"What do I want of anybody?" he whispered in a voice that was almost lost in cold fury. "I had four brutal years clipped out of my life by a three-voiced party-unknown who wanted to commit suicide bad enough to take thirty-three innocent victims along with her. They blamed it on Hot-Rock Farradyne, the spur-wearing spaceman." His voice came back, and he was half-roaring. "I've seen the results of love lotus! A wrecked personality that might have been a brilliant and gracious woman. I've seen a man plugged through the middle, to die at my feet. And on top of that, I've seen a family prosper and calmly make its place in society by dealing in the stinking things that bring ruin and death! What do I want of you? Your lovely, flawless hide peeled alive and spread out before a fireplace!"
She shrank from him; looked wildly at the stairway and then back into his face as she realized there was not a place in the spacecraft where she could hide.
He sneered at her fear. "I'm not going to commit violence on you," he said. "It would only give you pleasure to know that violence was my last resort." He looked at her closely. "What kind of person are you, anyway?"
Carolyn drew herself together; somehow her self-confidence had returned. "Why take your hatred out on me?" she asked.
"You?" he asked harshly. "Why shouldn't I? How in hell should I know what slinky game you're playing? One of your kind was responsible for the Semiramide affair, but who's to prove it? Am I the character that started tossing the con-rods out of the Lancaster? What was your former boy-friend doing on my ship? Setting me up for another kiss-off? Hell, woman, you'll be asking me next not to take these things personally!"
"You shouldn't. They're the fortunes of war."
Farradyne roared, so loud that his voice echoed and re-echoed up and down the ship: "Fortunes of war be god-damned!"
Then he stopped suddenly and looked at her again. "War?" he asked. "Between who and whom or between what, and where?"
When she did not answer, he sat down and put one hand to his head. Carolyn started to say, "Charles—" but he looked up and said, "Shut the hell up and let me think!"
"But I—"