As they departed, Questioner tasted the dessert and approved. It was not necessary to eat more than one taste, as she could recall the flavor and texture at will. Which she did as she sat, musing, going over everything she had learned on this planet. She had already decided mankind could not be allowed to continue on Newholme. The presence of indigenes was uncontrovertible. If mankind had settled in ignorance of their presence, they should have reported it the moment the first indigenes showed up. The fact they had not condemned them, and she had no intention of arguing with Haraldson"s edicts. And then there was this viral disease that constricted the female population....
But there were other riddles still to be solved, interesting habits, like the reverse veiling and the Consorts, and there was also this strange geological business....
Gradually it occurred to her that a very long time had pa.s.sed since Ellin and Bao had left in search of the members of the entourage.
A steward was summoned and asked to go find Bao and Ellin. He departed, veils flapping. After a short time, he returned. The Questioner"s aides were nowhere to be seen. Neither were any other of the Questioner"s people. The last anyone had seen of them them was when an understeward had served a light meal in their salon some time ago while they were packing. Their salon was now empty of persons. None of them had asked for transportation. They had not set out on foot or they would have been seen. was when an understeward had served a light meal in their salon some time ago while they were packing. Their salon was now empty of persons. None of them had asked for transportation. They had not set out on foot or they would have been seen.
Questioner told him to wait outside, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. Now what? Before she had a chance to think, Marool Mantelby was at the door. Her staff had advised her of this strange disappearance. Could she offer any help?
Questioner, regarding the woman with close attention, saw that she panted, her skin was flushed and her eyes darted in heightened excitement of a feral sort.
"I think it likely they have gone off on some expedition of their own," murmured Questioner.
"Then ... they may be gone for some little while?" asked Marool, licking the corner of her lips.
"Does this cause some domestic disruption?"
"Not at all. I merely ... wondered."
The Questioner smiled her meaningless, social smile. "Do not fret over it, Madam Mantelby. I"m sure all will be explained."
Marool bowed her way out with suspicious alacrity, Questioner staring after her, trying to decipher what the woman was up to. The understeward was still standing in the hall, and Questioner beckoned to him through the open door.
"Ma"am," he said respectfully.
"Will you lead me to the the quarters where our missing staff members stayed?"
The understeward bowed and led the way out into the wide, deeply carpeted corridor. The suite given over to the staff members was on the same level, though around several corners and down a long side corridor almost to the end. At the door, Questioner told the understeward to wait while she went in. There she stood looking slowly around herself. All the belongings one would expect were there, some neatly packed into cases, others piled ready for packing.
Questioner approached the wall, examining it with sensors in the tips of her fingers, moving along it, centimeter by centimeter. After a time, she touched an ornamental cartouche and stepped back as the wall swung open. She looked through into a pa.s.sageway that ran in both directions behind the wall. Questioner touched the cartouche again, and the wall closed silently upon itself.
"I read no evidence that mankind has ever been in that corridor," she murmured to herself, as she did sometimes when alone, impressing the things she saw into memory with the words she spoke. "No Earthian, no settler, none of my non-Earthian aides. There is evidence of some other living thing, however. The same living things I sensed in the little houses behind the gardener"s quarters."
She moved around the room, trying several other manipulations with similar effect. At the fourth hidden door she said to herself, "Here. They went in here. I can smell them. All of them. I scent Ellin"s perfume." She shut the opening and turned away, eyes unfocused.
"Madam Questioner ...?" queried the understeward from outside in the hall.
"One moment," she said, going on with her interior colloquy. "Did Mantelby do this? No. For if she had known about these sneakways in her walls, she would not have come to us to ask about our missing people. She would have searched for them herself, lest the abduction be laid at her door. No, the people who built them, the people who use them, are not mankind. Human, yes, probably, as Haraldson defined human, but not mankind."
She strolled toward the door. "So now, upon this stage, the indigenes appear, almost magically. How interesting. Now, what did they want with my witless entourage and my two good little dancers? Hmmm?"
In the doorway she stopped, looking around once more. "I find an interesting pattern: The planet was settled by mankind, and all the original settlers disappeared. Then it was settled again by mankind; this time the settlers didn"t disappear. Almost as though whatever had taken the first bunch had learned whatever it needed to know about mankind. Then we come along, bringing with us examples of several races that are fully mankind but different in appearance, and whoops, they disappear. As though whoever took them wanted to try a new flavor?
"But for what? And did they also seize up Ellin and Bao, or did those two adventurous children go off after them?"
She threw back her head, saying in a loud voice, "I hereby announce my intention of going wherever my staff members have been taken. I would appreciate an escort, but if none is provided, I will take whatever route I can find."
She moved majestically into the hallway. "I am talking to myself," she said to the servant. "Or to anyone else who can hear me and take the matter under advis.e.m.e.nt."
41.
a.s.sorted Persons In Pursuit.
Ellin had spoken of an unheard music that was building to a climax. Questioner had taken it for mere fantasy. Now, however, as she walked back to her own suite with every detector at full alert, she heard real subsonics with a wave length so long that it seemed to pulse like a heartbeat through the fabric of the world. Something very large was moving, or living, or thinking. So, let calm preparations be made.
The understeward trailed after her to wait outside her door, shifting from foot to foot, white showing around the edges of his eyes. Poor thing, she thought, he was frightened half out of his wits, thinking he would be next.
"My aides recently met two gardeners," she said. "One is actually a sailor. The other is, I think, a Consort in Training. Please, go to their quarters and tell them that I, the Questioner, need them at once. Have them bring with them whatever they would take on a journey. And come quickly back."
When he went away, almost at a run, she started putting together a pile of equipment: rations, lights, stout clothing and shoes for Bao and Ellin. In Ellin"s room, and Bao"s, she found dancing shoes, which she packed up along with everything else.
Meantime, the understeward had wakened the gardener and was spending too much time explaining.
"It"ll be my back," the gardener lamented for the tenth time.
"Not if the Questioner ordered it," the understeward said between his teeth. "We were all told to do whatever she ordered, and that means you, too."
"What"s going on?" asked a sleepy voice from the doorway.
The understeward turned, recognized Mouche as one of those the Questioner had asked for, and said, "The Questioner needs you and your friend. She said one of you was a sailor and one was a Consort and for you to put together equipment for a journey and come at once."
Ornery thrust his head between Mouche"s shoulder and the door. "She needs a sailor? For what?"
"I don"t know what she needs," the understeward cried. "All I know is, the Questioner wants you, so go get your things."
"Things?" said Mouche wonderingly.
"Whatever you need to go on a journey. She said a journey. Clean stockings. Clean underwear. Water bottles." The understeward fell silent, frantically trying to think what he, himself, would pack for a journey. He wasn"t sure he even had a water bottle.
"Who"s going to tell Madam Mantelby they"re gone?" asked the gardener in a grumpy tone. "You going to tell her? Now?"
The gardener looked at him significantly, jerking his head toward the back of the house. "Not now, you fool."
"Oh," the gardener jittered, licking his lips. "Right."
Mouche and Ornery went back to their quarters for their few belongings, then joined the understeward on the path, only to move quickly off it, for it crunched too greedily beneath their feet. Even the servant chose to pad up toward the house on the silent gra.s.s. He had left a side door open, which he shut and locked behind them before leading the way up the stairs, demanding silence with every movement, achieving it, and moving in it as a fish in quiet water. Like shadows, they slipped into the room where the Questioner waited.
"Well," she murmured, when they had been escorted in, when the understeward had been dismissed and the door shut tightly behind him. "Are you prepared for adventure?"
Ornery merely stared, as was his habit when confronting an ambiguous situation. Mouche responded as taught, with a low bow and a well-spoken salutation expressing the deep honor he felt at being able to serve the Questioner.
"How long did it take you to learn that?" Questioner asked in an interested voice. "Years, I"d imagine."
"I have been five years in training, Madam."
"How many more before you"re what they consider employable?"
Mouche bowed again, noting the amus.e.m.e.nt in the voice and reminding himself that this was said to be an artificial creature from whom he should not take offense. "It would depend upon the discrimination of my patroness, Ma"am. I am quite good at some things already. I am not, however, fully qualified as a judge of wine or as a gourmet cook. My musical skills require honing. Perhaps another five years...."
"Then the pleasures you offer are not only of the ... how would you say it?"
"Bedsports, Ma"am. No. Not only those."
She smiled ironically. "A pity to waste one so highly trained on so uncertain a mission. We are going underground, and we may run some risk. I have heard there are oceans under this planet, oceans sailed by strange and marvelous creatures."
Mouche"s eyes lit up. "I don"t know where your mission will take you, Ma"am, but I will not be a supernume if you are going by sea. Since a child, I have dreamed of the sea. I have studied it, as well. I will not be a bad companion."
"And you." Questioner turned her eyes on Ornery. "What about you?"
"A sailor, Ma"am," Ornery said. "Only that. Fond of the sea, yes. It"s a good life. Less troublesome than sh.o.r.e, so most of us think."
"Well. It may be we will find strange seas that warrant a sailor"s efforts, though to begin with you will be mere beasts of burden to carry the supplies my aides were not given time to take with them. You may leave those veils and outer garments here. The packs I have made up are in the next room."
When Mouche dropped his veil, she took his face in her hands and turned it to catch the light. "Ah," she said. "This needs attention, boy."
"We have had no opportunity, Ma"am," he said.
"Well, it won"t get any worse in the near future. Perhaps I can do something about it when we"ve finished. If we finish."
Ornery and Mouche eagerly took off the shapeless gardener"s robes and loaded themselves with Questioner"s gear, being not overburdened with the double load, since their own supplies were scanty.
"Is that all you brought?" Questioner asked.
"It is all we have, Ma"am," Mouche replied. "We were pressed into service with only the clothes on our backs and our small packs. May we a.s.sist you with your own burden?"
"I need none. Everything I need is provided for in what I am. I have many tools and gizmos built in, and maintenance is just over. I should be highly efficient for many days. You may follow me."
They did so, going silently out through the wide hallways toward the room where Questioner had found the sneakways in the walls.
42.
Marool Worships Morrigan.
While with the Wasters, Marool"s worship of Morrigan had been a daily event, shared with some, hidden from none. During her self-imposed banishment, however, self-interest had dictated that she either give up Morrigan entirely or adopt a more covert style of adoration. During her so-called pilgrimage to Nehbe, Marool had seen the work of a local though reclusive artist. He was called the Machinist, an eremetic genius living in the hills near the town and earning a livelihood by making ornamental devices as well as prototype machines for practical use. He was not a Family Man. He had no g" to his name. He gave the impression of living in a separate world, but was nonetheless sufficiently connected to the real one to be available to Men of Business needing improved designs of rug looms or grain threshers or goods wagons or anything else they could conceive of.
He could build virtually anything.
"Anything?" asked Marool.
"Oh, but not f ... f ... f ... for you, Ma"am. He does not work for women."
Someone had hired the stutterer to introduce Marool to the Machinist"s work. This someone had also suggested that Marool"s personality throve upon contrariness. The idea that someone would not do something she wanted done was guaranteed to pique her interest, and she demanded to meet the Machinist.
No, no, said her informant. The Machinist was very secretive, demanding that all his business be done by written orders left in his post box a mile or so from his lair. He saw no one, and no one saw him.
Marool asked why.
Her informant"s reply was quite spontaneous. "Well ... Ma"am, b ... b ... because he smells. You try to talk to him, you can"t b ... b ... breathe!"
Smells didn"t bother Marool. Before returning to Mantelby Mansion, Marool met with the Machinist. She did so secretly, taking no escort except two Hagger bodyguards who stayed at the post box while she went on to the house. On her first visit she explained her desires to the stringy, dirty-fingered, hot-eyed man, while he scribbled notes, asked few questions, and licked his lips while he suggested one or two refinements. On her second visit, she inspected the work so far completed and found it to her taste.
When she returned to Mantelby Mansion, she needed a place to put the device, and her grandfather"s wine cellar came to mind. Margon Mantelby the elder, Marool"s grandfather, had used a natural cavern below the mansion as a cellar for Mantelby wines, the product of family-owned vineyards. The cool catacombs had been presided over by a cellar master of some reputation, and the wine had been drunk during the ostentatious banquets given in honor of this or that family achievement.
When Marool had returned to the mansion, it had taken only a few trials to convince her she had no use for the wines since she could neither smell nor taste them, so she converted their vaulted s.p.a.ces into what she called her playroom playroom. Power for the devices was no problem. A sizeable tributary of the Giles flowed down the canyon behind Mantelby Mansion, and Margon the Elder had long ago partnered with his neighbors in building a small dam and hydroelectric plant to provide domestic lighting and the pumping of water. Marool"s fantastic devices did not fit either category, but she did not trouble herself over that.
The first machine was installed shortly after Marool returned from Nehbe, and in due time she added others. Among them was a device that amplified s.e.xual pleasure by almost but not quite choking the partic.i.p.ants during the act, and another that administered a carefully planned series of drugs during excitement. Some devices turned and twisted, holding bodies in ways that allowed persons-one or two or several simultaneously-to juxtapose or penetrate one another in ways otherwise unlikely. And finally, there was one very complicated machine that started its cycle doing interestingly erotic things and went on doing them, with increasing pain, pressure, and intensity, until the partic.i.p.ants perished.
Some of them Marool used with her playmates; others were used by her playmates, or her soon to be ex-playmates, on one another while Marool watched. All the machines were designed to be unstoppable except by Marool herself, and she wore the master key upon her wrist and never removed it, not even to bathe or sleep. On that same hand she wore a great obsidian seal ring bearing in intaglio the fanged, flame-haired face of Morrigan.
The furnishings of the playroom included a closet of masks, costumes, and devices, as well as an ornate cabinet of drugs that could, variously, increase pleasure or enable partic.i.p.ants to tolerate quite high levels of pain. Though the cabinet was locked, the lock was a simple one, an oversight by Marool, who gave her partners credit for little intelligence and had not thus far been mistaken in doing so.
Marool customarily spent part of every day in this special place. Since the Questioner had arrived with her entourage, however, Marool had not been near it. Though the Questioner and her two a.s.sistants customarily kept to their own rooms during daylight and always did so at night, the Questioner"s strange-looking aides were ubiquitous about Mantelby Mansion. Marool had found them at all hours, walking here, looking there, always very interested in what was going on, always intrusively present whenever Marool even thought about amusing herself. The moment Marool learned the entourage had disappeared, she sent a peremptory note to the servants" quarters ordering Bane and Dyre to join her. She took the absence of the entourage as a sign from Morrigan that she need no longer deprive herself of her pleasures.
Aside from venting the pressures she had built up, there was another reason to bring the brothers to the playroom, one she had so far delayed dealing with. Though Bane and Dyre were innately cruel, though they did not balk at inflicting considerable pain even on one another, qualities that Marool quite enjoyed, the difficulty of keeping the brothers nearby had become prohibitive. She could find other playmates who would be equally cruel and vicious but who did not stink so. She herself could not smell them-or thought she could not, though her body responded to the presence of their smell nonetheless. No matter what she did or did not sense, her servants could smell them too well. Several specialized and expensive staff members had simply gaped, gasped, and fainted away when in the brothers" vicinity, and they had been unable thereafter to resume their duties. Her latest nephew-steward had confirmed, though only when asked, that the odor given off by the two was asphyxiating, and that it grew worse with each pa.s.sing day.
She had decided, therefore, to unite pleasure with necessity by proceeding at once to the final machine, the one Bane and Dyre had been dying to try. Marool always enjoyed what she thought of as the end game. The preliminary teasing; the erotic challenge; the moment when it finally dawned on the partic.i.p.ant(s) just what was happening; the pleading; the screaming; the final moaned and broken phrases of adoration, when Marool told the victims she might stop if they loved her enough.
Thus, when Marool"s playmates arrived, she greeted them with every appearance of joy and with a generous supply of the treats they liked the most, drinks and rich foods and euphoric drugs. She engaged them in a little preliminary t.i.tillation, during which she herself indulged in several gla.s.ses of wine that Bane offered her, for the relaxing effect, not the taste. She had had a long, thirsty abstention!
It was Bane himself who suggested the special machine, the only one they had not yet used.
"You"re too young," teased Marool, who was enjoying herself inordinately and was in no hurry. "That"s for grown-up men."
"I"m as grown-up as you need," boasted Bane, with a sidelong glance at his brother. "Both of us are."
"Oh, you wouldn"t like it." Marool giggled, a little surprised at the sound coming from her own mouth. My, she had had a little sniffy more than usual. Had Bane slipped some of the euphoric into her wine? Naughty boy. Life was too pleasant at the moment to scold him. She breathed deeply and giggled once again. "It requires a very sophisticated taste."
"House Genevois gave me sophisticated taste," Bane said, stroking her thigh. "That"s why I got sent there."
"Who sent you there, dear? How much did you cost Madame?"
"We"re not Madame"s stupid Hunks," a.s.serted Dyre. "Bane and me, we"re destined for great things. Our daddy, Thunder his name is, he paid for us because he"s got a future planned for us."
"Sons of thunder," said Marool. "Oooh, so powerful."
"Powerful enough for any old machine," muttered Bane, flexing his muscles and admiring his erect phallus as reflected fragmentarily among many mirrors.