by C. L. Moore
“Shove me off,” she told the waiter, and sipped the first heady draft of her drink in mild defiance as the arbored platform went drifting off among the leaves. A vagrant current caught it there and carried her slowly along in a wide circle in and out of the branches, past other platforms where couples sat with heads close together with exotic drinks. Juille felt very lonely and very self-conscious.
On the curving stairs a young man in a startling cloak looked after her thoughtfully.
There were times, he told himself, when even the most trustworthy of secret informants made mistakes. He thought this must be one of the times. He had been waiting here for some while, watching the crystal stairs patiently. But now—the amazonian princess of Ericon was a familiar figure to him from her newsscreen appearances, and it was impossible to identify that striding military creature with this woman swathed in shadows, her garments breathing out Stardust that drifted and twinkled and faded behind her like wafts of faint perfume as she moved.
The young man knew very well what magic the dress designers of Cyrille could work, but he could not believe their magic wholly responsible for this. He grinned a little and lifted his shoulders imperceptibly under the remarkable cloak. It would be amusing to find out.
He kept an eye upon the drifting platform and mounted the stairway slowly, keeping level with it.
Juille watched her drink go down in the frosted sphere and was somewhat ironically aware that her spirits were rising to match it. The rigid self-consciousness of her first few minutes had relaxed; the drink made her mind at once cloudy and sparkling, a little like the shadowy draperies she wore. This was a delicious sensation, floating free upon drifts of perfumed breeze while music breathed and ebbed around her in the green twilight.
She watched the other patrons drifting by, half-seen amoconfettilike leaves of their bowers. Many of the faces she thought she recognized. Cyrille was not a world for the rank and file of the Galaxy to enjoy. One had to present stiff credentials to make reservations here, and by no means all of the patrons came incognito. It was a place to enjoy forbidden pleasures secretly, of course, but equally a place to see and be seen in. The wealthy and the noble of all the Galaxy’s worlds took considerable pride in showing off their elaborate costumes and the beauty of their companions here, for the very fact of their presence was as good as a published statement of wealth and ancestry.
Presently a flash of scarlet seen through the leaves of a passing platform caught her eye. She remembered then that she had noticed that same shocking cloak upon a young man on the stairs. It was a garment so startling that she felt more than a passing wonder about the personality of the man who would wear it. The garment had been deliberately designed to look like a waterfall of gushing blood, bright arterial scarlet that rippled from the shoulders in a cascading deluge, its colors constantly moving and changing so that one instinctively looked downward to see the scarlet stream go pouring away behind its wearer down the stairs.
Now the blood-red deluge moved fitfully between the branches of a passing arbor. The platform turned so that she could see through the arch of the entrance, and for a long moment as they moved lazily by one another she looked into the interested face of a young man with yellow curls and a short blond beard. His eyes followed her all during the leisurely passing of their platforms, and Juille suddenly sparkled behind the delicious languorous spell her drink had laid upon her. This was it! This was what she had hoped for, and not quite admitted even to herself.
A panel glowed into opaque life in the center of the table she leaned upon. The ubiquitous, inhumanly sweet voice of Cyrille murmured:
“A young man in a red cloak has just asked the privilege of speaking to the occupant of this platform. His identity is not revealed, but the occupant is assured from our records that he is of noble family and good reputation except for a casual tendency toward philandering of which the occupant is warned. He is skilled in the military arts, knows most forms of music well, enjoys athletic games, has done some composing of considerable merit. If the occupant wishes further acquaintance, press the left chair arm which will cut front repellors.”
Juille almost giggled at the curious blend of chaperonage, social report and conversational guide with which the honeyed voice prefaced an informal meeting. She wondered if her own anonymous record had been presented to the man, and then decided that it would not be, without her permission.
She wondered, too, just how another woman in her place, with the background she had usurped, would probably act. After a moment of almost panicky hesitation she laid a hand upon the chair arm and leaned on it.
The other platform had evidently made a wide circle around her while the introduction was in progress. Now it swung about in front of her arbor and she could see that the red-cloaked man was leaning on his own chair in a similar position. Across the clear green gulf he called in a pleasant voice:
“May I?&221;
Juille inclined her dark-gold head, carefully coifed under the hooding veil. The platforms drifted closer, touched with the slightest possible jar. The young man ducked under the arbor, darkening the entrance with the swoop of his bloody cloak. It billowed out behind him extravagantly in the little wind upon which the platforms drifted.
Juille was glowing with sudden confidence. Now she had achieved part of what she had set out to do. Surely this proved her capable of competing with other women on their own unstable, mysterious ground. The magic of the shadowy gown she wore had a part in it, and the drink she had almost finished added its dangerous warmth.
After all, humanity was a strange role to Juille, not one to maintain long. The subservient planets had wheeled across the heavens for her imperial family too long. That look of intolerable pride was coming back subtly into her delicate, steely face beneath the veil that drew its shadow across her eyes.
She nodded the newcomer to a crystal chair across from her, studying him coolly from under the cobwebby veil. He was smiling at her out of very blue eyes, his teeth flashing in the short curly beard. He looked foppish, but he was a big young man, and she noticed that the cloak of running blood swung from very fine shoulders indeed. She felt a faint contempt for him—music, composing, when the man had shoulders like that! Lolling here in that outrageous cape, his beard combed to the last careful curl, oblivious to the holocaust that was rising all through the Galaxy.
She had a moment’s vision of that holocaust breaking upon Cyrille, as it was sure to break very soon even this close to the sacred world of Ericon. She thought of H’vani bombs crashing through this twilight sphere in which she floated. She saw the vast tree trunk crumbling on its foundation, crashing down in ruins, its great arms combing all these drifting crystal bowers out of the green perfumed air. She thought of the power failing, the lights going out, the cries of the suddenly stricken echoing among the shattered Edens. She saw the darkness of outer space with cold stars twinkling, and the vast luminous bulk of Ericon looming up outside through the riven walls of Cyrille.
The young man did not appear to share any such premonitions of disaster. He sank into the chair she had indicated and stretched his long legs out comfortably. He had set down on the table a crystal inhaler shaped like a long flattened pitcher with its lip closed except for a tiny slit. Blue-green liquid inside swung gently to the motion of the platform.
He smiled at Juille very charmingly. In spite of herself she warmed to him a little. The charm was potent; though she disparaged it, she could not wholly resist returning the smile.
“This is Cyrille at its best,” he said, and gestured toward the twilit hush through which their transparent islet was floating in a long, ascending spiral. The gesture came back to include the bower’s intimacy. “Maybe,” he said reflectively, “the best I’ve ever known.”
Juille gave him a remote glance under the veil.
̶ery est dream,” he explained seriously. “That’s what we come for, isn’t it? Except that what we get here is much nicer than most dreams. You, for instance.”
The charming smile again, both repelling and attracting her. “If this were a dream, I might wake up any moment. But as it is—”
He stared at her for an instant in silence, while a little breeze rustled the leaves about them and green space swam underfoot below the transparent floor.
“You might be a princess,” he went on in a voice of deliberate musing. “Or something made up out of synthetics by some magic or other—I’ve heard of such things on Cyrille. Maybe you have no voice. Maybe you’re just made to sit there and smile and look beautiful. Is it too much to hope you’re alive, too—not an android?”
Juille said to herself, “This young man is much too glib, and he certainly enjoys the sound of his own voice. But then, I enjoy it, too—”
Aloud she said nothing, but she smiled and inclined her head a little, so that from the disturbed veil a mist of frosty lights floated out and twinkled into nothingness in the bowery gloom.
The young man stared at her, half enchanted by his own fancy, half convinced in spite of himself that she might after all be one of the fabulous androids of Cyrille, endowed with a compelling charm stronger than the charm of humans.
“If you were,” he went on, “if you were born yesterday out of a matrix just to sit there and be beautiful, I wonder what we’d talk about?”
Juille decided it was time to speak. She made her voice remote and low, and said through the sparkling shadows of her veil:
“We’d talk about the worlds you know … you would tell me what it’s like outside Cyrille.”
He smiled at her delightedly. “They gave you a beautiful voice! But I’d rather show you the worlds than talk about them. What would you like to see?”
“Which do you like best?”
Egide lifted his crystal inhaler and put its slitted lip to his mouth, tilting out a few drops of the blue-green liquid within. Then he closed his eyes and let the liquor volatize upon his tongue and go expanding and rising all through his head in dizzying sweetness. He was wondering if he would have to kill this beautiful, low-voiced creature, and if so, whether he would strangle her or use a knife, or whether the little gun tucked inside his belt would be safest. He said:
“I’ve never been sure of that. You’ll have to help me decide. If we find one beautiful enough, I’ll take you there tonight.” He leaned forward above the panel in the table top and spoke into it briefly. “Now watch,” he said.
Juille leaned across the table, folding her arms upon its cool surface. The veil setled about her in slow, cloudy shadows, little lights sparkling among them. With their heads close together they watched pictures form and hover briefly and fade in the panel.
Their islet floated out in a long arc over the abysses of spring evening, and followed a vagrant air current back through the branches again, while they reviewed world after changing world.
“Do you know,” said Egide, “that we’re doing what only the emperor of Ericon could do?” He watched juille’s dim reflection in the table top, and saw her expression change sharply. He smiled. Yes, she was probably—herself. He went on. “We’re making the worlds parade for our amusement. I’ll be emperor and give you the one you choose. Which shall it be?”
Juille was hesitating between laughter and outraged divinity. Did the lesser races really talk like this among themselves, with disrespect even for the emperor of the Galaxy? She did not know. She had no way of guessing. She could only swallow the unintended sacrilege and pretend to play his impious little game.
“There,” she said in a moment, pointing a tapered forefinger, “give me that city.”
“Yorgana is yours,” he told her, with a regal gesture that made his cloak sweep out in a sudden gush of blood. And he spoke again into the panel. The great swinging branches began to drift more swiftly by them as their platform picked up motion toward the giant tree trunk and the stairs.
Juille was accustomed to a certain amount of informality from her officers and advisers. She had never insisted upon the full rendition of her imperial rights, which in some cases bordered almost upon semidivinity. But she knew now for the first time that no one had ever been really at ease in her presence before.
Half a dozen times as they went up the stairs and entered a fancifully drop-shaped elevator she was on the verge of laughter or outraged dignity, or both together, at the young man’s attitude toward her. No one before had ever pretended even in jest to bestow largesse upon her; no one had ever assumed the initiative as a matter of course and told her what she was expected to do next. For the moment Juille was amused, but only, she thought, for the moment.
The real Yorgana had been in ruins a thousand years. Here in Cyrille, under the light of its three moons, it lay magically restored once more, a lovely city of canals and glimmering waterways in a night made bright as some strange-colored day by its circling moons.
They walked along the sand-paved streets, strolled over the bridges, dropped pebbles into the rippling reflections of the canals. And they talked with a certain stiffness of reserve which began to wear off imperceptibly after a while. Their range of subject matter was limited, for her companion appeared as determined to preserve his incognito as Juille was herself. So they talked of Cyrille instead, and of the many strange things it housed. They talked of the libraries of Cyrille, where the music of all recorded times lay stored, and of the strange pastime of musical levitation which was currently popular here. They speculated about the nationalities, the world origins, the rank of their fellow strollers through the oddly ghostlike city of Yorgana. They talked of the dark places of Cyrille, where beauty and terror were blended for the delectation of those who loved nightmares. But they did not talk of one another except guardedly, and any speculation on either side was never spoken aloud.
Juille was surprised at her own rather breathless enjoyment of this evening. They shared a little table on a terrace that overhung the spangled heights of the city, arid they drank pungent deep-red wine, and Juille sat silently, watching the three moons of Yorgana reflecting in tiny focus in her glass while Egide said outrageously flattering things to her.
They drifted in a boat shaped like a new moon along the winding canals under balconies hung with dark flowers, and Egide sang cloyingly sweet ballads, and the night was theatrically lovely. Once he leaned toward her, making the boat rock a little, and hesitated for what seemed a very long moment, while Juille tensed herself to repel whatever advances he was about to make. She knew so little of matters like this, but she knew by instinct that this was too soon. She was both relieved and sorry when he sank back with a deep sigh, saying nothing.
Except for that one incident, insignificant as it was, Juille had no reason at all to distrust the man. But as the evening went on she found that she did distrust him. There was no logic about it. His ingratiating charm struck responsive chords in her against her own desire, but the distrust went deeper still. It was not any telepathic awareness of his surface thoughts, but an awareness of the man himself as his casual opinions revealed him. He was, she thought, too soft. His height and his easy muscular poise had nothing to do with it. She had felt gun callouses on his palm when he helped her into the boat, and she knew he was not wholly the careless fop he pretended, but too many of his casual words tonight had betrayed him. He reminded her more than once of all she disliked most in her father’s attitude. She thought, before the evening ended, that she knew this young man better than he suspected, and she did not trust him. But she found his facile charm curiously disturbing.
The disturbance reached its height at the end of the evening, when they danced upon the starry black mirror of the Dullai Lake, where lessened gravity let them move with lovely long gliding steps to the strains of music which seemed to swoon extravagantly from chord to lingering chord. Juille was delightfully conscious of her gown’s effect here, in the very scene that had inspired the designer to create it. She was part of the dark, drifting shadows; the clouds of dim gauze billowed out behind her, astream with vanishing stars. And the dance itself wa
s perfection. They were both surprised at the intoxicating rhythm with which their bodies moved together; it was like dancing in a dream of weightless flight, buoyed up on the rise and flow of music.
In this one thing they lost themselves. Neither was on guard against the other while the music carried them along, swirling them around and around in slow, lovely spirals over the starry floor. They said nothing. They did not even think. Time had suspended itself, and space was a starry void through which they moved in perfect, responsive rhythm to music that was an intoxicant more potent than wine. They had known one another forever. In this light embrace a single mind controlled them and they moved to a single rhythm. Apart, their thoughts were antagonists, but in this moment all thoughts had ceased and their bodies seemed one flesh. When the music crcled intricately to its close, they danced out the last lingering echoes and came reluctantly to a halt, looking at one another in a stilled, mindless enchantment, all barriers let down, like people awakening from a dream and drenched still with the dream’s impossible sweetness.
They stood in a little tree-shadowed cove on the lake shore, dark water rippling in illusion beneath their feet. They were quite alone here. The music seemed to have lifted from the surface of the lake and breathed above their heads through the stirring leaves. And Juille was suddenly aware that Egide had tensed all over and was looking down at her with a queer intentness. Light through the trees caught in his eyes and gave them an alarming brightness. He reached for her in the darkness, and there was something so grimly purposeful about the gesture that she took a step backward, wary and poised. If he had intended a kiss, there was still something frightening in his face and the brilliance of his eyes.
Perhaps even Egide had not been sure just what he intended. But after a moment of intense silence while they stood in arrested motion, staring at one another, he let his arms fall and stepped back, sighing again with a deep, exhaling breath as he had sighed in the boat.
