He felt quite cheerful as he left the two together in his cabin. At
long last, he was free of responsibility, of illusion, of dreams. He
didn't need a woman; it would be wrong for him to expect a woman to
live with the kqyres, even unwittingly. Love was for the very young;
he had his work. And now that he was free of all these vexing human
entanglements, he'd be able to take hold of the business the way he
should have been doing all along. The kqyres was getting old; it was
time to assume the details of management himself. There were quite a
few areas of operation which could become even more productive if the
business was thoroughly reorganized.
Mattern went up to the control room. The kqyres was there, which was
not his usual place. Perhaps Alard had been right when he said it was
Njeri who had drugged the other crewmen and taken control of the ship.
Presently, Mattern would ask him why, but there were other matters to
be discussed first.
"Well," Mattern said, flinging himself into a chair, "Lyddy seems to be
disposed of satisfactorily." He gave a rueful laugh. "I take it you had
a hand in the arrangements. That was only fair--she's your creation."
He waved his smokestick at the xhind. "However, I'm warning you, I
won't let myself be manipulated any more. You're through pushing me
around."
The kqyres seemed almost offended. Then there came a soft chuckle.
"Manipulated, nonsense! We merely deluded you a little, in the same
manner you were wont to delude yourself, but more purposefully. In
truth, what else could we do? We needed you, and in order to induce you
to accept our terms, we had to establish some goal, some ideal for you
to aim at."
Something about the kqyres' voice disturbed Mattern; he only half
listened as the hyperspacer continued: "And the resources of your mind
were so pitifully meager at that time that this woman was the best
we could dredge up. Later, when your horizons had broadened and your
perceptions deepened, we attempted to alter your goal to a more worthy
one, but the woman had already become an obsession...."
"You're not the kqyres," Mattern interrupted. "You have a different
voice."
"Not the _same_ kqyres," the voice corrected. "Truly, it was unfair to
make Lord Njeri go through a thing like this twice in one lifetime.
Moreover, as he grew old, he grew careless."
So that was why the men had been drugged. There had been an unscheduled
stop in hyperspace.
Mattern got up and looked intently at the shadowy form. The xhind
flickered a little, as if in embarrassment, and embarked almost
nervously upon an explanation. "You were never intended to attain
Lyddy, merely to keep her image before you like the star a mariner
follows but can never reach." And then the kqyres laughed. "Except, of
course, that today he can reach his star."
"A carrot and a donkey might be a more suitable simile," Mattern said.
"Pity you couldn't have provided a better carrot."
The new kqyres ignored this comment. "Lord Njeri was transferred. He
has asked me to say that he looks forward to the pleasure of renewing
your friendship when you come again to Ferr. Meanwhile, I have taken
his place." After some hesitation, the new kqyres added, "I hope we
shall be good friends, also."
There was no use pretending any longer. "I know who you are," Mattern
said. "I recognize your voice. You're the mbretersha herself, aren't
you?"
* * * * *
She seemed pleased rather than dismayed. "Yes, I am the mbretersha. I
came to realize that the post of kqyres was more difficult than that of
queen. Therefore, I was the only one who should rightfully undertake
it. As I told you, in our universe a ruler cannot afford pride. She
lives only for the good of her people."
"She's got to," Mattern said bluntly, "if, as you said, her nervous
system is attuned to theirs. What actually did happen is that Njeri
told you I was quitting the business and he couldn't control me any
more. So you took his place to see if you could change my mind."
"Oh, that was a mere pleasantry!" she said. "I knew you would not give
up the hyperspace trade. What else would you have left?"
What else _would_ he have left? His money, his collections, his
unpleasant memories. All his emotional ties now were with that other
universe.
"Who's ruling Ferr?" he asked, evading her question.
"Lord Njeri, your former kqyres, serves as my regent. He is my father,
so he is fitted by birth; his system is also attuned to the planet's,
although not as sensitively as mine, since he is a male. Perhaps that
would make him a better ruler; he will suffer less. And I see no reason
otherwise why a male should be deemed incapable of ruling, providing he
is under careful supervision."
"No reason at all," Mattern agreed.
"Moreover," she continued, "I have organized the whole government of my
planet so that it runs itself. And, of course, from time to time, when
we make our trips, I shall be able to check into what's going on."
"But we're not going to make any more trips," he said. Although he
had not been serious about retiring--he knew that now--he wasn't going
to let the hyperspacers push him around. _Make her sweat a little_, he
thought irreverently.
"Will you not give me a chance, Captain?" she asked. "Is the prospect
of my company so displeasing to you that it will make you give up the
business immediately?"
"You know it's not that. I told the kqyres before you came--"
"But my people won't know it's not that. I shall lose face."
"If only you _had_ a face!" he cried. "I'm sick of sailing with
shadows!"
"My form in your universe is truly horrible, Mattern," she said softly,
"truly monstrous. The xhindi who have seen themselves in mirrors in
your universe have often gone mad."
"Anything is better than emptiness," he told her.
"If I appear in my true form, then will you accept me as your kqyres?"
"Well," he said, enjoying himself, "I'll make a few more trips with
you, but that's all I'll promise."
"I accept your promises," she said.
He felt a tiny shiver rise up in him. Suppose her normspace form was
even more hideous than her hyperspace form, which of course, was no
longer hideous to him. Would his nerves be strong enough to bear it?
* * * * *
He held his breath as the vibrations began to slow down, the grays
shimmering into substance, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and
then flowing into one basic roseate hue. Bit by bit, the planes and
shapes began to coalesce into the shape of....
A woman. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A woman next to
whom even the dream of Lyddy paled into thin air.
And, momentarily, he became the Len Mattern of fifteen years back,
standing there with his mouth agape. "But you said you'd be a
monster...."
"To my people, Mattern," she smiled, "this form is as monstrous as ours
is to your people. You change into our doubles in hyperspace; we change
into yours in normspace. Had you kept the continuity of tradition that
we have, you would know what we have always known--that xhind and human
are different aspects of the same race. That is why you fear us, and we
do not fear you."
_Of course_, he thought. _How else could they understand us so well?
How else could they find logic in our illogic and be able to condition
us according to our human natures?_ And he smiled to think that all
objection to the xhindi from the social angle was invalid. Monsters
they might be, but not non-humans.
"Once I thought this appearance was monstrous, Mattern," the mbretersha
went on, in the sweet voice which suited her now, "because I thought
you and your kind were, though forms of our race, monstrous forms--not
only without beauty, but without dignity or intelligence or compassion."
"Maybe you were right," he said.
"But since I have learned to know you and to--like you, I have come to
realize that outward semblances are meaningless. I may appear one way
in your universe, another way in mine, but I am the same I. If there
is beauty--" and she gave what, in a lesser personage, would have been
almost a giggle--"it is an inner beauty."
Mattern could not agree with this premise. Although he had admired
the mbretersha on Ferr, he felt quite differently toward her now, and
because of no suddenly discovered inner beauty.
"You'll stay this way in this universe then?" he asked. "It makes it so
much more comfortable for me--than just a collection of shadows," he
added hastily.
"I will stay this way permanently while I am in your universe,
Mattern," she told him, "if, in your turn, you will accept me as--as--"
"As my shipmate," Mattern finished, "my kqyres. I have already done so."
"Not merely as your _ship_mate."
"As my--wife?" he blurted, wondering whether he was reading her mind or
whether she was projecting so forcibly into his that he merely spoke
her thoughts for her.
She nodded.
To be chained again, after this brief moment of freedom! He wanted her,
right enough, and he was delighted to have her for his partner, his
companion, but he saw no need for formal commitments between them.
"You're the mbretersha," he protested, "the queen. It wouldn't be right
for you to marry a commoner!"
"And you," she retorted, "are one of nature's own noblemen, and, hence,
a fitting consort for me. There is no one in either universe whom I
could marry without lowering myself," she explained, "so I might as
well wed where there is a basis of respect, of admiration, and, to be
sure, expediency."
"But--but _our_ ceremony wouldn't be valid in _your_ universe, would
it?" he spluttered wildly. "And _your_ ceremony--"
"We will have two ceremonies, Mattern, one in each universe."
This, he could see in alarm, was going to be a truly lasting marriage.
* * * * *
Mattern was happy with the mbretersha, for she knew how to satisfy a
man's every dream as well as his desires, and of course, being the
kqyres, she was the only woman who would not be disturbed by the
presence of one on board. Moreover, she was a woman for whom a universe
could be risked, a woman to whom worlds could be offered--in short,
just as he was the only man worthy of her, so she was the only woman
worthy of him.
But sometimes he fancied that the mbretersha's blue eyes had the same
haunting familiarity that he had seen in Lyddy's and Alard's, and he
wondered. Alard's had been explicable enough; he and Mattern had had
the same mother. But why should Lyddy also have his mother's eyes--and,
stranger still, why should the mbretersha?
Len could not help wondering whether, to create the ideal fantasy, the
ultimate carrot, the xhindi had reached far back in his mind to get the
earliest--and thus the most fundamental--illusion of beauty for him.
Could both Lyddy and the mbretersha have been deliberately modeled on
his mother, and was the mbretersha's form in normspace merely whatever
she chose it to be--or appear to be?
_Oh, well_, he thought, _perhaps an artful illusion is the truest form
of reality._