by Glenn Smith
Chapter 51
Dylan had nursed his second double scotch for as long as he could, but no sooner had he drained the last of it when the sleazebag bartender poured him his third. He took his time with that one as well. He wasn’t a drinker and the last thing he wanted to do was get drunk, especially in this part of town, but after what he’d seen done to Nikki—was that even her real name, he wondered—he needed something to calm his nerves... or his temper... or whatever the hell it was that still had him feeling so antsy. Even now, a good half hour later, it still disturbed him... which he supposed was actually a good thing. What would it have said about him if it hadn’t disturbed him? And what did that say about the rest of the clientele in the place? Yeah, there were a lot of seriously sick people in the world.
He drained his glass and the bartender started refilling it again.
“I hope you don’t expect me to pay for all these drinks I didn’t order,” Dylan said as the bartender finished pouring.
“They’re on the house,” the man told him. “Consider it my apology for rattling your cage so hard with Nikki. This is my place and I don’t wanna see you leave it later with bad memories. Gotta keep the customers happy so they come back.”
On the house? In this place? Dylan didn’t believe for a second that that man would ever serve free drinks to anyone. Not unless he had a lot more to gain by it than just one more regular customer. So why was he doing it? Maybe the way Dylan had reacted to Nikki’s abuse had made the sleazebag think he was a cop. Maybe the drinks were meant to bribe him into not pushing to have the place shut down. Maybe that was why he’d told him his so-called big secret—that Nikki was, in reality, a nineteen year old woman who only looked like a teenage kid. Maybe she really was an underage teenager and he’d just been trying to protect himself and his business.
That poor girl. How could she have let that sick bastard do that to her, regardless of how old she really was? For that matter, how could he have done it to her? How could any human being so thoroughly and savagely violate and degrade another human being? It was just so... so... He didn’t even have the words.
He picked up his drink—What was it? His fourth?—but before he could even bring it to his lips all the torches suddenly dimmed, then went out completely, plunging the entire place into what would have been total darkness were it not for the small candles that flickered within the gourd-shaped, frosted-glass containers in the booths around the room’s perimeter. Without even thinking, Dylan quickly set his drink back down on the bar and slid off of his stool, moved a few meters away from the bar, and crouched low, expecting to be jumped from all sides. A sudden bright flash and a loud bang followed in the middle of the room, as though someone had set off a small explosive, startling him. Then a thick cloud of smoke billowed up through an opening in the middle of the room’s central platform and dissipated against the ceiling, illuminated briefly from below. Finally the near total darkness returned, but the attack that Dylan had thought was coming never did.
Four dim, yellowed spotlights, one near each corner of the ceiling, shone down onto that circular platform in the middle of the room, which was now quite obviously a stage. Once again, the crowd began to applaud and cheer, whistling and cat-calling as a pair of shapely, dark-haired young women, one of them an obvious human-Naku half-breed, were slowly raised to the stage from deep within it by the very floor upon which they were sitting. Like the four women who were chained to the corners of the room, they were clothed only in tattered rags and threadbare tunics of sackcloth that did very little to hide their feminine attributes. Each of them wore a slave collar around her neck and was chained by one ankle to a single thick iron ring that appeared to be permanently imbedded into the center of the stage floor.
Dylan relaxed and stood straight—all the booze must have been making him paranoid, he decided—then returned to his stool, shaking his head in disbelief. What now? How much worse could this place possibly get? The applause tapered off as prerecorded music began filling the place. It started low, haunting, sounding a lot like something from Earth’s middle-eastern region, but as the women performed their sinuous dance, slowly rising to their feet like cobras emerging from a basket that had just been opened, it grew into something louder, heavier, and much darker in its emotion—something almost demonic in its melody.
Enough was enough, Dylan decided. He’d come into the district to find himself a pilot and a ship. It was time he got to it. He picked up his drink and took one last sip... and nearly choked on whatever it was he’d just poured into his mouth. Certainly not the same scotch he’d been drinking. He glared briefly at the bartender, who only shrugged his shoulders in response, and then glanced around him as he fought to suppress the overwhelming need to cough, hoping that no one had seen him falter. Showing any sign of weakness in a place like this could lead to unfortunate events. Fortunately, pretty much everyone’s attention was focused on the stage. He glimpsed a bearded man sitting alone in a booth in a particularly dark corner of the room, slowly nursing a drink of his own. A small object on the left breast of his jacket flashed with reflected light each time he moved. Dylan couldn’t tell for sure in the dark at this distance, but he thought it might be a private yachtsman’s insignia pin. Anyway, that little flash of light had been what caught his attention. Figuring that man was as good a place to start as any, he got up and started walking over there, drink in hand.
“Hey,” came a voice from behind him, barely audible over the music. “You in the jeans and jacket.”
Dylan stopped and looked back over his shoulder toward the bar. The voice belonged to an attractive young woman with long, heavily teased blond hair who was leaning with her back against the bar, smiling at him very seductively. She was wearing a lot of shiny gold and silver jewelry—multiple earrings, two or three necklaces, several bracelets and large rings bearing a variety of colorful stones—and her attire—a black leather mini-skirt that sat low on her hips and was slit to the waistband on both sides, and a sheer, half-length red blouse that was open in front and held in place over her breasts by just a few narrow gold chains—left little doubt as to what her occupation was.
“Me?” Dylan asked, pretending that he hadn’t noticed her enticing appearance.
“Yeah, you,” she replied.
“What do you want?” he asked her impatiently, hoping to put her off.
But it didn’t work. Instead, she walked right up to him, touched her long, polished nails to his chest, and gazed longingly at him through eyes like pools of liquid sapphire. “Looking for some company?” she inquired, her melodic voice filled with the promise to please him in any way that he might desire. To say that her makeup was excessive, which Dylan had never cared for on any woman, would have been a gross understatement. Particularly around her eyes, where a wide, deep red band with black shadowing and gold highlights swept outward and upward like wings from the bridge of her nose to her temples. He’d always preferred a more natural look with light touches of makeup that enhanced rather than disguised, but in this case, rather than being put off by it, he found it oddly alluring. And her scent was intoxicatingly sensual.
Resisting her spell, Dylan gently pushed her hand away from his chest and told her, “No, I’m not.” He started to turn away from her, but she reached out and grasped his free hand, guided it to her smooth hip, and then pushed it slowly up under the back of her skirt and held it against her bare bottom.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Dylan gently pulled his hand free and answered, “Very sure.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
Dylan gazed at her for a moment—Was there more to her than he realized—then asked her, “What makes you think I’m looking for anything?”
“I can tell,” she told him confidently. “You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The look that says you don’t belong here,” she answered plainly. “The look that tells me you’re only here because you have to be—beca
use you need something, and that the only kind of place where you might find whatever it is you need is a place like this.”
She was nothing if not perceptive. “Oh, that look.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling in victory, “that look.”
“All right. So maybe I am looking for something,” he admitted.
“And so I repeat... What are you looking for?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Maybe I can help you find it.”
He doubted that, but of course he couldn’t know that for sure. Maybe she was connected somehow. Maybe she actually could help him find it. “Transportation.”
She grinned lustfully. “You can ride me for the right price.”
Dylan sighed. So much for that. “Transportation into space.” he clarified, though why he even bothered he didn’t really know.
“Anywhere you want to go, if you can afford the price of the ticket,” she fired back. “My launch pad is right upstairs.”
Despite the antipathy he’d always felt for her profession—not the men and women who pursued it, but the profession itself—seeing it as he did as self-degrading and an enormous waste of potential, he nonetheless found himself appreciating the cheerful sense of humor with which she approached it, misguided as it was. “No, thank you,” he told her. Once more he started to walk away, and once more she grabbed his hand and pulled him back. “I said...”
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere else.”
“I mean right now,” she clarified. “This minute.”
Dylan pointed toward the bearded man in the corner. “To talk to him, if that’s all right with you.”
“You don’t have to get so sarcastic about it,” she scolded. “I’m just trying to save you a bunch of trouble.”
“Oh, really? And just what kind of trouble are you trying to save me from?”
“Trouble of the worst kind, my friend,” she replied. “That guy’s a police officer. Say the wrong thing to him in a place like this and the only place he’ll take you to is the lockup.”
Dylan gazed over at the man once more and, despite the darkness, saw him in a whole new light. All the minute little indicators were there—sitting with his back to a solid wall, even at the cost of not being able to see the entertainment, the long slow nursing of a single, small drink, the almost constant surveillance of his surroundings, the avoidance of eye contact with anyone—and it only took a moment for Dylan to decide that the socialator was telling him the truth. How could he possibly have missed it? The scotch. That had to be it. He’d drank too much and it was affecting his perception and judgment. He locked eyes with the woman—she really did have very beautiful blue eyes—and said, “Thank you.” After all, trouble with the law was the last thing he needed right now.
“You’re welcome.”
“Tell you what,” he said, gesturing toward a booth that had just been vacated as he started to lead her in that direction. “You seem to know what’s going on around here, and I appreciate what you just did for me. If I offered to pay you, could you tell me who I should talk to?”
“About what?” she asked as she sat down.
He set his drink down on the table and sat directly across from her. “About a private pilot with his or her own ship who might be willing to take me into deep space.”
“You mean... you really are looking for transportation?”
“Yes, I really am,” he confirmed, nodding and immediately regretting having done so so quickly. Then, as the brief spark of nausea that followed passed, he asked, “Can you help me?”
“Yeah, but it’ll cost you.”
“I said I’d pay you for the information.”
“It’s not the information that’ll cost you,” she told him. “It’s the transportation itself.”
“Well of course I expect to pay for that.”
“A lot.”
Dylan hesitated for a moment. He could get money. If he needed to, he could get a lot of money. But his pockets were by no means bottomless. “How much is a lot?” he finally asked.
“That depends where you’re going,” she answered.
That much was obvious. He should have known she wouldn’t quote a price before he told her where he needed to go. The booze was really affecting him. He needed to go back to his hotel room and sleep it off.
“So? Where are you going?” she asked when he didn’t say anything.
“That’s none of your concern. How much do you want to tell me who to talk to?”
“What, are you deaf or something?” she asked him impatiently. “I already told you, the information won’t cost you anything. You’re already talking to the right person. My associates and I can provide you with transportation to just about anywhere you want to go. What I need to know before I can tell you how much is where that anywhere is.”
Dylan sighed, then told her simply, “Deep space.”
For a moment she just stared at him as though she were waiting for him to say something more. Then, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to, she asked, “That’s it? Nothing more? Just ‘deep space?’”
“That’s right,” Dylan confirmed. “Deep space... and no questions asked.”
She snickered. “Of course not. But I’m warning you right now that that won’t be cheap.” Dylan only gazed at her, and when enough silence had passed between them, she said, “All right. It’s your money. Come with me.” She stood up and started walking toward the side exit.
“Where are we going?” Dylan asked her without moving.
She stopped and looked back at him. “Come on.”
As soon as he started to move she turned and continued on her way.
As he followed her across the room, he glanced over at the stage and did a double-take. The dancers had thrown off their meager coverings and were performing in the nude, facing in opposite directions and rubbing glistening oils over their bodies as the stage slowly rotated. The enthralled crowd watched in trance-like silence, some seemingly mirroring the dancers, swaying back and forth in their chairs in time to the hypnotic melody, which had softened considerably but was beginning to grow more intense once again as the young women’s graceful, provocative gyrations brought them closer and closer together. Their bare bottoms brushed lightly against one another, just briefly at first, and then came together. They turned and faced one another and then slowly melted into each other’s arms, rubbing breasts against breasts, torso against torso, pelvis against pelvis, kissing and caressing, fondling and petting as they danced. Less likely staged than not, their apparent lust for one another seemed to grow more fervent with each passing moment, and before long they had lowered themselves gently to the floor, their arms and legs lasciviously entwined.
Dylan could hardly believe what he was seeing, but was even more surprised by what he was feeling. Consciously, the display disgusted him. Not because two women were showing such passionate sexual affection for one another, but because they were doing so in public, in front of so many gawkers. But on a more primitive, animalistic level, he was finding it oddly arousing at the same time, especially because they were doing it in public, and that disturbed him almost as much as the abuse and humiliation poor Nikki had endured over the bar had. While he wasn’t what some might consider to be a particularly religious person, he did have his moral standards and beliefs, and the events he was witnessing in this place were as contrary to them as anything ever could be. Why then hadn’t he just turned around and left as soon as he walked in?
A question for another time. He had a mission to complete and, hopefully, had just found a way to go about completing it. He turned his back on the stage, set his glass on the bar as he walked by, and then left through the side door into the alley, where he found the woman waiting for him. Glad to finally be out of that place—he’d have to remember never to visit The Devil’s Dungeon again—he followed her around the corner to the back of the building and up a flight of stairs, stealing one quick glimpse up her skirt
to see if she was wearing anything underneath it, which it turned out she was. Not much of anything, but something. At the top of the stairs they came to an apartment door, which she keyed open, and went inside.
“Geoff?” she called as she pulled off her ankle-boots. She set them aside and then walked through the living room toward the hallway directly ahead, fumbling with the chains that held her blouse in place.
A fairly muscular young man with close-cropped light brown hair and a darker brown goatee, dressed in black jeans and a simple tan tee shirt, emerged from a room to Dylan’s right, empty-handed, and glanced at the woman as she walked away, slipping off her blouse. Then he approached Dylan and looked him up and down, giving him the once-over. Dylan stared after the woman until she disappeared into a room off the hall, then turned his eyes on the young man.
“You want me to show him to the back room, Sis?” the man hollered.
“No,” she answered. “He’s not here for that.”
“Then why is he here?”
“Have a seat in the living room, Geoff. I’ll be right out.”
Geoff pointed to a pair of matching blue easy chairs sitting almost side-by-side against the nearest wall and waited for Dylan to sit down first. Dylan obliged him, sitting in the nearest of the two—the one nearest to the door. Geoff sat in its twin, a couple of meters to Dylan’s right, then asked, “So why are you here?”
“He’s looking for a private transport,” the woman answered as she walked back into the living room, tying off her mid-length white satin bathrobe as she turned toward the couch sitting against the opposite wall.
“Really?” Geoff asked, suddenly interested. “Where to?”
“Deep space,” she replied as she sat down on the couch’s arm, angled forward and resting her back against the wall, then raised her forward-most leg just enough to cause her robe to fall open and bare her thigh. It might have been purely accidental, but then again it might not have been. Either way, it certainly caught Dylan’s attention.
“Deep space?” Geoff was asking. “That’s it? Just deep space?”
