by Cecilia Tan
His hand hovered over mine, then drifted off to settle on his thigh. “Think about it,” he advised. He stood. “It’s worth it.”
I didn’t need his encouragement.
Joyce was gone when I got home, and when she called to say she was going to be with friends overnight again, I heard screams and music in the background.
I crawled into our chilled, summer-smelling sheets and fingered the ivory paper.
“I’m so glad you decided to meet me,” he greeted, arms opened expansively. His eyes were dark and fierce. They traced over me like lasers and, I imagined, stripped me bare to him. I shivered in my expensive boots and pretended that my clothes were impenetrable armor. It made me feel marginally better.
I stepped over the threshold gingerly, and into his world. It wasn’t anywhere near what I had been expecting to find. I had thought of gadgets and gizmos and erotic paraphernalia. Walman, it seemed, was staying in a typical hotel room at a typical hotel. If you could call the Raleigh a typical hotel, that is. It ranked with the Plaza in the guidebooks, and it showed as soon as you stepped onto the hotel’s marble floors.
“Sit, sit,” Walman instructed, motioning toward a typical, overstuffed hotel room chair with one hand.
I sat, clasping my hands on my lap because I didn’t know where else to put them. The chair made me feel small and insignificant, just like Walman’s eyes did.
“I thought you weren’t going to visit me,” he said almost petulantly, settling in a similar chair across from mine. He propped his arms on the chair, and though he should have looked ridiculous, he didn’t.
“I almost didn’t,” I said finally, then swallowed and asked the question that had been on the tip of my tongue for almost two weeks. “Why me?”
“Ah.” The gleam in his eyes deepened, and Walman transferred his gaze to the window and the cityscape behind me. “I saw you, in the audience.”
I remembered seeing the cameras high above. I’d thought they were for security purposes. Maybe security used them too. “I didn’t realize....”
“Well, we’re a vain lot, you see, we artists. We crave knowing how our art makes our viewers feel.”
“So you watch the audience while you do your show?”
“No, no, don’t have time for that.” He steepled his fingers together, nearly obscuring his chin in the process. He was an average man with a thin, angled face—a man far from what most would consider attractive.
He seemed like a simple man.
“We watch the tapes after the show,” he continued to explain. “Myself, and a few select others. We watch faces and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s still a show, and I strive for perfection in my art—for myself, for my subjects, and for my audience.”
“And you saw me,” I said.
“Exactly.” He leaned forward in the chair, eyes fixed on me. I felt the weight of his regard as if it were a physical thing, a thing too heavy to shrug off or ignore. My skin prickled in response.
“But... I’m normal,” I blurted out. “I’m ordinary, boring!”
“And that is exactly what we’re looking for,” he said soothingly. “But more than that, we need someone who needs us. Someone who can benefit from our artistry.”
“You think I can?”
“I do.” He reached forward and plucked my hands free from my lap, pulling them to him and clasping my fingers tight. “In fact, I know you can.”
And his eyes, his dark, all-seeing eyes, told me that he did indeed see deep into me. Deeper, perhaps, than I wanted him to see.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, pulling my hands free of his and trying with every molecule in my body to keep from balling them into fists. It wouldn’t help, anyway. There was no edge left to grasp—I was freefalling already.
Walman’s eyes took on a new look, one of pensiveness and brooding, but he agreed and led me back to the door. He pressed a card in my hand—thick ivory cardstock—and told me to call him with my decision.
I felt his eyes on my back as I walked down the corridor to the elevator. When I looked back, waiting for the metallic doors to close, I saw him in the hall, arms crossed over his chest and a furrow deepening his brow.
His card was heavy in my pocket, and it weighed on me for days while Joyce flitted through our apartment like a ghost, sleeping while I worked and touching down only briefly for peckish kisses and hummingbird hugs. Her eyes moved when she couldn’t, when I trapped her for a film or dinner together, and when I clasped her in my arms at night she felt stiff and distant.
Maybe she had found another lover. Maybe she was just pulling away as our relationship ran its course. I didn’t now why, but I knew then that it was over.
We argued, finally, when she found the invitation on my nightstand and demanded to know why it hadn’t been thrown out. I was relieved to tell her about my visit with Walman, and drove the argument around to her distance and her eagerness to be elsewhere while she was clearly engaged in our conversation.
Her chin stiffened and her lips trembled. “You think I’m cheating on you?”
“Are you?” My question was much calmer than the emotions roiling within me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer.
“I’m not,” she said heatedly. “I love you, and I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Then what’s wrong? What’s wrong with me? With us?”
“I just...” she speared her fingers into her hair. “I just need to see my friends, to get out, that’s all.”
I couldn’t find words to respond to that, so I just watched her. She returned my gaze steadily, unblinking. Then, without saying a word, she turned on her heel and left.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said gruffly, when I caught up to her as she tossed her purse over her shoulder and settled her hand on the doorknob. “I just can’t take this. Not tonight.”
“I won’t be here,” I said finally, my stomach aching and my fingernails digging into my palms.
The words were faint, but she paused and glanced back at me. And she was gone.
My fingers strayed to the ivory card.
“You’ll be fine,” Lizbeth assured me. She was approximately three inches from my face at the time, peering at the skin around my eyes and nose with a magnifying glass, trying to make sure that she had pruned and toned me to perfection. Well, as close to perfection as non-enhanced, non-decorated flesh could be, at least. She had already been over the rest of my body—she had explained that she always saved faces for last, because she found them the most interesting.
My hands were clenched on the padded armrests of her seat. I was reclining, nearly flat on my back, while she examined me. We were in a small room in the amphitheatre, a room of bright, blank whiteness that smelled of antiseptic, and faintly, sweat. My stomach was flip-flopping—I could already hear the crowd in the background.
“I think we’re done,” she said finally, stepped back to allow me to sit up. “Walman is waiting.”
She led me toward the stage and directly to Walman himself. He greeted me warmly, settling his hands on my shoulders and sweeping me again with his gaze. I learned that the look, his examination, felt the same when I was naked as it did when I was fully clothed from head to toe.
“Excellent,” he said, taking my hand and nodding absent thanks to Lizbeth, who obligingly melted away into the darkness of the side of the stage. Presumably to her little white room, where she could put away her swabs and her creams in their neat slots in her boxes so that they were ready for the next performance—the next performer.
Walman handed me onto a table and I lay flat at his direction. I was naked, but I wasn’t embarrassed. There was something in his manner that prevented me from caring about my nudity, that assured me it was normal and right.
“You’ll be fine,” he said soothingly as he dug his hands into my hair and spread the curls around my face. Once finished with that, his hands swept down to trace the placement of my hips, my thighs, my ankles.
I squinted
to look at him—the lights above were bright and warm—and tried to read him. He was remote, though, distant, and I couldn’t glimpse what he was feeling or seeing.
“I broke up with my girlfriend,” I blurted out.
Walman’s eyes flitted to my face. His gaze was curious, but not supportive or reproachful. He simply watched. He hadn’t asked me any questions when I had called, and I didn’t know why I was telling him, but it felt good.
“She... she wasn’t happy,” I said finally.
His hand, which had settled on my breast again after smoothing my hair across the warm, soft surface of the table, shifted to my shoulder when he patted me gently.
“You must let yourself go,” he said.
I wanted to ask him what he meant, whether he was speaking of Joyce or of me or of the performance, but an abrupt swelling of sound awakened me to the fact that the curtains were parting and the performance was starting.
Walman stepped to the front of the stage. I turned my head to the side so I could see him, now very conscious of my nakedness and the spotlight that shone high above me.
The chatter of the audience stopped, and Walman spoke. I barely listened, focused as I was on staying on the table and keeping myself from fleeing the stage in fright.
He moved back, still talking, and I began to piece together his explanations. His hands were light as they applied the electrodes to my body—small, sticky nodules that he set on my scalp, my shoulder, my inner thigh. They were wireless, driven by internal mechanisms, he had explained—nothing more than little stickers.
Unseen bonds slid over my wrists and ankles—restraints, to keep me from hurting myself and to keep me from moving and disrupting the artistry of the coming show. A band was placed across my forehead, too, though that would be for later, I had been told.
Then he bowed back, and the crowd beyond the stage—beyond my vision—applauded politely, and the show began.
I had talked again to the man, who had waxed rhapsodic about the feelings, the sensations... about how he felt afterwards and what he realized during. Walman had explained the technical aspects of the show, of the electrodes that manipulated my nerves and the sounds that soothed, warmed, hypnotized and aroused all at once. I hadn’t known what to expect.
It started like fingertip-light touches, smooth and gentle and erratic, and changed to warm, long strokes against my breasts and my abdomen and my tense thighs and calves. Cool air caressed my face and blew my hair back from my eyes. My nipples tingled and erected as the air slid over my feet and across my hips. The places where the electrodes were attached tingled as well, and the feelings spread outward and deeper with each passing second.
I gasped as the intensity increased, and I flailed and grasped at the edges of the table, arching my hips off the padded surface as a wave of feeling shot down my spine. The world faded then, shrank to my body and the feelings that were coursing through me. The lights began to burn my eyes, so I shut them.
The fingerlight touches began to intensify as well, becoming warm, massaging hands and fingers intent on arousal. I shifted my hips, feeling the cream flowing from me to wet my thighs and my ass. I clenched my muscles, though it was useless and I knew it, then gasped at the sensation that the clenching created.
My awareness of the electrodes passed, too. The places where they were attached become no more than hotspots in the maelstrom of my pleasure. Feeling swept up my thigh and to my cunt and into me. I was invaded by a hundred fingers, a hundred licking, suckling tongues. I felt myself swelling, and my breasts began to ache. I twisted my shoulders to find the cool ribbon of air that had caressed them, but it had been replaced by a breeze of warmth and desert-dry heat that just exacerbated my tension. Sweat broke out on my brow and beneath my arms.
I cried aloud as the invisible bonds on my limbs clamped tight, like a lover holding me, and gasped when I felt the cool band on my forehead flare with heat. Light exploded behind my eyes and there was a face—Joyce’s face—there before me. I sobbed, and tried to reach for her, begged her to stop my agony as my arousal grew, but she simply smiled and set her hands upon my face. Her lips met mine and I drank of her, grinding myself against the table to alleviate the pressure building deep within me.
Joyce pulled back and her face changed, the space between the eyes widening, the ears sinking lower on the head, her hair lengthening and curling into corkscrews. Freckles streamed across her nose and cheeks and her eyes bled to honey-gold.
Cera, my previous lover, my lover who had gone on to a flashy job with my blessings, let her fingers fall to my breasts and smiled at my sob of relief as she caressed my nipples and tugged them gently. I looked down, down her neck, down her throat, and saw that she was naked. Her pubic hair was neatly trimmed, as always, and I remembered the delightful taste of her honey.
The hair that covered her lightened, became shiny and blonde, and the hips that showcased that hair widened and bronzed. I followed the nipped-in waist and knew before I met her brown eyes that my lover was now my first lover, she who had introduced me to the delights of fingers and tongues. Gia rubbed herself against me and my clit hardened and swelled. I rubbed back, grinding myself into her, reaching, reaching....
My lover changed again, and this time I didn’t recognize the hips that pushed against me or the breasts that teased me. I searched her face, but recognition seemed just beyond reach. When her mouth lowered to mine I was beyond caring, as her hands were touching and she was rocking against me in a smooth rhythm that sent shocks down my spine and out to my fingers and toes.
“Yes,” I heard in my head. “Yes.”
Warmth shuddered through me, warmth and electricity, and she was everywhere, in my mouth and in my cunt and on me, and I gasped and shuddered as finally, finally, I felt the first waves of my orgasm start to radiate out.
I jerked against my bonds and sank my teeth into my bottom lip, moaning and hissing and rocking with the pleasure. It went on and on, seeming to last forever, and I rolled with it, feeling it go through me from my cunt to my head and then back down to my toes.
On the wave of it, as I crested it I saw her face again and I recognized her, finally. Her face was one I knew intimately, but not as a whole. Not as a sexual thing, not in a way that I would evaluate a woman as a lover—I had never looked at myself that way.
Then her face faded, smile and all, and I opened my eyes as post-orgasmic lassitude began to weigh my bones. The light was bright and hot and sweat rolled from me. I smelled myself and my sex and heard the breathing and gasping of the watching audience. In silence, I shuddered and my eyes drifted closed and I let myself fall into a dreaming, half-awake state.
I barely heard the curtain close, or the approving roar of the audience, or felt the gentle hands that released my bonds and lifted me from the table and carried me off the stage.
I woke to myself while they were washing me. Walman looked up from my legs, where he held a thick, soft, cool cloth, and smiled gently.
“You were magnificent,” he assured me, laying a palm on my knee. My eyelids fluttered again as the washcloth resumed its soothing course, and I took stock of my surroundings.
A small room, colored in warm, rosy tones. Soothing music, cool cloths on my skin. My hair was damp against my shoulders and my face felt clean and scrubbed.
“When we’re done, we’ll get you dressed. Many people want to meet you.”
I nodded, slowly, and let myself drift off again.
“Many” didn’t describe the crowd waiting for me when I finally dressed and emerged. The throng seemed hundreds deep. Men, women, all dressed to the nines and carrying flutes of champagne. A table to the side of the room was laden with food and my stomach rumbled.
Laughter rang among those close to me and Walman nodded at an assistant, who scampered to the table and grabbed a plate immediately.
I was pulled into the crowd, still a little woozy. Walman had explained that my shakiness was a normal effect of the performance. I wasn’t sure if he
meant the electrodes or the mind-blowing orgasm, and I wasn’t inclined to ask.
Then I found myself face to face with Joyce, out of the blue. I stared at her, and she smiled widely.
“You were gorgeous,” she said. “My lovely angel!” She spread her arms wide in invitation.
I felt the eyes on me as I stepped forward, into her embrace, and wrapped my arms around her in return. I pressed my head to hers and hugged her to me for a moment, then leaned back and searched her face. There was nothing there, no regret, no love, no guile... it was blank, though her eyes were affectionate. I kissed her then. Slowly, deeply, with all the love that I had felt for her. I held her head to mine and savored the taste and sensation.
Then I stepped back. Lizbeth was at my elbow.
“Here, I’m sure you’re starving,” she said, pushing a plate of fruit and cheese and delectable pastry at me.
With a last smile at Joyce I stepped away, knowing that I wouldn’t be stepping back.
And as I contemplated my future, a future with wide horizons and no limits, I ate, and chatted, and realized that I was at peace.
The Lift by Kal Cobalt
The data message was sandwiched between an interrogation request and a chemist follow-up, notable only as the sole mail which had reached Xon Xaedin that day by normal channels.
Xon,
It's been a long time, but I've kept an eye on you. Do you remember Illan? We seem to have come to a point where there is, in certain important respects, more machine than Illan. A visiting Ice Ops told me he could neither sense Illan's presence nor his thoughts. Naturally, I thought of your predicament. Traveling topside poses little danger for Illan now that he can pass by without tipping off half the Ops in the sector to his illegal ports (illegal, but paid for by ConFed.That's government for you).
Would you like to see him again? I don't have the information necessary to produce statistics on the probable success or failure of your capacity to tolerate his presence, nor could I find enough information on your case to tell what sort of risk you'd be placing yourself in by trying. Illan is, of course, very interested in seeing you again if you can stand it. Regards,
