“I don’t know.”

“Are you afraid of the drug now?”

I shook my head. “That isn’t easy for me to answer. I need time to come to terms with the whole experience. Time to think about it, Schweiz, before getting involved again.”

“You’ve tasted the experience. You’ve seen that there’s only good to be had from it.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps.”

“Without doubt!” His fervor was evangelical. His zeal tempted me anew.

Cautiously I said, “If more were available, I would seriously consider trying it again. With Halum, maybe.”

“Good!”

“Not immediately. But in time. Two, three, four moontimes from now.”

“It would have to be farther from now than that.”

“Why?”

Schweiz said, “This was my entire stock of the drug that we used this evening. I have no more.”

“But you could get some, if you tried?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, certainly.”

“Where?”

“In Sumara Borthan,” he said.

37

When one is new to the ways of pleasure, it is not surprising to find guilt and remorse following first indulgence. So was it with me. In the morning of our second day at the lodge I awoke after troubled sleep, feeling such shame that I prayed the ground to swallow me. What had I done? Why had I let Schweiz goad me into such foulness? Selfbaring! Selfbaring! Sitting with him all night, saying “I” and “me” and “me” and “I,” and congratulating myself on my new freedom from convention’s strangling hand! The mists of day brought a mood of disbelief. Could I have actually opened myself like that? Yes, I must, for within me now were memories of Schweiz’s past, which I had not had access to before. And myself within him, then. I prayed for a way of undoing what I had done. I felt I had lost something of myself by surrendering my apartness. You know, to be a selfbarer is not a pretty thing among us, and those who expose themselves gain only a dirty pleasure from it, a furtive kind of ecstasy. I insisted to myself that I had done nothing of that, but had embarked rather on a spiritual quest; but even as I put the phrase to myself it sounded portentous and hypocritical, a flimsy mask for shabby motives. And I was ashamed, for my sake, for my sons’ sake, for the sake of my royal father and his royal forefathers, that I had come to this. I think it was Schweiz’s “I love you” that drove me into such an abyss of regret, more than any other single aspect of the evening, for my old self saw those words as doubly obscene, even while the new self that was struggling to emerge insisted that the Earthman had meant nothing shameful, neither with his “I” nor with his “love.” But I rejected my own argument and let guilt engulf me. What had I become, to trade endearments with another man, an Earthborn merchant, a lunatic? How could I have given my soul to him? Where did I stand, now that I was so wholly vulnerable to him? For a moment I considered killing Schweiz, as a way of recovering my privacy. I went to him where he slept, and saw him with a smile on his face, and I could feel no hatred for him then.

That day I spent mostly alone. I went off into the forest and bathed at a cool pond; then I knelt before a firethorn tree and pretended it was a drainer, and confessed myself to it in shy whispers; afterward I walked through a brambly woods, coming back to the lodge thorned and smudged. Schweiz asked me if I felt unwell. No, I told him, nothing is wrong. I said little that evening, but huddled in a floating-chair. The Earthman, more talkative than ever, a torrent of buoyant words, launched himself into the details of a grand scheme for an expedition to Sumara Borthan to bring back sacks of the drug, enough to transform every soul in Manneran, and I listened without commenting, for everything had become unreal to me, and that project seemed no more strange than anything else.

I hoped the ache of my soul would ease once I was back in Manneran and at my desk in the Justiciary. But no. I came into my house and Halum was there with Loimel, the cousins exchanging clothes with one another, and at the sight of them I nearly turned and fled. They smiled warm woman-smiles at me, secret smiles, the token of the league they had formed between themselves all their lives, and in despair I looked from my wife to my bondsister, from one cousin to the other, receiving their mirrored beauty as a double sword in my belly. Those smiles. Those knowing eyes! They needed no drug to pull the truths from me.

Where have you been, Kinnall?

To a lodge in the forest, to play at selfbaring with the Earthman.

And did you show him your soul?

Oh, yes, and he showed his.

And then?

Then we spoke of love. I love you, he said, and one replied, I love you.

What a wicked child you are, Kinnall!

Yes, Yes. Where can one hide from his shame?

This silent dialogue whirled through my brain in an instant, as I came toward them where they sat beside the courtyard fountain. Formally I embraced Loimel, and formally I embraced my bondsister, but I kept my eyes averted from theirs, so sharp was my guilt. It was the same in the Justiciary office for me. I translated the glances of the underlings into accusing glares. There is Kinnall Darival, who revealed all our mysteries to Schweiz of Earth. Look at the Sallan selfbarer slink by us! How can he stand his own reek? I kept to myself and did my work poorly. A document concerning some transaction of Schweiz’s crossed my desk, throwing me into dismay. The thought of facing Schweiz ever again appalled me. It would have been no great chore for me to revoke his residence permit in Manneran, using the authority of the High Justice; poor payment for the trust he showed me, but I came close to doing it, and checked myself only out of a deeper shame even than I already bore.

On the third day of my return, when my children too had begun to wonder what was wrong with me, I went to the Stone Chapel to seek healing from the drainer Jidd.

It was a damp day of heavy heat. The soft furry sky seemed to hang in looping folds over Manneran, and everything was coated in glistening beads of bright moisture. That day the sunlight was a strange color, almost white, and the ancient black stone blocks of the holy building gave off blinding reflections as though they were edged with prisms; but once inside the chapel, I found myself in dark, cool, quiet halls. Jidd’s cell had pride of place in the chapel’s apse, behind the great altar. He awaited me already robed; I had reserved his time hours in advance. The contract was ready. Quickly I signed and gave him his fee. This Jidd was no more lovely than any other of his trade, but just then I was almost pleased by his ugliness, his jagged knobby nose and thin long lips, his hooded eyes, his dangling earlobes. Why mock the man’s face? He would have chosen another for himself, if he had been consulted. And I was kindly disposed to him, for I hoped he would heal me. Healers were holy men. Give me what I need from you, Jidd, and I will bless your ugly face! He said, “Under Whose auspices will you drain?”

“The god of forgiving.”

He touched a switch. Mere candles were too common for Jidd. The amber light of forgiveness came from some concealed gas-jet and flooded the chamber. Jidd directed my attention toward the mirror, instructing me to behold my face, put my eyes to my eyes. The eyes of a stranger looked back at me. Droplets of sweat clustered in the roots of my beard, where the flesh of my cheeks could be seen. I love you, I said silently to the strange face in the mirror. Love of others begins with love of self. The chapel weighed on me; I was in terror of being crushed beneath a block of the ceiling. Jidd was saying the preliminary words. There was nothing of love in them. He commanded me to open my soul to him.