The Love Farmer

ONE DAY, ARRIANGEL was a free citizen of Dilvermoon — wealthy, beautiful, and quite happy.

Then she woke in a strange, narrow bed and looked up to see a bland-faced stranger bending over her.

"Ah. You're with us," said the stranger, in a whispery voice. He smiled with his mouth, but not with his eyes.

She tried to sit up; he pressed her back and slapped a narcosack against her neck. Her muscles melted into uselessness.

The stranger spoke again. "It's my duty to inform you that you are now the property of Specialties, Inc., a subsidiary of SeedCorp/Dilvermoon."

When next she woke, she was alone.

A day passed, then another. Her cell was comfortable enough, though not luxurious. There was a formfit bed, a holotank, a hygiene stall, and several paintings on the walls. These small canvases depicted pastoral scenes, painted in a smooth, impersonal technique. Smiling young men and women tended gardens full of flowers and fruit-laden trees. All were wholesomely attractive, and this was even more apparent because all were naked. When she looked closer, she saw that they all wore thin explosive slave collars, disguised as fashionable silver chokers. She shuddered and turned away.

The room was wedge-shaped and from all three walls projected the glassy snouts of holocam imagers. This, she thought, was the least palatable aspect of her captivity — even now, strangers watched her and judged. She wondered that she had so quickly grown used to the unseen eyes. She had even grown used to the idea that the watchers were with her when she visited the stall.

She tried to adopt a philosophical attitude. It could, after all, be very much worse. Arbrand might have sold her to a chop shop, or to one of the exty traders that infested the human sectors of Dilvermoon. She thought back over the events of the past few days, trying to see what had made Arbrand do what he had done.

Arbrand... it was difficult to believe he had enslaved her simply because she was no longer romantically intrigued by hifn. He had seemed so well-mannered, not at all the sort of person who would perform so dire an act. And she had broken off such relationships before. Many times.

She shook her head. Arbrand was certainly mad; no other explanation was possible.

She remembered his white face, his bleak eyes, the odd choking sound he made when she told him that she could no longer see him. She thought she had explained her decision with a generous degree of courtesy and tact. Certainly she had tried to be civilized. But in the next instant, he had seized her hand. She thought he was only going to attempt some desperate gallantry, so she hadn't tried to pull away until it was too late. He had pressed a sinjector against her wrist, and that tiny cold pain was the last thing she had felt, until she had awakened in the slave pen.

Arriangel went now to the mirrors that opened like silver wings in one corner, and looked critically at her reflection. She touched the comer of her jaw, brushing back the thick, honey-gold hair. She rubbed at the empty spot where her Citizenship tattoo had once been. She wondered how Arbrand had managed to remove the tattoo so swiftly and completely. Well, he was an extremely wealthy young man, with resources equal to ¦i I most any task. She held up her wrist. Its smooth white skin was unmarked over the spot where her datacyst interface had once been. Not only was she a slave ... she was a penniless slave.

She decided to stop thinking about Arbrand.

A long time later, a rattle came from the door. It swung open, to reveal a black-masked turnkey and a tall, red-haired man. The turnkey bowed the tall man inside, then stepped out and closed the door.

Arriangel observed her visitor with interest. She judged him a handsome man, perhaps even beautiful. He was muscular and moved with an energetic grace. His face struck her as unusual — a bit more strongly carved than was completely fashionable, with broad cheekbones, heavy brows, and deep-set amber eyes. His mouth was wide and smiling. His hair was of a peculiarly fiery shade, swept back from a high forehead.

"Will I do?" he asked, in a low, warm voice, and smiled even more broadly.

She looked away, embarrassed. "Are you here to buy me?"

"It's possible. Do you think you'd make a satisfactory purchase?"

She suddenly found the situation not at all amusing. It was one thing to sit alone in a comfortable room and muse abstractly on the institution of slavery. It was quite another to be confronted by a man who could own her, who could then do whatever he wished with her — rent her out by the hour, sell her piece by piece to the clonehacks... or grind her up for beastfood if she displeased him.

Always before, in her dealings with others, she had made the rules —and this she had believed to be the natural order of the universe. She felt tears well up in her eyes. How could her circumstances have changed so abruptly and unfairly?

"Well, at least you can cry. That's a good sign. You'd be surprised to know how many human beings have lost that faculty." The man spoke kindly. Arriangel was cheered a bit by his apparent civility. Perhaps she should hope that he would be the one to purchase her.

She brightened, and tried to smile.

He laughed, but it wasn't a derisive sound, not at all. "You're an optimist, too," he said. "I like that."

He sat on her bed and regarded her without speaking. He seemed perfectly at ease, as though he might watch her in that assessing manner for hours. His face reflected some pleasant but unidentifiable emotion, and she felt somehow challenged. "You know my name," she said. "Will you tell me yours?"

"Yes, of course," he said. "I've been rude, Arriangel. My name is Memfis."

She smiled at him, as warmly as she could. She suddenly felt herself on more familiar ground. She tossed back her hair, and leaned against the wall, thrusting out her hip, a maneuver that she knew shaped her body into an alluring line.

Memfis the slaver seemed to appreciate her skill. His gaze traveled slowly up and down, and when he was finished, his smile had some personal quality that it had not had before. Her confidence rose a bit.

She decided to attempt bribery. "I was a Citizen," she said.

"Oh?" Memfis seemed only mildly interested.

"Yes. If you buy me, I can guarantee you a fat profit. All you need do is contact my family." She looked at Memfis, quirked an eyebrow.

He continued to smile, but she had the feeling that she was failing to make herself understood. "Is that so?" he asked.

She was slightly annoyed. "Yes, it's so. My demifather is Larimone the Factor?" Memfis looked away, rubbed at his chin, as if struggling to remember.

She was quite irritated now. "Surely you don't pretend that you've never heard of Larimone?"

He stopped smiling, and fear stabbed through her. She couldn't seem to remember her new station. Would the slaver punish her?

But he didn't seem angry. "I remember now," he said soberly. "Larimone the Factor. Of course. He died in the Adjustment, and his corporation was redistributed."

She felt a breathless, uncertain grief squeeze her heart. "Larimone is dead? Truly dead? Oh, oh .... When did it happen?"

Memfis drew a deep breath, looked unhappy. "I'm not sure. Four hundred years ago? Five hundred? I don't know. I'm sorry to have spoken so bluntly, but you must sooner or later learn the truth of your new circumstances."

Her muscles turned to jelly, and she slid down the wall. She hugged her legs to her body and hid her face. What had happened?

"The man who sold you to Specialties put you on ice for a long time. What was his name?" The slaver's sympathy seemed oddly genuine.

"Arbrand," she muttered.

"Arbrand. Yes. This sort of thing happens frequently in vengeful e nslavements; it separates the victim from the possibility of rescue, and i lie passage of time works other unpleasant effects."

"I see," she said.

"I'm sorry."

Arriangel began to lose interest in the handsome slaver; why pretend that he saw her as a desirable woman? Now she had only one significant quality: merchantability.

Memfis went to one knee beside her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's not as bad as that, Arriangel. You still possess the strengths you had before: your beauty, your wit, your passion. You have everything but your freedom." He spoke as though he could read her mind. She wondered if he was of a telepathic race or whether her thoughts were simply identical to those of any other newly informed slave.

She tried to smile. He did seem kind, for a slaver.'Then she wondered what darkness, what perversity his apparent kindness hid, and she became frightened. "If you buy me, what will you do with me?"

"Nothing terrible. My decision hinges on one question. Can you love?"

She was confused by the question. Memfis watched her with his beautiful amber eyes, apparently waiting for her to reply to his foolish question. "Can I love? Can't everyone?"

"Oh no; in fact, it's relatively few of us who can love. I'm not asking you if you can pretend to love; I'm not recruiting for a brothel. Though, if I don't buy you, a dozen whorebrokers will bid for you, I'm sure. Can you love?'

"I think so. I loved my father." It was still difficult for her to believe that so vital and forceful a man as Larimone could really be dead.

Memfis made an impatient chopping gesture with his hands. "No, no. That's not what I mean... not at all. I'm a specialist. I'm interested in the sort of love that runs hot from our hearts, that makes us bum for our lovers, that cooks us in our own passionate juices, until we're dizzy with desire. I'll ask you again: Can you love?"

The slaver's fine features seemed suddenly too taut; otherwise, she could not read his expression at all.

But, quite suddenly and perversely, she wanted to see a particular emotion on his face; she wanted to see those amber eyes grow warm. "Yes," she answered. "I can love."

A long, silent moment passed. Then Memfis smiled, an oddly intimate expression. "I think I will believe you, Arriangel."

SO HE bought her, and conducted her from the pens. When the outer doors clanged shut behind her, she felt a sudden lightening of her spirits, though perhaps she was foolish to feel so. Who knew what demands her new owner might make of her? But for the moment, he treated her with careful courtesy. He didn't attach a leash to the plastic collar around her neck, though he held her arm. She found the warm touch of his hand pleasant rather than restrictive, and she missed it when he released her to key open his tunnel car.

The car was luxurious, and she enjoyed this confirmation that Memfis possessed wealth, though she tried to tell herself to be sensible. She was just a possession now; she must learn how to deal with Memfis in a different way than she had dealt with any of the others.

When she was settled and the car was moving through the tunnels on its programmed course, Memfis spoke. "A drink? Smoke? Dust?" He gestured toward a small autobar, and it unfolded, to display a range of euphoriants.

"Perhaps some wine, something not too heavy . . . she answered diffidently.

He seemed pleased by her answer, and he poured her a goblet of some pale, flowery wine, and then one for himself. "You're moderate, even after all this time on the ice. That's an attractive quality, Arriangel. We sleep, on the ice, but our bodies still accumulate needs... though more slowly."

She sipped at the wine, and gazed at him over the rim of her goblet, aware that she made an appealing picture. She waited for him to speak again, but evidently silence caused him no uneasiness. He simply watched her with appreciative eyes. She found that she could not match him at this game, and so she asked him the question that most occupied her. "What will you do with me?"

"You asked that before, and I didn't say, did I?"

"No."

He leaned back in his velvet-upholstered seat and looked at her over his own goblet, in a gesture that was so clearly a mockery of hers that she flushed and set her goblet down, splashing a bit of wine on the polished surface of the table.

He laughed, without any discernible meanness, and it was so pleasant a sound that she was immediately disarmed. Then he set his own goblet aside and leaned forward. He took her hands between his and spoke earnestly. "Do you know what a love farmer is? No? Well, that's what I am, and between us, we'll grow love."

Her face must have betrayed some unreasonable hope, because he frowned and patted her hands gently. "That's not the way I should have said that, though you're a beautiful woman, and I would find you very intriguing under different circumstances. I didn't buy you for myself; your price was far too high for my personal pocket, and besides ... I've never understood the appeal of purchased lovers. No, I bought you in my capacity as a representative of the corporation."

Her heart fell, and she looked down. "I see."

"Not yet," he said, and sighed. "Well . . . better if I defer a full explanation until we arrive. Things will be clearer then."

He would say no more, turning aside her questions with charming and inconsequential pleasantries.

They drove through dark tunnels for thousands of kilometers, the car shuddering with the speed of their passage. After a while her anxiety moderated to the point that she felt a bit sleepy. She forced herself to remain alert.

More than an hour later, the car slowed and dropped through several switchoff tunnels before finally arriving at a floodlit security gate. Memfis said to her, "Were here, Arriangel. This is where we'll do our work together."

The gate was large and strong-looking, and it displayed a bas-relief in gold, inset with platinum and iridium detail. The carving occupied an oval area and was divided into two parts by the gate's vertical seam. On the right was the face of a woman who wore a sweet, soft smile; her eyes were dreamy and mild, and she wore a garland of flowers about her head. On the left side was a man with grim features, whose hair snarled about his head with the energy of angry snakes. His mouth was a bitter line; his eyes bulged with mindless outrage.

The sign that arched over the gate said, The Garden of Passions, Inc. The letters were backlit with a red glow so deep it seemed almost black, the color of iron cooling in a forge.

Memfis touched a button, and the gate split down the center. The two faces slid aside, allowing the car to enter.

He helped her from the car, and she stepped out into an empty loading bay. "Come," he said. "I'll see you settled in your rooms, and tomorrow I'll explain the work we do here."

He took her through a series of deserted corridors, past a hundred closed doors, and in all that way, they met no one else. The corridors were very quiet, and Arriangel began to think morbid thoughts. Was the soundproofing very good at the love farm, and did tormented people scream behind all those closed doors?

Memfis again seemed to sense the direction of her speculations. "Please, Arriangel, don't be afraid. I promise you, nothing bad will happen to you tomorrow."

He seemed so sincere that she gave him her first unforced smile. He laughed. "Very good, Arriangel. You have a lovely smile, and I hope to see it a great many times before we’re finished."

Finished? Her smile wavered — but only for an instant.

Her door seemed no different from all the others, but it opened when he pressed his palm to the ident plate. He ushered her inside with a courtly sweep of his arm, and she stepped over the threshold.

For all she could tell, she was in a luxurious apartment. The media room was decorated in an unfamiliar style, with warm colors and soft fabrics — she supposed fashions 'had changed over the centuries. There was a small kitchen, a large bedroom, and a well-appointed bathroom, in which sat a huge claw-foot bathtub with gold fixtures. In a shallow niche off the bedroom was the most ominous furnishing, a tall padded chair, equipped with heavy straps and a neural-inductance harness. Above it, set into the wall, was a large video screen. Memfis went to the chair and patted it affectionately. "This is the retroprobe. Here is where you'll do your work, Arriangel. Don't be afraid; I'll ask nothing unpleasant of you —just that you love. That doesn't sound so terrible, does it?"

"I don't understand," she said, biting her lip.

He touched her arm lightly, a gesture she found comforting, against her will. "I know. Tomorrow, when you're rested, I'll explain. Tonight don't worry. You'll find everything you need; look for whatever you want in the usual places — food in the kitchen, clothes in the closet." He went out.

She didn't bother to try the door. She knew it would be locked.

She decided to take a bath, a long, hot bath. Perhaps she could soak away the uncertainties of her new life, if only for a while.

Arriangel slept poorly that night in her strange new bed, so far from her old life. Her dreams were muddy with frustration and anxiety; when she woke, she could remember nothing of them.

After she had visited the bathroom and made use of the combs and brushes and cosmetics she found there, a mech servitor emerged from its wallcloset and served her breakfast in the media room. She ate with little appetite.

Later she watched a performance on the holotank. A color dancer she had never heard of created crude, garish effects on a canvas of thousands of grimacing faces. The colors that cycled over the faces were depressing - pasty, clay-colored washes; sickly greens; dark, bloody crimsons. The music was stridently repetitive, and she soon turned it off. She wondered that the world had so deteriorated during her sleep on the ice.

Arbrand had chosen a vengeance even viler than she had at first understood.

She sat in silence for an hour, turning over her memories, worrying at them. When Memfis arrived, she had derived no insights from them. She still could not understand how she had come to be what she now was.

A chime announced his arrival, and she looked up, expecting her door to open without her volition, as it had when she was in the pens. After a moment she realized that Memfis was waiting for her permission.

Perhaps it was no more than a disarming gesture, but it made her feel better. "Enter," she said, running her hand quickly over her hair.

Memfis came in, smiling his reassuring smile. "Ah," he said, clearly delighted. "How lovely you look this morning. No wonder you've been so often loved, Arriangel."

There was an odd inflection to his voice, but she could not decide what it meant. Still, he wasn't at all threatening, and she smiled warmly, pleased to see him.

He rubbed his hands together briskly, as if to warm them, then extended one to her. ''Come along. It's time for you to learn about the work you'll do here."

She put her hand in his, and he lifted her gently to her feet. He must have seen the fear in her face, though she tried to hide it. "No, no, there's nothing to be afraid of, as I've said before. In fact, almost everyone wishes to have the opportunity you're about to receive."

"They do?"

"Oh yes. How many of us would not go back into our pasts and change things, if we could?" He laughed. "No, I have no time machine — none exist, so far as I know."

He drew her into the bedroom, where the tall chair stood. At his touch on a wall-mounted dataslate, the chair slid forward, and the neutral harness lifted up and out of the way. "Will you sit?" he asked.

She could not have said why she was so afraid. Despite its appearance, suggestive of the restraints employed by low-tech torturers in holodramas, the chair's fabric was clean and new, its plastic surfaces unmarred, the straps wide and padded. "Please ...," she whispered.

"All right," he said, apparently not annoyed. "I'll sit. You watch."

He made himself comfortable in the chair. When he was ready, he nodded, and the straps curled around his chest and over his wrists and ankles. Simultaneously, the neural harness descended, until its black plastic hood obscured his face... except for his mouth, which still smiled for a moment longer.

Then his mouth fell into repose, and above the chair the screen came to life, veils of random color swirling.

When the screen cleared, she saw a forest scene — ancient gnarled trees growing amid mossy black boulders, through which a narrow brook poured. From the frosty, directionless light, she assumed she was watching one of the ecosims to be found in the wealthier enclaves of Dilvermoon, a little bit of carefully designed wilderness deep under the steel shell of the artificial planet.

For a moment the scene was static, and then it came to life, the water moving, tree limbs tossing in a moaning wind. A bright green databar slid across the bottom of the screen, flashing the words "MNEMONIC VALIDITY: CONFIRMED." At the same instant, a sensie field touched her, and she shivered. The wind was cold, and some fearful emotion rode on it. The room grew misty around her, though the flashing databar remained clear, and she was drawn into the screen's viewpoint.

The viewpoint panned, and she saw, standing beside a deep pool, a little boy, a child who seemed instantly familiar, though she was sure she had never seen him before. He was perhaps nine years old, pale-skinned, with hair of a familiar fiery color. He was smiling at her, but there was nothing pleasant about that smile. It was too wide and too knowing, and, in some subtle and disturbing way, quite dreadful.

"Come," the little boy said. "Let's see who's better."

The voice was that of a child, but Arriangel repressed a shudder of disgust.

She recognized Memfis — the small features were unmistakable. Or was it him? She saw some unendurably hateful quality in the child... though it was difficult to put her finger on exactly what was so awful.

The boy held the loop of a leash in his hand, and he gave it a jerk. A small, miserable-looking creature came slowly from behind a boulder. It was so hunched over that she took a moment to recognize it as a merlind, a bioengineered pet that had been popular in the enclaves when she was a child. Its body incorporated a malleable alien protein, and its entertainment value derived from the fact that its physical structure could be a altered almost instantly. The boy drew a control module from his pocket.

Her viewpoint spoke, and again she caught the resonances of disgust and fear. "No, Tafilis. I don't want to play that anymore." The voice was also childish and almost identical to the first boy's, except that it seemed sweetly troubled, and not at all monstrous.

"But you will." The awful child tapped at his controller, and his merlind strightened up and began to change.

Arriangel felt a distracting degree of confusion. Her viewpoint called the child Tafilis, not Memfis. What was happening? She shook her head.

The databar still flashed the same message.

The merlind had begun as a small, chubby animal with nappy brown fur and large, dark eyes. Its body elongated, the fur retracted, and hard blue scales surfaced on its skin. Its jaws enlarged and lengthened, and it hissed, opening a mouth full of long yellow teeth. It sprouted a crest of stiff green spines and a segmented insectile tail tipped with a poison-oozing stinger.

"No, really, Tafilis, please ... I don't want to," her viewpoint said in a trembling voice. The sensie field squeezed Arriangel between loathing and terror. She could feel her viewpoint's fear, a twisting hand in her belly.

"You think I give a shit what you want, Memfis?" Tafilis laughed horribly, and the creature he had made strained at the leash. "Come on, I'll give you a slow count to twenty to do your merlind, then I turn Bones loose. Hurry!"

Her viewpoint looked down at the furry, innocuous merlind that cowered between his legs. "That's not enough time, Tafilis!"

"Tough. One, two...."

Her viewpoint fumbled out his control module, punched at the screen with clumsy fingers.

"... fourteen, sixteen...."

Her viewpoint's merlind was changing, growing bands of armor and long claws, but too slowly, too slowly. Its liquid eyes still looked up at its master in fear and confusion.

".. .eighteen, nineteen..."

"Wait; we're not ready..."

"Twenty!" Tafilis bent forward to press the release of the leash, and her viewpoint was still not ready.

"No!" But then a disorienting calm descended on her viewpoint, who put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the splinter gun he'd taken from his mother's armory that morning.

With the part of her self that was still Arriangel, she noticed that the databar had turned a brilliant crimson, and was flashing a new message, "MNEMONIC VALIDITY: DIVERGING."

Her viewpoint pointed the gun at the monster. As it sprang toward his still-helpless pet, he fired. The spinning wires strummed the air and cut the creature into rags. The remnants blew back and splashed into the pool, still squirming.

Tafilis glared, face dead white, little spots of angry red high on his cheekbones. "You cheated, you little snot. I'll make you sorry for that."

"I'm already sorry. But I couldn't let you kill Jackrat, like you did Tobita. Mama will buy you another merlind; don't be mad."

Her viewpoint approached the pool and looked down into the water. Streamers of blood flowed lazily with the current. The ripples died away, and she saw a serious little face reflected there, identical but not the same as the horrible Tafilis.

"Memfis," she whispered. "You have a twin? Poor Memfis."

* * *

THE SCREEN went dark, and the hood rose from Memfis's face. He seemed a bit pale, and sweat glistened on his forehead.

"Sorry,” he said. "I wouldn't have picked that memory."

"The boy . . . that was your brother? Your twin?"

"Yes. He's my partner now. We two are the principal shareholders in i lie corporation." .

"He's here?" She felt a shudder of dread pass through her. That monster? Here?

Memfis smiled, a bit ruefully. "I'm afraid so. He's talented in his way; anyway, he's my brother, so I must put up with him. Well, enough about Tafilis. Did you understand the retroprobe — what was happening?"

"I'm not sure."

"I'll explain. That was a memory of my childhood — up to a point. Then it became a fantasy." His eyes darkened, and he looked down. "I didn't have the splinter gun that day, and Bones killed Jackrat. Like it killed the next two merlinds I got, until I learned not to want them anymore."

"That's terrible," she said.

"It was a long time ago, Arriangel." He shook himself and smiled. "But the point is, the retroprobe lets us go back into our memories and change something — a poor decision, a bit of bad luck, an attitude, perhaps. Something. And then we see how it might have been. How it might have been. ... Do you seer

"I understand. But... what does this have to do with me?" She was honestly puzzled. Her life had been remarkably free of regrets; except for her enslavement, she could think of nothing she would change.

That look of detached compassion fell over his beautiful features again. She was abruptly very uncomfortable. "Why do you look at me that way?"

He took her hand gently. "Arriangel. Think about this. You've been lucky enough to be loved many times. Why so many?"

"I don't know what you mean." And she didn't, but she sensed a criticism in his questions.

"I mean, what happened? Why did you never choose to stay with your lovers?"

"What an odd question. No one stays together forever, do they?"

Memfis laughed softly, a sound of sad amusement. "Remember what I said before I bought you, Arriangel. That very few can love."

"But I loved! I did! It's not my fault that something always happened to change things." She was astonished to find her eyes full of tears.

"Well," he said in a soothing voice. "We can make it right, under the probe.”

The tears leaked down her cheeks. "But why? Why are you doing this?"

He seemed surprised, and then contrite. "You're right. I really haven't explained yet. Listen, then. I'm an artist; my form is making love." He smiled at her expression. "Oh no, not the physical act, Arriangel. No. That's both too subtle and too limited for me; it's also too crowded a field. Everyone's an expert; isn't that the case? No. What I do is different.

"I record great loves; great and genuine loves. I have few competitors and fewer peers. And love is always in fashion, always marketable. Few can truly love, but everyone is curious, and what they're most curious about is this: how does it feel to be truly loved? So I find a person like you, someone who is beautiful and sweet and demonstrably lovable. And then I mine the memories of their greatest love. Finally I assemble those memories into a sensie chip; it becomes a distillation of one of the strongest experiences humans can have."

"But... why me? You just said that I've never loved." She felt a sudden hot pang of resentment, and her eyes went dry. "At least, not by your standards."

"It doesn't matter — or so I hope. You have all the necessary qualities, Arriangel. You were wealthy, and so, to most of the people in the pangalac worlds, your life was already a dream. Therefore you had the leisure to indulge in romance. You were born beautiful; you were always beautiful — and you know it, which gives an unmistakable flavor to your mind, a taste the rest of us hunger for." He kissed her hand, a courtly, artificial gesture. "I don't know yet what went wrong, but we'll find it and fix it, under the probe."

"I don't know," she said, in an uncertain voice.

"No, no. Don't fear. And remember, if you can give me what I ask, I'll give you back your freedom."

She was afraid to believe him, and her distrust must have been obvious.

He laughed. "There's no altruism involved, Arriangel. When I publish the chip, you'll be famous. When you're free, your fame will feed the chip's fame, and the chip's will feed yours. The corporation will profit from that interaction, of course. Publicity is all-important, even for artists — if they don't want to starve for their art." His expression darkened, as if he found that reality unpalatable.

When he was gone, she waited in the probe.

The brothers sat in the control room. On the screen, Arriangel sat up ¦it might in the retroprobe, a look of repressed terror on her lovely features.

"You might have chosen a less frightening memory for my demonstration," said Memfis.

Tefilis shrugged. "No great harm done, eh?" He turned to Memfis. "Anyway, she's a poor choice for your purposes, Brother. My wager on that."

Memfis touched the dataslate, and the hood of the probe lowered over Arriangel's face. "Your wager? How much?"

Tafilis grinned, a predatory glitter of white teeth. "Six weeks' profits on your half of the operation and a share of your stock to me, if you fail with her. The same to you, if I'm wrong. And just to keep you honest, you get only three tries."

"Done," said Memfis carelessly, all his attention now given to the probe's primary screen.

"Ahh...," said Tafilis in cheerful satisfaction. "You're never going to win this bet; I wonder why you keep making it. One day our legacy will all be mine. But don't worry, Brother. I'll always keep a place for you."

She felt the mask descend. When it covered her eyes, she felt a brief wrench in her senses, and then she was elsewhere, long ago....

She found herself walking alone down a familiar corridor, hearing the sounds of her classmates settling into their learning environments. She was a bit late, but not anxious. Her teachers would wait, and none would dare speak harshly to her.

She was thirteen, intrigued by the changes in her body, by the process of becoming a woman. Her school was a fine one, congenial in every respect, located in an exclusive downlevel habitat, and her life was perfect. She would never be one of those awkward adolescents, unsure of her worth.

She paused at the corridor junction, and admired herself in the mirror that covered the wall there. Her body paint was just the right shade of spring green, and her gowner had skillfully accented the swell of her new breasts with a soft russet shadow. Her pale hair, twisted into an elaborate love knot, spiraled down her back. On her feet were silver-scaled slippers, with delicate red garnet buttons.

"Perfect, just perfect," she said in honest delight. She performed a graceful half-pirouette, and was startled to see an older boy watching her with solemn approval.

He immediately turned and walked purposefully away — to her puzzlement and annoyance.

She sniffed and went on, somewhat subdued.

Time slipped and skidded her into the next day. She was talking with her friend Loyaluiz. "I turned around, and he just pretended he hadn't been ogling me. What a geekly loon."

Loyaluiz, Arriangel's current best friend, was a plain girl. Were it not for her esthetically conservative parents, she would have already had herself scuplted into Arriangel's twin. But she compensated for her ordinary looks with a lively character and quick intelligence, so that she had almost as many friends and admirers as Arriangel.

"Who was he?' Loyaluiz asked.

"I don't know."

"What'd he look like?"

Arriangel considered. "A few years older than us. Not tall. Darkskinned, with straight black hair. Good features, probably, if he smiled."

“His clothes?"

"I didn't notice what he was wearing."

Loyaluiz smiled secretively. "You never notice; you're too rich. But I bet his clothes were a bit shabby. I think you're talking about Garso-Yao, this season's poverty project." Every year the school gave a scholarship to a deserving child from one of Dilvermoon's many Howlytowns. A few of these went on to distinguished careers; most returned to the dark corridors.

Arriangel was immediately interested. She had never had a poor admirer; in fact, she didn't know any poor people. What would it be like to have a poor lover? The year before, when she had first shown an interest in the subject, her demifather had retained an expensive and exclusive sexual-education service for her. The attractive young men and women the service had sent to her home had pleased her, but their detached skills had begun to pall. Was it true that poor people made love with an exciting degree of crudity? Were their simple pleasures the stronger for their simplicity? But... perhaps Garso-Yao was not her admirer — why had he left so precipitately?

"Did I frighten him away?" she wondered aloud.

Loyaluiz laughed. "Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn't have time for you. I hear he's a serious prole. Studies all the time. Full of determination. You know."

"I guess... "

Time whirled her ahead a week.

In the sensorium she found Garso-Yao taking the datasoak. It was late; they were almost alone in the vast, low-ceilinged room. Only a few cubicles showed lights, indicating the presence of other dutiful students. She stood beside his cubicle, looking in at him. He reclined in the datasoak's couch. His eyes were closed, his expression far away, soft with some vicarious emotion. She wondered where he was, what he was seeing. His mouth was well shaped, and behind his lips gleamed strong teeth, very white. She slipped into the cubicle and touched him, running her fingers along the sharp curves of the cheekbones that lay under the dark, taut skin. There was something unbearably intimate about this contact, enhanced in some mysterious way by his unconscious acceptance.

She raised her eyes and peeked over the cubicle partition. No one moved in the hall. The proctor was gone from her glass booth at the far end; probably gone to fetch a cup of stim against the long hours remaining on her shift.

Garso-Yao wore a white shirt, open at the throat. His chest was almost grotesquely deep, as though his ancestors had come to Dilvermoon from some thin-air world. She slipped her hands under the shirt, touched his collarbones, embedded in flat bands of muscle.

She took another glance about the hall, then shrugged off her blouse, she straddled Garso-Yao, heart thumping, amused and frightened by her own daring, and unpeeled the contact strip that sealed his shirt. She had no clear idea of what she intended to do; she functioned in a state of thoughtless impulse, a familiar and comfortable mode.

What now? She really didn't want to wake him; she wanted only to add a bit of substance to her unformed fantasies. She leaned forward and lay her breasts against his chest, her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

He had a faint, slightly sweaty smell, not at all offensive. She closed ¦ her eyes and rested more of her weight against him.

Memfis watched from her eyes, until she closed them. Then he s directed the probe to simulate a detached viewpoint, which he raised until, the two of them just filled the screen, her slender, pale body outlined by his darkness. Here he paused for a moment. He resumed the pullback, continued to raise the simulated viewpoint, and eventually Arriangel and Garso-Yao were just a shadowy dot in the geometric maze of the ; sensorium, the only two who shared a cubicle in all that vast, empty space.

"Nice shot," said Tafilis, the usual sneer embedded in his voice.

Memfis ignored him. Arriangel had given him this image; but it was his talent to see how the significance of the moment could be made clear to those who might someday experience this love... or as clear as it could be to those who could not love. Tafilis was one of these unfortunates, but • he was a good hater.

"Memfis," said Tafilis, "she's only a child, and a remarkably callow one at that. Why bother with so immature an experience? What can it ripen into, but some sort of pathetic puppy love?"

"You have your area of expertise; I have mine," Memfis said, without turning from the screen. He manipulated the probe's slate, and the scene in the sensorium faded away.

"Yes, of course," said Tafilis, undisturbed. He got up and went away.

ON A parallel sensory track, Arriangel felt Garso-Yao stir as he emerged from the datasoak. She knew an instant's dismay; she hadn't meant to lie against him for such a long time. She raised her head so that she could see his face clearly.

Before she could pull away, his eyelids fluttered and he woke. His eyes glowed with an unfocused shine; then they cleared, and he realized he wasn't alone. He tried to jerk back, and at the same time, his arms clamped her tight, in some sort of defensive reflex. She couldn't breathe.

They both lay motionless for a long moment. He looked up at her, and his arms gradually released her. She didn't pull back; she stared into his eyes, allowed herself to soften against him. His dark face flushed slightly.

She imagined herself in his place — how the heat of her small breasts would feel to him, the pressure of her knees gripping his hips. What was he thinking?

His eyes — which at first had seemed like hard black stones, unknowable — changed. Something loosened; a lock fell open. His arms t ightened around her again.

Arriangel felt a new sort of exhilaration. "Yes," she said. "But not here."

Memfis keyed Arriangel's timeline forward a week. She stood in the public room of her suite, naked and beautifully rumpled with lovemaking, arms folded truculently. Garso-Yao hesitated by the door, looking uncomfortable.

Memfis panned the detached viewpoint over the luxurious furnishings and elaborate toys that filled the room. He softened the focus, so that the appointments softened into a flowing abstraction of rich colors and jeweled lights.

Arriangel spoke a sharp syllable. "Why?"

Memfis slipped back behind her eyes.

She couldn't understand Garso-Yao's reluctance. She loved him, but she couldn't understand him. She was rich; he was poor — these were irrefutable facts, so why couldn't he accept her assistance gracefully?

He shrugged. "I've explained, Arriangel. I thank you for your offer, but if I take your money, I'll be weakened. Anyway, you shouldn't worry; my needs are simple, and the school meets them well enough."

"Well," she said, exasperated. "I suppose . . . though I can't see how decent clothing and a good dataslate would corrupt you fatally. But why won't you live here with me?" ^

He looked about, a glance that seemed to inventory her many comforts. "I can't risk it. I might become used to... all this." He shook his head. "I know it seems foolish to you. But where I was born, only the strongest prosper." He shivered, and for a moment his face took on a curious expression, compounded of fear and nausea. "It's a terrible place, Arriangel. I can't go back. I won't jeopardize my opportunity here." His expression softened. "I'm already taking a great risk, by loving you, by coming here at all. I should insist that you come to my cubicle instead, but I've come to want you too much, and you might refuse."

Then he left.

Idiot, she thought... but the thought was tempered with fondness. She found Garso-Yao vastly interesting — it was as if she loved an alien, so different was he from her other friends. He would tell her strange stories of his bizarre childhood in the streets of Howlytown; he could sing unfamiliar songs in a sweet, resonant tenor; he was exciting in bed, with his untrained enthusiasm and his unforced gestures of affection.

She felt a pleasant wonder at her own daring in choosing so unusual a lover. "You're a rarity," she whispered, addressing herself as much as Garso-Yao.

Memfis shifted her recall onto a parallel trial vector and cycled them through the next month. His sensors warned that a major decison point approached; all over his board, warnings flashed.

He watched her confer with her friend Loyaluiz.

"What's the matter with him?" she asked.

"He's afraid he'll have to go back to Howlytown; didn't he say so?" Loyaluiz seemed rather indifferent to Arriangel's complaints. Observing the scene, Memfis saw that her indifference masked a small envy: that Arriangel had once again been more precocious than Loyaluiz, had been first to experiment with that ancient emotion, love.

"So what can I do?"

Loyaluiz shrugged. "He fears poverty, right? Settle an endowment on him, so he can live well forever, no matter how his education turns out."

Arriangel smiled. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

"You're too rich; you swim in wealth like a fish in water, and you never notice what you swim in."

A few days later, Memfis watched Arriangel and Garso-Yao in bed, tumbled in the sheets, sharing a glass of sweet blond wine.

"I have a surprise," she said, setting the glass aside and taking a small dataslate from the bedside counter. "Here."

He took it carefully, a mulish look settling over his face. "I can't accept this, Arriangel."

"Not the slate, silly. Look!" She touched the slate, and it lit up with the details of the endowment she had created for him.

His eyes grew large, and his mouth fell open.

"Now you're rich, too, and you'll never have to go back to Howlytown, no matter what happens," she said. "Isn't it perfect?'

He looked up at her, speechless. His expression wasn't entirely satisfying to Arriangel. Certainly he was surprised, but she saw some deep wound there, too, and how had that happened?

Tafilis had returned. "Oh yes," he said, looking over his brother's shoulder. "Her first big mistake . . . but if it hadn't been so, she'd have found another way. I know her; she's one of mine."

"No," said Memfis, certain that for once his brother was wrong.

To verify his judgment, he tracked the decline of Arriangel's first romance.

Garso-Yao tried to give the money back, but Arriangel had been clever enough to make the transfer of funds irreversible, and the principal untouchable.

Memfis watched Garso-Yao accept his changed fortunes. At first, this was satisfying to Arriangel; Garso-Yao spent most of his vast new income on charity, on wildly eccentric gifts for her, on entertainments for new friends.

But then Garso-Yao slowly came to understand that the obsessive drives that had shaped his existence had become irrelevant.

He became a very strange young man.

He left school, of course. He experimented with the most expensive civilized vices: wireheading, pseudodeath, beasting. He took an apartment in Bo'eme, a quarter frequented by decadent artists and their sycophants. He dressed with extravagant tastelessness; he had his body tattooed with grim images — screaming faces, broken corpses, instruments of torment — so that Arriangel felt a growing reluctance to take him into her bed. Gradually he ceased to be interesting, and began to be an embarrassment to her.

The only thing about him that didn't change was Garso-Yao's devotion to Arriangel. When she changed her school and her lockplates and refused to see him, he committed his final act of gaucherie.

His cronies found him dangling from a silken cord outside her security port one night. She had gone away for a few days, and so was spared the sight of his swollen black face.

At first, she was melodramatically inconsolable, but eventually he faded into a slightly regretful, romantic memory.

"Cold," said Tafilis.

"She was very young," Memfis said wearily.

"Sure."

Loyaluiz shrugged. "He fears poverty, right? Settle an endowment on him, so he can live well forever, no matter how his education turns out."

Arriangel felt a sudden twist in her perceptions, a feeling of displacement. She rubbed at her temples, and the sensation faded. "What?" she asked.

"An endowment. Then money won’t be an issue between you."

Arriangel looked at her friend, and saw something in her unremarkable face that she had never noticed before. Envy? Slyness?

"I'm not sure that would be a good idea," she said slowly. "I'd have to think about it."

Loyaluiz curled her thin lip. "Miserliness? From you? I can hardly believe it."

"That's not it; what a foolish notion.'' Arriangel regarded Loyaluiz with new eyes, and decided she didn't like what she saw, at all.

Memfis watched the screen as the processors remade the reality recorded in Arriangel's memories.

For a while all went well. Garso-Yao continued his education and his devotion to her, and Arriangel believed herself to be settling deeper into the love of her live.

A month passed in pseudorecall. Events began to sour. The two of them quarreled more frequently. Garso-Yao still told his strange stories, but he was starting to repeat himself. She resented the time he spent at his studies; what use was it to be young and beautiful and in love if she could never go where envious eyes could see her?

Arriangel's mouth more and more often fell into a pout of discontent, and Garso-Yao grew thin and too intense.

"Oh yes," said Tafilis.

Memfis tried to tweak the track back onto a smooth course. The processors approached overload, and Tafilis laughed. "That's cheating," he said.

"Shut up," said Memfis without heat. "It's only the first try. What did you expect?"

That evening, after Arriangel had bathed, dined, and rested, Memfis came to her apartment and showed her the recording. They sat together on the couch, not quite touching, and watched a sensie screen that descended from the ceiling.

"You'll find this interesting... and perhaps instructive," said Memfis in a colorless voice.

When she saw the first images of Garso-Yao, and watched her younger self lie against him in the datasoak cubicle, tears clouded her vision. She felt a pang of bittersweet remembrance.

"That was so long ago," she said. "I had forgotten."

"Not at all," said Memfis. "It was all there, just under the surface." He seemed a bit haggard, and dark smudges underlined his eyes.

Her heart twinged with sympathy.

Arriangel shook her head, annoyed with herself. Memfis was a slaver. He was exploiting her most private memories; why should she care about him? She gave all her attention to the screen.

When the recording reached the point of revision, during the scene with Loyaluiz, she opened her mouth to say that it hadn't happened that way.

Then she noticed that the on-screen databar was flashing a new message. "MNEMONIC VALIDITY: DIVERGING," it read.

"Oh," she said.

She Watched.

On this pseudotrack a little more time passed before things went wrong, and some odd twist occurred in her perception, so that she felt an illogical gratitude for the few extra sweetnesses that the artificial memories showed her, for the fragments of extra time spent happily in Garso-Yao's arms.

But then it began to come apart, though not as disastrously as it had in reality. This time, Garso-Yao did not kill himself when she left him; he used his frustrated passion to augment the force of his ambition and became a grim young man indeed.

Still, she was comforted.

"At least he didn't die," she whispered when the recording was finished.

Memfis looked at her. Some poorly concealed emotion burned through the weariness. Disgust? "Arriangel. Garso-Yao still rots in his grave, victim of a careless child's whim and his own weakness." He gestured at the screen, his hands trembling. "Do you think this is real? It's just a plausible lie — though in this case not a very pretty one. Or salable."

She felt an answering anger. "We loved well for a while; very well indeed. You make it seem as if it were nothing. You're wrong, even if it didn't last forever. When he died, my heart ached for months . . . and I guess it still does. Anyway, if you didn't like the way it went, why didn't you just keep changing it?"

Memfis shook his head, and now he only looked sad and tired. "I would have liked to, Arriangel, but past a certain point, the processors can't keep up with the complexity of the changes. I can redraw one significant event, sometimes two, but after that I have to let events run their course. If I don't, the processors overload and begin to strip away the gestalt of the redrawn reality, trying to free enough capacity to maintain the track. Eventually the track becomes a cartoon, if I push it far enough."

"I see," she said.

"Besides," he went on, as if she hadn't spoken. "I have no illusions about my skill and my machines. I rely on my subjects to make my art. I'm not like those love farmers who attempt to synthesize their characters from thin air, then put them through their wooden paces, jerking their strings and putting words in their mouths, phony light in their dead eyes. Such arrogance, to believe that they understand love so well that their feeble imaginings have any beauty, any resonance. Art is observation, not creation; what can anyone create that hasn't been done a trillion times before?"

His eyes kindled with a brilliant, brittle rage, and she was once again afraid of him. She edged away, crossing her arms under her breasts and looking away.

"No, no," he said, in a voice abruptly soft and low. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be so harsh. If Garso-Yao is dead, then so is that young Arriangel — and she was only foolish, not hateful. I believe that we can learn from our mistakes, that we can change and become capable of love." She glanced up and saw his face naked for an instant, undisguised by his usual armor of urbane confidence. "I must believe this," he whispered, looking down, his hands knotted together in his lap.

She wanted to throw her arms around him and give him what comfort she could... but she didn't quite dare... and then she grew angry with herself.

A silence grew between them, until she thought she would smother in it. But finally he spoke. "We'll try again in a few days. I didn't choose well, I'm afraid. Next time we'll do better; I'll research more carefully, think it through. We'll do fine, I'm sure." He patted her hand and gave her his marvelous smile.

She nodded.

"Meanwhile," said Memfis. "We'll rest. I can show you some of the amusements we have here, if you like."

"Please," she said, concealing eagerness. She found the prospect of his continued companionship interesting. She was no longer a young girl, to fall instantly into the fiery embrace of infatuation, but still... there was something intriguing about the slaver. No, she corrected herself, he wasn't actually a slaver; he was an artist whose work required slaves. She frowned. Why, exactly, was that so?

"May I ask you about your work?"

"Certainly," he said. "Though some questions I prefer not to answer."

"Oh. Well, can you tell me why you use slaves in your art? Why not chronicle the loves of free Citizens?"

He still smiled, though he looked a bit uneasy. "Several reasons, Arriangel. One is economic; Citizens would demand too large a proportion of the gross profits in compensation for their contribution — and ours is an expensive craft. Furthermore, many folk look upon their loves as private; they feel reluctance to make their passions public. I don't understand this myself . . . why not glorify your love?" He seemed momentarily sad. "Had I a great love, the universe would know of it."

Arriangel found this very strange. He had no lover? Incomprehensible, unless his standards were impossibly high. Perhaps he mutated into some hideous creature at frequent intervals.

He continued. "Also ... those who love greatly are frequently neither beautiful nor wealthy, and if I wish to find a market for my work, I must remember that most of my patrons don't care to experience the passions of homely nobodies." He looked pensive. "It's a pity, of course.”

"I see." She leaned against his shoulder, enjoying his warmth. "And I suppose that the most important Citizens would be least likely to allow such an invasion of their privacy, and would ask more money, too."

"You understand," he said ruefully.

"I guess. So, why do you work only with memories? Why don't you just seek out two beautiful people 'who can love,' as you say, and bring them together?"

He gave her an odd look, as though she had said something both clever and discomfiting. "There are problems in that approach," he said carefully. "For one, those who can love have generally already found someone to cherish, and would be unwilling to rearrange their emotional commitments for my convenience. Besides, love is such an illogical thing. Who can say why love begins, or why it chooses the objects it chooses? My subjects might very well despise each other. It would be an expensive risk."

"I suppose."

"There's another reason why I prefer to work with slaves — if they're capable of love, they've usually been separated from their dear ones."

"Oh."

He seemed uncomfortable, and his smile faded away. He didn't speak for a minute, and she felt no urge to interrupt the silence.

"Tell me, Arriangel," he finally said. "Would you rather be in a downlevel brothel?"

"No," she answered. She thought it an unnecessarily cruel question, even though no cruelty showed in his face.

The following days passed in a simulation of normality. While that time lasted, Arriangel could almost believe that she was the guest of some wealthy, reclusive friend.

Accompanied by a tiny, unobtrusive mech guide, she was free to roam the vast compound — though many doors were closed to her, and she could only imagine what went on behind the steel.

She spent much time in the well-equipped gymnasium, using the devices there to restore her body to perfection. After several vigorous hours, her regrets would surrender to the anesthesia of exhaustion, and she could be happy for a while.

Nearby she found a self-service euphorium, but she felt no interest in the drugs it could dispense. Down the corridor from the gymnasium was an alcove full of sexual toys, including autonomous simulacra of various sorts, which winked and smiled at her from their preservative niches. The glass door was locked against her. For some reason she was reluctant to ask Memfis why that was so; perhaps she feared he would say that his purposes were well served by her growing sexual frustration. In all her long life, she had never been without ready companionship, and now she had another resentment to bear.

Still, late at night in her empty bed, she couldn't help thinking about Memfis and his beauty, so that her annoyance was increasingly tinged with involuntary lust.

She swam in the large bubble pool, luxuriating in the warm, supporting water. One of her favorite diversions was a zero-gravity, intelligent maze, which reordered itself before each of her many attempts to penetrate to its heart. Its narrow tubes were spun from an empathic plastic, and as she flew slowly through the branchings and turnings, the plastic altered color in coruscating washes — and sang a low, wordless, ever-changing music.

She discovered that her holotank could be tuned to the Dystan dream, that vast tangle of story and myth, and found that the melodramatic lives of the dream-dwellers still held the same fascination for her, even in her changed circumstances. Over the hundreds of years, her old favorites had been replaced by new characters, but the dream was as vivid as before.

She was surprised to learn that Memfis was also a watcher, and they spent several evenings together in her rooms, in the glow of the dream-screen. He spoke little, and she found undignified the thought of making friendly overtures to the slaver, so that the evenings passed uncomfortably. Still, it seemed more interesting than watching alone.

Memfis favored the doings of the lowland wizards who held fiefs at the south end of the dream's greatest island. Currently, a handsome woman of unknown ancestry and motives was wreaking havoc in princely hearts (hroughout the region.

In the spell of the dream, Memfis seemed to grow younger and less driven.

"Oh yes," he said one night, sitting beside her on her couch. "They know how to love there. If only I could reach into the dream and steal that one." The black-haired dream-dweller lay in a glade, naked on her cloak, her white body dappled with sunbeams. She drank green wine and listened to a young prince with a lute. From the forest a huge, hideous troll watched in fascination; clearly, significant events were in the offing.

Arriangel felt vaguely insulted. Here she sat, at least as beautiful as the dream-dweller — within easy reach and perhaps even willing. In her old life, she might have attempted to demonstrate her desirability; now she bit her lip and spoke peevishly. "That's silly," she said. "She was bred to her role by the dream designers; she acts as she must. She's not real, in the way we are."

Memfis turned and looked at her, appraisal flickering behind his eyes. "You're right," he said. "Sometimes I lose my perspective. The dream-dwellers are too simple and direct for my purposes — after all, what's love without introspection?"

She shrugged, still irritated. He got up and left, and didn't return again.

She came to the conclusion that she had been foolish.

In all her wanderings about the compound, she met no other slaves, and sometimes she wondered if she and Memfis were alone in the compound. She grew attached to this pleasant delusion, until the day she met Tafilis.

Arriangel was returning to her rooms from the bubble pool, still naked and wet, toweling her hair vigorously. She followed her mech guide blindly around a corner, and almost ran into Tafilis.

The towel still obscured her vision, and for an instant she thought he was Memfis. But he stepped close and touched her at the waist. He ran his hand up her flank, detouring to brush his fingers along the swell of her breast. "Very nice," he said.

She stepped back and wrapped the towel about her. He laughed an awful laugh, full of ugly merriment.

"You must be Tafilis," she said, struggling to conceal her alarm.

"None other!" Tafilis resembled Memfis to a remarkable degree — they even dressed alike — but the physical resemblance seemed only to heighten the differences in their characters. The grace she found attractive in Memfis seemed in Tafilis a spiderish agility. The smile that in Memfis seemed so unforced and direct was in Tafilis a rictus of gloating — yet the shape was the same. She shook her head, confused. Had she imagined those virtues in Memfis? It seemed suddenly possible, looking at his twin.

He laughed again, but then the smile went out like a switched-off lamp. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "You wonder how we can be so different, my brother and I. I'll tell you a secret: we're not so different."

"Oh?"

"Indeed. Oh, he prattles about love... and he plays the mooncalf well I'll give him that. But he's a fool. Love... What is love? It's a phantom, a fashion. No one knows what it is, and it's never the same thing twice. What sort of passion is that? A jellyfish passion, fit only to comfort weaklings. Memfis struggles to trap the wily creature, but he never succeeds, never. All he can do is take whatever poor thing he's netted and make it look pretty." Tafilis snorted derisively.

She tried to edge past him, to return to the relative security of her rooms, but he moved to block her, darting out his hand and gripping her shoulder.

"I, on the other hand, am very good at my craft, which leads to the major difference between me and my dear brother. I always succeed, while lie always fails." He released her, but kept his hand on her, touching her collarbone with delicate fingers. "Would you like to know which of the passions I cultivate?'

She nodded jerkily, afraid to speak.

He dropped his hand and turned away. "Hate," he said, in an oddly soft voice. "The deepest passion, the most obdurate passion, the passion everyone can understand." He glanced back at her as he walked away, and lust for a moment, his smile seemed identical to the smile of his handsome brother.

"Again?" asked Tafilis. "You're so earnest, Brother. I wish I had your devotion. Of course, my job is vastly easier than yours —this I freely admit!"

Memfis ignored his brother's mockery, giving his attention to Arriangel's memories, searching among the strands of remembrance for just the right place to begin his next attempt.

"Ah well," said Tafilis. "I have faith in you.... You won't succeed in your own estimation, but your chips will be salable, as always — and that's the important thing. Tell me: when will you admit defeat?"

Memfis glanced up at his brother's vulpine features, and suppressed a shudder. His loathing for Tafilis threatened to rise up and overwhelm him, but he fought it back. How could he expect to cultivate love and faith in Arriangel when he was himself so full of hate and despair? He rubbed his hands over his face and took a deep, calming breath.

Tafilis laughed.

ONDINE WAS the only human person Arriangel had ever met who was indisputably more beautiful than Arriangel.

For all her astonishing beauty, Ondine lived as sparely as an acolyte of the Dead God, without friends or lovers, in a rundown and dangerous sector of Bo'eme.

Ondine's apparent poverty was an affectation. She was the leading collateral portraitist on Dilvermoon, and had been for centuries. Now her portraits brought such fabulous prices that the hyperwealthy of Dilvermoon were compelled to commission her services, if for no other reason than to demonstrate their status.

It was therefore inevitable that the two of them would meet.

Larimone the Factor was a tall, massive man; standing over Arriangel, he seemed a cliff of dark stone, threatening to fall on her. But when he spoke to her, his hard face always grew soft with uncritical affection.

"It's an important occasion, Arriangel. This year... you're no longer a child; you take on the privileges and responsibilities of majority. I want to make you a suitable gift."

"It's too expensive, Father. For what she would charge, you might lease a small planet for a year." Truthfully, she felt uncomfortable with the idea of the famous portraitist looking into her mind, probing her most private thoughts, installing sensors deep in her brain stem. Ordinarily, only relatively mature persons commissioned collateral portraits — persons with powerful personalities, persons whose minds had grown rich and strange with experience. How could Ondine find the shape of her soul, when Arriangel herself had no clear idea of what she was? She was too young.

"What would I do with another world?" Larimone laughed his harsh laugh.

"I think you'd come up with something," said Arriangel.

"I'm too busy already," her demifather replied, and a shadow crossed his face, so quickly that she almost didn't notice it. A strange resonance touched her mind, as if the shadow had some meaning that she would never discover, until too late ... but then her thoughts cleared, as though wiped clean by some phantom hand.

"Yes," she said. "All right."

Arriangel wasn't at all sure that she liked Ondine, on the evening they met. The artist greeted her, without discernible warmth, at the security lock of her studio and residence. She gestured at Arriangel's bodyguards to wait in the lock.

"I allow no armed creatures within," explained Ondine in a soft, raspy contralto.

Ondine was a woman of indeterminate age, with that ambiguous, immaterial shine that often marked humans who had lived for many centuries. In appearance, she seemed a young girl. Her body was slender and angular, clothed in an unadorned shift of coarse white fabric. Some ancestor, born under a fierce sun, had bequeathed her skin of burnished mahogany — or perhaps she simply wore a fashionable dye. Certainly that dark skin made a dramatic contrast with the pale silver of her long, braided hair, and a perfect complement to the rich amber of her eyes.

Her expressionless face was a harmonious interaction of taut planes —the swooping line of her arched brows, prominent cheekbones, the lush mouth, the high blade of her nose.

Arriangel found herself staring openmouthed, unable to decide wherein Ondine's shocking beauty lay — it seemed too unconventional to judge by any familiar standards.

Ondine smiled, very faintly, and her harsh perfection wanned into a more human loveliness. "Come along, child," she said.

Arriangel followed at her heels, breathing in Ondine's fragrance, a faint musk of desert flowers and some unfamiliar spice.

In the studio, Ondine made her sit beneath a skylight, through which a carefully synthesized bluish light poured. It bathed Arriangel in blinding brightness, so that she had to squint to see Ondine moving about, pausing occasionally, her head cocked to the side in silent appraisal.

Long minutes passed. Finally Arriangel lost patience. "What are you looking at? I thought it was my mind you would record."

"'Record'? Is that what you think I do?" The artist seemed mildly amused, which annoyed Arriangel.

"Well, what do you do, then?"

"Shall I show you one of my galleries?" Ondine stepped forward and took Arriangel's hand in a cool, delicate grip.

Arriangel allowed herself to be drawn toward a closed door, a massive steel thing set in the darkest corner of the studio.

Ondine pressed her palm to the ident plate, and the door slid up into its casing. Inside was more of the cold, merciless light.

"Nice," said Tafilis. "Well-chosen, Brother. I myself can hardly wait —and you know how jaded I am. But you'll have legal trouble with Ondine — mark my words. She'll lawyer us."

Memfis shut away the aching pain of his brother's voice and concentrated on his work.

Ondine led Arriangel into the gallery, a small, circular room ten meters in diameter. Set into the wall was an emperor's ransom of Ondine's collateral portraits, perhaps thirty priceless pieces.

The artist took her across the room to the far wall, where a man stared bleakly out from the ornately framed holofield. "Do you recognize him?" asked Ondine.

"No," Arriangel answered. "Who is he?" .

Ondine sighed. "That was Nomun the Emancipator. He's been dead for six hundred years — so they say. I'm not sure I believe it."

Arriangel examined the portrait. Nomun possessed a hard, secretive face, much scarred, and lined by great apparent age, but retaining an aura of potency and implacable purpose. He was shown from the waist up, wearing a black uniform without insignia. Behind him, displayed in an artfully sinuous arrangement of windows, were scenes from his life. Several of these were battle scenes: one in black space between ranks of suited warriors, one of antique ships tossing on an emerald sea, one in a dripping black jungle. One window showed a scene from, presumably, Nomun's childhood — a grim street in some Howlytown, down which a gleaming hardcar trundled. From one of the car's armored ports, a wideeyed child peeked. There was a parade of thousands, a cold desert empty but for one stumbling man, the cratered surface of some airless moon. At the top of the image was a tangle of great crystalline growths, over which many tiny Nomuns scrambled, killing each other in a hysteria of violence.

Ondine touched a switch at the bottom of the holofield, and Nomun came to life, his eyes darting from Ondine to Arriangel. The scenes behind him began to crawl with dreadful movement, and minute splashes of blood flowered in the depths of the field.

Nomun locked his suddenly terrible eyes on Arriangel's and she gasped. In the portrait's deep black gaze, she saw a chill, quiet madness, untempered by humanity.

"Speak to him," said Ondine in an oddly urgent voice. "He was a great man in his way, though he never paid me."

Arriangel's throat felt frozen. She tried to think of a question that would not reveal her shallowness to Ondine; finally one of defensive subtlety occurred to her. "Do you like your portrait?'

The bitter mouth quirked slightly, an almost-smile, but then the terrible eyes shifted through a bewildering range of expression: despair, grief, horror. He shook his head violently, and his dark hair shed sweat in glittering, slow-motion streams across the background of the portrait.

"Like it," he said in a thin, creaky voice. "Like it?"

Then he opened his mouth, much wider than any unmodified human should have been able to, so that his face, except for those eyes, seemed to disappear behind that straining orifice.

He screamed. The sound seemed to reach out and strike Arriangel, moving her physically back. It was the most hideous sound she had ever heard, distilled dreadfulness, digging strong, dirty fingers into her ears, clawing at her own sanity.

Ondine stabbed at the switch, and the holofield stilled. Arriangel could not bear to look at the frozen, distorted face.

Ondine put her arm around Arriangel. "Was it so bad?" asked Ondine. Her flesh where she touched Arriangel had an unnatural smooth density; her skin felt like warm marble, polished to a high gloss.

Arriangel shivered, pleasantly distracted. "Perhaps not."

Ondine released her and wandered a few paces away, to stop before another portrait. "Nomun harbors a powerful madness; probably I was unkind to have shown him to you. His was a difficult and frustrating destiny — the endless freeing of slaves. His life was complicated by a catastrophic degree of fame. Never mind; here's a more pleasant madman... and stylish, too."

This portrait also depicted a very old man. Where Nomun's aged appearance had seemed to derive from indifference, this man's antiquity was displayed triumphantly, a badge of accomplishment, as if he had survived from a time so ancient that attaining a great age was a notable feat. Extravagant wrinkles seamed every square centimeter of his skin, a seared and arid landscape, dominated by great magenta eyes, glittering with fey energy. Oddly, his mouth was wide and red, the mouth of a much younger man. He wore a swirling cape of green stonesilk; his huge, knobby hands appeared to grip the bottom of the holofield, as though he might at any moment hurl himself forth into Arriangel's reality. Behind him a hundred tiny, diamond-shaped windows writhed with movement, each displaying a different minuscule scene. Before Arriangel could lean close enough to see what events transpired in the tiny windows, Ondine flicked the switch, and the old man seemed to swoop toward her, thrusting his face into hers, a wild smile twitching at his incongruously youthful mouth.

"Hah!" he shouted gleefully. "What's this, my beautiful Ondine? A customer for the Flesh Tinker's knife, eh? Eh?"

Arriangel shrank away, though she detected no menace at all in the Flesh Tinker's cold, powerful voice.

Ondine smiled and shook her head. "No, her beauty is currently satisfactory to her, I think."

The old man's image withdrew into the holofield's plane and struck a disdainful pose. "How vulgar," he said.

Ondine switched him off and moved to the next portrait: a mech shaped to resemble one of the black lords of Jaworld. His deeds were recorded in angular lightning bolts behind him, and the zigzagging windows were peopled by primitively drawn figures of humans and animals, who seemed to act out mythic events.

Next to the mech was one of the ephemeral sapients of Snow, human-seeming but for her elongated body and great cracked-crystal eyes. Beyond her was a mutated human child, scaled with plates of dense, glimmery chitin, who grinned cheerfully with a lipless mouth.

Ondine called no more of her portraits to life. She drifted slowly around the perimeter of the gallery, seemingly oblivious to Arriangel, who followed in a fog of confusion and intrigue.

"You'd have to stay here for a month or two," said Ondine. "I demand at least that much commitment from my subjects."

The viewpoint shifted and spun away from Arriangel. It circled the two women, so that the portraits flowed past in all their glorious diversity, until the two slender figures seemed to stand in a whirlwind of halfglimpsed faces, color and expression melting into a stream of humanity, infinitely rich, infinitely varied.

"Oh, very nice," said Tafilis. "Do you suppose the Ondine portrait still exists somewhere? Here's a fine idea: somehow we get access to the portrait, install it in your girl's quarters... and watch love bloom. It's your only chance, Brother." He laughed his unpleasant laugh.

Arriangel spent hours surrounded by the ruby-gleaming lenses of Ondine's holocameras, wearing at the nape of her neck the heavy, cold weight of a cortical exciter. The exciter twisted her face into a million different expressions, while leaving her thoughts in a state of chill abstraction. She found it a very strange sensation, but it allowed her a space of time for watching Ondine.

The artist moved about the studio with unfailing grace, always composed, always elegant, always beautiful in an unselfconscious style that Arriangel found fascinating. All of her friends who could claim gre.it beauty seemed to put that beauty at the center of their lives, so that in every glance their eyes said: I know that you see me.

But not Ondine; she had escaped a trap whose existence Arriangel had not before perceived.

Ondine was admirable in other ways. Arriangel gradually came to a deep appreciation of Ondine's achievements as an artist. Occasionally Ondine would permit her to wander through the gallery she had first shown her, and Arriangel began to understand what marvelous objects the portraits were. To think that Ondine had captured these great souls so perfectly that they had survived intact their centuries of imprisonment in the holofields... alone with the memories of their tumultuous lives... It seemed unimaginable.

When she realized the degree to which the portraits were conscious and self-aware, Arriangel felt a chill, and seriously considered canceling the commission. What would it be like, to live forever with a synthetic reflection of herself — no matter how artfully contrived? Would her portrait someday reproach her for permitting its existence?

She wanted to speak to Ondine about her misgivings, but she could not articulate her misgivings in any way that didn't seem puerile and shallow. Somehow the artist divined her uneasiness. She took Arriangel into her tiny, warm kitchen.

"You're having second thoughts?” asked Ondine over cups of fragrant tea.

"It's frightening... to think of a person much like myself, trapped forever in a web of circuitry... "

Ondine smiled. "You'd be surprised how few of my clients ever think about it. It's much to your credit that the thought has occurred to you."

"But. . . isn’t it dreadful, for the portrait?"

"It can be," Ondine said. "It depends on the client. Some clients put the portraits in a vault; they commission them only to demonstrate their status, and find the portraits a personal embarrassment - or worse. Those portraits do have dreadful existences. But others do better. My portrait of Ambrin, the great dream designer, for instance; it wrote a novel that was moderately successful, and spoke to me about a portrait of itself. It didn't have the money, however." She laughed, for the first time.

This was much too bizarre a concept for Arriangel to grasp. She shook her head. "Then, you make people."

"Oh no. My portraits are merely objects of contemplation; you mustn't think of them as people."

ONCE, AFTER a particularly trying session, while Ondine s strong hands massaged life back into Arriangel s aching facial muscles, she asked, "What will you fill my windows with? After all, I'm so young. Nothing of note has ever happened to me. In fact, I can't understand why you agreed to do my portrait."

Ondine shrugged. "Larimone offered me a magnificent fee.

Arriangel felt a pang of humiliation. "Really? That's the only reason?"

Ondine smiled. "Well, no. For one thing, you're an astonishingly beautiful child... and of late I've neglected the simple charms of ungilded loveliness. Actually, I justify this on this basis of challenge. Who but Ondine would attempt to make great art from such formless material?

Arriangel bit her lip, and asked no more questions that day.

After Ondine finished her physical recording, she put Arriangel under a probe, and swam Arriangel's holomnemonic ocean, trolling for experience. Now it was Ondine who seemed exhausted by each new session, and her face grew a bit pale and strained.

"Am I so disappointing?" asked Arriangel.

Ondine rubbed at her temples. "No. In fact, I find more intensity in you than I had expected. It's always so. Sometimes I think that I'd find the same passions in the dullest cipher of the darkest corridors. Perhaps we all live lives of great drama in our hearts."

Arriangel found this idea a delightfully radical one; in fact, she was delighted by every aspect of Ondine, and soon came to recognize that she had developed an infatuation for the artist. With that realization, she spent even more time gazing wistfully at her.

Always before, her seductions had gone exactly according to plan, since, for the most part, they were carefully orchestrated beforehand. But this seemed disturbingly different; Ondine was practically living inside her mind, and she could keep no secrets, practice no coquetry. It was a vulnerable situation, but somehow liberating... and gradually it came to seem excitingly intimate.

Arriangel experienced only dimly the memories Ondine unearthed: a scent, a sound, a fleeting image. But when Ondine drew the memory of Garso-Yao from her, she again felt that strange twist in her perceptions, as though she were moving in layers of dream, as if she had lived through that long-ago grief many times before. She came from the probe crying, feeling some gray emotion that she could put no name to.

Ondine held her and smoothed her hair, saying nothing. Arriangel leaned against her and sobbed, dismayed but unable to stop.

When finally she caught her breath, she said, "I'm sorry. Sorry. I don't know what's wrong."

"Don't worry. I pick at scabs, to see the bright blood beneath. I have to; it's my art. . . but you don't have to like it." Ondine laughed a slightly forced laugh.

Arriangel pressed her head against Ondine, whose fragrance suddenly seemed very sweet. She became aware of the shape of Ondine's breasts beneath the thin fabric of her blouse, the silky warmth of Ondine's skin against her cheek.

She felt an impulse to kiss that skin; it grew until she could no longer resist it.

"No," said Ondine, and pushed her gently away. "I have no interest in such things. If I accommodated you, it would mean nothing. It would be no more than a passionless courtesy."

"Oh?' Arriangel's face burned; she could not remember the last time she had been refused.

"It's nothing to do with you, Arriangel. I'm very old; I've had countless lovers, and we made love in all the possible ways... a thousand times, ten thousand. After so long a time, it all becomes friction — an activity no more dignified than, say, picking fleas from each other's fur." She laughed, a bit ruefully. "The centuries wear away one's tolerance for indignity, I'm afraid."

"I see," said Arriangel, drawing away.

"No, don't be offended. Actually, I've grown fond of you... surprisingly so. You're sweet and intelligent; you take a more genuine interest in my art than anyone has in many years. Anyway, were I inclined to have sex with anyone, I'd have many reasons to choose you. If that helps."

"I'm not offended." But she was, a little. Despite this, Arriangel still found Ondine desirable. "After the portrait is done, may I stay with you, for a while?"

Ondine almost, but not quite, frowned. But after a long pause, she said, "Why not?", as though it were a decision of no moment.

"What I can't understand," said Tafilis, "is why Ondine found such a shallow little creature attractive. Love is strange, truly." He fixed an expression of melodramatic surprise on his face.

"She has a clean soul," muttered Memfis.

"How absurdly mystical."

"Perhaps. On the other hand, who would deny that dirty souls exist?" Memfis glanced at his brother, and saw annoyance cross his face.

"Really?" said Tafilis. "Well, I can already tell you that it won't work. Ondine's glands may have dried up — but not Arriangel's."

Memfis shrugged. "Love is more than dripping glands, though I don't expect you to understand that. You were never imaginative, except in the devising of torments."

"Perhaps not," said Tafilis dubiously. "But remember: our customers are no more imaginative than I."

Arriangel continued to find Ondine absorbing. Infatuation ripened into devotion, and finally she came to believe that she loved Ondine — for her brilliance, for her wry charm, for her kindness, for her vast and fascinating experience of life in Dilvermoon. And for her beauty, though that came to seem less important as the weeks passed.

One evening, over a late dinner, Arriangel spoke idly. "Were you always so beautiful?"

"Indeed not," answered Ondine easily. "Why, once I was a squat little mudhen of a woman, with a face like a colicky frog. No, over the years I've enriched a series of lineamentors great and small, hiring their knives. I've worked hard to uncover my internal landscape. And why not? I'm a maker — should I not remake myself, if it amuses me?'

"I guess so. I've never thought to do so — maybe I'm hopelessly dull."

"Not at all, and why should you wish to tamper with a beauty as spectacular as yours? That it came to you effortlessly is a miracle." Ondine touched her hand lightly. "I find your beauty a delight. It reassures me that occasionally the universe acts benevolently."

"That's a pleasant idea." But then another thought struck Arriangel. "I suppose I don't understand. If the pleasures of the body are unimportant to you, why does it matter what you look like?'

Ondine smiled. "I admit my philosophy lacks consistency. And anyway, would you have loved me, if I were still a toad?'

Arriangel laughed, hoping that the question was entirely rhetorical. And Ondine's ambiguous response kept alive the hope that she would one day invite Arriangel to her bed. Meanwhile, she seemed not to mind whenever Arriangel visited an old lover for the night.

When finally Ondine declared the portrait finished, Arriangel expected to see it immediately, but Ondine assumed a strangely disengaged expression. "No," she said. "If you take possession of the portrait, then I must ask you to leave my home."

"But why?" Arriangel was bewildered.

"It's my rule. Too much honesty between lovers isn't good."

"But we're not lovers."

"Aren't we?" Ondine seemed saddened.

Arriangel shook her head, confused. "Is it that you think I'd be offended?"

"Perhaps." But Ondine's expression said otherwise, and Arriangel couldn't think of another reason.

"Well, it doesn't matter to me," said Arriangel, and was almost sure that she meant it.

* * *

"So, when do you start to meddler?" asked Tafilis.

"Not yet," answered Memfis. "Don't you have anything else to do?"

"Nothing compelling."

He remained, watching over Memfis's shoulder, while the devotion between Ondine and Arriangel deepened.

It was a difficult task, to show this subtle progression dramatically, but Memfis accomplished it by choosing a melange of tender moments: an exchange of smiles, a gentle touch, a small kindness, a few words of comfortable conversation, meals taken together, thoughts shared.

Each brief segment was recorded as a series of almost-still images, and the effect was of memories dimmed by time but still golden. He ended each segment with a long-held shot of Ondine's eyes, growing younger.

A year passed, and then another.

Arriangel still desired Ondine, but accepted her celibacy. This was a disappointment, but survivable — or so she told herself. The two years she spent in Ondine's home were the most consistently happy years she could remember.

She eventually asked Ondine to instruct her in the craft of collateral portraiture, but Ondine refused gracefully. "No matter how talented you might prove to be, you would always be at a competitive disadvantage —and there would be competition, I can assure you."

Instead, she encouraged Arriangel to find a form all her own, and Arriangel soon settled on an ancient craft of Old Earth — jewelry formed of slender wires and molten glass. She gained a degree of skill at this craft, which added to her contentment. None of her old friends could create anything without the aid of conceptualizers and synthesizers, and she felt pleasantly set apart from them ... a person of special substance.

But eventually she had enough rings for all her fingers. Her friends no longer accepted her gifts with genuine enthusiasm, and she grew restless. She began to be curious about her portrait, which Ondine kept in a gallery , forbidden to Arriangel.

No locks barred her from the gallery, and finally one day, feeling • herself secure in Ondine's affections, she decided to have a look.

The door opened to her touch, and she went inside. The walls were crowded with holofields, jammed onto every surface, a few even placed on the ceiling, so that their subjects seemed in danger of falling from their frames.

Almost immediately she knew she had made a mistake.

The men and women in the fields were all so ordinary: unremarkable faces, bland expressions, unstylish clothing. Their background windows seemed to depict events of negligible color and vigor. Nobodies.

She stepped close, peered at the nearest image. It contained a man with a narrow, sallow face and large, moist eyes. He smiled benignly, if somewhat vacantly. Behind him were a dozen faceted windows, each showing a domestic scene — the man in a small apartment, watching a dreamscreen with a woman. The man swimming in a no-grav pool with the woman. The man in bed with the woman. The woman seemed vaguely familiar.

With a shock of recognition, Arriangel identified Ondine, in an earlier and less graceful body.

She went on to the next portrait, and the next, and then she understood that she was looking at portraits of Ondine's past lovers.

She found her own portrait in a comer, where the other works had been cleared away to give it a clear space.

Except for the white frame of empty wall, it wasn’t much different from any of the others, an image of a pretty, but otherwise ordinary, young woman. Arriangel felt sick. All these portraits, including hers, lacked any trace of the power and presence that distinguished the other work in Ondine's galleries.

She stepped closer, and looked at the windows behind her image.

There was Garso-Yao, hanging from his cord. She quickly looked away.

Across from him was a boy she vaguely remembered. They'd met on a luxury safari into the jungled ruins that filled an ancient gouge in Dilvermoon s steel shell. In tiny detail, they shared a tent, tangled together happily.

Later the boy had been killed by a mutated beast.

Here was an interesting panel. ... It seemed to show Ondine and Arriangel bathing together in a huge marble tub, an event that had not yet occurred. For a moment she felt a small uplift of anticipation. But then she decided that Ondine had added the scene only for its contribution to the composition, only for the artistic effect of the two beautiful, juxtaposed bodies.

What do you thinks asked Ondine in her low, rough voice.

Arriangel whirled about, startled. Ondine leaned against the wall, arms folded, face closed. Arriangel felt her hurt give way to a brief flash of guilt, and then to a stronger pulse of anger.

"I'm not as impressed as I hoped," Arriangel said.

"Sorry."

"Is this your gallery of pets?" Arriangel indicated the jumbled portraits with a jerky gesture. '

"They were all my darlings, once." She looked about, a sudden tender smile trembling on her lips. "Don’t feel bad. Most find it impossible to love reality; not 1.1 warned you not to look."

"I see," said Arriangel icily. "Well, I suppose now I must leave your home, since I’ve broken your rule."

Ondine shook her head sadly. "Only if you wish to. I've grown too fond of you to send you away now."

This was somehow an unsatisfying response. "No," said Arriangel. "A rule is a rule."

MEMFIS REGRESSED the probe to the moment just before Arriangel had decided to enter the forbidden gallery.

Tafilis shook his head. "It's useless — you're just dealing with a surface effect. She's one of those who have a timer on their hearts. She'll never measure up to your standards... though I'm not sure anyone could."

"Leave me alone," said Memfis, sweating over his control board.

"You know, Brother, you're shamefully inconsistent. On the one hand, you chose — apparently out of sheer artistic hubris — to record an extremely unconventional romance, and on the other hand, you cling to a very rigid personal definition of love. By what convoluted inner mechanism do you resolve this?" Tafilis fixed a look of polite curiosity on his lean face.

"Love is as obdurate an emotion as hate, despite what you think."

"Oh, yes . . . you bum to reconstruct a deathless love; isn't that so? Well, you never will. Never! People live too long — no such fragile emotion can survive the centuries." Tafilis spoke as if in great earnest, but Memfis was not deceived.

"Shut up, shut up," Memfis said, so full of loathing that he could barely speak.

But Tafilis was right.

When Memfis came to tell her of their failure, he moved carefully, as if his chest were full of broken glass, and his handsome face was gray with exhaustion. He appeared to be fresh from the scene of a tragedy.

"I did my best," he said.

"I'm sure."

"Would you like to see?" Memfis asked this with such transparent pain that Arriangel agreed to look at his recording — though in fact she felt more apprehension than curiosity.

When the recording reached the point at which Ondine had forbidden her to look at her portrait, Arriangel felt a deep pang of regret.

"I guess she was afraid I'd be offended," she said.

Memfis shook his head. "Perhaps."

"What, then?"

"I think she wanted to spare you this knowledge: that you could never know her as she knew you. She was so old, and you were so young."

Arriangel looked aside at Memfis, whose attention was fixed on the screen. At the moment, despite his youthful body, he looked a thousand years old. It suddenly occurred to her to wonder how long he had been working in his Garden of Passions.

When the recording had run to its sad conclusion, he sat back and closed his eyes.

Arriangel watched him, fascinated. After a while his breathing steadied and deepened. To her astonishment, he slept.

In sleep, he regained his beauty. His face had grown smooth and guileless, and Arriangel found herself oddly moved.

She herself felt no inclination to sleep.

An hour later he still slept, and she had grown very restless. She found herself hovering over Memfis, admiring him. She thought of his kindness and courtesy, his intelligence and compassion. She looked at his strong, graceful hands, which lay open in his lap, and wondered how he might touch her, if they ever became lovers.

She sighed. "I have a history of seducing sleeping men," she muttered, and undressed.

When she laid her hand on his shoulder, he woke with unnatural speed. His eyes flew open, and for an instant, it seemed to her that they held none of the confusion that anyone else might have shown upon awaking abruptly, that he was completely aware of the situation: her hand on his shoulder, her naked body, her heart hammering.

But he took her hand and drew her into the bedroom, and she forgot about everything else for a long time.

After, lying in his arms, she asked him why he had taken so long to come to her bed.

"I thought I had good reasons," he said. "I was trying to preserve my artistic objectivity — how could I properly mine your heart, if I loved you? And even more important... you were my slave... a bad way for lovers to begin. I didn't want you to think of yourself that way. I didn't want you to act dutifully." His face still held that unmarked innocence.

"I'm not naturally dutiful," she said, laughing.

His face darkened suddenly. "Tafilis says you have a timer on your heart."

"Does he?'

"Do you?"

She swept away the bedclothes and rose. She went to the sideboard, and with shaking hands poured a goblet of green wine.

"If I do have a timer, it hasn't started yet." She spoke with a greater anger than she had intended.

"I'm sorry," said Memfis miserably. "I've been disappointed ... many times."

He seemed so terribly sad that her anger melted away. She came back to the bed and offered him the goblet. While he drank, she ran her fingers over the hard planes of his chest. "There's really no problem, is there? I'm still your possession."

He shook his head. "No. I couldn't own a woman I love. Tomorrow I'll satisfy your indenture to the company and buy back your Citizenship/' He grinned, suddenly boyish. "Tafilis will hate that."

And though at first she couldn't believe it, her captivity was over.

In the morning, Memfis stood by while a medunit restored her Citizen's tattoo. When it was done, and Arriangel was once again a free woman of Dilvermoon, she felt a soaring happiness — until she noticed the gloom that shrouded Memfis.

"What's the matter?"

"Will you be leaving now? I'll lend you my car, if you like." His face was full of sad expectation.

"Will you come with me?"

His eyes brightened, and he smiled uncertainly. "If you like. For a while."

"For a while," she agreed. "We'll see how it goes."

Their time together went wonderfully.

She discovered that some of her personal fortune remained untouched by Larimone's collapse and Arbrand's vengeance. She took an apartment in the best quarter of Bo'eme.

There she and Memfis lived. Away from his brother and the Garden, he seemed to bloom, becoming less driven. Occasionally he returned to his woik for a week or two — but these separations only made their reunions sweeter. Remembering her disaster with Ondine, Arriangel never asked Memfis about his work, and never asked to view any of his creations.

But when he was gone, she sometimes wondered if he worked with a new and more beautiful slave.

Still, he always returned to her, his eyes gentle with love.

Her life seemed perfect, each day flowing past, leaving nothing but just the right amount of golden remembrance.

In fact, in some subtle way she could not quite identify, her life had become streamlined, shorn of complexity, free of the niggling details of existence. It seemed almost to be a progression of high points, unmuddied by everyday banality. She attributed this in part to the contrast with her time as a slave... and to the artistic way Memfis devoted himself to her happiness.

He was very good at making her happy. She wondered if he knew her better than she knew herself, so adept was he at steering her clear of sadness. Somehow he could always make things seem different.

A year passed before she became restless.

She never ceased to love him, but she finally understood that she needed a change.

She told him in bed, after lovemaking, thinking it kinder.

The look in his eyes made Arbrand seem no more than a peevish boy.

She felt a peculiar twist in her perceptions.

* * *

"Has it gone wrong again, Brother?" Tafilis asked brightly. "Ah well. Better luck next time. I'll send you the validation, so you can pay off your wager."

Memfis muttered a curse under his breath.

It seemed to ignite a flare of rancor in his brother. "For once, Memfis, you ought to have the guts to do it yourself, instead of using all this nice clean machinery. You ought to rub your victims with your own sanctimonious flesh just once; just once stick in the knife with your own pure hands." Tafilis spoke with apparently genuine disgust.

Memfis ignored him. He shut down the probe and went away in silence.

Arriangel found herself abruptly returned to her apartment in the Garden of Passions. The hood of the probe rose from her face, and the straps released her.

She was alone in the room.

At first, she was sure it was a terrible dream, or perhaps she was mad. She sat on her couch and waited for it to pass. But by the time Memfis came through her door, she had drawn the correct conclusion.

"You didn't knock," she said. She existed in an emotional state beyond anger, beyond fear.

"I have only a moment," he said stiffly. "I've come to tell you that I must transfer your supervision to my brother." His face was as inhuman as any machine, tightened into a caricature of exhaustion and frustration.

She nodded slowly.

He seemed about to say something else, but then he turned and went away.

When Tafilis entered her quarters, she saw that he was dressed in a manner identical to his brother, and for a moment she wondered if she had somehow become trapped in a bad psychodrama — the sort where the monstrous twin turns out to be no more than a concealed aspect of the sympathetic twin. After all, she had never seen them together. But no. There was no possibility of that. Where Memfis had seemed weary almost to death, Tafilis bounced across the room buoyantly. His hair seemed spiky with ominous energy; his face glowed; his eyes glittered. He even smelled different — a pungent, yeasty sourness.

"Arriangel," he said. "It's my turn now." He snapped a collar about her throat and jerked her roughly to her feet. "Come. It won't be so bad. True, I'm not like my brother... but on the other hand, when I rape you, at least you'll see my face."

Though Tafilis was so unlike Memfis, there was something in the uncertain texture of this moment that seemed dreadfully reminiscent of the moment before Memfis had bought her ... when he had asked, "Can you love?"

But she gathered her courage. She had survived her enslavement and her memories; she would survive this. "What will happen if I cannot please you any better than I pleased your brother?"

"Then I must sell you." Tafilis spoke the words as if they meant nothing very much, but his smile was full of malicious promise.

"Oh."

The horrible smile widened, until Tafilis no longer resembled his brother at all. "Now I must ask you an important question, Arriangel."

"What is it?"

"Can you hate?"

"Yes," she answered, with a certain grim satisfaction, and answered his smile with one as ugly.