“Leave a woman her secrets, and perhaps she’ll leave you yours.”

There was an implication here. “What do you know of my secrets?”

She leaned forward, letting the sheet drift to her slim waist, letting the nightgown pull tight. “The lay roster. You’ve been using it to search out every female crew member on the ship. You are seeking a woman.”

She knew. Suddenly he wanted very much to talk about it, to lay bare the secret that had driven him from planet to planet and ship to ship for four years. The enormous futility of that search, that difficult seeking through stolen passenger lists and pay rosters for an imitation siren, that almost certain disappointment, brought a crashing misery about his soul. It was too much to bear.

He became aware of himself cradled in her arms, his head against her beating breast. She held him closely, stroking his hair, while the sorrow and pain of his memory flowed from him. “I’m in love with an illusion,” he whispered. “A girl with a song played a game of love in the forest, and I can’t rest until that song is complete. I have to find her, even though I know—”

“Who is she?” the Captain asked softly.

Again the agony washed over him, a sea of despair he had dammed back too long. “She called herself Malice,” he said, “and I suppose it was allegorical. The name of a siren, a minionette, who lives to torment man. In that guise she gave me the hvee. If she exists, I am lost; if she does not, my life has been a dream, a tender nightmare.”

She bent down and touched her lips to his with the tingle of fire. “Do you love her so much, Aton?”

“I love her! I hate her! I must have her.”

She kissed his cheek, his eyelids. “Can there be no other woman? No other love?”

“None. Not until the song is finished. Not until I know what no person knows, what no text reveals. Oh, God, what I would do for love of Malice...only to have her with me.”

She held him, and in time he drifted fitfully to sleep, still fully clothed. “It was so sweet, so sweet,” he thought he heard her say.

•  •  •

Negotiations for additional trade were completed the following day, and Aton and the Captain made ready to return to the Jocasta.

“We thank you, Human,” the Xest spokesman signaled. “We now offer our gift to you, our portrait of yourself.”

They brought forth a large covered framework. Aton wondered when their artist could have done the work, since neither he nor the Captain had posed. Unless the technique were subjective...