“No,” I said, not bothering to mask the finality in my voice. “I’m the assignment leader, and I say we stick. If you take us off this planet, you do it against my direct orders. I’m not about to let that filth get the chance to contaminate anyone else, not when I’m this close to him. I have him right in my ….”
“You don’t have him anywhere, and you know it,” he interrupted, fighting to sound sleek and lecherous.
“You don’t know where he is any more now than you did when we first got here, but you’re too stubborn to admit it. Maybe you need to be reminded how much power I have over you down here.” He switched back to Basic and said, “No, Jennifer, my mind is made up. A little slave training won’t hurt you, and will probably do you a world of good. Come into the bedroom, now. I want to get inside you for a while before we go to dinner. ”
“You miserable, no good, gutter-crawling piece of . . .” I began, really fuming, but he cut me off again.
“But of course they’ll all know what I’m doing to you,” he laughed, coming closer to snap his arm around me before I could figure out just exactly what I wanted to do to him and also was able to do in that gown. “If you don’t behave yourself, I’ll invite some of them in next time to watch. Come along, now.”
He just about dragged me into a bedroom that matched the sitting room, neither one of us about to make the struggle loud but both of us still struggling, threw me on the bed, then went through some window-dressing chatter about what he was doing to me. He forced me to the point of having to answer in kind, and then began making love to me, trying his usual tricks to get me to respond. Verbally I gave him everything he was looking for, every ooh and ahh and moan and groan, but through it all I kept every trace of expression off my face and simply stared at him, telling him to go ahead and rape me and be damned. He tried to go through with it, he really did, but in the end all he did was make the same noises I was making but the male variety, bouncing on the bed next to me and staring down. Anyone listening would have thought we were having a ball, but as balls went, that one was on the grim side.
When the sound show was over, Val turned away from me and simply lay down. We’d said everything there was to say, and at that point my telling him how close Radman was would either be totally disbelieved or believed so eagerly that he would go after him alone in the way I’d thought about earlier.
Whatever was done would have to be done by me, but that was the way it was supposed to be anyway.
I’d wanted to keep Val out of it; he was making sure I did exactly that.
After waiting for a few minutes for the benefit of the ears listening, I left the bed and went into the only bathroom the apartment had. I didn’t have to be told that the apartment was a single, assigned to Val with me thrown in as an unimportant extra occupant. Double accommodations had two bathrooms, but I wasn’t being considered a guest in my own right, not in anything that counted. I got out of my gown and shoes and earrings without letting my annoyance show, then stepped into the shower. If Val thought he was sick of that place, he should have tried it from my point of view.
Showering and drying didn’t take long, so it was still too early to get dressed again. I thought about going back out to the bedroom until it was time to join our jolly group for the meal, then rejected the idea. I didn’t want Val thinking I had changed my mind, and I didn’t want to give him the chance to change it for me. The bathroom floor was nicely carpeted with no mist, so there was nothing to keep me from spending my time there. I sat down and then stretched out, trying to forget about everything.
When an hour had passed on the clock I dressed again, brushed my hair, then made my silent way out of the bathroom. I didn’t want our listeners to know how long I’d been in there, and with Val supposedly asleep I had the perfect excuse for tiptoeing. Val’s eyes followed me as I crossed the room toward the sitting room, but he stayed where he was, continuing to pretend to be asleep. It looked like he hadn’t been able to really rest any more than I had, but as long as he didn’t start in on me again it didn’t much matter.
I sat in the sitting room for about fifteen minutes, and just as Val came out of the bedroom, a knock sounded on the door. He crossed the room to open it, and found that we were being called to dinner. I began to think that my time was improving, but when we followed the woman to a large private dining room on the other side of the elevator, I began thinking the Lord of Luck was at it again. Place cards were arranged on the long formal table in the center of the haunted-castle-like room, first names only, if you please, and the card directly to my right showed the name Richard. I sat down at the table with Val to my left, excitement rising in me despite the fact that Richard is a very common name and I hadn’t been introduced to everyone in our group. If that was Radman who had been seated next to me, I had it made.
I waited until almost all the guests had arrived, until James came in and sat on the opposite side of the other end of the table, until the woman in silver and the bearded man in black took their places at the two ends of the table. I’d been waiting for Radman to come in and sit down, but that turned out not to be necessary. When he came in he stopped to talk to James, but by then I didn’t care what he did. He was the only one not sitting down, and the only place left open was the one to my right. He must have seen to that arrangement, I realized, an unsitting spider throwing the door wide in welcome to the spider-eater disguised as a fly.
Acting as though I didn’t even see Radman, I put my hands under the edge of the red tablecloth, gently scraped off a tiny piece of the colorless coating from my left ring fingernail, and took it between my thumb and forefinger. A few seconds of casual checking brought the assurance that no one was specifically looking my way, so I took the opportunity and reached past Radman’s wine glass for a warmed soft roll. Opening my fingers over the glass got rid of the sliver of specially made chemical before I touched the roll, and when I brought my hand back the first step was done. Each of my fingernails is coated with a different colorless, traceless chemical, in most instances a poison, and the one I’d chosen for Radman would give him about two hours or so to enjoy his meal before it turned him completely out of focus. He’d be feeling sick enough to go to bed, and if things worked out tight I’d be right behind him. I could have fed him something lethal just as easily, of course, but that wasn’t the way death warrants were served. Death by poisoning can be caused by anyone or anything, even an accident, and doesn’t tend to be as impressive as death by execution. The Council wanted whoever stepped into Radman’s shoes to know that the same thing could happen to him if he got too far out of line, and the Council’s way was how I had to play it.
Radman finally came over and took his seat, gave me what he must have considered a friendly smile, and began asking me small-talk questions about how my time in the Sphere had gone so far. I gave him unenthusiastic answers with down-in-the-mouth overtones, trying to get him to pick another victim for his conversation, but he was getting too much of a kick looking at the one he’d already picked. I wouldn’t have liked the man even if I’d known nothing about him, and then he really added the icing. He took the opportunity of a slave coming over to pour wine in his glass to lean close to me, then sent his bad breath right in my face.
“Don’t you worry about that class you’ll be starting tomorrow, little girl,” he reassured me in low tones, his hand moving under the tablecloth to touch my gown above my thighs. “I’ve already arranged to be there as one of the men you’ll learn to please, and I really do intend to be pleased. When we sit down at this table again tomorrow night, you’ll know what it’s like to be screwed by a real man.”
He chuckled as he gave me a final pat, then leaned away again to reach for his wine, leaving me to fight hard to keep from shuddering in disgust. I already knew what it was like to be invaded by that particular
“man,” and if I’d had to do it again I would have gotten sick or crazy. I watched him swallow down half his wine without even tasting it, a pig of a man .with fewer manners even than an animal, walking garbage that thought it had me marked, bought and paid for. The only thing it didn’t have neatly arranged was the drug in its drink, and the fact that the hunter had now become the hunted.
“Jennifer, sweetheart, are you all right?” Val’s voice came suddenly from my left, his arm circling my shoulders a minute later. “You’re trembling and pale-looking again just the way you were a few hours ago. Don’t you feel well, little girl?
“Not really, uncle Val,” I answered in a small voice, indulging in the urge to lean closer to him and put my head against him. “I don’t know what it is, but I really don’t feel good. ”
“You probably just need some hot food in you,” he murmured, tightening his arm around me and gently brushing aside some of my hair with his free hand. “We’ll try it and see how it does. ”
I nodded obediently and just kept leaning on him, knowing he was seriously concerned but finding the out he’d given me too good to pass up. Not feeling well was a great reason for my going back to our room early, and once I was gone no one would wonder where I was. I rubbed my cheek against his shirt, glad I could do it in character, finally admitting I was glad about another thing. As soon as Val had started speaking to me, Radman had turned away to the woman on his right and had begun a conversation with her. As long as Val had his arm around me Radman’s hands would be off, and that made up for a whole hell of a lot of the nonsense I’d gone through with my new partner. I remembered again the various times he hadn’t taken advantage of me when he could have, a couple of hours earlier being the latest addition, and grudged the admission that it occasionally felt good to have him there.
When the dinner finally got rolling it was a lavish affair, with course after course of food and bottle after bottle of wine, all of it generous helpings, all of it indisputably the best it could possibly be. I continued to pretend I wasn’t feeling-well, but still managed to swallow enough food to keep me going for a while, at the same time staying away from anything stronger than water, as I intended to be working later and didn’t want the edge taken off my reflexes.
Having Radman next to me put a strain on my appetite, but it did turn out to be handy; when the light sheen of sweat started covering his face and he began to tug unconsciously at his collar, I knew it was time for me to leave. The drug I’d fed him would soon begin to affect him more strongly, and I wanted to be innocently gone by then. I told Val I still wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go back to our room and go to bed, and was surprisingly saved from having him insist on going with me by John Little, who sat to Val’s left. He dismissed my supposed illness by telling Val it was just a reaction to the tour we’d taken that afternoon, then told him there was something special he wanted to show him in just a few minutes.
Val looked at me and hesitated, then must have realized that if I’d really needed him, I would have said so in the trade language. He told me to go and get some rest, patted my cheek, and had turned back to Little even before I had pushed away from the table.
I walked the supposed stone corridor back to our room with the key Val had given me in my hand, thinking about Radman and idly wondering why Little hadn’t introduced Val to him yet. Radman hadn’t once so much as looked in their direction all evening, and that made me curious. Was the cold shoulder Little’s idea or Radman’s? Had the game Little’s been playing changed, or was it deeper than we’d first supposed? If I managed to get Radman that night it would turn out not to matter, so I didn’t spend much thinking time on the question; by the next day Val and I would hopefully be on our way back to the Station, and the slavers’ plans turned to no more than dust on a chalkboard.
I reached our door, opened it and slipped inside, then stood thinking for a minute, annoyed by something I’d just seen.
The corridor outside was empty, but that little alcove near the elevator the woman in silver had come out of was occupied by three slaves, probably waiting to take care of the wants and needs of the guests. The room I stood in wasn’t far from that alcove, and if I stepped back out into the hall for any reason, like going to Radman’s room, for instance, they’d see me without any trouble. That was a problem I hadn’t foreseen and didn’t appreciate, but there was something else to take care of before I spent any real time thinking about it.
I moved without worrying about sound and entered the bedroom, then went to my luggage. Pulling out a hair-fine ear was the work of a minute, along with a shorts outfit and canvas deck shoes. I left the clothes and shoes on the bed, took the ear, then went back to the door to the apartment and opened it. I’d purposefully forgotten to set the “do not disturb” sign when I’d first come in, needing that minute to get the ear, and that’s where I set the ear, right below the sign. With the thin, tiny bug in place, I’d know for sure when Radman came back to his apartment.
Back in the bedroom again, I changed out of the silver gown and sling-backs into the clothes I’d prepared, got a button receiver from my luggage, then decided to be optimistic. Among the jewelry I’d brought was a very special ring, a large, well-set and expensive-looking ring, but it was more than just expensive. I slipped it on my finger, put the button receiver in my ear, then went to lie down on the bed.
Through the receiver in my ear, I could hear the low-voiced chatter among the slaves, no words, sound only, but it helped to off-set the feel of that bedroom while I waited. The bed I lay on was a big four-poster, but it wasn’t curtained the way it might be. The walls of the room were false stone, with a double-window breaking one of them with an exit to a balcony outside. The lighting was still red and the mist still covered the floor, and the room temperature was still- up there, and I really did feel as though I waited in a room in hell. What I planned to do that night was a fitting occupation for hell, and that thought seemed to add to the faint depression I was feeling. Also, typically, the depression didn’t come from the thought of doing the job, but from the thought of the possibility of not being able to do it. If I couldn’t pull it off I’d be running into Radman tomorrow in a way that really would be hell.