“A handkerchief, a towel …,” she said softly.
I drew open a drawer in a nearby dresser, took out a handkerchief. As I moved to pass it to her, Mandor seized my wrist and took it from me. He tossed it to her and she caught it.
“Don’t reach within my sphere,” he told me.
“I wouldn’t hurt him,” she said, as she wiped her eyes, her cheeks, her chin. “I told you, I mean only to protect him. “
“We require more information than that,” Mandor said, as he reached for the sphere again.
“Wait,” I said. Then, to her, “Can you at least tell me why you can’t tell me?”
“No,” she answered. “It would amount to the same thing.”
Suddenly I saw it as a strange sort of programming problem, and I decided to try a different tack.
“You must protect me at all costs?” I said. “That is your primary function?”
“Yes. “
“And you are not supposed to tell me who set you this task, or why?”
“Yes.”
“Supposing the only way you could protect me would be by telling me these things?”
Her brow furrowed.
“I …,” she said. “I don’t., .. The only way?”
She closed her eyes and raised her hands to her face. “I… Then I would have to tell you. “
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “You would be willing to violate the secondary order in order to carry out the primary one?”
“Yes, but what you have described is not a real situation,” she said.
“I see one that is,” Mandor said suddenly. “You cannot follow that order if you cease to exist. Therefore, you would be violating it if you permit yourself to be destroyed. I will destroy you unless you answer those questions.”
She smiled.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Ask Merlin what the diplomatic situation would be if a daughter of the Begman prime minister were found dead in his room under mysterious circumstances-especially when he’s already responsible for the disappearance of her sister.”
Mandor frowned and looked at me.
“I don’t understand what that’s all about,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “She’s lying. If something happens to her, the real Nayda simply returns. I saw it happen with George Hansen, Meg Devlin, and Vinta Bayle.”
“That is what would normally occur,” she said, “except for one thing. They were all alive when I took possession of their bodies. But Nayda had just died, following a severe illness. She was exactly what I needed, though, so I took possession and healed the body. She is not here anymore. If I depart, you’ll be left either with a corpse or a human vegetable.”
“You’re bluffing,” I said, but I remembered Vialle’s saying that Nayda had been ill.
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her.
“Mandor,” I said, turning to him, “you said you can keep her from vacating that body and following me?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Okay, Nayda,” I said. “I am going somewhere and I am going to be in extreme danger there. I am not going to permit you to follow me and carry out your orders.”
“Don’t,” she answered.
“You give me no choice but to keep you pent while I go about my business.”
She sighed.
“So you’ve found a way to get me to violate one order in order to get me to carry out the other. Very clever.”
“Then you’ll tell me what I want to know?”
She shook her head.
“I am physically unable to tell you,” she said. “It is not a matter of will. But … I think I’ve found a way around it.”
“What is that?”
“I believe I could confide in a third party who also desires your safety.”
“You mean-“
“If you will leave the room for a time, I will try to tell your brother those things I may not explain to you.”
My eyes met Mandor’s. Then, “I’ll step out in the hall for a bit,” I said.
And I did. A lot of things bothered me as I studied a tapestry on the wall, not the least being that I had never told her that Mandor was my brother.