While Dlimas-lyi and Tlisi-tlas-tin scrambled up clutching the sheet about gtstselves and floundering among the pillows.
“Atli-lyen-tlas!” gtst said, and gtsto bowed profoundly, again and again. Hilfy stood ready to catch Atli-lyen-tlas should gtsta fall. But gtst excellency of Urtur seemed to draw strength from the encounter:
“Do not take distress of my presence,” Atli-lyen-tlas said. “How is my offspring now known?”
“Dlimas-lyi,” gtsto whispered, “may it add distinction to your excellency.”
“I have resigned Urtur,” Atli-lyen-tlas said. “And I have no more attachment to this time.” “You are gtsta!”
“Just so. Nor need distress my serenity with what is beyond my reach. The oji is not for me now. This person Dlimas-lyi is not for me. I am free.”
“Your holiness,” Tlisi-tlas-tin whispered. “Please utter assurances of your good favor in our condition.”
“I do so. Please,” Atli-lyen-tlas said, reaching a trembling hand toward Hilfy. “Please convey me to a place where I may rest. My course is clear now. I am without obligation of any tasteful sort and would not struggle to achieve more. I am completed.”
Try that one through the translation program, Hilfy thought in dismay. There were things which one did not ask a stsho. Sex was right in the same class as Phasing. Gtst excellency and Dlimas-lyi stood naked as they were born and she now had a holiness of some kind on her hands, an aged stsho, resigned, retired, unmarriageable and sexless; and therefore not eligible to receive the Preciousness. Gods save them.
“We will find your holiness suitable and tasteful quarters immediately adjacent. It will take a time to prepare. Is this acceptable?”
“We should be very honored,” said Tlisi-tlas-tin.
“Most profoundly,” said Dlimas-lyi, “we beg your holiness to do so.”
A flutter of fingers. “I am beyond needs. But yes, this would be pleasant. I have no cares. Free. All free.”
Whereupon gtsta indicated gtsta would walk back in the direction from which gtsta had come.
Tarras and Fala offered tentative support; but gtsta said, “I am free of needs.”
Fall on his holy rump, Hilfy thought distressedly. But whatever reserve of strength Atli-lyen-tlas had found, still held. Gtsta fingers had been burning hot when they had touched hers. Something metabolic was going on, whether healthy or not—the stsho medical diagnosis program would have to tell them that one.
Gtstawalked ahead of them, wandering a little in gtsta steps, taking time to examine the texture of the walls of the corridor, the wall-corn at the corner, gtsta fingered dials and button sockets gtsta had no claws to access, or there would have been loud-hail all over the ship, providing a most unwelcome and tasteless startlement to gtstself.
Holiness seemed to have a direct and negative effect on the brain, Hilfy decided. And on the tendency to push buttons and take walks, and the holiness’ door was going to be locked, the minute they had gtsta inside.
“Guard gtsta,” she muttered to Tarras and Fala. “Keep gtsta away from buttons and sharp objects.”
“What do we do if gtsta wants something?” Tarras asked. “What’s wrong with gtsta? What’s going on?”
Tarras and Fala hadn’t followed a word of it. One forgot.
“That’s a holiness,” she said. “Don’t ask me whether gtsta is Phasing or what. I don’t know. And I’ve read every gods-be book on the species.”
“Nobody knows?” Fala asked.
“Nobody but the stsho,” she said. “And they’ve refused to talk.”
“I… you know.” Hallan didn’t feel he was doing well. Chihin just kept watching him, the two of them standing in the galley, Chihin leaning back against the counter, himself with nowhere reasonable to put his hands. “I just … well, I didn’t know what you thought.” He didn’t want to say that Chihin’s own best friends had warned him: that wasn’t kind. “I just wasn’t sure you were really meaning what I thought you meant, so I didn’t want to talk to you until I could sort of figure out …”
“Same,” Chihin said. “You want to go back to the quarters? Sort it out where we don’t have to be proper?”
“I—“ He was going to hyperventilate. He wanted to take the invitation and he was unaccountably scared to, because it would change things, and change them all of a sudden and too fast. “I—“