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“He’s all right,” I said finally. “Better than any of the others.”
“Not like any of the others,” Lance said. He shook his head, walked away with his head bowed—the way Griffin had walked away that night, as sad. Not like the others. Not someone Dela would tire of. Not someone to put aside. And kind. Maybe he wished for Robert back. But Lance was in the trap. He had so little selfishness himself—he opened to generosity. He was made that way.
“Lance.” I caught up with him, took his arm. “Lance—I don’t want to be alone.” I said it, because he had too much pride. He let me take his hand. “Come downstairs,” I asked him.
He yielded, never saying anything, but he walked with me to the lift, and I was all but shaking with relief, for pulling him out of that. We should have a little comfort, we two, a night lying close, among our friends.
We came in ever so quietly, Lance and I, into the mostly dark sleeping quarters ... stood there a moment for our eyes to adjust, not making any noise. Everyone was on the couches, and a tape was ru
We might slip in on the dream, I thought: when my eyes had adjusted enough that I reckoned not to bump into anything, I crossed the room and looked up at the screen to know what sort it was.
And then my heart froze in me, and I flew back across the room to my locker, and Lance’s. I felt there, on the shelf, but the tape was gone; was in the machine; ru
Maybe my face showed my terror. Lance had seen; he looked only half disturbed until he looked at me, and reached out his hand for mine. “Viv,” I said, reckoning who would have stolen. “O Lance, we’re ruined, we’re lost, they shouldn’t—”
“We can’t stop it,” he said, half a whisper. “We daren’t stop it halfway—not that one. They’d never sort it out.”
“It’s my fault,” I mourned. “Mine.” But he put his arms about me and held, which was comfort so thorough I had no good sense left and held to him, which was all I wanted.
“We might use it too,” he said. “If it’s beyond stopping. I want it, Elaine.”
So did I, for twisted, desperate reasons—even if I lost him again. So we joined them, helpless in the dream that had gotten loose on the ship, that filled the Maidand told us what we might have been.
But for some of us it was cruel.
XI
Then that same day there past into the hall
A damsel of high lineage, and a brow
May-blossom, and a cheek of apple-blossom,
Hawk-eyes; and lightly was her slender nose
Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower;
She into hall past with her page and cried,
“... Why sit ye there?
Rest I would not, Sir King, an I were king,
Till ev’n the lonest hold were all as free
From cursed bloodshed, as thine altar-cloth
From that best blood it is a sin to spill.
My name? ...
Lynette my name.”
It was a good way to have passed that aching night—if it had been any other tape. We were free for a time; we knew nothing about the terrible place where we were.
I loved and lost again. But I knew the terms. And there was Lance with me, who had learned the tape under his own terms, and who had made his peace with what he was. He was trapped, the same as I was. And not afraid anymore. His world made sense to him, like mine to me.
But when we woke, with the hammering still going on the same as before—when we stirred about with the light slowly brightening to tell us it was another morning in this place—it was hard to look at one another. Everyone—crew and staff—moved about dressing, and no one looked anyone else in the eye.
That was what it did to us.
I went over and took the tape myself, and no one said anything; I stored it in my locker again. But they all knew where, and I reckoned so long as we lasted in this place, they would not let it alone. Could not let it alone. Lance came and laid his hand on mine on the locker door, and pressed my fingers. He was afraid too, I thought. Of the others. Of what now we knew we were.
Only there was Percy, who came to us, his face all distressed. Who just came, and stopped and stared. Gentle Percivale.
“It’s a tape,” I said out loud, so they all could hear. “It’s an old story, an amusement. Lady Dela owns it and let me borrow it. You have to understand.”
But there was no easy understanding. Not for that.
“Viv said—” Percivale began, and dropped it.
Vivien.I looked her way; and Vivien met my eyes by accident. She was just putting her jacket on; and her head came up. It was not a good look, that. She turned away and began sweeping her hair back, to put it up again in its usual immaculate order.
“We had better get to the bridge,” Gawain said then quietly, “and see how the night went.” He started to the door, looked back. Percivale had joined him. And Ly
Everyone looked. Modred had been sitting on the couch getting his boots on—and still sat there, inward as ever. And when Gawain called him he got up and went for the door, as silent, as quiet as ever.
But we got up afraid of him, as we had never been. And it was wrong. I felt it wrong. I intercepted him on his way, took his arm.
“It’s amusement,” I said. But Modred had always been i
His dark eyes fixed on mine, and I saw something in the depth of them ... I couldn’t tell what. It might have been pain; or just analysis—something that for a moment quickened him. But he had nothing to say. OurModred could make jokes, the lift of a shoulder, the rhythm of his moves; but this morning he was—quiet. Without this language. He used the quieter story tapes; mostly I suspect they bored him, and the more violent ones were outside his understanding. But when one is tired, when one’s defenses are down to begin with—
“Yes,” Modred said, agreeing with me, the way we agree with born-men, to make peace and smooth things over. And he went away with the others.
“Vivien,” I said, turning around. “Vivien, you’ve done this.”
She went on pi
“Let be,” Lance said, taking me by the shoulders.
She was dangerous, I thought to myself, and she ran all our lifesupport up there; and our future food supply; all the technical things in the loft.
But maybe—I tried to persuade myself—that was what we were all doing this morning: maybe we had all learned to look at each other askew; and, we were cursed to know how others saw us.
“Modred,” I mourned. “O Modred.”
“It should never have happened,” Lance said. “It was my fault, not yours.”
“How do we prepare against a thief?” I asked, meaning Viv. But Viv had finished her dressing and swept past us without a look.
“My fault,” Lance repeated doggedly.
“They’ll sort it out,” I insisted, turning round to look at him. “You did. I have.”
“I’m not so sure,” he said, “of either of us.”
“You know better than that.”
“I don’t.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Aren’t we—whatever tapes they put in?”
I had no answer for that. It was too much like what I feared.