Uranus

by Ben Bova

  And she was screaming, sobbing, “Yes! Please! Please!”

  Her body pulsed and writhed with agony that was exhilarating, overpowering, stretching her consciousness and her bodily sensations beyond endurance.

  Everything went dark. She thought she must be sleeping, but this was much deeper. She could feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. Only darkness and a throbbing pain deep inside her.

  She awoke, alone and naked in a bare little room. A cell. A prison. She propped herself on one elbow. Nothing to see except cold gray walls.

  She heard a sound. The soft fall of a naked foot. All around her a cluster of men came into focus, naked, erect, intent. And Alicia Polanyi stood among them, also naked and smiling mirthlessly down at Raven.

  “Welcome to my world, Raven,” Polanyi said, with a cheerless smile.

  The men crowded around her, seized her arms and legs and lifted her off the cold bare floor. One of them stepped between her outstretched legs, grinning wickedly. “I’m first,” he said, grinning down at her naked, struggling body. “But I won’t be the last.” The other men laughed and gripped Raven tighter.

  An animal roar shattered the gray-walled cell. The locked door crashed to the floor. The men grasping Raven dropped her painfully onto the cement floor as a huge apparition took form in their midst.

  “Quincy,” Raven whimpered.

  Another man’s form coalesced between Raven and O’Donnell. “It’s not your turn yet,” said Evan Waxman. Unlike the others, Waxman was wearing a multicolored floor-length robe that shimmered with his every motion.

  O’Donnell stared at him. “You promised me,” he growled.

  Waxman smiled knowingly. “Not just yet, Quincy. We’re not finished having our fun with her.”

  For an eternally long moment, O’Donnell stood before Waxman, blinking uncertainly, his hands balled into fists, his hairy chest heaving. Then he glanced down at Raven, lying helpless and naked on the cold bare floor.

  “You’re finished!” O’Donnell bellowed. And he swung a backhand swat at Waxman that sent him staggering to the floor.

  The other men scattered and disappeared. O’Donnell stepped down and lifted Raven gently in his arms, then turned and started for the open doorway. Beyond the door was light, so bright it hurt Raven’s eyes.

  Raven heard a sharp zing and felt O’Donnell shudder, but the giant of a man lumbered through the door and staggered out into the brightness.

  * * *

  The light hurt Raven’s eyes. She squeezed them shut as Quincy carried her in a staggering trot along the habitat’s long, curving passageway. She could hear him puffing, panting, feel his hairy chest heaving while his big meaty hands held her naked body close to his.

  Raven didn’t know if anyone else was in the passageway. She kept her eyes shut tight against the painful overhead lights. She heard no voices, no footsteps, sensed the presence of no one except Quincy’s massive body lumbering along the passageway.

  She felt his chest rising and falling as he puffed along, felt the warmth of his body, the sheen of his sweat.

  Where are you taking me? she asked silently, too exhausted and drained to speak aloud.

  At last she sensed him slowing down. She cracked her eyelids open enough to see the double-doored entrance of the habitat’s hospital. Quincy banged a bare foot against one of the doors and it swung open.

  Raven closed her eyes again but she heard voices, male and female:

  “Who the hell—”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She gave up her fragile grip on consciousness and let herself slide into oblivion.

  CONFRONTATION

  Quincy O’Donnell watched the medics take Raven’s naked form from his arms and wheel past him, into the hospital’s main corridor.

  Suddenly he realized with a shock that he was standing in the hospital lobby totally naked. The medical personnel and waiting patients were staring at him. He didn’t know what to do, where to go.

  One of the nurses—a short, dark-skinned Asian—came to him, bearing a full-length hospital gown.

  “It’s disposable,” she said in a near whisper to Quincy as she stood on tiptoes to spread it over his broad shoulders. “Just flush it down a waste chute when you’re finished with it.”

  Red-faced with embarrassment, Quincy muttered his thanks as he struggled into the gown. It barely reached his mid-thighs and he worried that it would rip down the back, but he felt unutterably grateful for it.

  He marched himself, barefoot, back through the passageways toward his quarters. People passed by him, staring, some grinning, but one look at the grim expression on his face kept them from saying anything.

  He reached his apartment finally and sat heavily on his unmade bed. Waxman, he thought. He did this to Raven. Promised me she and I would be together, and when I got there she was naked and shivering while Waxman and all those other men looked down and pawed at her.

  He saw again Waxman’s sadistic, gloating face in his mind’s eye. His fists clenching automatically, Quincy told himself, “I’ll have to see him.”

  He lay back on his unmade bed and tried to sleep. But the visions of Raven in that cold room, naked, helpless, while Waxman gloated over her, filled his mind whenever he tried to close his eyes.

  Quincy was surprised when he awoke. Turning on the bed, he saw that it was a few minutes past 6:00 A.M. Very deliberately, he got to his feet, showered, shaved, dressed in a work uniform, threw the hospital gown down the disposal chute, and headed for Waxman’s office. He passed two different cafeterias on his way there, but didn’t have the faintest urge to eat anything.

  Waxman’s office was locked when he reached it. Quincy decided to wait out in the passageway. He stood there like a Praetorian guard until Alicia Polanyi showed up, blinked with surprise, then let him into the outer office.

  “You want to see Mr. Waxman?” she asked, curiosity knitting her lean face. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No,” said Quincy as he settled himself in one of the chairs along the office’s wall. “I’ll wait for him.”

  “Shouldn’t you be out with your construction team?”

  “They’re robots. They’re already programmed. I need to see Mr. Waxman.”

  At that moment the door to the passageway outside slid open and Waxman stepped in. He stiffened with surprise as Quincy rose from his chair like a looming thundercloud.

  “O’Donnell,” Waxman said stiffly. “I should have expected this.” Without even a glance at Alicia, Waxman strode to the door to his private office, which slid open automatically as he told Quincy, “Come on in.”

  Quincy followed Waxman through the doorway and firmly shut the door as Waxman slid into his desk chair.

  “So what do you want?” Waxman asked, looking up at Quincy. “Disappointed that you didn’t get your chance with her? That can be—”

  Quincy planted his massive fists on Waxman’s desk and leaned over until he was nose-to-nose with the man.

  “You leave her alone,” he rumbled.

  “Raven? She’s a whore, for god’s sake. You can’t—”

  Grasping the front of Waxman’s shirt and lifting him up from his chair, Quincy repeated, “Leave her alone.”

  Waxman grasped Quincy’s fist in both his hands, but couldn’t budge them from his shirt front.

  “You try to touch her again,” Quincy told him, “and I’ll kill you. I’ll break your face and crush your ribs and dance on your dead bones. Understand me?”

  Waxman sputtered, swallowed hard, and finally managed to squeak, “I understand you.”

  Quincy released him. Waxman collapsed back into his sumptuous dark chair.

  “Good,” said Quincy. Then he turned and left the office.

  A moment later Alicia Polanyi appeared at the doorway, distressed. “Are you all right?”

  Waxman was breathing heavily, his eyes on the doorway that Quincy had gone through.

&nb
sp; After a few moments, he nodded shakily. “Yes. All right. No damage done.” He sat up more erectly, drummed his fingers on his desktop, then said, “Get the chief of the robotics department on the phone for me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Polanyi went back to the outer office, sliding the door shut behind her.

  Threaten me, will he? Waxman seethed inwardly. The big Irish idiot. We’ll see who lives and who dies.

  AWAKENING

  Far, far in the distance she heard voices. Women, for the most part, talking about—her, Raven felt sure, but she couldn’t quite make out the words they were using. Too soft, too hushed, too guarded.

  She sank back into the oblivion of unconsciousness, all sensation gone, all memories nothing more than a faint, distant picture of Vesuvius hulking against the blue Neapolitan sky. After a while the volcano shifted, transformed into the hulking form of Quincy O’Donnell, grim and silent.

  Time lost all meaning. Raven floated on nothingness as Quincy’s bulky form dissipated, dissolved into blank nothingness.

  “Can you hear me?”

  The voice sounded familiar, somehow.

  “Raven, please open your eyes. It’s time for you to wake up.”

  Alicia? Raven wondered.

  It took an effort of will as she tried to force her eyelids open.

  Alicia Polanyi was bending over her, her cold blue eyes staring at Raven, her cadaverous face grave, utterly serious.

  “Wake up, Raven,” she said softly, almost begging. “Please wake up.”

  Raven blinked twice, three times.

  “I’m awake,” she croaked. Her throat felt sandy dry, scratchy.

  Alicia’s gaunt face broke into a thin smile. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God.”

  Raven realized she was lying in a hospital bed. The ceiling, the walls were soft white. The room was narrow, cramped; she thought she could almost touch both walls without moving from the bed by stretching out her arms. Machines somewhere were chugging and beeping. She felt weak, fragile.

  “I was…”

  Alicia placed a finger gently on Raven’s lips. “Don’t try to talk. Rest. Sleep. You’re all right now.”

  But Raven tried to push herself up to a sitting position. And failed. She had no strength. She lay back on the hospital pillow and stared at Alicia.

  “What happened?” she mumbled. “How did I get here?”

  Alicia’s thin lips almost smiled again. “Quincy O’Donnell brought you here. With a tranquilizer dart embedded in his back, he carried you in his arms from Evan’s little playroom to the hospital.”

  “Playroom?” Raven asked.

  “You’re all right now,” Alicia said. “The Rust has been flushed out of your system. The medics got to you in time, thanks to your big boyfriend.”

  “Quincy’s not…” Raven couldn’t finish the sentence. She knew whichever way she said it would be wrong.

  “You sleep now,” Alicia Polanyi said gently, getting to her feet. “The medical staff will take care of you.”

  A sudden alarm made Raven’s body tense. “Evan! He did this to me.”

  With a nod, Alicia agreed, “Just as he did to me, more than a year ago. But I didn’t have a giant of a man to save me.”

  “Quincy.”

  “He pulled you out of Evan’s little playroom and brought you here. He saved your life.”

  “Quincy,” Raven repeated, more softly as sleep closed her eyes.

  * * *

  When she awoke again the Reverend Kyle Umber was standing beside her bed, in his customary chaste white suit, staring down at her with sorrowful eyes.

  “Good morning,” he said softly.

  For the first time, Raven noticed there was a view screen on the wall of her room. It showed an image of Uranus: blue-gray, serene, bland.

  Surprised, Raven mumbled, “Reverend Umber.”

  “How do you feel?” Umber asked.

  Raven realized that she felt strong, sound. As she pulled herself up to a sitting position she saw that she was wearing a disposable hospital gown, as pure white as Umber’s suit. The bed rose behind her, almost noiselessly.

  “I’m all right … I think.”

  “You had a close call. The percentage of Rust in your blood was very high.”

  “Evan did that to me,” she snapped.

  Umber shook his head. “When I heard that you were here in the hospital I immediately asked Evan what he knew about it. He told me he’d been in an all-night meeting with the maintenance staff. There’s been an accident on the construction of Haven II—”

  “He was gang-banging me!” Raven cried.

  Umber shook his head sadly. “Seven members of the maintenance division affirmed that they were in conference with Evan all that night.”

  “They’re lying!”

  With a helpless shrug, Umber said, “How can we prove that? It’s your word against theirs.”

  The word of a whore against the manager of this entire habitat, Raven thought.

  COST

  “He’s evil,” Raven whispered. “Evan’s a monster.”

  Reverend Umber nodded sadly. “He’s drunk with power. I’ve tried to change him, bring him to God’s grace, but…” He shook his head. “I’ve had no success with him. Not yet.”

  “I’ll kill him,” she hissed.

  Umber’s face went white with alarm. “No!” he barked. “Evil is not the answer.”

  “It wouldn’t be evil,” Raven insisted. “It would be justice. God’s justice.”

  For a long silent moment Umber looked down upon Raven sadly. “Don’t try to assume the powers of God. That way lies death and damnation.”

  Raven started to reply, but held her tongue. The reverend doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how truly evil Evan is. In her mind she saw again Waxman’s cold smile as the men pawed and penetrated her.

  At last she said, “I know you’re right, Reverend. But it’s hard to forgive.”

  “Christ forgave those who crucified him. From the Cross, bleeding and dying, he forgave them all.”

  Raven nodded, but inwardly she thought, I’m not Jesus Christ. I’m not God.

  * * *

  After a few more attempts to comfort her, Umber left her room, head bowed unhappily. A nurse came in with a luncheon tray. And an announcement. “Good news, Ms. Marchesi. You passed all the diagnostic tests. You’ll be free to leave this afternoon, after your physician sees you and signs off on your case.”

  And go where? Raven asked herself.

  She was finishing the last morsel of soyburger on her tray when Evan Waxman stepped through the doorway of her narrow room.

  Smiling brightly at her, Waxman said, “They tell me you’ll be able to return to work tomorrow.”

  Raven glared at him.

  Stepping to the side of her bed, Waxman lowered his voice and continued, “Don’t be sullen. You tried to go around me and paid the penalty for that. Let’s allow bygones to be bygones.”

  “Bygones?” Raven shouted. “You call what you did to me ‘bygones’?”

  Waxman shook his head sadly. “Raven, my dear, nothing happened to you. You weren’t raped. You weren’t even molested.”

  “The hell I wasn’t!”

  His smile only slightly thinner, Waxman explained, “That’s the beauty of Rust, my dear. That’s why it’s in such demand. It affects the mind, not the body. It builds elaborate fantasies inside your brain.”

  Raven glared at him, unbelieving.

  Waxman sat himself on the edge of her bed. “Think, Raven. You’ve been thoroughly examined by this hospital’s very meticulous machinery. And probed by the medical staff. They haven’t found you injured in any way; no scars, not even any bruises. Perfectly sound of limb and body.”

  “I was gang-raped,” Raven snarled. “While you watched. And smiled. And laughed.”

  “All in your imagination, my dear. All in your mind. The Rust produced a fantasy for you.”

  “For you, Evan.”

  His smi
le thinning somewhat, Waxman admitted, “Well, yes, I produced the scenario for your dramatics. But it all happened in your mind, not your body.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Spreading his hands innocently, Waxman said, “Raven, I wouldn’t hurt you. Not really. I’m rather fond of you, actually.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  “Perhaps,” he admitted carelessly. “But the only scars you’re carrying as a result of our little endeavor are in your mind, not your body.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. I promise you. The hospital staff, the diagnostic systems that examined you from top to toe, they all show that you are physically unharmed.”

  “Physically,” Raven echoed.

  Getting to his feet once more, Waxman said, “The brain, Raven. That’s the most important sexual organ of all. And thanks to Rust, we can manipulate it virtually any way we like.”

  Glowering at him, Raven muttered, “You’re a monster, Evan.”

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “But if you want to survive here, you’ll do as I tell you.”

  Raven said nothing, although she was telling herself, Silence means assent. Let him think that. Do what he wants. For now.

  Waxman went as far as the door before turning and telling Raven, “Oh, yes, that lumbering oaf O’Donnell. He was killed two days ago. An accident on the job he was supervising outside on Haven II’s construction. Damned fool misprogrammed one of the robots he was managing and it tore his head off, helmet and all.”

  ALLIANCE

  Raven sat on the bed, stunned. Quincy is dead? The question reverberated in her mind. Dead? Killed? Because he helped me. It’s my fault. I killed him.

  She bent over and cried until no more tears were left.

  Eventually, a pair of doctors came into her room—one male and one female—and gave her a peremptory examination. Vision, reflexes, a quick check of her innards with a handheld scanner.