“So Jadawin is finally dead? I don’t believe it. You are trying to play a trick on me, you stupid slug!”
“You’re in no position to call names.”
“Let me see his body,” she said.
Theotormon shrugged. “That’s impossible. He’s floating somewhere in the palace. I barely made it to this room myself. I can’t go out to get him without flooding this room.”
Vala looked at the water on the floor and then she smiled. “So you’re trapped, too. You fish-stinking idiot, you don’t even have the brains of a fish! You just told me what your situation is!”
Theotormon gaped. He said, “But. . . but. . .”
“You may think you have me in your power,” Vala said. “And so you do, in a manner of speaking. But you are just as much in mine. I know where the spacecraft is. It can get us off this planet and to another, which has a gate through which we can leave this universe. Now, what do you propose to do about this impasse?”
Theotormon scratched the fur on his head with the tip of a flipper. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, yes, you do! You’re stupid, but not that stupid! You’ll make a trade with me. You let me out, and I’ll let you leave with me in the ship. There’s no other way out for either of us.”
Wolff could not see Theotormon’s expression, but he could deduce from his tone the cunningness and suspicion on his face.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t, any more than I can trust you. We’ll have to arrange this so neither of us can possibly trip the other up. Do you agree?”
“Well, I don’t know. . .”
“This control room won’t be harmed if the seas get a mile high and sit forever on the palace. I have food and water enough for a year. I can just sit here and let you die. And then I’ll figure some way to get out, believe me. I’ll discover a way.”
“In that case,” Theotormon said, “why don’t you do it?”
“Because I don’t want to stay in this room for a year. I have too many things to do.”
“All right. But what about Chryseis?”
“She comes with me. I have plans for her,” Vala said.
Her voice became even more suspicious. “Why should you care about her?”
“I don’t. I just wondered. Maybe . . . maybe you could give her to me. From what Jadawin said, she must be very beautiful.”
Vala laughed and said, “That would be one form of torture for her. But it isn’t enough. No, you can’t have her.”
“Then it’s not a deal,” Theotormon said. “You keep her. See how you like being cooped up with her for a year. Besides, I don’t really think you can swim to the spacecraft The water pressure will be too much.”
Vala said, “You stupid selfish slimegut! You’d die yourself rather than let me have anything! Very well, take her then!”
Wolff smiled. He had told Theotormon to bring up Chryseis and so take her mind off him. This business about Chryseis was just irrelevant enough and so Theotormonically selfish that she might be convinced that he was not hiding the truth.
Theotormon clapped his flippers together with glee. Wolff hoped that his joy was all act, since he was not sure that Theotormon might not betray him at the last moment. Theotormon said, “All right. Now, how can we get to the spacecraft?”
“You’ll have to release me first. I’m not going to tell you and then have you take off without me.”
“But if I open the door to your room, you’ll be able to get out ahead of me.”
“Can’t you set the controls so they’ll open the doors by the time you get here?”
Theotormon grunted as if the thought were a new one. “All right Only, you’ll have to come out of the room with absolutely no clothes on. You must both be nude and emptyhanded. I’ll come out of my room weaponless. We’ll both leave at exactly the same time and meet in the corridor that links the two rooms.”