He forgot his own emotions as he found the young girl collapsed upon hischest, sobbing like a frightened child. After a moment's hesitation,in which he saw that restraint would be tantamount to cruelty, he puthis arm around her and brought her close, kissed her forehead and saidgently. 'Don't cry, little Sylvie (the name he had heard herfather use those many years before). It's over now.'
'But it's not over,' she said wretchedly. 'It's not.And if you only knew what I was going to do. You'd hate me.You'd never speak to me again. It's too awful..... And Idon't WANT to. I don't want to.'
He waited for her to become quieter. 'The only thing I couldn'tforgive, and that I don't understand, is why you keep punishingyourself. The way you've withdrawn, and won't let anyone close toyou. Especially Kalus.' He knew from the hurt look she gave him thathe had struck upon the heart of her unhappiness. 'Or is it himyou're trying to punish?'
'You don't understand,' she said weakly. And she would havetold him, and perhaps have found in his wisdom a way to let go, andrenounce the evil thing that she proposed. But at that moment she hearda voice outside the open door.
'I thought I saw her go into the library,' answered McIntyre to anunknown questioner. She stiffened, quickly wiped the tears from hereyes. Kataya knocked lightly, then entered.
'Hello, Commander. Am I disturbing you? I'd hoped to speak withSylviana.' There was no animosity in her voice. If anything, it wassoftened and conciliatory. 'Would it be all right?'
Though the question had been directed to Stenmark, Sylviana felt theintrusion keenly, as if she had received yet another slight from thiswoman, who continued to encroach upon her most intimate acquaintances.
'Anything you have to say to me,' she replied without turning,'You can say in front of the Commander.'
Stenmark began to rise diffidently, but she took his arm and would notlet him, unsure herself if she wanted his strength to lean upon, orsimply did not wish to grant anything so personal to the woman who hadhurt her so badly.
'Really, Sylviana, maybe I should go.' But the childlike anguishhe saw in the honest look she gave him, made him turn instead with asigh.
'Please come in,' he said.
'Are you sure, Sylviana? It's very personal.'
'You heard my answer,' she said coldly, still not turning.'Speak to me here, or not at all.'
'All right. The Commander will have to be informed in any case.'Kataya took a deep breath, trying with all her self-discipline not tosound too triumphant.
'The tests were positive. I'm going to have a child. By Kalus.I wanted to explain that it changes nothing between you, and that I feelno hostility---'
But Sylviana broke her off, whirling in a frenzy. 'You sorry AsianWHORE! Sleeping with him behind my back, and humiliating me again andagain!'
'No,' said Kataya calmly, firmly. 'There was only the onetime, which never would have happened..... But it did happen, for whichI'll always be grateful. I just wanted to tell you that I bear youno grudge, and would never try to steal him from you.'
Sylviana stood in shocked silence. And though her face and wholebearing were hostile and inconsolable, Kataya realized they might neverspeak again. Better to say it all now, and have done.
'Taking him away from you was never my motive. And though I amdeeply fond of him..... Can't you see how much he loves you?PASSIONATELY, single-heartedly. Don't you know how much that'sworth? I've only experienced it once in my life, and I would giveall the world to have that back..... My gentle husband, so unlike thehard, cruel men among whom he was raised.'
'Get out!' screamed Sylviana, 'Before I tear your eyes out!You MONSTER. You whore.' And she fell to weeping.
Kataya swallowed hard, then left to control her own emotions. Rising, Stenmark spoke for her, perhaps for all the company. 'Sylviana. SYLVIE. I know you don't want to hear this right now, but I think you have to.'
The young woman fell back upon the stool, sobbing. Touched with pitythough he was, the aging Commander knew he could not comfort her untilhe had made her see the truth.
'The men of Japan, Kataya's ancestors, were every bit as cruel asthe Germans during World War II. They killed millions in their marchthrough Asia, raping women to death, cutting men to pieces, neversparing the children..... So that when America finally developed theatomic bomb, those with the power to use it had very little sympathyleft. But loosing that atomic death, whose lingering effects were notyet known, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, making war against the innocentwomen and children of that tragic country..... One atrocity doesn'tjustify another.' And while he was not sure she would understand theparallel, he knew no other way of reaching her.
'The problem with revenge, Sylviana, is that you never hurt thepeople you're trying to, but only create new victims. Your countrycondemned to a slow and horrible death, by all the ills and cancers ofradiation poisoning, more than a million men, women and children who hadno knowledge of, and took no willing hand in, the butcheries of theirmilitary government.'
'I don't care!' cried the young woman bitterly. 'You have to care,' said Stenmark grievously, 'Even if it happened before you were born. And even then, that's only the smaller part of Kataya's anger. You lost your father, as we all lost those dear to us..... Imagine if you had lost Kalus, in the full flower of your pure and uncorrupted love for him? And not only Kalus, but the innocent life his seed had planted in your womb.' But Sylviana only wept harder, unable to feel anything but her own pain.
'She may be the last Japanese left alive,' he continued. 'Andthe silent suffering forced on the women of that country by theirculture is beyond any power of mine to convey. Should it all be fornaught? Hate the men of that time if you want; sometimes I do myself.But not the women. God love them.....
'She has the right to bear a child, Sylviana, and to choose thatchild's father. Think about that the next time you find yourselfhating her, or despising the blessed and innocent life that now growsinside her. I don't think you'll have the heart to hate her then.Not in your worst moments.'
But it was all too much for her: too overwhelming to forgive, or evenunderstand. She raised herself, angrily pushing away the hands thatwould have comforted her, and ran out of the room with a wordless cry ofpain and self-loathing. And kept on running, as if the Devil ran behindher.
In time she slowed to a walk, though she could no more stop moving thandeny her lungs the air they screamed for. 'Just walk!' she cried.'WALK. Until you can't feel anything.'
But after another mile she stopped, and knelt down and wept for thethird time. Because she knew that she would do it. She would betraythe one she loved most. Until she made him feel her pain, thinkingnothing of his own---
'I don't care!' she cried, raging, the three words which sooften precede the worst that we are. And though they were not entirelytrue in her case, the tragic end is often identical.
She would go through with the evil act. She would do it.
Chapter 47
That night Kalus dreamed he was alone in a dark cave, too small and dankfor a man. But the light rose slowly through a stone-lipped entrance,and he saw a familiar form beside him as he sank into the wall, towatch. Kamela lay with three cubs beside her. But two had been turnedto stone. He struggled to wake himself, because he knew what was tocome.
A large wolf entered, looking black, and bared its yellow fangs.Another stood guard outside as the earth parted to admit the terribleand magnificent bastard, Shar-hai. He entered, silent as death, andlifted the living cub and set it gently, almost lovingly, in a corner.Kamela never once moved, or changed her expression as they came closer,snarling sadistically.
They raped her, as he struggled to break free. Only then it was nolonger Kamela, but Sylviana they raped, and the face of Shar-hai becamehuman as it tore at her. He struggled desperately and called her nameas Smith and Rawlings pinned him to the floor. BUT THEY'RE MY FRIENDS!He cried out to her with hea
rt-crushing passion, as the sound of itfilled his ears, and woke him.
*
He lay on his back, wet with sweat, unable to remember. He threw offthe sleeping bag which now seemed to him a coffin, or a mummy's wrap.He tried to shake off the dream, but the images of Kamela's rape hadnever left him, and those of Sylviana as the victim transferredthemselves with terrifying ease. His own reality, as it returned tohim, seemed far less real. And it came as no surprise as he recognizedthe human face of Shar-hai. It was William, his teeth like knives.
The sun was climbing: she would be awake. But this was only anafterthought, as he ran toward the compound. He threw open the firstdoor, then the second, and burst into the room he had never seen. Shewas there, half dressed, seeming but a continuation of the dream fromwhich he felt he had not woken. For there was no waking from the truth.
'Sylviana,' he pleaded, closing the door while she glared at him.'You must not see William today. I have seen a terrible vision. AndI know, as I have always known..... He will rape you, and try to hurtyou! Perhaps he will even (the thought was unendurable), KILL you.'
She forced herself to finish dressing calmly, as he forced himself notto touch her. But as she tried to walk past him as if he did not exist,he could contain himself no longer. He seized her by the arms, and bothlost control.
'You can't go to him!' he shouted. 'I won't LET you.'And his hands were like claws. Then they softened, along with his eyes,and he all but begged her. 'PLEASE.'
'Take your hands off me!' she cried, breaking free with a terriblestrength of her own. 'Don't you touch me, ever!' He drew backfrom her, trembling.
'Haven't you punished me long enough?' he said. 'I amSORRY. For this. For everything. I am in agony; is that what youwanted? But I am also afraid for you, mortally afraid. In some thingsyou are still very naive. You can't see, no one can see, what hewill do to you! But I know the look in his eyes, because I have seen itbefore. It stood in front of me in the arena, at no greater distancethan the length of my sword---'
'Shut up!' she screamed. 'You shut up! What do you know aboutMEN? You couldn't, because you're barely more than an apeyourself. Go back to your beloved hill-people, and eat rotten meat inthe dirt!'
But here she paused, remembering her purpose. And through the heat ofthe first real hatred she had ever felt for him, came the cold touch ofpoise in the act of betrayal, and she knew with a twisted thrill what itwas to surrender to Evil.
'But if you're really worried,' she said placidly, 'Wait forme at the Vale of the Obelisk. I'll meet you there at noon, to tellyou of our love-making. And then we'll say goodbye, forever.'
She strode out, and left him shaking. He fell to his knees and wept,much as William had screamed, to find his lover dead. He was alone in adark cave, too small and dank for a man.....
*
William did not wake, because he had not slept. He told himself that hewas letting it build inside him, mounting toward the kill. But in truthhe was far beyond even that. The amphetamines he had injected thoughevery voice of body and mind cried against it, ate him like a cancer.He had lost all control. This would be an act of vengeance, but not hisvengeance. Somewhere in the mincer of pain and loss he had become thevery thing he had fought all his life against, what he swore he wouldnever become: an instrument in someone else's, someTHING else'shands. He could not admit this. He could not admit, or think, ofanything. For his mind was no longer his own. Not by a conscious actof submission---
He gave a violent cry and hurled a bottle at the crumbling half-wall.As it shattered, as he saw the broken glass and knew what it could do tohuman flesh, he remembered his purpose. In large, painful gulps hedrained most of a second bottle, letting the wine take the place ofblood in his veins.
He would be Master yet. The sun was up and it was day. He would haveher, and then destroy her. Then destroy himself. Nothing elsemattered, and Nothing never needed justification. It simply was, theonly truth: the hole when the bottom fell out. It was the naked razor,stalking through the streets, cutting out men and women at random.Letting some grow fat for its later pleasure. Wantonly hewing the poor,who though possessed of a greater capacity for suffering, had reachedthe limits of endurance and could be tortured no more.
He had become a willing servant of the thing he had always fought, andfeared. But he did not care.
He did not care.
*
When he came to her, as arranged, there was a moment when Sylviana sawwhat Kalus had seen: a wild, desperate hunger in his eyes, that could nolonger feed on things which the earth gave as food. They wanted notflesh, but blood, not nourishment, but to mock the very act ofnourishment. They could not be fed, or appeased, any more than onecould quench the rape of napalm fire.
She turned away, and felt her heart throb violently in revulsion andfear. Only the perverse pride and will that had slowly taken hold ofher, kept her from running away at the sight of him. This, and thestubborn naivet? of the illusioned, which told her this instinctivefear was a flaw of perception: that true, malignant evil did not exist,and that things could not possibly come to the ends envisioned bynightmare imagination. It was the same voice that told the world theHolocaust could not happen, was not happening, even as six million Jews,Russians, intellectuals, homosexuals and other defenseless minorities,were led to the fire. She listened to that voice, and made it herisland of hope, the one that made the twisted dream of murder andhealing, kindness through cruelty, destruction and rebuilding, stillpossible. Like one who had stared too long at the sun, insisting therewas no danger, she was completely blind.
She turned back to him, more composed, and wondered only why he made noattempt to aid her: to dim the cutting laser of his eyes.
But he was through with hiding, and playing the part of the weak andworshipful lover. LET HER SEE! rang the twisted chime of his thoughts,distorted and horrible. Let her walk into the jaws of death with eyeswide open. And this choice also was correct: that his eyes andintentions were obvious, only made them the more impossible to believe.
She merely said, 'Shall we go?' And she couldn't understand whyat that moment she should think of the black widow that her father hadfound in her bedroom as a child, killing it as she cried at his cruelty.
*
Kalus sat on a piece of broken stone with his head in his hands, unableyet to look up and go on. Alaska stood before him, puzzled. Her youngmind had continued to develop, so that now she was aware of herexistence as clearly, if without the same complexity, as any humanadolescent. In the preceding weeks she had realized that such a choicemight come: a choice between the two people she loved. And for reasonsno more complicated than simple feeling, she had chosen Kalus, hadremained with him as he lay helpless on the floor, and not followed whenSylviana called to her angrily.
It was his one compensation. He knew that if he left the colony the cubwould go with him, regardless of what lay ahead. It was that simple,and that beautiful. And in that moment, alone and forlorn among theruins of yet another tortured depression, this singular act of givingbroke his heart. Because he saw in her pure, animal innocence the thingthat he had always wanted from a woman, but had not dared to ask:
Loyalty, which so many have forgotten, and for which there is no otherword. And not the pale imitation of it found in some marriages, whichdemand that each cut off and subvert some part of themselves, to bejoined like hobbled twins at the place of amputation. What he wantedwas nothing more and nothing less than the bond of true allies: not halfa woman, because of him, but a whole woman, for the same reason. Not toenslave but to enrich, not to question in time of crisis, but to loveand support, not blindly, but freely and fully. All these things he hadoffered her; but he knew they meant nothing if she was unwilling to givethe same in return. Because there is no such thing as one-sided love.
He did not know how he understood these things, or why they had come tohim now, only that he knew them, and that their truth was unbending.Yes. H
e would wait for her at the designated time and place. If shecame to him and said she could not do it, and asked his help to rebuildthe things that they had lost, he would remain with her forever.
But if she came to him in mocking triumph---if she ever again spoke tohim as she had---all was finished between them. He would leave her,leave this place, and never look back. There was no middle ground.Because he knew finally, defiantly, that he was physically incapable ofbeing other than himself, and should never have tried to be. Theconsequences of rejection would be devastating, and in the cold light ofday he did not know how he would find the will to go on, without her.But this no longer mattered. Nothing mattered, but that this agony andfear must end. There was no other way.
He rose and walked the remaining distance. To the Vale of the Obelisk.To wait.
***
SO FAR IT'S GONE WELL ENOUGH, she told herself, though she still couldnot look at him, or one second further than the present. They sattogether on the sunlit slope of a wide, grassy recession. Its quietsymmetry would have been lovely and serene, but for a single thrust ofgnarled stone which pierced its center, ringed about the base by amatting of jagged weeds. The company called it Devil's Thumb. Itwas a protrusion of the devil to be sure, but she wasn't at all surethat ?thumb' was the correct metaphor. She kept her eyes awayfrom it, concentrating instead on the white sheet spread beneath them,on the bread and wine before them.