Gateway To Xanadu (21 page)

“How do you do, Jennifer,” Little said to me with polite, uninterested friendliness, without offering his hand. I had told Val that Radman’s assistant would be more interested in him than me and although I hadn’t really been lying, the whole truth was that Little swung both ways, depending on mood and circumstance. His coolness had to be calculated then, possibly to make my “uncle” believe that he had no designs on his pretty, young niece. That meant he would open up more completely if I were elsewhere, leaving him a clear field to get buddy-buddy with Val.

“I do great-at home,” I answered with as little interest as he had shown, deliberately not looking at Val.

“Why I let myself be talked into this trip, I’ll never know. Uncle Val’s ideas of fun are too archaic for words.”

“Now, Jenny, you know I’ve been trying to entertain you,” Val said with mild reproof in his voice, showing nothing of the look that had done such a thorough job of rattling the woman in the shop. “If nothing else, the idea of our going down to Xanadu and the Pleasure Sphere should excite you.”

“Big deal,” I said with no enthusiasm whatsoever, pretending not to see the brief burst of exultation in Little’s eyes. “All they do in the Pleasure Sphere is have sex, every minute of the day and night. If I wanted sex I didn’t have to come here for it, I have enough partners back home. And there’d also be something interesting to do besides that.”

“My dear girl, only amateurs provide ‘just’ sex,” Little told me with an indulgent, superior smirk, glancing at Val to share the amusement with him. “The Management of the Pleasure Sphere is far from amateurish, which means you have a rare treat before you. The vast majority of young ladies your age are never given the opportunity to so indulge themselves. You should be grateful to your uncle for his generosity.”

I glanced at Val as though I would have said something nasty to that but didn’t care to go quite that far, then let my very evident skepticism say what I wasn’t putting into words: the whole scene was a drag, and I had no intentions of believing what I’d been told. Uncaring boredom with the universe as a whole wasn’t an untypical reaction of the age group I supposedly belonged to, and it had the benefit of being an acceptable out in case I slipped and forgot to be impressed by something I’d supposedly never seen before.

“My niece doesn’t consider me generous, Mr. Little,” Val put in in that same mild way, but with a hint of sternness. “My sister has indulged her shamefully, continually allowing her to do just as she pleased, and now has given her over into my care more or less permanently so that she might run off to one of these frontier planets leaving no responsibilities behind her. That I brought Jennifer along on this trip when I might just as easily have left her behind apparently means nothing, except that she now begins to understand that I refuse to be disobeyed and ignored in the way her mother allowed. You have learned that lesson, haven’t you, Jenny?”

I sent him a look of pure hate, but felt more like grinning and congratulating him. The line he’d come up with was perfect, and also gave me the exit excuse I needed

“I’ve told you before that my name is Jennifer,” I hissed with the flush of embarrassment reddening my cheeks. “And if you aren’t ready to go back to the suite, I am.”

I turned and stalked away without paying the least attention to a chuckling Little, and let my mad carry me all the way back to our suite. Once inside I indulged the urge to grin, especially when Val didn’t show up right behind me. He and Little had gone off somewhere to strengthen their new friendship, finally getting that assignment off the ground the right way.

Not knowing how long I would have to wait, I walked into the middle of the sitting room, thought about the various entertainments the suite offered, then shook my head and went into my bedroom. Now that something was actually being accomplished and it was only a matter of time before I got my own hand in the batter, the impatience I’d been feeling was back to a level I could live with easily. There was no telling what we’d get into once we hit dirt on Xanadu, so it was time I noticed that I hadn’t had much sleep the last couple of days-or enough sleep free from footsie-playing and nightmares. I stretched hard when I stopped next to my bed, opened my expensive and tastefully fashioned jumpsuit after kicking off my deck shoes, then climbed happily bare between the ice-blue covers.

I came slowly awake when my appetite stirred for the third or fourth time, something it hadn’t done in quite a while. I’d eaten breakfast that morning only because Val had threatened to send me to the babysitting service for a while if I didn’t, and he’d had that look in his eyes that said he’d do it just for the hell of it if I refused. Now that there was the prospect of action ahead of me my appetite was starting to get interested again, and it felt like I’d slept through lunch. I turned my head on the pillow to peer up at the headboard, and sure enough, Station lunch time was behind me. I knew I’d have to get up soon to see about the problem, but the bed was comfortable and I was still half asleep. I snuggled down under the covers,, rubbed my face against the smooth, cool pillowcase, felt my eyes closing-then sat up fast at the sound of glass shattering somewhere in the sitting room. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I no longer felt sleepy.

I eased open my bedroom door without making noise doing it, but I needn’t have bothered. The only one in the sitting room was Val, and all he was doing was what the room called for. One of the white and gold walls had a splotch of liquid streaming down it, with a small pile of broken glass lying at the base of the wall, but there was no true indication of how the splotch and broken pieces had gotten there. One of the deep, comfortable light-gold chairs was helping V al do his sitting, and when I stepped into the room he looked over at me.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he said very quietly, more-subdued, I guess you would call it-than I’d ever thought he could be. “We still have plenty of time before we have to be at the shuttle, so if you need more sleep, go ahead and take it.”

“I was just lying there and thinking about getting up anyway,” I answered with a headshake, making an effort to keep a frown off my face as I took the chair opposite his. “How did it go?”

“My good pal John will be going down on the shuttle with us,” he said, sounding and looking the least bit-distracted. “Since he’s been to the Pleasure Sphere before and I haven’t, he insists on playing guide.

He now knows how unhappy I am about being saddled with a teen-aged pampered princess how it cramps my style-but doesn’t know yet what I hope to do to get rid of her. Once we get to know each other a little better I’ll let him in on my plans, but not until then. We also got our sexual preferences established, and since anything is fine with me as long as it’s female, he’s decided to do it my way for the time we’re together. He doesn’t mind in the least, and we ought to have a lot of fun.”

“Val, what’s wrong?” I asked, really disturbed at the tonelessness in his voice as he finished his report.

By rights he should have been chewing me out for not telling him that Little was a switch-hitter instead of the one-track I’d described him as; rather than that he was just sitting quietly in his chair, his yellow shirt and dark green pants more rumpled than sharp-looking, his face expressionless, his body oddly tense. “Val, tell me what happened.”

“John Little wasn’t the only one I got to know better,” he answered, looking as though he were forcing the words out. “For the first time in my life, I also got a really good look at myself. If you’re not going back to bed, put some clothes on.”

I glanced down at myself to realize that I’d come into the sitting room in the same thing I’d slept in-which is to say, nothing but skin, but what difference did that make? We were in the middle of something a lot more important than clothing or the lack of it.

“I’ll get dressed as soon as we finish this conversation,” I said, gesturing aside his comment. “What did you mean you…”

“You get dressed, or this conversation is finished,” he interrupted with a growl, looking at me in the weirdest way. “As a matter of fact, I want you to haul out a couple of those weapons you have in your trunk and start carrying them. Do it now.”

I opened my mouth to argue with him, closed it again in exasperation, then got out of the chair to go back to my bedroom. It took about five seconds to get into my jumpsuit and smooth closed the staytab, then I headed back into the sitting room.

“Okay, now I’m dressed,” ,I stated as I reclaimed my chair. “I’ve protected your modesty, and now you’re damned well going to tell me what’s going on. What the hell did Little do to you?”

“It wasn’t Little, and you didn’t have the time to get those weapons I mentioned,” he came back, only a very small portion of the tension gone out of him. “You get in there and get them, or I’ll . . . ”

“No, Val!” I interrupted sharply, standing up to walk closer to his chair. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m still leader of this assignment, and if there’s any threatening to be done, I’m the one who’ll do it. If it bothers you that I’m not armed, don’t worry your pretty head about it. I am armed, and as soon as the attack comes I’ll prove it. Now what the hell is eating you?”

He looked up at me where I stood above him, his exposed and vulnerable soul staring out of his eyes, and then he looked away again.

“I was only thinking of your safety,” he said in a faint voice. “I know now that I can’t be trusted, not even by myself. Mother of Life, how could I have done it?”

He buried his face in his hands and leaned so far forward that I thought he would topple out of the chair; there’s no question about how close he came. He rocked forward and back, so tormented that I wanted to take him in my arms and hold him as tight as my strength allowed, but when I put my hand to his shoulder he pulled away, either denying himself comfort or afraid to accept it. I have a fairly vivid imagination, but it was impossible for me to come up with what he might conceivably have done to tear him apart so. There was only one thing I could think of to get me the answers I couldn’t pry out any other way, so I went back to my room a second time to get it.

It didn’t take very long to get my kit, which meant Val was in the same place when I stopped next to him again. I opened the kit and slid out one of the miniature pressure hypos, filled it from the vial of Easy, then emptied it again into his arm, right through his shirt sleeve. The hiss of the hypo was too low to break through his upset, so I just replaced the instrument in its bands and went back to my chair to wait for the drug to take effect. Easy earns its nickname by building up a thick, soft wall between you and your emotions, taking the importance out of everything, relieving stress from whatever source. With enough Easy in you, you could even help cut your own head off without worrying about it; the project would be too unimportant to get excited over.

It took a good three or four minutes, but finally Val’s body relaxed enough to let him sit back in his chair. I got out of my own chair and walked over to him, perched on his left chair arm, then smoothed his black hair back the way he so often did with me.

“Tell me what you and Little did, Val,” I suggested softly as his eyes came to me. “Where did you go after I left you?”

“We went for some coffee and conversation,” he answered without hesitation, still looking up at me. “I told him how hard it was for a gentleman of leisure to be tied down with an unwanted responsibility like a young girl, but my older sister was in charge of our parents’ estate and would have cut me off from the money if I’d refused. You know, the story you made up for me to use.”

“I remember the story,” I said with a nod of approval. “Is that all you did? Just drink coffee and talk?”

“No,” he said in the same direct but dreamy way. “After he sympathized with me we talked about sex, and then he suggested we go somewhere to get the bad taste of being crowded by a woman out of my mouth. He said he knew just the experience to do it, and we’d both have fun.”

“Experience,” I repeated, suddenly suspicious. “Val-did he take you to the Exotic Rooms?”

“Yes,” he answered, not a flicker of upset in the black gaze resting easily on me. “We went to the Exotic Rooms, and I did what Ringer suggested for any time I was caught in a situation where I would be expected to know what was going on, but didn’t. I told John I was in the mood to pretend I’d never been there before, and that I’d taken to pretending that with a lot of things, just to make them interesting again. He liked the idea of leading a novice around, and joined the ‘game’ by taking over completely.”

“He would,” I muttered, blessing Ringer in absentia for coming up with such a useful out. It fit in well with the “I couldn’t care less” attitude I’d had to come up with, and would probably be very effective for the cover we were then using. “What sort of experience did he arrange for the two of you?”

“It was for the four of us,” Val corrected with no emphasis on any part of the statement. “He picked out two very pretty girls as our escorts, then had us taken to a private room. A completely hairless girl served us all odd-tasting drinks, we drank until we fell asleep, and then we were someplace else and other people.”

He stirred very faintly in the chair then and almost looked away from me, a reaction that made me wonder what his constitution was like. The drug shouldn’t have let him feel anything, but then I realized he probably still had Exotic Rooms drugs in his system, too. I’d have to neutralize all of it, the Easy included, but I needed some more answers first.

“Tell me what those other people did,” I said, hoping that if I put it impersonally, he’d be able to accept it and talk about it in the same way. Happily I hit the right combination; he sat still in the chair again, and didn’t try to look away.

“The two men were desert bandits on a world I didn’t know,” my partner said, his gaze turning inward.

“The two pretty girls were a King’s daughters, and the bandits led their men in attack against the caravan that was taking them somewhere. The bandits killed all of the caravan guards, and then we found the two girls, who had been trying to hide from us. John took one and I took the other, we threw them across our saddles, then we carried them back to our camp. My little redhead was terrified, but she and her sister still expected to be ransomed back to their father with nothing else happening to them. John and I dragged them into his tent by the hair, forced them to strip in front of us and all of our men, then he and I raped them. They were both virgins and both hysterical, but we did it anyway. And then the dream went away and the four of us were back in the room we’d been drinking in, and I cook the girl lying next to me and-did it again. She screamed and begged me not to, but I still raped her.”