“There are millions of Dunaways waiting to be released like pent-up hyenas,” Burton said. “What good is it going to do to judge just one?”
“It’s your woman that was raped!” Turpin said.
“But she is not my property, and I won’t speak for her,” Burton said. “Why … since she is the victim, why don’t you let her be the judge?”
Alice, having just come from the bedroom, had overheard him. She said, “Well, Dick! So she isn’t your property and she can speak for herself! Imagine Richard Burton saying that! You have changed!”
“I suppose I have.”
“Too bad you didn’t do it before, not immediately after, we parted,” Alice said. “That doesn’t make me feel very good, you know. You live with the Chinese woman for a very little while, and she works all sorts of changes in you.”
“She had nothing to do with it.”
“Who did then, God? Oh, you’re impossible.”
Nur said, “How is she?”
“As well as can be expected after … that. Aphra, Sophie and I will take care of her for a few days. If that’s all right with you, Dick?”
“Of course,” he said, somewhat stiffly. “It is most generous … compassionate … of you.”
Star Spoon had fallen asleep under the influence of a drug recommended by the Computer. Burton and Frigate Carried her out on a stretcher through a side entrance and placed her in the back of a huge steam-driven Dobler automobile. Turpin drove it over the winding road to the entrance. Here Burton transferred her to his chair, and, with her on his lap, flew the chair the short distance to his world’s entrance and the long distance to the Arabian Nights castle in the center. The others followed him. After Star Spoon had been undressed and put in bed by the women, Alice and Sophie came out from her room.
“She should be all right by the time she wakes up,” Sophie said. “Physically, that is. Mentally and emotionally … ?”
The women would take care of Star Spoon in shifts. As soon as she awoke, Burton would be called. He protested that that was not necessary. He would sit by her bed until she awoke and then do his best to comfort her.
“Let us do something, too,” Sophie said.
Burton said that he would go along with them; he understood why they insisted. They empathized deeply with Star Spoon because they, too, had been raped more than once. They also needed to take care of her; that compulsion, if you could call it a compulsion, was part of their natures.
“Born nurses,” Burton said to Frigate.
“How lucky can you get?”
The American was not being facetious. He envied people who wanted to use themselves for the benefit of others.
Star Spoon got up in time for breakfast. Though she drank only a little tea and ate part of a piece of toast, she was well enough to take some part in the conversation. She seemed glad to have the three women with her, and they even got her to laugh several times. However, she did not want Burton to hold her, and she responded to his attempts to talk with her with uncompleted sentences or nods or shakes of her head.
After two days, the three women left. Star Spoon immediately quit staring into space for long periods and busied herself with various projects with the Computer.
“She’s withdrawing,” Burton told Nur and Frigate. “I won’t say it’s just into herself. She seems to be burying herself with work with the Computer. She’ll stop whatever she’s doing—she won’t talk about that much—and listen while I talk. But I’ve spent hours, days, trying to get her back to her old self, and I’ve failed.”
“Yet,” Frigate said, “she’s been raped before.”
“This may have been the final trauma. The last and the unendurable wound.”
He did not tell them that she had become animated and genuinely interested for a short time when he had asked her what she wanted to do to Dunaway. She had replied that she did not want to destroy his recording. He certainly deserved oblivion forever, but she could not bring herself to do that. Dunaway should be punished, if he would learn anything from it. She doubted that very much. Finally, she said that she was going to forget about any punishment or any kind of retribution. She wished that she could forget about him, but she just could not.