That accounted for some of the tremor in her muscles, she decided, and wandered off to join Max and Merry in their search of kitchen storage. Warrior could make do with sugared water, a treat it would actually relish; Warrior would also, with its peculiar capacities, assure that they were not poisoned.
iv
Jim ate, sparingly and in silence, and showed some relief. It was the first meal he had kept down all day. She noted a shadow about his eyes and a distracted look, much as the crew of the Jewel had had at the last.
Notwithstanding, he would have cleared the dishes after . . . his own notion or unbreakable habit, she was not certain. “Leave it,” she said. He would not have come upstairs with her, but she stopped and told him to.
Second door to the right atop the stairs, the main bedroom: Jim had set everything there, a delightful room even to a Kontrin’s eye, airy furniture, all white and pale green. There was a huge skylight, a bubble rain-spotted and showing the lightnings overhead.
“Dangerous,” she said, and not because of the lightnings.
“There are shields,” he offered, indicating a switch.
“Leave it. We wouldn’t be safe from a Kontrin assassin, but we probably will from the talent Istra could summon on short notice. Let’s only hope none of the Family has been energetic enough to precede me here. Where’s your luggage?”
“Hall,” he said faintly.
“Well, bring it in.”
He did so, and set about unpacking his own things with a general air of distress. She recalled him in the terminal, frozen, with the gun locked in his hands. The remarkable thing was that he had had the inclination to seize it in the first place . . . the dead guard, she reckoned, and opportunity and sheer desperation.
He finished, put his case in the closet and stood there by the door, facing her.
“Are you all right?” she asked. ” Warrior’s outside. Nothing will get past it. No reason to worry on that account.”
He nodded slowly, in that. perplexed manner he had when he was out of his depth.
“That skylight—doesn’t bother you, does it?” The thought struck her that it might, for he was not accustomed to worlds and weather.
He shook his head in the same fashion.
She put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture of comfort as much as other feeling; he touched her in return, and she looked into his face this time cold sober, in stark light. The tattoo was evident. The eyes . . . remained distracted, perplexed. The expression was lacking.
His hand fell when she did not respond, and even then the expression did not vary. He was capable of physical pleasure—more than capable. He felt—at least approval or the lack of it. He suffered shocks . . . and tried to go on responding, as now, when a beta or Kontrin would have acknowledged distress.
“You did well,” she said deliberately, watched the response, a little touch of relief.
Limited sensitivity. Suspicion washed over her, answers she did not want. He made appropriate responses, human responses, answered to affection. Some azi could not; likely Max and Merry were too dull for it. But even Jim, she thought suddenly, did not react to stress as a born-man might. She touched him; he touched her. But the responses might as easily be simple tropisms, like turning the face to sunlight, or extending cold hands to warmth. To be approved was better than to be disapproved.
Lia too. Even Lia. Not love, but programs. Psych-sets, less skilfully done than the betas’ own.
Beta revenge, she thought, sick to the heart of her. A grand joke, that we roll learn to love them when we’re children.
She hated, for that moment, thoroughly, and touched Jim’s face and did not let it show.
And when she was lying with the azi’s warmth against her, in Merek Eln’s huge bed, she found him—all illusions laid aside-simply a comfortable presence. He was more at case with her than he had been the first night, an incredible single night ago, on the Jewel; he persisted in seeking closeness to her, even deep in sleep, and the fact touched her. Perhaps, whatever he felt, she was his security; and whatever his limitations, he was there, alive—full of, if not genuine humanity, at least comfortable tropisms . . . someone to talk to, a mind off which her thoughts could reflect, a solidity in the dark.