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I stood there in the open doorway with my heart beating hard with relief. He saw me. He said nothing, only walked on over to another of the machines and meddled with it, by which I decided he didn’t want to say anything, or see anyone. He started up his exercise again as if he could force his body to do what it ought by making it stronger. Or maybe that wasn’t his reason. In any event he should hardly be here when others had duties ... but I was far from saying so.
I closed the door again, walked away to the galley, figuring that the crew might appreciate something hot to drink about now. I tried to do something useful—and all the while Lance’s look kept gnawing at me, dark and sullen.
The lift worked, not far away from the galley. I heard someone come down, and went to the door, expecting maybe Percy, who was coming and going on Viv’s errands. It was a man’s tread.
I met Griffin.
Maybe fright showed. He looked at me and frowned, and I vacated the doorway, letting him in. “Have you seen Lancelot?” he asked, setting my heart pounding afresh. “They said he might be around the gym.”
I cursed them all, the crew—who had sent Griffin down here, to get him off their necks up there, I reckoned. I even tried to think of a lie; but he was a born-man and his frown turned my bones to jelly. I nodded meekly, found a tray and some cups to occupy my sight and my hands. “I was going to make a snack, sir. Would you like?”
“You think we have enough to be making up meals off-schedule?”
I looked at him, already u
“No. They’re not working up there. Except doing the hydroponics setup. That.” His eyes raked around the galley as if he were hunting for fault. “I’ll be in the gym,” he said then. “If Dela asks.”
“Sir,” I murmured, eyes lowered, a quick turn toward him. He left. I leaned on the counter a moment, not wanting now to do what I had set out to do as an excuse; but I was afraid to follow him.
I busied myself after a moment, not hearing him come back, made the coffee and took it up. It was what master Griffin had said, that there was not much going on about the bridge. The hateful screens stayed the same. Gawain was there alone. Modred and Ly
“Is Lance fixingsomething down there?” Viv asked, and then I knew who might have told Griffin, if she had found it out to tell. I frowned. “He was working over the machines,” I said without a flicker. Lance had problems enough without being dragooned into Viv’s merciless service. “I think he’s busy.”
“Huh,” Vivien said, and sipped her coffee.
“What did Griffin want?” I asked. “To use the gym?”
“He asked where Lance was,” Percy said.
“I’d been looking for him,” I said.
“Griffin?”
“Lance.”
“Could have asked,” Modred said.
I fretted, sipped my own coffee. “I’d think he’d have come back by now.”
“Griffin? He’s been everywhere this morning. Insisted to have us explain controls to him.”
“He’s handled insystem craft,” Gawain said tartly. “He says. Elaine—drop a word to my lady. The Maidisn’t in a position we can afford difficulties. You understand.”
“I’ll try,” I said, looking at my coffee instead of at the screens, with their terrible red images. “I’ll do it when she wakes up.”
It made me cold, that worry of Gawain’s, and this restlessness of Griffin’s. Griffin, who was down in the gym; with Lance—in his frame of mind.—Why aren’t you working? I could, hear Griffin asking Lance, meddling-wise. What are you doing down here? And I could see Lance with that sulle
I put my cup empty onto the tray. Gawain did. The others lingered drinking theirs, so I had no excuse to go. “I think I may have left a switch on in the galley,” I said.
“Comp can check it,” Percy said.
I abandoned excuses and left the bridge, forgetting the tray, hurried to the lift and rode it back down to the lowermost level, walked quickly down the dim corridor forward.
The gym door was open. I walked into that echoing place with its exercise machines and its padded walls, hearing grunts and crashes, and my heart stopped in me, seeing the two of them, Lance and Griffin, locked in fighting. And then I saw them more clearly, that they were wrestling, stripped down. They grappled and shifted for advantage. It was sport, a game.
—and not. They struggled, bled where fingers gripped, strained and heaved strength against strength. Muscles shivered and shifted blinding quick. They broke, panting, eye to eye, shifted and charged again, seeking new advantage, making the echoes ring. Both were sleek with sweat, both matched height for height and reach for reach, in weight and width of shoulder and length of arm and leg. Dark head beside bright, olive skin next golden, they turned and moved and strained, locked in a grip that neither one would give up, and I ached watching it, turned half away, for it seemed that bones and joints must crack ... looked again, and they seemed blind to all else, still locked, glassy-eyed, each trying to make the other yield. A born-man, in contest with one of us. And that one of us could fight a born-man, even in sport—
I knew why Lance wrestled, and what he fought, and I was cold inside.
Lance, O Lance, it’s not a game.
Not for either of them.
“Griffin,” I cried. “Master Griffin!—I think you should see my lady. She’s been locked away too long. Please come.”
They broke. Griffin looked toward me. I ran away, but I waited in the crosspassage outside until I knew Griffin had believed my lie and was gone from there, sweaty as he was, carrying his shirt over his arm and headed for the lift.
Lance came, later. He didn’t see me. I stayed to the shadows and watched him pass, walking with shoulders bowed, showered and cleaned and bearing no mark on him.
I could have bit my tongue for the lie I’d chosen, that Dela had had need of Griffin—and not of him.
At least I had stopped it. That much. What was more, it worked—at least for Dela, who got Griffin back; and for Griffin, who at least found himself welcome. No more of them that afternoon, no more intrusions on the crew, no more of Griffin’s frettings.
Lance ... helped Viv and Percy set up the lab, u
That evening—evening, as we had declared the time to be—my lady decided to throw a private party—a party in Hell, she declared it, with that terrible born-man humor of hers; and we had to serve the di
Griffin fell in with this humor in reluctant grace, and dressed. It was Lance who had to attend him, Lance that Dela appointed his servant. Better me, oh, better me; but that was how it was. I dressed my lady Dela in her best, a beautiful blue gown, and did her hair, and fixed the di
The crew, for their part, was not enthusiastic. They were still on their duty fix.
“They’re to enjoy themselves,” was Dela’s order, which I relayed. It was a kind of absolution, and that wrought a little change (at least I imagined one) in Ly