Warren bleated, and tried to hobble nearer, but found that his goat feet were suddenly clumsy. He smiled up at her, and for a moment the G.o.ddess stopped, confused.
"You smile? As if you are happy to see me?" she asked. "I bring you here naked, painted like a fool, and show you your- self as a dumb animal, and you smile?"
Warren bleated, looking around in bewilderment. The l.u.s.t he felt for her was strong, and the pink tip of his organ began extending from its hairy sheath. Yet beneath the l.u.s.t was a de- sire more refined, a yearning to beg her forgiveness, to seek her love. He wanted nothing more than to climb on that bed with her, to caress the face of G.o.d with one hand and soothe her anger.
"Take him!" Rebecca ordered, and suddenly the satyrs and wood sprites had him. They pulled him down from the pallet and twisted his arms behind, held Warren"s face to the ground. Someone tied his right wrist to an exposed tree root, then his left, then his feet, tightening the ropes so that his legs spread wide.
Warren, his face in the dirt, panted, raising small puffs of dust from the ground, and the satyrs began to dance around him, their eyes gleaming in the firelight, followed by the men with stag"s heads. They danced in wide circles and sang in deep voices, sometimes coming close enough to caress his na- ked b.u.t.tocks, watching him with l.u.s.t in their eyes, as if they could not wait for the G.o.ddess to give her command so that they could fall on him. Through it all. Warren grunted, but he did not try to struggle free of his bonds or fight.
Rebecca watched, amused at first, but gradually she began to frown as if her face would settle into a scowl. Finally she spoke, "Do you understand why you are here?" she asked.
With a wave of her hand, the G.o.ddess returned his voice to him.
"I ... don"t know. You invited me," Warren offered.
"I brought you here so I could watch you get raped, the way you raped me," Rebecca said evenly. "I"m going to let the satyrs have you, one by one, until you cry out in agony the way I cried when you took me. Then I personally am go- ing to slit your throat, here. And at the same time that I do it 134 Dove Wolverton here, I have paid the security guard Marinda Chase to slit your throat outside the virtual reality, and you will die."
"Oh," Warren said.
"You aren"t frightened? You didn"t even guess that I wanted vengeance?"
"I guessed," Warren admitted. "I don"t remember what I might have done to you. I guess ... I came here to find out.
I"ve been raped, in prison back on Earth. I know what it"s like. As for death, I"ve never been afraid of it. I"ve died six times. And I"ve spent a long time in h.e.l.l, on a planet called Darius IV. I guess, maybe, I came here because I wanted to see your heaven, if only for a moment. Forgive me if I en- joyed the taste of it, even for a moment, when you didn"t want me to."
"You think this is heaven?" Rebecca said. "Can you under- stand the tedium of having everything you want, when you want it? I would trade a day of life for an eternity here, and you stole my life!"
Warren looked up, sweat running from his face. "I know you hate me, but the man you hated died three hundred and fifty years ago. If you want, you can go ahead and kill me now." Warren waited, humbled, naked. For a moment Rebec- ca"s scowl faltered. He almost dared hope for mercy.
Then Rebecca shrieked, and the sound of her wrath filled the skies. For one endless moment the flames of the bonfires leaped up around him, like a wall, like a huge crown, and Warren took their full fury, felt them crisping his flesh, b.u.m- ing the skin from his bones, boiling his eyes in their sockets.
He tried to scream, but only steam shot from his mouth. He twitched to flames more caustic than any acid. In that mo- ment, he wanted death more purely than ever before, but it would not come. His sanity felt as if it would boil and bubble away as cruelly as his flesh, but still death would not come.
The flames were snuffed more suddenly than they had arisen. Warren found himself in the slate gray visiting room, gasping, burning. The cyborg Marinda Chase stood over him, the plug from the neural jack in one hand, a long bare knife in the other. Warren saw that a second core was plugged into the neural net, running up to the socket at the base of To CARESS THE FACE OF G.o.d 135 Marinda"s skull. She too had been plugged into the illusion, awaiting the G.o.ddess"s orders.
"You can go," Marinda said. "Rebecca"s had her fun.
You"ll never suffer enough to satisfy her. I suspect that your other victims would feel the same, if they were around to talk.
I can understand their hate, but I won"t kill you for them."
"But you thought about killing me," Warren said, unable to imagine what he had done to her. The cyborg looked into his eyes, and Warren saw danger there, and the end of his hope.
Marinda might not kill him, but she was the kind who would never forgive him. She would just keep exacting a toll, day after day, minute after unceasing minute.
She said in a deadly tone, "Get out, before I change my mind."
The shining shuttle pod returned to Darius IV only two days before I was scheduled to leave. Warren Garceau got out along with two servant droids and began offloading seeds and young fruit trees, various desert reptiles, and other forms of animal life from Earth. I thought it a great waste of his wealth-him, someone who could live almost anywhere, do almost anything.
Still, he was free to do as he liked, and I no longer needed the guardhouse. Earth had stopped imprisoning men ages ago, having found more advanced and profitable ways to reprogram criminals. Still, I had managed to keep Warren imprisoned until his sentence was completed, as was my job. I bore him no grudge, so I gave him the guardhouse as his own, along with the surrounding mountains and the orchards.
I asked Warren before I left what he had found at Hotel Andromeda that made him want to flee civilization so soon.
"A world too much like the one I left," he answered.
"What of the things you wanted?" I asked. "What of s.e.x and death?"
Warren grunted, looked away. "I"ve lived without love for a long time. I guess I can keep on living without it- As for death, I figure I have the rest of eternity to explore it." I looked into Warren"s eyes, and I saw his dishonesty. s.e.x and death. I knew, I knew that he had somehow gotten his fill of both. Suddenly I became afraid, wondering who he may have raped, who he had killed.
136 Dave Wolverton I did not wave good-bye to Warren as I left. The c.o.c.katoos rose betow the shuttle in a cloud, and beyond the green of trees in the mountain vale and the ruby desert surrounding it, there was t.i.ttle to see. 1 pieced together his story at Hotel An- dromeda myself, and even visited Rebecca Lyons in her heaven. She still had the downloaded personality of Warren there with her, burning in flames, screaming. She said she would keep it there forever, as if it were a treasured gift. But I contacted Hotel Security and managed to erase the stolen construct. I read its memories before releasing it from its pain. Still, all these years later, I sometimes think of Warren.
An explorer relumed to Darius IV a decade ago and de- scribed the world as fecund. In the mountains, he said there were fruit trees-cherry, mango, pear, avocado, olive, peach, apricot-and wild strawberries the size of a man"s fist.
Salmon and giant trout leap in the streams. He found wild fields of corn and rice, and wheat growing over your head, and beneath the double suns, the plants blossom all year long.
Stronger trees and gra.s.ses have even begun to encroach into the desert wastes, finding place among cactus. There is no one there now to harvest the fruits, so they are consumed by lizards and flocks of ivory c.o.c.katoos. This is what Warren made of his world, and I imagine that I would not have done as well.
GLa.s.s WALLS.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Beth touched the warm gla.s.s window. Inside, the baby Minaran swam, its small head rounded and sleek, its eyes open and friendly. When she had first pa.s.sed the cubicle, the baby rested on its back on a rock, basking in fake sunlight. Its fur was white, its fins slender but strong.
Odd that it would have a cubicle all to itself just inside the human wing. Odder still that the cubicle had been a banquet room a few days before.
She leaned her face against the gla.s.s, wishing she could go inside. The poor little thing had to be lonely. If she could hold it and feel its warm, wet fur against her skin, she might be able to ease the loneliness-both of their loneliness-for just a short time.
"Beth!"
Roddy"s voice. She jumped away from the window and stood, hands clasped behind her back. She kept her gaze trained downward, away from the Minaran in the cubicle.
137.
138 Kristine Kathryn Rusch Roddy hated it when she ogled the guests.
"What are you doing in the main lobby?" He stood beside her. She could smell peppermint on his breath. He had just had a cup of his favorite-expensive-tea. "Did someone call for you?"
She shook her head. How many demerits this time? Or maybe he would take a week"s worth of tips. The diamond square pattern on the carpet ran together. She blinked, making sure her eyes were tearless.
"You know I don"t like having the personal staff in the lobby. It creates a sleazy atmosphere. Some of our patrons would prefer to ignore people like you."
As you would, she thought. She finally raised her head, saw Candice at the lobby entrance, watching the entire ex- change. Roddy wore a black suit, very twentieth-century retro, fitting in perfectly with the decor in this half of the hu- man wing. Except for the Minaran.
"I was walking through," Beth said, "and I saw the Minaran. What"s it doing here?"
"That"s none of your business," Roddy said. "When you were hired on, you were told not to ask questions-"
"Beth was not hired," Candice said. She started down the incline into the lobby. Roddy didn"t move. He froze, just like Beth had, when faced with his boss. "Let"s not have this dis- cussion in the lobby, hmm? My office, please."
Except for the Minaran. the lobby was empty. The next ship was twenty minutes behind schedule. The staff was hav- ing its break, preparing for the midaftemoon rush.
Beth and Roddy followed Candice around the registration desk. Her office was a s.p.a.cious room with a view of the docking ships and the stars beyond. She had to have been at Hotel Andromeda for most of her life-and had to have been a valued employee-to attain a view like that.
"Sit down," Candice said as she slipped in the wide leather chair behind her desk. Her office, too, was done retro. Beth didn"t want to sit in the leather chair on the other side of the desk-she hated the feel of the material against her skin; it brought back too many unpleasant memories-but she did anyway. Roddy sat beside her, perched at the edge of the chair as if he were going to spring up any minute.
"The lobby is not a place for dressing down an employee,"
GLa.s.s WALLS 139.
Candice said, folding her jeweled hands together and leaning forward on the desk. "We are striving to make our guests as comfortable as possible, and they don"t need to see dissention among the staff. Is that clear?"
Roddy nodded.
"Good. You may go."
Roddy leaped out of the chair as if it had an ejector seat.
He was gone from Candice"s office in the time it took her to turn to Beth. "You know better than to stand in the lobby when you"re not working."
"Yes." Beth looked at her hands. They weren"t as well groomed as Candice"s. The years of hard labor would always remain in the form of yellowed calluses, bent nails, and scarred skin.
"The Minaran fascinates you."
Beth didn"t answer. When she stared at the creature, mem- ories crossed within her. Memories of the investigator-what was his name? Shafer?-who had killed so many Minarans and destroyed her world, too. Memories of being trapped, na- ked, in a cubicle the same size for her first real journey into s.p.a.ce, the other prisoners pa.s.sing her, jeering, and tapping on the clear plastic. She had hated it, hated it, and not even the memory of John got her through.
All that combined in loneliness so deep mat sometimes she thought nothing would fill it.
"Beth?"
Beth looked up. Candice"s voice was harsh, but her eyes weren"t. Candice was the only nice person Beth had met on the staff. The rest treated her like dirt, like she was worse than dirt, like she had no value at all.
"You have more demerits than any other staff member. Your ten-year service contract has grown to sixteen. If you don"t watch yourself, you could be indentured to the hotel for life."
Beth shrugged. She had nowhere else to go. Meager as it was, the hotel was more home to her than any other place she had lived. Any other place except Bountiful, among the Dancer"s.
Candice stood up, and shoved her hands in the pocket of her suit She was a big woman, and powerful. "I would like to make you a project, Beth. I think you"re smarter than any other person on the staff. I can send you to an alien no one knows anything about, and you can discover its s.e.xuality and please it 140 Kristine Kathryn Rusch within a matter of hours. If this system ran on merits instead of demerits, I suspect you would have been out of here in five years, instead of acc.u.mulating enough trouble to keep you here indefinitely. But I need to know if you"re willing."
"What do you want from me?" Bern"s voice felt rusty, as if she hadn"t used it for days.
"I want to train you to become my a.s.sistant. You would act as liaison between all branches of the hotel, and you would mostly work in New Species Contact. You would discover what a species needs to feel most at home, and work with the design and personal staff to accomplish that."
Beth clasped her hands together. She had never done any- thing like that. She could barely speak to other people. Imag- ine if she had to speak to other species. Normally she went into their rooms and became like a Dancer, absorbing the emotions of the other being and flowing with them until she found what they wanted. Then she would leave, and Dancerlike, forget everything that had happened. "I don"t know design or diplomacy."
"I would train you."
Bern shook her head once and stood. "If you knew about me, you wouldn"t offer this."
"I know you came to us from a penal ship. I know you were in for murder."
"No." Beth reached out and touched the edge of Candice"s desk. The wood was smooth and warm, like the gla.s.s around the Minaran"s cubicle. "I was convicted under the Alien Influ- ences Act. Some friends of mine and I saw Dancer p.u.b.erty rites and tried them on each other, not realizing that when you cut off a human"s hands, heart and lungs, they die. Because of us, the Intergalactic Alliance closed its second planet- Bountiful-and ordered that humans never have contact with Dancers again. And we were scattered into isolation, away from aliens. That"s why the hotel had to get special dispensa- tion to buy my indentured servitude contract."
"But no aliens have influenced you since," Candice said.
"That"s because," Bern said, keeping her voice soft, "that"s because I haven"t let them."
GLa.s.s WALLS 141.
Beth went back up to her room by the back way, so that she wouldn"t see the Minaran, and be tempted to stop again in the lobby.
The hallway outside her room was quiet. She pressed her finger against her door and it slid open, revealing her haven.
Her room was not done retro. A sleep couch floated in the middle, mimicking the weightlessness of s.p.a.ce. Nothing dec- orated the walls, not even a holojector, vid screen, or sound unit. It had taken her nearly two years to accept the room as a haven instead of a punishment-by that time, she was used to its spareness- It gave her eyes a rest from the business in the remainder of the hotel.
She took off her shoes and waved at the bed. The motion made it float down to her, and she climbed on it, letting the softness take her. When she had no a.s.signments, she usually slept. Sleep protected her from her memories, protected her from her life. She closed her eyes and felt the bed rise to its place in the center of the room.
The Minaran swam behind her closed eyelids, its little white body begging for her attention. Minarans were not s.p.a.ce-faring creatures, so they had no place in the hotel. So of course the ho- tel would have to build something special.
But someone would have had to bring the creature here.
Someone would have had to travel with it, provide it with accomodarions, alter a vessel in order to cany it in s.p.a.ce. Some- one had a lot of money invested in mat one little creature.
Odd. Too odd.
Beth opened her eyes and stared at the blank ceiling. Still the sense of the Minaran did not leave her. Minar. the crea- ture"s home planet, had been closed, like Bountiful- The Minarans were an endangered species, like the Dancers.
She sat up so fast the bed rocked and nearly tossed her out.
Like the Dancers. Minarans were protected species-no one was allowed to remove them from the planet. And this one was a baby, since it was the size of a small cat. Adult Minarans grew to the size of adult male lions, like the kind kept in the Earth zoo on the fifteenth level.
Her knowledge of the Minarans came from the holos that the hotel had shown her when she arrived. The Minaran sequence 142 Kristine Kathryn Rusch was the most graphic, hordes of colonists sweeping down on the defenseless animals because the colonists believed that the Minarans had killed a few humans. The colonists had poisoned the Minarans" environment, and the creatures had died in agony as the chemical balance of their watery home shifted. Eighty percent of the creatures died before someone figured out that the colonists were killed by environmental factors that had nothing to do with (he Minarans at all.
The holo was a cautionary piece about the power of erro- neous beliefs. If hotel staff suffered from the same kind of prejudices the colonists had, guests would die on all levels, from ignorance to lack of care, to well-intentioned "security"
measures.
That"s what had been striking her as odd, more than the cu- bicle in the lobby. The entire staff knew about the Minarans, knew about the illegality of transporting them, and still gave this one a place of honor in the lobby.
She had seen a lot of strange things in the hotel, and she had ignored most of them. She couldn"t ignore this one.
The Minaian"s wide, round eyes haunted her in a way mat no one had since she left Bountiful, almost two decades before.
lii She didn"t want to see Candice, because Candice would ask her to change her decision. Beth wasn"t qualified to work in such a sophisticated position. She didn"t want anyone harping on her, forcing her into a place she didn"t want to be.