Chapter 12

“Love,” she said, “there are worse things in the world than keeping me amused when I’m not busy. We’ll go to the beach again one day soon, I promise.” And she was gone again.

Chandler was a concubine--not even that; he was a male geisha, convenient to play gin rummy with, or for company on the surfboards, or to make a drink.

He did not quite know what to make of himself. In bad times one hopes for survival. He had hoped; and now he had survival, perfumed and cushioned, but on what mad terms! Rosalie was a pretty girl, and a good-humored one. She was right. There were worse things in the world than being her companion; but Chandler could not adjust himself to the role.

It angered him when she got up from the garden swing and locked herself in her room--for he knew that she was not sleeping as she lay there, though her eyes were closed and she was motionless. It infuriated him when she casually usurped his body to bring an ashtray to her side, or to stop him when his hands presumed. And it drove him nearly wild to be a puppet with her friends working his strings.

He was that most of all. One exec who wished to communicate with another cast about for an available human proxy nearby. Chandler was that for Rosalie Pan: her telephone, her social secretary, and on occasion he was the garment her dates put on. For Rosalie was one of the few execs who cared to conduct any major part of her life in her own skin. She liked dancing. She enjoyed dining out. It was her pleasure to display herself to the worshippers at Luigi the Wharf Rat’s and to speed down the long combers on a surfboard. When another exec chose to accompany her it was Chandler’s body which gave the remote “date” flesh.

He ate very well indeed--in surprising variety. He drank heavily sometimes and abstained others. Once, in the person of a Moroccan exec, he smoked an opium pipe; once he dined on roasted puppy. He saw many interesting things and, when Rosalie was occupied without him, he had the run of her house, her music library, her pantry and her books. He was not mistreated. He was pampered and praised, and every night she kissed him before she retired to her own room with the snap-lock on the door.

He was miserable.

He prowled the house in the nights after she had left him, unable to sleep. It had been bad enough on Hilo, under the hanging threat of death. But then, though he was only a slave, he was working at something that used his skill and training.

Now? Now a Pekingese could do nearly all she wanted of him. He despised in himself the knowledge that with a Pekingese’s cunning he was contriving to make himself indispensable to her--her slippers fetched in his teeth, his silky mane by her hand to stroke--if not these things in actuality, then their very near equivalents.

But what else was there for him?

There was nothing. She had spared his life from Koitska, and if he offended her, Koitska’s sentence would be carried out.

Even dying might be better than this, he thought.

Indeed, it might be better even to go back to Honolulu and life.

In the morning he woke to find himself climbing the wide, carpeted steps to her room. She was not asleep; it was her mind that was guiding him.

He opened the door. She lay with a feathery coverlet pulled up to her chin, eyes open, head propped on three pillows; as she looked at him he was free. “Something the matter, love? You fell asleep sitting up.”

“Sorry.” She would not be put off. She made him tell her his resentments. She was very understanding and very sure as she said, “You’re not a dog, love. I won’t have you thinking that way. You’re my friend. Don’t you think I need a friend?” She leaned forward. Her nightgown was very sheer; but Chandler had tasted that trap before and he averted his eyes. “You think it’s all fun for us. I understand. Tell me, if you thought I was doing important work--oh, crucial work, love--would you feel a little easier? Because I am. We’ve got the whole work of the island to do, and I do my share. We’ve got our plans to make and our future to provide for. There are so few of us. A single H-bomb could kill us all. Do you think it isn’t work, keeping that bomb from ever coming here? There’s all Honolulu to monitor, for they know about us there. We can’t like some disgusting nitwits like your Society of Slaves destroy us. There’s the problems of the world to see to. Why,” she said with pride, “we’ve solved the whole Indian-Pakistani population problem in the last two months. They’ll not have to worry about famine again for a dozen generations! We’re working on China now; next Japan; next--oh, all the world. We’ll have three-quarters of the lumps gone soon, and the rest will have space to breathe in. It’s work!”

She saw his expression and said earnestly, “No, don’t think that! You call it murder. It is, of course. But it’s the surgeon’s knife. We’re quicker and less painful than starvation, love ... and if some of us enjoy the work of weeding out the unfit, does that change anything? It does not! I admit some of us are, well, mean. But not all. And we’re improving. The new people we take in are better than the old.”

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.

Then she shook her head. “Never mind,” she said--apparently to herself. “Forget it, love. Go like an angel and fetch us both some coffee.”

Like an angel he went ... not, he thought bitterly, like a man.

She was keeping something from him, and he was too stubborn to let her tease him out of his mood. “Everything’s a secret,” he complained, and she patted his cheek.