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I saw that the eyes of every individual there glittered at the armbands, the headband, the earrings I wore, and as I wondered why the Puttioran who had fetched me had not simply taken them, realised that of course he must be afraid, or that is exactly what he would have done.
Still no one had moved, or made a sign of greeting. I took then a great chance, which made me quite cold, and inwardly confused for a moment: I stepped forward, with “Canopus greets you!” and glanced at Nasar to see how he took this, as I gestured to a girl servant to bring forward a chair that stood by the wall. This was a chair similar to the one used by the beauty, who was, I had decided, hostess there: I seated myself on her level, a short distance from her and from Nasar, and clapped my hands without looking to see if this was being obeyed—a custom taken from another recent visit of mine—and when a goblet was presented to me of some crystalline material, was careful not to let a drop of it touch my lips, while I pretended to sip.
“I understood that you were from Sirius?” remarked the fair one, clapping her hands as I had done, and accepting a fresh goblet—this was done to put me at my ease. To encourage me to drink?
This the most dangerous moment of my meeting with these decadents. I could not afford to hesitate, and I smiled, merely, and with a rather amused little glance at Nasar, as to a fellow conspirator in a harmless joke: “If it has amused Nasar to say that I am, then why not?” And I laughed. And did not look at him, but smoothed my skirt.
He had now to challenge me. I knew that if he did, it would probably mean the loss of my life, let alone the ornaments they all coveted so much. I sat at ease, pretending to sip the intoxicant—pretty rough stuff, too, nothing tempting in it—and examining the scene quite frankly and with apparent enjoyment.
I ca
The signs of a degenerate class are the same everywhere and always: I will not waste time in details. But I have seen them too often, and in too many places, and their pere
I had wondered often enough if on Canopus, or in her Empire, this rule applied, but as I was actually thinking that Nasar’s presence here, subjugated and used, was an answer, he lifted his bronze eyes direct at mine and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, fair Canopean.”
And he turned away, with an air so defeated, so angry, that I did not know what to do. But I knew, at least, that I had survived a very dangerous moment. It would have been piquant, to say the least, to end my life here, on this degraded planet, with these demoralised creatures.
“Am I not to know the name of my hostess?” I asked.
“Your host is Nasar,” she said, in that voice I absolutely expected: it was lazy, rich, suggestive: her voice, just like her appearance, could make you think of one thing, one thing only, and even if you had never experienced it. For I had not! I had read of it all, certainly—I had made a study of pathology. But it had so happened that my career in the Service had begun very young, and that while our Empire has suffered periods when I might very well have been at risk myself, I was always occupied, well away from the Mother Planet.
But sitting there in that gilded, amiable, pleasure-loving scene, which had over it a sort of silky dew if it were drenched in ethereal honey, looking at the smiling glistening woman, it was not necessary to have experienced it! I understood it all, and only too well—because I was being affected I sat there, trying to preserve a correct, if not an official, air. For one thing, I ought not to be wearing these artefacts, which were too powerful, even if they had been put out of exact use by the fact that they were not in alignment with the other dispositions of the practice that had been disturbed by the interruption by the Puttioran.
For another, it is of course not the ease that to turn your back on an area of life is the same as to abolish it! Often enough, and even with Ambien I, I had understood very well what a seductive realm lay there, just for the effort of saying: Yes! Of course I had known—been aware of—watched for—guarded—that door, or entrance, which watchfulness is in itself way of signifying a disposition to enter into something. This was what I was seeing. And what I was understanding. Oh yes, the woman was magic! And as I thought that word, I understood that she was a daughter of old Adalantaland; I remembered this full smiling ease of the flesh, the glisten—but there and in that time it had very different function. The wonderful females of that island had been in a correct alignment—or almost; of course I remembered how they had begun to slide away: yet one could sense their oneness with their surroundings. But this descendant of theirs had all the magnificence of the physical, but in addition a witchery that had slipped out of its place, had become sufficient to itself. As I looked at Nasar, tense and miserable there in his low seat, and then at her, I did not have to be told anything: I felt it. And I began to be afraid: it very a very easy door to open, just one little step, one little decision—and suddenly I found myself thinking of Klorathy as I had never done yet: I was amazed and appalled: it seemed as if there, beckoning me, was a smiling playful amorousness, which was certainly not what I was in search of—in wait for—when thinking of companionship with Klorathy… with Canopus. And this lighthearted amorousness was in itself an antechamber where I could very quickly indeed descend to something very different. What I saw there, in front of me now—nothing lighthearted about that! Nasar was gazing sombrely at the woman’s indolent lolling arm, and on his face was a look of such pain that… but she was saying again: “It is Nasar who is your host.”
“I think not,” I said smiling, as pleasantly as I could… and I heard rather than saw the Puttiorans mutter to each other—or rather vibrate together, a twanging sound added to the whining repetition of the music that was working on my nerves as much as the general atmosphere.
“Her name is Elylé,” said Nasar abruptly. “This is her house. And we are all her guests—aren’t we?—your guests or your captives?” and he laughed, flinging back his head pouring down the fiery intoxicant.
“Her willing captives,” said a dark smiling lisping youth, who had about him every sign of the spoiled rich. He rose from heaps of cushions and sat by Elylé’s chair, and, grasping her hand with a rough painful movement, began planting kisses up and down the forearm. She hardly moved, did not look at him—but at Nasar, who had gone pale.
“Nasar,” said she, in her soft beguiling voice, “is not as willing a captive as you,” and she looked at Nasar, with a laugh, challenging him—willing him. I saw there a truly dreadful struggle in him. He was being drawn forward by her seductiveness, her frank and open invitation, and at the same time he was fighting in himself to resist her. Everyone in the room watched the struggle. And what happened at last was that he gave a great gasp, leaned forward from his seat, lifted her white arm, and having gazed it with shudder that shook every part of him, kissed the hand, but negligently, and even clumsily—so did the conflict in him manifest itself. He sank back in his seat, staring in front of him, then took another great gulp from his goblet.
He said harshly: “This desiccated bureaucrat of a Sirian is shocked by us.”