. I can’t leave Simeon or Joat,” Channa said piteously.
And Amos knew that she also meant these quarters which she knew even in her blindness, and this station which was surely now as much her heart’s home as Bethel was his.
“Neither can I leave my people, my planet. Nor do I ask such sacrifice of you,” he said, using the force of his personality to reassure her. He smiled down at her, thumbs caressing the velvety skin of her temples. She searched his face with her fingertips and smiled in response.
“But several times in every year, I must return to this station on the business of my people and my world,” he went on. “That, I may in all conscience do.” A wry shrug. “If my people cannot do without their prophet now and then, then I will not have taught them well. Perhaps the day will come when they need no man to stand between them and God, and I will be free to raise my horses and roses in peace.”
Her face lit. “And I could visit sometimes, couldn’t I?” she murmured.
“With Joat,” Amos said, and then in a far more persuasive and loving tone, “although it is not well for a child to be alone, without brothers and sisters . . .”
“Yes,” she laughed as she sensed the change in his stance, falling formally to one knee but before he would speak. She held him upright with her hands.
“In a matter such as this, I should ask permission of your father,” Amos said, rising and drawing her close. “But Simeon will do.”
She fisted him lightly under the short ribs. “I’ll speak to Simeon on my own behalf.”
“We will then both address Simeon the Father. But,” Amos said in her ear, after a time. “There is one condition.”
“What?”
“You must never call me Simeon again.” She drew her head back and nodded solemnly. He touched her chin gently. “You may, however,” he went on, wishing for once that Simeon was listening, “call me Persephone.”
Epilogue
The chills were less now, and the survivors recovering, although a quarter of the crew had died of the fever and more gone mad.
Belazir’t‘Marid clenched his rattling teeth against a paroxysm as he lay in the darkened bridge, while the Dreadful Bride fled outward all alone.
“Someday,” he whispered.
S. M. Stirling, The City Who Fought
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