Paul took her arm and began to steer her through the scrubby thorn bushes.
“I read your dissertation,” he said softly.
Suka stopped dead for a moment, quaking with horror. “You…did?” she said. “Why would you do that?”
“A few nights ago, I was pondering the thorny issue of your low-level rule-breaking, trying to come up with a strategy for dealing with it that wouldn’t disturb the workings of the crew or the ship too much. I had a read of your file. The title of your dissertation piqued my…curiosity, let’s
say. I couldn’t resist logging on to the Academy’s archive and taking a look.”
It seemed she was expected to respond to this revelation in some coherent way, when gibbering was pretty much all she was capable of.
“Ah,” she said. “Did you…like it?”
“I found it excellent. Very well researched and eloquently argued.”
“It was a bit controversial. My supervisor almost refused to let me do it.”
“I don’t think she was right. I don’t think our society has taken the right path on that issue at all.”
“You don’t think urge-repression is a good thing?” Suka’s words fell over each other in their haste to get out.
“Not always. Not that kind of urge. Yes, to some of the more extreme ones—the harmful ones. But this was a consensual practice. It should never have been outlawed.”
“I’m…wow. I’ve never met anyone who agreed with me. All my friends were a bit freaked out when they read it.”
“Conditioning.” Paul shrugged. “Repression. Who knows? Your dissertation struck me for two reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“One, it showed that you have an original mind. You don’t accept without question—yes, I know that’s what I ask you to do, but the context is different.”
“And the other?”
“You wanted to write about the practice of BDSM in the first place. After the banning, its apologists and practitioners were hounded, seen almost in the same light as paedophiles. You had to be brave to take the subject on. And, to strike up that kind of courage, you had to have a personal interest. Am I right?”
“You’ll think I’m a freak,” muttered Suka.
“No. I promise I don’t think that. I do find it amusingly ironic that a person with such an aversion to authority…well…am I right? Or is it because you want to dominate?”
Suka caught her breath. “No! My dissertation was about the female submissive in bygone culture. I wrote about her because I felt close to her. I’m sorry, I can’t talk about this with you. I want the ground to open up…”
They were at the city walls now, ready to pass through its enormous gate of overarching black marble.
“I don’t,” said Paul softly, letting his grip on her arm tighten just a notch. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be exploring this city with.”
Suka looked up at him with vivid interest, searching for reflections of herself in him, for signs that she was not alone. She thought she could see them. Could she really see them? Was there really a man who…?
No. He was her commanding officer. It would be unethical anyway.
She turned her face away again.
“I can’t imagine why,” she said stonily.
“Oh, I think you can,” he said with an odd little sigh. “Come on then. Let’s see the sights of Sevarium.”
He dropped her arm, clapped his hands together decisively and strode beneath the archway at such a pace Suka had to trot to keep step with him.
“It’s a bit like ancient Rome,” she offered breathlessly, looking around what appeared to be a large public square, like a forum, walled on all sides by public buildings, the fourth side inset with a second black marble arch. Wide, wide stony space under an ochre sky, stretching out for a good half-mile square, was the introduction to Sevarium. The space was partitioned by the colour of the stone, like a less chequered chessboard, and Suka wondered aloud what this signified.