“Let me show you to your room,” Shirley blurted.
I fetched the luggage: a suitcase apiece for Vornan and myself. My own grip was nearly empty, holding nothing more than a few changes of clothing; but I had to struggle to lift Vornan’s. Naked he had come into this world, but he had accumulated a good deal on his travels: clothing, knickknacks, a random miscellany. I hauled it into the house. Shirley had given Vornan the room I usually occupied, and a storage room near the sun deck had been hastily converted into an auxiliary guest room for me. That seemed quite proper. I set his suitcase down, and left Shirley with him to instruct him in the use of the household appliances. Jack took me to my own room.
I said, “I want you to realize, Jack, that this visit can be ended at any time. If Vornan gets to be too much for you, just say the word and we’ll pull out. I don’t want you going to any trouble on his account.”
“That’s all right. I think this is going to be interesting, Leo.”
“No doubt. But it might also be strenuous.”
He smiled fitfully. “Will I get a chance to talk to him?”
“Of course.”
“You know about what.”
“Yes. Talk all you like. There won’t be much else to do. But you won’t get anywhere, Jack.”
“I can try, at least.” In a low voice he added, “He’s shorter than I thought he’d be. But impressive. Very impressive. He’s got a kind of natural power to dominate, doesn’t he?”
“Napoleon was a short man,” I reminded him. “Also Hitler.”
“Does Vornan know that?”
“He doesn’t seem to be much of a student of history,” I said, and we both laughed.
A little while later Shirley came out of Vornan’s room and encountered me in the hall. I don’t think she expected to find me there, for I caught a quick glimpse of her face, and she was wholly without the mask that we wear in front of others. Her eyes, her nostrils, her lips, all revealed raw emotion, churning conflicts. I wondered if Vornan had attempted anything in the five minutes they had been together. Certainly what I saw on Shirley’s face was purely sexual, a tide of desire flooding toward the surface. An instant later she realized I was looking at her, and the mask slipped swiftly into place. She smiled nervously. “He’s all settled in,” she said. “I like him, Leo. You know, I expected him to be cold and forbidding, some kind of robotlike thing. But he’s polite and courtly, a real gentleman in his strange way.”
“He’s quite the charmer, yes.”
Telltale points of color lingered in her cheeks. “Do you think it was a mistake for us to say he could come here?”
“Why should it be a mistake?”
She moistened her lips. “There’s no telling what might happen. He’s beautiful, Leo. He’s irresistible.”
“Are you afraid of your own desires?”
“I’m afraid of hurting Jack.”
“Then don’t do anything without Jack’s consent,” I said, feeling more than ever like an uncle. “It’s that simple. Don’t get carried away.”
“What if I do, Leo? When I was in the room with him — I saw him looking at me so hungrily—”
“He looks at all beautiful women that way. But surely you know how to say no, Shirley.”
“I’m not sure I’d want to say no.”
I shrugged. “Should I call Kralick and say that we’d like to leave?”
“No!”
“Then you’ll have to be the watchdog of your own chastity, I’m afraid. You’re an adult, Shirley. You ought to be able to keep from sleeping with your house guest if you think it would be unwise. That’s never been much of a problem for you before.” She recoiled, startled, at my gratuitous final words. Her face crimsoned again beneath the deep tan. She peered at me as if she had never seen me in clear focus before. I felt angry at myself for my foolishness. In one breath I had cheapened a decade-long relationship. But the taut moment passed. Shirley relaxed as though going through a series of inner exercises, and said at last in a calm voice, “You’re right, Leo. It won’t really be a problem.”
The evening was surprisingly free from tension. Shirley produced a magnificent meal, and Vornan was lavish in his praise: it was, he said, the first dinner he had eaten in anyone’s home, and he was delighted by it. Afterwards we strolled together at twilight. Jack walked beside Vornan, and I with Shirley, but we stayed close to one another. Jack pointed out a kangaroo rat that had emerged from hiding a little early and went hopping madly over the desert. We saw a few jackrabbits and some lizards. It forever astonished Vornan that wild animals should be on the loose. Later, we returned to the house for drinks, and sat pleasantly like four old friends, talking of nothing in particular. Vornan seemed to accommodate himself perfectly to the personalities of his hosts. I began to think that I had been uneasy over nothing.
The curious tranquility continued for several days more. We slept late, explored the desert, reveled in eighty-degree heat, talked, ate, peered at the stars. Vornan was restrained and almost cautious. Yet he spoke more of his own time here than was usual for him. Pointing to the stars, he tried to describe the constellations he knew, but he failed to find any, not even the Dipper. He talked of food taboos and how daring it would be for him to sit at table with his hosts in a parallel situation in 2999. He reminisced lazily about his ten months among us, like a traveler who is close to the end of his journey and beginning to look back at remembered pleasures.
We were careful not to tune in on any news broadcasts while Vornan was around. I did not want him to know that there had been riots of disappointment in South America over the postponement of his visit, nor that a kind of Vornan-hysteria was sweeping the world, with folk everywhere looking toward the visitor for all the answers to the riddles of the universe. In his past pronouncements Vornan had smugly let it be known that he would eventually supply all the answers to everything, and this promissory note seemed to be infinitely negotiable, even though in fact Vornan had raised more questions than answers. It was good to keep him in isolation here, far from the nodes of control that he might so easily seize.
On the fourth morning we woke to brilliant sunlight. I cut out my window-opaquers and found Vornan already on the sun-deck. He was nude, stretched cozily in a web-foam cradle, basking in the brightness. I tapped on the window. He looked up, saw me, smiled. I stepped outside just as he rose from the cradle. His sleek, smooth body might have been made of some seamless plastic substance; his skin was without blemish and he had no body hair whatever. He was neither muscular nor flabby, and seemed simultaneously frail and powerful. I know that sounds paradoxical. He was also formidably male. “It’s wonderfully warm out here, Leo.” he said. “Take off your clothes and join me.”
I held back. I had not told Vornan of the free-and-easy nudism of my earlier visits to this house; and thus far all the proprieties had been carefully observed. But of course Vornan had no nudity taboos; and now that he had made the first move, Shirley was quick to follow. She emerged on the deck, saw Vornan bare and myself clad in nightclothes, and said smilingly, “Yes, that’s quite all right. I meant to suggest that yesterday. We aren’t foolish about our bodies here.” And having made that declaration of liberalism, she stripped away the flimsy wrap she had been wearing and lay down to enjoy the sun. Vornan watched in what struck me as remarkably aloof curiosity as Shirley revealed her supple, magnificently endowed body. He seemed interested, but only in a theoretical way. This was not the ravenously wolfish Vornan I knew. Shirley, though, betrayed profound inner discomfort. A flush swept nearly to the base of her throat. Her movements were exaggeratedly casual. Her eyes strayed guiltily to Vornan’s loins a moment, then quickly pulled away. Her nipples gave her away, rising in sudden excitement. She knew it, and hastily rolled over to lie on her belly, but not before I had noticed the effect. When Shirley and Jack and I had sunbathed together, it had been as innocent as in Eden; but the stiffening of those two nubs of erectile tissue bluntly advertised how she felt about being nude in front of a nude Vornan.