by David Drake
Jolober didn't say that so long as he could go anywhere other men went, he could pretend he was still a man. If the Placidan civilian could have understood that, she wouldn't have asked why he didn't have ramps put in.
“Well, what was that?” demanded Higgey—thin, intense, and already half bald in his early thirties. “Was anyone killed?”
“Nothing serious, Master Higgey,” Jolober said as he slid back to the table and lowered himself to his “seated” height. “And no, no one was killed or even injured.”
Thank the Lord for his mercy.
“It looked serious, Commandant,” said the third committee member—Wayne, half again Jolober's age and a retired colonel of the Placidan regular army. “I'm surprised you permit things like that to happen.”
Higgey and Rodall were seating themselves. Jolober gestured toward the third chair on the curve of the round table opposite him and said, “Colonel, your, ah—opposite numbers in Armstrong tried to stop those tanks last week with a battalion of armored infantry. They got their butts kicked until they didn't have butts any more.”
Wayne wasn't sitting down. His face flushed and his short white mustache bristled sharply against his upper lip.
Jolober shrugged and went on in a more conciliatory tone, “Look, sir, units aren't rotated back here unless they've had a hell of a rough time in the line. I've got fifty-six patrolmen with stunners to keep order… which we do, well enough for the people using Paradise Port. We aren't here to start a major battle of our own. Placida needs these mercenaries and needs them in fighting trim.”
“That's a matter of opinion,” said the retired officer with his lips pressed together, but at last he sat down.
The direction of sunrise is also a matter of opinion, Jolober thought. It's about as likely to change as Placida is to survive without the mercenaries who had undertaken the war her regular army was losing.
“I requested this meeting—” requested it with the senators themselves, but he hadn't expected them to agree “—in order to discuss just that, the fighting trim of the troops who undergo rest and refit here. So that Placida gets the most value of her, ah, payment.”
The committee staff would do, if Jolober could get them to understand. Paradise Port was, after all, a wasteland with a village populated by soldiers who bad spent all the recent past killing and watching their friends die. It wasn't the sort of place you'd pick for a senatorial junket.
Higgey leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table top, and said, “Commandant, I'm sure that those—” he waggled a finger disdainfully toward the window “—men out there would be in better physical condition after a week of milk and religious lectures than they will after the regime they choose for themselves. There are elements—”
Wayne nodded in stern agreement, his eyes on Mistress Rodall, whose set face refused to acknowledge either of her fellows while the subject was being discussed.
“—in the electorate and government who would like to try that method, but fortunately reality has kept the idea from being attempted.”
Higgey paused, pleased with his forceful delivery and the way his eyes dominated those of the much bigger man across the table. “If you've suddenly got religion, Commandant Jolober,” he concluded, “I suggest you resign your current position and join the ministry.”
Jolober suppressed his smile. Higgey reminded him of a lap dog, too nervous to remain either still or silent, and too small to be other than ridiculous in its posturing. “My initial message was unclear, madam, gentlemen,” he explained, looking around the table. “I'm not suggesting that Placida close the brothels that are part of the recreational facilities here.”
His pause was not for effect, but because his mouth had suddenly gone very dry. But it was his duty to—
“I'm recommending that the Dolls be withdrawn from Paradise Port and that the facilities be staffed with human, ah, females.”
Colonel Wayne stiffened and paled.
Wayne's anger was now mirrored in the expression on Rodall's face. “Whores,” she said. “So that those— soldiers—can disgrace and dehumanize real women for their fun.”
“And kill them, one assumes,” added Higgey with a touch of amusement. “I checked the records, Commandant. There've been seventeen Dolls killed during the months Paradise Port's been in operation. As it is, that's a simple damage assessment, but if they'd been human prostitutes— each one would have meant a manslaughter charge or even murder. People don't cease to have rights when they choose to sell their bodies, you know.”
“When they're forced to sell their bodies, you mean,” snapped Rodall. She glared at Higgey, who didn't mean anything of the sort.
“Scarcely to the benefit of your precious mercenaries,” said Wayne in a distant voice. “Quite apart from the political difficulties it would cause for any senator who recommended the change.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Higgey, whose natural caution had tightened his visage again, “I thought you were going to use the record of violence here at Paradise Port as a reason for closing the facility. Though I'll admit that I couldn't imagine anybody selfless enough to do away with his own job.”
No, you couldn't, you little weasel, thought Horace Jolober. But politicians have different responsibilities than soldiers, and politicians’ flunkies have yet another set of needs and duties.
And none of them are saints. Surely no soldier who does his job is a saint.
“Master Higgey, you've precisely located the problem,” Jolober said with a nod of approval. “The violence isn't a result of the soldiers, it's because of the Dolls. It isn't accidental, it's planned. And it's time to stop it.”
“It's time for us to leave, you mean,” said Higgey as he shoved his chair back. “Resigning still appears to be your best course, Commandant. Though I don't suppose the ministry is the right choice for a new career, after all.”
“Master Higgey,” Jolober said in the voice he would have used in an argument with a fellow officer, “I know very well that no one is irreplaceable—but you know that I am doing as good a job here as anybody you could hire to run Paradise Port. I'm asking you to listen for a few minutes to a proposal that will make the troops you pay incrementally better able to fight for you.”
“We've come this far,” said Rodall.
“There are no listening devices in my quarters,” Jolober explained, unasked. “I doubt that any real-time commo link out of Paradise Port is free of interception.”
He didn't add that time he spent away from his duties was more of a risk to Placida than pulling these three out of their offices and expensive lunches could be. The tanks roaring down the street should have proved that even to the committee staffers.
Jolober paused, pressing his fingertips to his eyebrows in a habitual trick to help him marshal his thoughts while the others stared at him. “Mistress, masters,” he said calmly after a moment, “the intention was that Paradise Port and similar facilities be staffed by independent contractors from off-planet.”
“Which is where they'll return as soon as the war's over,” agreed Colonel Wayne with satisfaction. “Or as soon as they put a toe wrong, any one of them.”
“The war's bad enough as it is,” said Rodall. “Building up Placida's stock of that sort of person would make peace hideous as well.”
“Yes, ma'am, I understand,” said the port commandant. There were a lot of “that sort of person” in Placida just now, including all the mercenaries in the line—and Horace Jolober back here. “But what you have in Paradise Port isn't a group of entrepreneurs, it's a corporation—a monarchy, almost—subservient to an alien called Red Ike.”
“Nonsense,” said Wayne.
“We don't permit that,” said Rodall.
“Red Ike owns a single unit here,” said Higgey. “The China Doll. Which is all he can own by law, to prevent just the sort of situation you're describing.”
“Red Ike provides all the Dolls,” Jolober stated flatly. “Whoever owns them on pape
r, they're his. And everything here is his because he controls the Dolls.”
“Well…” said Rodall. She was beginning to blush.
“There's no actual proof,” Colonel Wayne said, shifting his eyes toward a corner of walls and ceiling. “Though I suppose the physical traits are indicative…”
“The government has decided it isn't in the best interests of Placida to pierce the corporate veil in this instance,” said Higgey in a thin voice. “The androids in question are shipped here from a variety of off-planet suppliers.”
The balding Placidan paused and added, with a tone of absolute finality. “If the question were mine to decide— which it isn't—I would recommend searching for a new port commandant rather than trying to prove the falsity of a state of affairs beneficial to us, to Placida.”
“I think that really must be the final word on the subject, Commandant Jolober,” Rodall agreed.
Jolober thought she sounded regretful, but the emotion was too faint for him to be sure. The three Placidans were getting up, and he had failed.
He'd failed even before the staff members arrived, because it was now quite obvious that they'd decided their course of action before the meeting. They—and their elected superiors—would rather have dismissed Jolober's arguments.
But if the arguments proved to be well founded, they would dismiss the port commandant, if necessary to end the discussion.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” Jolober said as hydraulics lifted him in the saddle and pressure of his stump on the throttle let him rotate his chair away from the table. “That you came all this way to silence me instead of refusing me a meeting.”
“You might recall,” said Higgey, pausing at the doorway. His look was meant to be threatening, but the port commandant's bulk and dour anger cooled the Placidan's face as soon as their eyes met “That is, we're in the middle of a war, and the definition of treason can be a little loose in such times. While you're not technically a Placidan citizen, Commandant, you—would be well advised to avoid activities which oppose the conduct of war as the government has determined to conduct it”
He stepped out of the conference room. Rodall had left ahead of him.
“Don't take it too hard, young man,” said Colonel Wayne when he and Jolober were alone. “You mercenaries, you can do a lot of things the quick and easy way. It's different when you represent a government and need to consider political implications.”
“I'd never understood there were negative implications, Colonel,” Jolober said with the slow, careful enunciation which proved he was controlling himself rigidly, “in treating your employees fairly. Even the mercenary soldiers whom you employ.”
Wayne's jaw lifted. “I beg your pardon, Commandant,” he snapped. “I don't see anyone holding guns to the heads of poor innocents, forcing them to whore and gamble.”
He strode to the door, his back parade-ground straight At the door he turned precisely and delivered the broadside he had held to that point “Besides, Commandant—if the Dolls are as dangerous to health and welfare as you say, why are you living with one yourself?”
Wayne didn't expect an answer, but what he saw in Horace Jolober's eyes suggested that his words might bring a physical reaction that he hadn't counted on. He skipped into the hall with a startled sound, banging the door behind him.
The door connecting the conference room to the port commandant's personal suite opened softly. Jolober did not look around.
Vicki put her long, slim arms around him from behind. Jolober spun, then cut power to his fans and settled his chair firmly onto the floor. He and Vicki clung to one another, legless man and Doll whose ruddy skin and beauty marked her as inhuman.
They were both crying.
Someone from Jolober's staff would poke his head into the conference room shortly to ask if the meeting was over and if the commandant wanted nonemergency calls routed through again.
The meeting was certainly over… but Horace Jolober had an emergency of his own. He swallowed, keyed his implant, and said brusquely, “I'm out of action till I tell you different. Unless it's another Class A flap.”
The kid at the commo desk stuttered a “Yessir” that was a syllable longer than Jolober wanted to hear. Vicki straightened, wearing a bright smile beneath the tear streaks, but the big human gathered her to his chest again and brought up the power of his fans.
Together, like a man carrying a moderate-sized woman, the couple slid around the conference table to the door of the private suite. The chair's drive units were overbuilt because men are overbuilt, capable of putting out huge bursts of hysterical strength.
Drive fans and power packs don't have hormones, so Jolober had specified—and paid for—components that would handle double the hundred kilos of his own mass, the hundred kilos left after the tribarrel had chewed him. The only problem with carrying Vicki to bed was one of balance, and the Doll remained still in his arms.
Perfectly still, as she was perfect in all the things she did.
“I'm not trying to get rid of you, darling,” Jolober said as be grounded his chair.
“It's all right,” Vicki whispered. “I'll go now if you like. It's all right.”
She placed her fingertips on Jolober's shoulders and lifted herself by those fulcrums off his lap and onto the bed, her toes curled beneath her buttocks. A human gymnast could have done as well—but no better.
“What I want,” Jolober said forcefully as he lifted himself out of the saddle, using the chair's handgrips, “is to do my job. And when I've done it, I'll buy you from Red Ike for whatever price he chooses to ask.”
He swung himself to the bed. His arms had always been long—and strong. Now he knew that he must look like a gorilla when he got on or off his chair… and when the third woman he was with after the amputation giggled at him, he began to consider suicide as an alterative to sex.
Then he took the job on Placida and met Vicki.
Her tears had dried, so both of them could pretend they hadn't poured out moments before. She smiled shyly and touched the high collar of her dress, drawing her fingertip down a centimeter and opening the garment by that amount.
Vicki wasn't Jolober's ideal of beauty—wasn't what he'd thought his ideal was, at any rate. Big blondes, he would have said. A woman as tall as he was, with hair the color of bleached straw hanging to the middle of her back.
Vicki scarcely came up to the top of Jolober's breastbone when he was standing—at standing height in his chair—and her hair was a black fluff that was as short as a soldier would cut it to fit comfortably under a helmet. She looked buxom, but her breasts were fairly flat against her broad, powerfully muscled chest.
Jolober put his index finger against hers on the collar and slid down the touch-sensitive strip that opened the fabric. Vicki's body was without blemish or pubic hair. She was so firm that nothing sagged or flattened when her dress and the supports of memory plastic woven into it dropped away.
She shrugged her arms out of the straps and let the garment spill as a pool of sparkling shadow on the counterpane as she reached toward her lover.
Jolober, lying on his side, touched the collar of his uniform jacket.
“No need,” Vicki said blocking his hand with one of hers and opening his trouser fly with the other. “Come,” she added, rolling onto her back and drawing him toward her.
“But the—” Jolober murmured in surprise, leaning forward in obedience to her touch and demand. The metallic braid and medals on his stiff-fronted tunic had sharp corners to prod the Doll beneath him whether he wished or not.
“Come,” she repeated. “This time.”
Horace Jolober wasn't introspective enough to understand why his mistress wanted the rough punishment of his uniform. He simply obeyed.
Vicki toyed with his garments after they had finished and lay on the bed, their arms crossing. She had a trick of folding back her lower legs so that they vanished whenever she sat or reclined in the port commandant's presence.
Her fingers tweaked the back of Jolober's waistband and emerged with the hidden knife, the only weapon he carried.
“I'm at your mercy,” he said, smiling. He mimed as much of a hands-up posture as he could with his right elbow supporting his torso on the mattress. “Have your way with me.”
In Vicki's hand, the knife was a harmless cylinder of plastic—a weapon only to the extent mat the butt of the short tube could harden a punch. The knife was of memory plastic whose normal state was a harmless block. No one who took it away from Jolober in a struggle would find it of any use as a weapon.
Only when squeezed after being cued by the pore pattern of Horace Jolober's right hand would it—
The plastic cylinder shrank in Vicki's hand, sprouting a double-edged 15cm blade.
“Via!” swore Jolober. Reflex betrayed him into thinking that he had legs. He jerked upright and started to topple off the bed because the weight of his calves and feet wasn't there to balance the motion.
Vicki caught him with both arms and drew him to her. The blade collapsed into the handle when she dropped it, so that it bounced as a harmless cylinder on the counterpane between them.
“My love, I'm sorry,” the Doll blurted fearfully. “I didn't mean—”
“No, no,” Jolober said, settled now on his thighs and buttocks so that he could hug Vicki fiercely. His eyes peered secretively over her shoulders, searching for the knife that had startled him so badly. “I was surprised that it… How did you get the blade to open, dearest? It's fine, it's nothing you did wrong, but I didn't expect that, is all.”
They swung apart The mattress was a firm one, but still a bad surface for this kind of conversation. The bedclothes rumpled beneath Jolober's heavy body and almost concealed the knife in a fold of cloth. He found it, raised it with his fingertips, and handed it to Vicki. “Please do that again,” he said calmly. “Extend the blade.”
Sweat was evaporating from the base of Jolober's spine, where the impermeable knife usually covered the skin.
Vicki took the weapon. She was so doubtful that her face showed no expression at all. Her fingers, short but perfectly formed, gripped the baton as if it were a knife hilt— and it became one. The blade formed with avalanche swiftness, darkly translucent and patterned with veins of stress. The plastic would not take a wire edge, but it could carve a roast or, with Jolober's strength behind it, ram twenty millimeters deep into hardwood.
