“‘Trying,’ yes. That’s a good word. Actually, Squire, that’s what I’ve come to ask you about.” He looked at me. “Don’t leave, Tedla, this concerns you. Tellegen, I need your help. Tedla has potential to be an excellently valuable informant. It’s got access to information no human can give me, and the intelligence to put it language-wise. I don’t think I’ll ever find another asexual with those qualities. If you would let me spend some time with it...” He broke off at the look on Squire Tellegen’s face.
In a voice more ominous than I’d ever heard him use, the squire said, “I must ask you, Magister, not to speak to Tedla. Not another word.”
If I had worked for any other guardian, I would have been on the way to retraining before the day was up. The things I knew could have destroyed the squire and all he stood for. No one keeps around blands with dangerous secrets when someone is poking around for information.
Galele, of course, had no notion of any of this. He looked from one to the other of us, bewildered. “But what harm could come of it?”
“You don’t yet know our world well enough, Magister,” the squire said. “I am responsible for Tedla’s safety. You could put it in terrible danger.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Galele said earnestly. “I could preserve Tedla’s anonymity, if you like. No one would know.”
He kept on for a while, arguing about how valuable the information would be, how it would lead to greater understanding between our worlds. I could see the tension building in the squire, and at last it exploded out.
“I told you no!” he said in a voice he barely controlled. “Leave my house now! If I ever see you nosing around my blands again, I’ll run you off myself.”
Galele was perfectly stunned, and backed away, speechless. I quickly swept the door open for him to leave. He looked at my face, then at Tellegen’s. He was a little flushed with embarrassment or anger, but he said nothing. He ducked out the door, and I quickly followed, closing it behind me. I hurried ahead down the hall to fetch his coat.
As he took his wrap from me, he said, “Tedla, what got into him? What did I say?”
“Don’t you ever learn?” I whispered, glancing over my shoulder. “Just stop asking questions.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble. I thought he would be happy to help.” He saw the fear on my face, and said in concern, “Will you be all right?”
“Just get out,” I pleaded. With a slight hesitation, he turned to go.
When I got back to the library, Squire Tellegen was pacing, still perturbed. “Is he gone?” he demanded. I nodded. He came up to me and took me by the shoulders. “We have to stop, Tedla. It’s too dangerous. Someone is going to find out. We can’t go on.”
But I saw in his face that it was far too late to stop.
That evening, he told me to build a fire in the river room. It was not a good sign. Whenever a black depression was coming on him, the river room was the place he chose to go. It had been months since he had last spent an evening there alone. Pelch was terribly worried when it heard, and kept casting accusatory looks in my direction.
I looked in on him halfway through the evening. The fire had burned low, and he was simply sitting on the couch before it, staring at the coals. I tiptoed in to put more logs on. When the fire was going again, I turned around to look at him. He was watching me with an expression very close to grief.
“Tedla, what is going to become of you?” he said.
I was already on my knees, so I settled back on my heels to look at him. “I’m going to serve you forever,” I said.
“I am old,” he said. “My life is drawing to a close. You are young. You will have many years after I die.”
He was thinking of death again. I felt like something cold was growing inside my chest. I put a hand on his knee. “No. You can’t die. I want you to live.”
“I have done you terrible harm,” he said.
“No. I love you.”
“I need to know you’ll be safe. That’s the least I owe you.”
“I’ll never be happy anywhere but with you,” I said.
He reached out and touched my cheek. “Do you know the worst thing I have done to you? The thing most likely to bring you harm?” He paused, then said, “I have nearly made you human.”
He leaned forward and kissed me then, very tenderly. I closed my eyes and savored the sensation of his lips against mine, the press of heat from the fire at my back, the absolute completeness of the moment. I desired nothing, expected nothing.
After that I joined him on the couch, nestled up against him with my head on his shoulder and his arm around me. We watched the fire die together, as the river roared down the black canyon outside.
***
In the next weeks the house seemed more quiet and lonely than usual, without Magister Galele’s visits. I realized how much I had come to enjoy his chatter, his curiosity, his outrageous questions. I think Squire Tellegen noticed it, too. Once, while we were playing cards, he asked, “Did you like him, Tedla?”
“It’s not for me to like or dislike your guests,” I said.
But I realized that I had liked him, in a way. Menoken was a grave and melancholy place without him.
And so I was both startled and pleased when the squire told me one morning that he had invited Magister Galele back. “Will he stay the night?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
I met Galele at the door. He looked at me warily. “How are you, Tedla?”
“Fine, sir,” I said in my best distant servant manner, because I knew it would madden him. It did, too, till I glanced at him to gauge his reaction, and he realized I was teasing.
I showed him into the library, just like before. But this time Squire Tellegen said to me, “Please leave us alone, Tedla. I want to talk to Magister Galele privately.”
This surprised me a great deal, since no one ever thought that having a bland in the room made their conversations any less private. I could have listened at the graydoor, but that would have been disobeying, so I went down to the kitchen to bide my time, brewing some coffee for them since I had nothing else to do.
Presently, Britz came in and said that the squire was looking for me. I dashed up the stairs two at a time, paused outside the graydoor to regain my composure, then slipped in.
Magister Galele was not in the room. The squire was standing alone behind his desk looking grim and severe. A tremor of apprehension passed through me as I approached and stood waiting for his orders.
“Tedla,” he said formally, “you know I have never ordered you to do something against your will.”
“No, sir,” I said.
“Well, now the time has come when I must give you such an order. I want you to promise that you will obey me.”
I stood there, filled with misgivings, searching his face to see what this meant.
Sternly he said, “Tedla. I asked you a question.”
My eyes fell to the floor. “Yes, sir,” I said softly. “I’ll obey you unless it will bring harm to you.”
He came around the desk then, and took me in his arms, crushing me to his chest. When at last he let me go and looked at me, there were tears in his eyes, but he was smiling. “What I have to ask you will very nearly break my heart, but nothing worse than that,” he said.
Horribly alarmed now, I said, “What?”
“I want you to go back to Tapis Convergence with Magister Galele. I want you to assist him however he asks, and to think of him in every way as your guardian.”
Stricken, I cried out, “Forever?”
“Of course not,” the squire said. “Nothing lasts forever.”
“When can I come back to you?”
He paused. “When I decide.”
“Who will be your Personal?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, smiling. “You can be more use to him now than to me. Do what he tells you. Learn what you can from him.”
He was sending me awa
y to remove temptation from his life. He knew that as long as I was living in his house, he would not be able to keep away from me.
That part was bad enough. But—Magister Galele? A few weeks ago, he had thrown the alien out of the house for asking to talk to me. Now, he was giving me whole to the person most likely to pry. “What if he asks me questions?” I said.
“Tell him what it’s proper for him to know,” Squire Tellegen said. “I rely on your discretion.”
He was crazy, trusting his secret to a bland and an alien. It was almost as if he wanted to be found out. I clutched at his coat. “I don’t want to go,” I said.
Gently, he said, “It’s not your decision. You have to trust that I know what’s best for you.”
“No!” I said.
His voice grew stern again. “Tedla, you promised to obey. Now go say good-bye to the other blands. Magister Galele is waiting.”
“Now?” I cried out.
“Yes, now. Go on.” He pushed me to the graydoor.
I was completely stunned. I stumbled through the graydoor and down the bland-run, too shattered even to cry. When I reached the kitchen, Pelch was getting the blands started on dinner. I fell into a chair at the table. Irritably, Pelch said, “What’s wrong with you now?”
“I’m not going to be here tonight,” I said. My voice sounded strange. “He’s sending me away. I have to go with the alien.”
I saw a look of triumph grow on Pelch’s face. “Ha!” it said. “I knew it! I knew he would come to his senses.”
The other blands were all gathered around now. They looked less pleased than Pelch, since this was another disruption to their routine. Whatever they thought of me, at least I did my share of work.
“What will you do for the alien?” Mimbo said.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Pelch said nastily.
My feelings were already battered, and this was too much. I rose and turned to leave. Britz stopped me. “I’ll miss you, Tedla,” it said. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
I gave it a desperate hug. “I’ll miss you, too, Britz,” I said, my voice breaking. I turned to look at the rest of them. “I’ll miss you all.” My eyes came last to Pelch. “Even you, Pelch,” I said.
I had nothing to take with me but the clothes on my back. I climbed the steps slowly, dreading what lay ahead. Magister Galele was waiting in the hallway. There was no sign of the squire.
“Tedla, I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” Galele said, as elated as a little child. “Believe me, you have nothing to fear.”
He didn’t know what he was talking about.
We boarded the aircar together. He sat up by the pilot, I sat in back. As we took off I stared blankly ahead, feeling as if there were nothing left inside me.
***
When we landed at the convergence, Magister Galele led me straight down into human space, as if it were proper for me to be there. I had never been in the human parts of a convergence, and my first impressions were confused: huge spaces, wild colors, waterfalls, and jostling crowds. There was not another bland to be seen. I trailed my new guardian, feeling horribly conspicuous, aware of every glance that came our way. At last I whispered to him, “Magister? Isn’t there another way for me to go?”
He looked a little puzzled, then said, “Well, if there is, I don’t know it. I can barely find my way around this place on good days.”
So I was obliged to follow him. There was no supervisor who knew where to direct me, no bland to show me the way through grayspace. I wondered how I was going to find the roundroom. I hadn’t felt so lost since I was a child, with Joby in the curatory.
At last we came to his quarters, a small apartment off a secluded spoke. The place was a complete shambles: papers, clothes, and food strewn all over, burned-out lights, and a musty smell. As I stood looking around me in horror, he started apologizing for being so unprepared to have me there. “This is the last thing I was expecting; we’re just going to have to improvise,” he said. He poked his nose into the studium and said, “This can be your room. I’m afraid there’s only a couch; will you mind?”
“I’m not going to sleep in the roundroom?” I asked fearfully.
“You mean, with the other blands?” he said. “Certainly not. I don’t want you getting lost among the order’s blands. You don’t work for the order. You work for me.”
This was incomprehensible. Everyone worked for an order, even Squire Tellegen. “Who’s going to be my supervisor?” I asked.
“Me, of course,” Magister Galele said.
He didn’t understand. The supervisor was the one who meshed all the blands’ work together, so they functioned smoothly as a team. I couldn’t be a team of one. I had to work with other blands. I couldn’t do my duties otherwise. But he knew none of this. I felt horribly out of place.
He disappeared into the studium, and began excavating the couch from under heaps of books and dirty clothes. It made me terribly anxious to see a human doing work to make room for me in human space. “Don’t do that, sir,” I said. “I’d rather sleep in the roundroom. Please.”
He frowned at me. “I want you close by, not somewhere off six floors away. What if I need you at odd hours?”
A horrible thought struck me: He meant that he needed me sexually. I felt sick. So Pelch had been right about what my duties were going to be. I stared at the floor, trying to distance myself from the person this was happening to. Somehow, I had to make myself accept it.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t have extra towels or anything. We’ll have to dig some up tomorrow.”
So I wasn’t going to be allowed to use the blands’ hygiene station, either. He wanted to bathe in the same room with me.
He opened the closet door and exclaimed in satisfaction, “Ah, at least this is empty.” He turned to look at me and said, “Where are your clothes?”
He was perfectly insane. “I’m wearing them,” I said, as if he couldn’t see.
“You mean that’s all you own? Where are you going to get a change?”
“Doesn’t the order have uniforms?” I said hopelessly.
“I don’t want you wearing those disgusting gray things,” he said.
I was completely miserable. I sat down on the couch and stared at the floor. He kept on talking, but I tuned him out. There was nothing but grayness in my head.
“Tedla?” He was standing in front of me. I looked up blankly. “Don’t go neuterish on me,” he said.
I looked away indifferently, saying nothing. What did he expect? I was a neuter.
He stood there looking at me for a little while, then finally left. I barely noticed. My mind was off.
I sat there the rest of the evening. From time to time I could hear him talking to the viewscreen, but I paid no attention. As night came on, I expected him to come in and demand my services to satisfy his sexual needs. Every time I thought about it, I froze up in terror. I didn’t even know if aliens had organs like humans did, or what they did to stimulate themselves. Whenever I began to drift off to sleep, I would remember what I had to do, and start awake, my heart racing.
Of course, he never came. I never told him what I thought that first night. When I got to know him better, I didn’t dare—he had a very prudish streak. But of course, I didn’t know that then.
***
The next morning I woke up curled on the couch underneath a blanket I had never seen before. For a moment I puzzled at how it had gotten there; then I saw the clock and leaped up in dismay. With no other blands to nudge me awake, I had overslept. It was horribly late, and I could hear Magister Galele already moving around in the kitchen. My first day with a new guardian, and I had acted like some lazy slug of a bland.
When I came into the kitchen he was pouring coffee for himself. “Ah, you are alive,” he said on seeing me. I thought it was a rebuke, and looked down, mortified.
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t normally sleep late.”
/> “Well, you were pretty worn out last night. Coffee?” He held out the pot as if offering me some. I shrank back, sure I was misunderstanding.
“Have you already bathed and groomed, sir?” I asked.
“Yes. Go ahead,” he said.
I was silent. If he had already done it, what was I supposed to go ahead with?
“The bathroom,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
So we were to take turns using it. I blushed, feeling stupid and self-conscious. “Is there anything you need first?” I asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
As I showered, I planned out my day. There was a lot of work ahead to get this place spruced up and back in order. Somehow, I was going to have to find out which blands I was to be working with.
When I came out he was sitting in the lounge drinking coffee. He had left some food lying out in the kitchen. Our apartments are not like yours, with food dispensers. We have little areas for preparing foods from scratch. Since I didn’t know where the refectory was, I decided to risk eating some of his food while he wasn’t looking. I didn’t intend to take enough for it to really count as stealing.
He came in as I was wolfing down a slice of bread. I put it down, embarrassed and unsure what he would think. He said kindly, “Why don’t you bring it out to the table?”
I obeyed, but it was horribly uncomfortable, eating next to a human. I hurried to finish.
“Is there something you would like me to work on first?” I asked, rising.
“I didn’t have much in mind,” he said. “I’d just like to talk.”
My face must have shown my consternation, because he said, “Is there something wrong with that?”
I couldn’t think of a polite way to say it. “I...I can’t talk. I’ve got too much work to do.”
“You do?” he said, surprised.
“Yes.” I looked around. “This place. I can’t let you live like this. I’ve got to find the cleaning blands and get them in here. I’ve got to go through your clothes, your grooming supplies—”
Halfway Human Page 28
