"I didn't lose it. I threw it away. I no longer needed it. I've made things move faster than our precious Elector, or even your people, can anticipate. Broey thinks to wait for an opening against me?" She shook her head.
Captivated, McKie watched her cross to the window, open a ventilator above it. She kicked a wooden knob below the adjoining bookshelves, pulled out a section of paneling which trailed a double bed. Standing across the bed from McKie, she began to undress. She dropped the wig to the floor, slipped off the coveralls, peeled the bulging inner disguise from her flesh. Her skin was pale cream.
"McKie, I am your teacher."
He remained silent. She was long waisted, slim, and graceful. The creamy skin was marked by two faint scars to the left of the pubic wedge.
"Take off your clothes," she said.
He swallowed.
She shook her head.
"McKie, McKie, to survive here you must become Dosadi. You don't have much time. Get your clothes off."
Not knowing what to expect, McKie obeyed.
She watched him carefully.
"Your skin is lighter than I expected where the sun has not darkened you. We will bleach the skin of your face and hands tomorrow."
McKie looked at his hands, at the sharp line where his cuffs had protected his arms. Dark skin. He recalled Bahrank talking of dark skin and a place called Pylash Gate. To mask the unusual shyness he felt, he looked at Jedrik, asked about Pylash Gate.
"So Bahrank mentioned that? Well, it was a stupid mistake. The Rim sent in shock troops and foolish orders were given for the gate's defenses. Only one troop survived there, all dark-skinned like you. The suspicion of treachery was natural."
"Oh."
He found his attention compelled toward the bed. A dark maroon spread covered it.
Jedrik approached him around the foot of the bed. She stopped less than a hand's width away from him . . . creamy flesh, full breasts. He looked up into her eyes. She stood half a head over him, an expression of cold amusement on her face.
McKie found the musky smell of her erotically stimulating. She looked down, saw this, laughed, and abruptly hurled him onto the bed. She landed with him and her body was all over him, hot and hard and demanding.
It was the strangest sexual experience of McKie's life. Not lovemaking, but violent attack. She groaned, bit at him, clawed. And when he tried to caress her, she became even more violent, frenzied. Through it all, she was oddly careful of his pleasure, watching his reactions, reading him. When it was over, he lay back, spent. Jedrik sat up on the edge of the bed. The blankets were a twisted mess. She grabbed a blanket, threw it across the room, stood up, whirled back to look down at him.
"You are very sly and tricky, McKie."
He drew in a trembling breath, remained silent.
"You tried to catch me with softness," she accused. "Better than you have tried that with me. It will not work."
McKie marshalled the energy to sit up and restore some order to the bed. His shoulder pained him where she'd scratched. He felt the ache of a bite on his neck. He crawled into the bed, pulled the blankets up to his chin. She was a madwoman, absolutely mad. Insane.
Presently, Jedrik stopped looking at him. She recovered the blanket from across the room, spread it on the bed, joined him. He was acutely conscious of her staring at him with an openly puzzled frown.
"Tell me about the relationships between men and women on your worlds."
He recounted a few of the love stories he knew, fighting all the while to stay awake. It was difficult to stifle the gaping yawns. She kept punching his shoulder.
"I don't believe it. You're making this up."
"No . . . no. It's true."
"You have women of your own there?"
"Women of my . . . Well, it's not like that, not ownership . . . ahhh, not possession."
"What about children?"
"What about them?"
"How're they treated, educated?"
He sighed, sketched in some details from his own childhood.
After a while she let him go to sleep. He awakened several times during the night, conscious of the strange room and bed, of Jedrik breathing softly beside him. Once, he thought he felt her shoulders shaking with repressed sobs.
Shortly before dawn, there was a scream in the next block, a terrifying sound of agony loud enough to waken all but the most hardened or the most fatigued. McKie, awake and thinking, felt Jedrik's breathing change. He lay tense and watchful, awaiting a repetition or another sound which might explain that eerie scream. A threatening silence gripped the night. McKie built an image in his mind of what could be happening in the buildings around them: some people starting from sleep not knowing (perhaps not caring) what had awakened them; lighter sleepers grumbling and sinking back into restless slumber.
Finally, McKie sat up, peered into the room's shadows. His disquiet communicated itself to Jedrik. She rolled over, looked up at him in the pale dawn light now creeping into the shadows.
"There are many noises in the Warrens that you learn to ignore," she said.
Coming from her, it was almost conciliatory, almost a gesture of apology, of friendship.
"Someone screamed," he said.
"I knew it must be something like that."
"How can you sleep through such a sound?"
"I didn't."
"But how can you ignore it?"
"The sounds you ignore are those which aren't immediately threatening to you, those which you can do nothing about."
"Someone was hurt."
"Very likely. But you must not burden your soul with things you cannot change."
"Don't you want to change . . . that?"
"I am changing it."
Her tone, her attitude were those of a lecturer in a schoolroom, and now there was no doubt that she was being deliberately helpful. Well, she'd said she was his teacher. And he must become completely Dosadi to survive.