He was no longer laughing, he noticed; the fit was over. And so, he sensed, was the anxiety outside. In some way, he had passed a test.
It was then that the xhindi began to speak to him through the hull of the ship, urging him to come out. "You have come so far," they said, "and time is a precious and a dangerous commodity. We cannot afford to waste it, either of us."
He did not—could not—respond.
They could have forced him out, but they were kind—or perhaps only wise. They simply coaxed and waited. After a while, moving stiffly, as if he had cogs instead of a heart, he opened the airlock and went outside. He set foot on the dark polished surface of Ferr. But there was no thrill of strangeness or of triumph or anticipation. There was ... nothing. His physical senses were all operating. He knew there was neither gravity nor lack of it. He knew there was no atmosphere—and he accepted that, not because he accepted the xhindi's word that he would not need to breathe in this continuum, but because he didn't care whether or not he breathed; he didn't care about anything.
"Come," the xhindi said, in audible words now, and their spoken voices were as sweet as their mind voices.
He found himself moving as through a nightmare, as he proceeded according to their directions, and the xhindi themselves, with their monstrous grace and musical voices, were a logical part of the black ballet in which he found himself participating.
The dignitaries of Ferr, a fantasy procession in the moonlit colors of hell—smoke and flame and shadow—came to greet him and to lead him to the mbretersha. She glittered splendidly upon her throne of alien substance—a monster, of course, in human terms, and yet also a great lady, as a queen should be in any terms. Through the fog of his own immediate perception, she reached out and touched him with her dignity and compassion.
