Chapter Fifty-two

Reaction hit home fully when Nils Hansen climbed out of his battlesuit and stood in his undergarments in the dwelling he had created for himself.

He began to tremble. When he realized that he might vomit, he tried to reach the bathroom off the main hall. Spasms caught him too soon, doubling him up on the pale, resilient flooring.

Outside the clear panels which encircled the room, morning breezes combed a landscape of grassland and brush. The boulder-huge lumps silhouetted on the eastern horizon were a herd of titanotheres.

After a few minutes, Hansen started to get to his feet. His stomach lurched again sourly, but he managed to wait the moment out. There was nothing else in his guts to lose, anyway.

The synthetic floor purred as it cleaned itself, sucking in all traces of vomit through micropores in its surface. Hansen's idea of a palace was a utilitarian structure which took care of itself and which never intruded on its master's existence the way a human servant might do.

Hansen didn't want humans watching him puke his guts up because he wasn't perfect, even though he was a god. . . .

"Sometimes I live in the country . . . ," Hansen sang in a monotone as he looked down at his garments. His shirt of gray homespun was black with sweat, and he'd managed somehow to tear the right sleeve half loose from the body as well.

And the vomit.

He loosed the gold-clasped belt a woman had given him, then pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it away. The floor would take care of it and of the breeches of naturally black wool. They'd been well-made garments at the start of the battle. Hours of sweat and straining had felted the fabric and left it reeking like a goat in rut.

"Sometimes I live in the town," Hansen sang as he stepped the rest of the way into the shower. His presence summoned a firm spray of water, two degrees above blood temperature, without need for a command.

The filth would wash away quickly. Fatigue would pass in time. Both his arms were bright red and tingling at the water's touch, but Hansen hadn't done himself permanent injury by loading his arc gauntlets so heavily for so long. . . .

"Sometimes I take a great notion . . . ," Hansen gurgled as he closed his eyes and opened his mouth to water that could not sluice the bile from his soul.

He had watched through North's screen as Krita's battlesuit lost its luster in a cyan fireball. That memory would never heal. Nils Hansen had enough deaths in his soul to be quite sure of that.

". . . to jump in the river and drown," chorused a woman in a throaty contralto; an attractive voice, but untrained and off-key.

Hansen's eyes opened. Krita stood outside the bathroom. She looked thin and worn. A patch of skin had rubbed from the edge of her right wrist, and the hair on the crown of her head was kinked and discolored.

She was all the beauty in the world.

"What . . . ?" Hansen said. He gestured, shutting off the water that had almost choked him.

"The door was open," Krita said. She crooked him a tired smile. Her suede singlet was polished smooth where it rubbed the inside of her battlesuit. "My lord North brought me here. After the battle."

"But you were . . . ?"

Hansen reached a hand out and drew the woman to him. She came willingly. Her normally-taut body was almost boneless in its present exhaustion.

"Not killed," she murmured into Hansen's shoulder. Her burned hair stank and cracked away as he nuzzled her. "His arc, my lord North's, it tore the top off my helmet. But not me."

Hansen began to laugh in a complex of emotions which he couldn't have untangled himself.

"He told me to say to you . . . ," Krita continued. She paused, desperate to get the quote precisely correct, despite her fatigue. "He said, 'You aren't the only one who could handle a weapon. . . .' He called you 'Kommissar.' And he said—"

She raised her eyes to Hansen's and gave a half sob, half chuckle. "My lord North said that good Searchers were too valuable to waste; and that anyway, you might appreciate the favor. Was he right, my lord?"

Hansen was crying. He kissed her. Her mouth was as soft as a ripe peach.

Krita giggled in relief. "Do you mind company when you shower, my love?" she murmured.

"I don't mind you," Hansen said. The water sluiced down, and outside the sun rose in a crimson, purple splendor.