"After a while, I stopped answering; there was nothing I could say. But I still heard from Karl several times a year. He swore that sooner or later, he would get to Earth and see me again. I didn't take him seriously."
Perhaps not, thought Duncan; but I am sure you weren't wholly displeased. It must have been
flattering to have held in your hand the soul of someone as talented and beautiful as Karl — even if he had been enslaved accidentally, with the aid of a machine...
He saw very clearly now why all Karl's later liaisons and marriages had exploded violently. They had
been doomed to failure from the start. Always, the image of Calindy would have stood, an unattainable
ideal, between Karl and any happiness. How lonely he must have been! And how many
misunderstandings might have been averted if the cause of his behavior had been realized in time.
Yet perhaps nothing could have been done, and in any case it was futile to dream about missed
opportunities. Who was the old philosopher who had said: "The human race will never know happiness, as long as the words ‘If only...’ can still be spoken?"
"So it must have been a surprise, when he finally did turn up."
"No. He'd dropped several hints — I'd been half expecting him for a year. Then he called me from
Port Van Allen, said he'd just arrived on a special flight, and would be seeing me as soon as he'd
completed his gravity reconditioning."
"It was a Terran Survey supply ship, going back empty — and fast. Even so, it took him fifty days."
And it couldn't have been a very comfortable trip, Duncan added to himself — fifty days inside one of
those space trucks, with minimal life-support systems. What a contrast to Sirius! He felt sorry for the officers who had innocently succumbed to Karl's persuasion, and hoped that the current Court of Inquiry would not damage their careers.
Calindy had recovered some of her poise. She stopped pacing around, and rejoined Duncan on the
divan.
"I was not sure whether I really wanted to see him again, after all these years, but I knew how
determined he was; it would have been useless trying to keep him away. So — I suppose you can say I
took the line of least resistance."
She managed a wry smile, the continued: "It didn't work, of course, and I should have known it. The we saw a newscast that you'd just arrived on Earth."
"That must have been a shock to Karl. What did he say?"
"No much; but I could see that he was upset and very surprised."
"Surely he must have made some comment."
"Only that if you contacted me, I was not to tell you that he was on Earth. That was the first time I suspected something was wrong, and started to worry about the titanite he'd asked me to sell."
"That's a trivial matter — forget about it. Let's say it was just one of the many tools Karl used to reach his objective. But I'd like to know this — when we met aboard Titanic, was he still with you?"
Another hesitation, which in itself supplied half the answer. Then Calindy replied, rather defiantly:
"Of course he was. And he was very angry when I said I'd met you. We had a bad row over that. Not the first one." She sighed, slightly too dramatically. "By that time, Karl realized that it wouldn't work — that it was quite hopeless. I'd warned him many times, but he wouldn't believe me. He refused to face the fact that the Calindy he'd known fifteen years before, and whose image was burned in his brain, no longer
existed..."
Duncan had never thought that he would see tears in Calindy's eyes. But was she weeping for Karl,
he wondered — or for her own lost youth?
He tried to be cynical, but he did not succeed. He was sure that some part of her sorrow was perfectly genuine, and despite himself was deeply touched by it. And more than touched, for now, to his great
surprise, he found that sympathy was not the only emotion Calindy was arousing in him. He had never
realized before that shared grief could be an aphrodisiac.
This was a development that he did nothing to discourage, but he did not want to hurry matters. There
was still much that he hoped to learn and that only Calindy could tell him.
"So he was always disappointed when we made love," she continued tearfully, "thought at first he tried to conceal it. I could tell — and it wasn't pleasant for me. It made me feel — inadequate. You see, by this time I'd learned a good deal about imprinting and knew exactly what the trouble was. Karl's case isn't unique..."
"So he got more and more frustrated — and also violent. Sometimes he frightened me. You know
how strong he was — look at this."
With another theatrical gesture, she slipped open her dress, displaying the upper left arm — not to
mention her entire left breast.
"He hit me here, so hard that I was badly bruised. You can still see the mark."
With the best will in the world, Duncan could discover no trace of a bruise on the milky-white skin,
smooth as satin, that was exposed before his eyes. Nevertheless, the revelation did not leave him
unmoved.