“Regretting it already?”
“Not at all. But it’s strange to be married and not have a wife.”
“You can call me wife. You can call me whatever you want. Reinvent me. That’s what I’m for.”
“I didn’t marry you to use you, Pie.”
“That’s part of it, though. We must be functions of each other. Mirrors, maybe.” It touched Gentle’s face. “I’ll use you, believe me.”
“For what?”
“For everything. Comfort, argument, pleasure.”
“I do want to learn from you.”
“About what?”
“How to fly out of my head again, the way I did this afternoon. How to travel by mind.”
“By mote,” Pie said, echoing the way Gentle had felt as he’d driven his thoughts through N’ashap’s skull. “Meaning: a particle of thought, as seen in sunlight.”
“It can only be done in sunlight?”
“No. It’s just easier that way. Almost everything’s easier in sunlight.”
“Except this,” Gentle said, kissing the mystif. “I’ve always preferred the night for this. . ..”
He had come to their marriage bed determined that he would make love with the mystif as it truly was, allowing no fantasy to intrude between his senses and the vision he’d glimpsed in N’ashap’s office. That oath made him as nervous as a virgin groom, demanding as it did a double unveiling- Just as he unbuttoned and discarded the clothes that concealed the mystif s essential sex, so he had to tear from his eyes the comfort of the illusions that lay between his sight and its object. What would he feel then? It was easy to be aroused by a creature so totally reconfigured by desire that it was indistinguishable from the thing desired. But what of the configurer itself, seen naked by naked eyes?
In the shadows its body was almost feminine, its planes serene, its surface smooth, but there was an austerity in its sinew he couldn’t pretend was womanly; nor were its buttocks lush, or its chest ripe. It was not his wife, and though it was happy to be imagined that way, and his mind teetered over and over on the edge of giving in to such invention, he resisted, demanding his eyes hold to their focus and his fingers to the facts. He began to wish it were lighter in the cell, so as not to give ease to ambiguity. When he put his hand into the shadow between its legs and felt the heat and motion there, he said, “I want to see,” and Pie dutifully stood up in the light from the window so that Gentle could have a plainer view. His heart was pumping furiously, but none of the blood was reaching his groin. It was filling his head, making his face bum. He was glad he sat in shadow, where his discomfort was less visible, though he knew that shadow concealed only the outward show, and the mystif was perfectly aware of the fear he felt. He took a deep breath and got up from the bed, crossing to within touching distance of this enigma.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Pie asked softly. “Why not let the dreams come?”
“Because I don’t want to dream you,” he said. “I came on this journey to understand. How can I understand anything if all I look at is illusions?”
“Maybe that’s all there is.”
“That isn’t true,” he said simply.
“Tomorrow, then,” Pie said, temptingly. “Look plainly tomorrow. Just enjoy yourself tonight. I’m not the reason we’re in the Imajica. I’m not the puzzle you came to solve.”
“On the contrary,” Gentle said, a smile creeping into his voice. “I think maybe you are the reason. And the puzzle. I think if we stayed here, locked up together, we could heal the Imajica from what’s between us.” The smile appeared on his face now. “I never realized that till now. That’s why I want to see you clearly, Pie, so there’re no lies between us.” He put his hand against the mystif s sex. “You could fuck or be fucked with this, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you could give birth?”
“I haven’t. But it’s been known.”
“And fertilize?”
“Yes.”
“That’s wonderful. And is there something else you can do?”