Macroscope

She took his silence as an objection. “We had to have you back. It was that simple. It isn’t as though there are any physical secrets between us, after the handling and the melting. If you were falling and I could offer a hand to pull you back — the principle is the same. You did it for me, on Triton, with your trial. So this time it was my turn to — to contribute.”

The irony was that it might have worked. Could he possibly have made physical love to Afra and not been drawn back to her world? He doubted it.

“I thank you for the gesture,” he said, feeling quixotic.

“Now that we understand each other,” she said, relieved, “the rest is easy. I want you to know that this world needs you more than that one does. So — this world offers you more. It is, as I said, that simple.”

“It’s still too complicated for me. What are you getting at now?”

“You love me. I need you. That’s not the same thing, I know, but it’s honest. If my embrace will hold you here, I give it to you. Anything Aia had for you — I will match. Anything any woman has for you. You don’t have to travel to any other world — you mustn’t travel—”

“I suppose you are pretty much like Aia.”

There was no flickering lamplight, but the classic lines of her forehead, nose and chin wavered in his gaze. “That’s no compliment, but it’s the truth,” she said. “We sell what we have for what we need. Men their brains, women their bodies. Better that than hypocrisy.”

There was a silence of several minutes. Ivo thought of all the things he might say, but knew she knew them already. She had said one thing and meant another, earlier; now the truth was coming into view as the base warred with the sublime. She was offering paid love — the last thing he wanted from her, but all she had, realistically, to give.

Again the question he had asked himself in Tyre: why not settle for the best he could get? He had been willing to embrace Aia’s body in lieu of Afra; why not accept Afra’s body — in lieu of Afra? Both women had come to terms with their necessities, knowing they could not bring their lovers back to life; why not he?

Yet if he had learned any lesson in Tyre, it was this: there was no salvation in a surrogate.

“Maybe next time,” he said.

She did not move or look at him. “Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands…”

She was still sitting there when he fell asleep.

It was night in the marshes of Gly

He felt Afra’s hand take his left. “If you go, I will don the goggles and follow you,” she said. It was a threat, for she would encounter not Tyre but the destroyer.

“I’m on guard now, and rested,” he replied. “It’s safe.” But he felt better for the touch of her fingers, their almost-affectionate pressure. Last night he had turned her down; today, oddly, she was warmer toward him.

Tyre appeared unchanged, superficially. Warships still docked at the ports of the island city and the buildings remained tall and crowded. He recognized the temple complex and the area where he had met Aia, that night.

“We don’t seem to have moved,” he said, perplexed. He wondered how he could have seen the city so accurately before, since they had probably removed him from the macroscope as soon as he fell into the Mediterranean. He must have been there!

“More likely it’s a fifty-year jump,” Afra said. “Backward or forward or sidewise. Can you find a landmark?” She still had not relinquished his hand, except for the brief periods he needed it for coordinated adjustments.

He centered on Gorolot’s house, quite curious and a little nervous. Strangers occupied it, and the configurations of the structure had changed, as though the house had been rebuilt. Ivo lingered, disappointed, though he remained apprehensive about the effect the sight of Gorolot — or Aia — might have on him.

“You can go back,” a masculine voice said in his ear, in Phoenician.

Ivo clenched Afra’s hand. “Pull me out!” he said urgently. “It’s Schön!”

He felt her fingers returning his pressure, as from a distance, and the tug of the goggles coming off — but the scene did not shift.

“Why do you fight me?” Schön asked in Ivo’s voice.

“Because you may be destroyed the moment you take over, for one thing. Don’t you know that?”

“When I take over,” Schön said as though never doubting the eventuality, “I will have the whole of your experience to draw on, should I require it. At present I have almost none of it. It is exceedingly difficult for me even to contact you, since you don’t let go until your mind is distracted. So I don’t know what your problem is — but I do know there is something intriguing afoot.”

Someone was still tugging at a distant extremity. “Hold up a minute, Afra,” Ivo called. “He only wants to talk.”

“I don’t trust him,” she said from the far reaches.

“Give us two minutes.”

“Little puritan Ivo has a girlfriend now?” Schön inquired. Obviously he knew — but how much?

“No. Now look, I have to explain why I can’t let you have the body. We’re in touch with a nonhuman signal that—”

“I can give you romantic prowess. No woman can withstand that. A warty toad could seduce a princess.”

“I know, but no. Now this galactic civilization has broadcast what we call the destroyer signal that—”

“How about turning me loose for a specified interval? Just long enough to lick this problem of yours.”

“No! You don’t understand what I’m—”

“Junior, are you trying to lecture me on—”

A cold shock hit him, reminding him of the original plunge into the Mediterranean. Ivo looked up to find Afra standing before him, the bucket in her hands. “Yeah, that did it,” he said, shaking himself. She had doused him with icewater: three gallons over his head.

“Are you going to be trapped every time you use the scope?” she demanded. “You were talking in Phoenician again, but I got the bit about two minutes, not that I waited that long. What did he want?”

“He wants out,” Ivo said, shivering. He began to strip off his clothing. “But he can’t get out until I let him.”

“What about the destroyer?”

“He doesn’t seem to know about that, or want to hear it. I couldn’t make him listen.”

“He must know about it. What about that message — ‘My pawn is pi

Ivo, bouncing up and down to warm up, halted. The wet floor was slippery under his bare toes. “I didn’t think of that. He must be lying.”

“That doesn’t make sense either. If he knew the destroyer would get him, why should he expose himself to it? And if he knows it won’t, why not say so? This isn’t a game of twenty questions.”

“Now that I think of it,” Ivo admitted, “he didn’t sound much like a genius to me, I’ve never actually talked directly with him before, but — it was more like a kid bargaining.”

“A child.” She brought a towel and started patting him dry, and he realized that for the first time he had undressed unselfconsciously before her. They had all seen each others’ bodies during the meltings, but this was not such an occasion. Barriers were still coming down unobtrusively. “How old was he when — ?”

“I’m not sure. It took some time to — to set me up. I remember some events back to age five, but there are blank spots up until eight or nine. That doesn’t necessarily mean he took over then—”

“So Schön never lived as an adult.”

“I guess not, physically.”

“Or emotionally. You matured, not he. Is it surprising, then, that he appears childish to us? His intelligence and talent don’t change the fact that he is immature. He likes to play games, to send out mysterious messages, create worlds of imagination. For him, right and wrong are merely concepts; he has no devotion to adult truth. No developed conscience. And if the notion of the destroyer frightens him — why, he puts it out of his mind. He no longer admits its danger. He thinks that he can conquer anything just by tackling it with gusto.”