by Mike Resnick
By the time he finished work the third day he was feeling so isolated and unhappy that he didn't even stop by the public rooms hoping for a glimpse of her, but instead went straight to his suite, determined to find some way to utilize his skeleton card so that she couldn't break the computer connection. He stalked into the bathroom, spent half an hour in the sauna trying to relax so that his loneliness and misery weren't quite so broadly displayed on his face, and finally showered, dressed, and returned to the parlor, still not quite sure what to do with the skeleton card but determined to make some attempt, however futile, to speak to the Madonna once again.
“Hi, Harry,” said a soft, feminine voice coming from the bedroom. “I was starting to wonder if you were ever coming out of that damned steambath.”
Startled, he walked to the doorway and saw Suma, wearing the sheerest and flimsiest of negligees, lying on his bed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
She flashed him a sultry smile. “Charity work. The Madonna thinks you're feeling a little lonely, so here I am to the rescue.”
“Well, you can just go right back!” he snapped.
Suma looked puzzled, and a little irritated.
“Nobody's ever turned me down before, Harry.”
“View it as a learning experience.”
“What makes her so special?” demanded Suma.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” replied Redwine.
“Then you're the only person aboard the Comet who doesn't!” she shot back. “Everybody knows you were sleeping with the Madonna, and everyone's seen you moping around after she threw you out.”
“She didn't throw me out,” lied Redwine, wondering just how foolish he had appeared during the past few days.
“Why did you even want to get in?” asked Suma, honestly curious.
“You wouldn't understand.”
“I certainly don't.” She stood up and turned slowly around. “Is she as pretty as this?” she asked, striking a pose that accentuated the fullness of her breasts and the strikingly smooth curve of her hips.
“No,” he said honestly. “She isn't.”
“Well, then?” she asked.
“That's just not very important.”
“Maybe you think she's better in bed?”
Redwine shrugged. “I hadn't thought about it.”
“Well, she's not,” said Suma defensively. “There are things I can do that she's never even heard of.”
“I don't doubt it,” replied Redwine. “So what?”
“So why is she the only one on the whole ship that you want?”
“I have a feeling that it wouldn't make any sense to you.”
“Try me,” she said, smiling invitingly and looking inordinately pleased with her double entendre.
“I'd rather not.” He paused. “Why the hell do you care?” he asked her. “You don't even like me.”
“Call it professional pride. No one's ever refused me before, and no one has preferred the Madonna to me.”
“Well, it's a cross you'll just have to bear.”
A look of fury flashed across her face, and then, suddenly, she was smiling again. “You're presenting me with a challenge I can't resist, Harry.”
“Force yourself.”
She slipped out of her negligee and lay back down on the bed, undulating sensuously.
“You force me, Harry,” she grinned.
“Forget it,” he said, trying to sound uninterested while wondering if he had ever seen such a perfect body.
“You don't know what you're missing, Harry,” she whispered, running her tongue over her moist lips. “Would you like me to tell you?”
“What I'd like is for you to leave,” he said, knowing that he should walk out of the suite, or at least go back to the parlor, but unable to take his eyes off of her.
“She's never coming back. You'd better take what you can get.” She turned onto her belly and stretched languorously. She noticed him staring at her, and arched her back and raised her buttocks provocatively.
“Do you really want to be faithful to a whore who doesn't want any part of you?”
“She told you that?” demanded Redwine.
Suma smiled like a kitten. “I want a part of you, Harry. Want me to show you which part?”
“What exactly did she tell you?”
“That as soon as I had a couple of spare hours I should stop by here.” She paused. “That was almost two days ago, Harry. You really don't know how generous she's being to you. I don't have many spare hours.”
“She knew I'd tell you to leave,” said Redwine.
“But I don't have to,” replied Suma, turning onto her back again. “Just say the word and Sesame will open so wide you can see all the way through to next month.”
Suddenly Redwine felt himself getting mad. “She knew I'd tell you to leave!” he repeated. “That's the only reason you're here.”
“I've got about twenty other reasons,” purred Suma. “Would you like me to whisper them all in your ear?”
“She counted on it!” he continued, feeling a growing sense of outrage building within him. “Well, screw her!”
“Oh, no, Harry,” said Suma. “Screw me.”
“'You bet I will!” he said savagely. “This is supposed to be a whorehouse, isn't it?”
He began unfastening his tunic, but Suma was at his side an instant later, pulling his hand away.
“Let me do it,” she whispered. “Your job is just to relax and let me do all the work.”
“Fine,” he aid. “But let me do one thing first.”
“Will I like it?” she asked with a sly smile.
“I will,” he replied, walking into the parlor. He got our his skeleton card and re-activated the security system. “I hope to hell you're watching!” he muttered under his breath, too softly for Suma to hear.
Then he returned to the bedroom.
“I'm all yours,” he said, still staring at the computer in the next room. “I've got just one request.”
“You just name it, Harry,” she said, starting to unfasten his tunic and kissing each new section of his torso as it was revealed.
“I don't want you just to be good,” he said savagely.
“I want you to be great! You got that?”
“Oh, I will be, Harry,” she promised him. “I'll be the best you ever had, the best you ever dreamed of having.”
“I want this to be memorable, damn it!” he continued.
He walked over to the bed and ripped the satin covers off, throwing them into a corner of the room. “And leave the goddamned lights on!”
“That's the spirit, Harry,” she grinned. “I'll show you things you never thought you'd see.”
And a moment later, after she had finished undressing him, she pulled him down onto the bed and began keeping her promise. Not a single orifice went unused, not a position remained unattempted, not a variation went untried, and with surprising suddenness Redwine felt his anger and outrage seep away from him, to be replaced by a hitherto unsuspected animal lust.
As he lay on the bed, alternately watching Suma and her mirrored reflection on the ceiling going to work with a vengeance, he found himself wondering how she could throw herself into her sexual encounters like this day in and day out. And even as his body responded to her kisses and caresses, her natural inclinations and her unnatural ones, a section of his mind seemed to hover dispassionately above their intertwining bodies, coldly surveying the situation, cataloging what was happening for the ease of his future recollection.
It puzzled and disturbed him. He had never found himself doing this with the Madonna. He couldn't even remember who did what to whom, let alone what order they did it in.
He forced himself to concentrate on the sensations he was feeling again. Nothing in his experience had ever felt this strange and unique and wickedly exciting—not with the Madonna, not with his ex-wife, not with any of the other women he had known. If there was a sexual heaven, t
his had to be it. There was no greater pleasure to be had anywhere in the universe, and if there was, the human body wouldn't stand it: it would go stark raving mad.
But he didn't feel stark raving mad, or anything like it. He felt aloof, withdrawn—alone. He was so stunned by the realization that he momentarily lost his concentration on what Suma was doing to him.
She noticed—given where he was and where she was, she couldn't help but notice—and after a quick glance at him to make sure he wasn't in the throes of a sudden coronary, she went back to her ministrations with renewed vigor. As she did so, he tried to cope with the discovery that since his first night with the Madonna he hadn't felt the emptiness that had become second nature to him.
He knew with a grim certainty that it wasn't solely the sex he had had with her that he cherished. Certainly those encounters, gratifying and fulfilling as they were, didn't measure up to what he was experiencing at this moment as Suma whirled about the bed like some incredibly soft, smooth, insatiable dervish, touching, kissing, massaging, stroking, pulsating, using sections of her body, familiar and unfamiliar, in ways that he was sure no one else had ever conceived.
He stared up into the mirror and watched her, fascinated, as she climbed atop him, did something with her legs that even a contortionist would view with professional envy, and began rocking and swaying with a primal, sensual rhythm. The sensations were almost unbearable, and yet he felt no closeness, no sense of joining emotionally as well as physically.
She was just a stranger, albeit an incredibly talented one, doing a job. Even as he finally succumbed to the inevitability of his orgasm, he knew that while he may have responded to her physically—indeed, that he couldn't help responding to her physically—he didn't really like her. He was equally sure this entire episode would vanish from her mind the instant she left his room, nor did he especially want her to think about him once this encounter was over. After all, her job was to please him; if she enjoyed her work, as she seemed to be doing, so much the better, but it was a job and nothing more.
And then he realized the real reason for the emptiness that had once again fallen upon him. The Madonna's pleasure mattered to him; Suma's did not.
More, it mattered to him not as an affirmation of his own sexual prowess, but because it was important to him that she feel what he felt, that he know he was giving as well as receiving. It was simply another way of caring, a way of reaffirming their closeness when even words proved inadequate. The only bond he had with Suma would diminish and then break in a matter of half a minute or so; sex with the Madonna merely reaffirmed a bond that already existed.
At least, he decided unhappily as he finally separated from Suma and lay on his back, panting heavily, half of a bond existed. His half.
Smart, Harry, he told himself ironically. After forty-three years of being alone, of ruining a decent woman's happiness and siring three girls whose names you still get confused, who do you finally fall in love with? A whore. And not just any whore, but a whore who won't even talk to you. Shrewd move, King of the Saboteurs!
Suma turned to him, grinning triumphantly. “Well?” she said expectantly.
“You kept your promise,” he replied.
“Want to do it again before I leave?” she asked.
“You're kidding, right?”
“It's good for the muscle tone,” she said seriously. “Besides, I might not be able to get back here for a few more days.”
“Give me a raincheck,” he said. “I feel ten years older than when we started.”
“Was it memorable enough for you?”
“It was memorable.”
“I'd like to see that Madonna do that!” she said proudly.
“So would I,” he answered sincerely.
Her mask dropped again for an instant. Then she was on her feet and slipping back into her negligee.
“If I hurry, I think I've got time to change into my clothes and grab a meal before my next appointment—if you have no objections?”
“None.”
She walked into the parlor, then paused and turned to him.
“You're a fool, Harry.”
“I know,” he said softly.
“That doesn't make you any less of one,” she replied.
Then she was gone, and Redwine, after lying on the bed and sorting out his emotions for another few minutes, got up and slowly began putting his clothes on.
He pulled a cigar out of his pocket, stared at it for a moment, then shrugged and put it back. As he walked into the parlor he was suddenly aware of the security system. There were more than a dozen cameras hidden throughout the suite, all of which he had located his first night aboard the Comet, but now he walked up to the one that transmitted his image on the ship's intercom system.
He stared into it for a long, uncomfortable moment, then sighed deeply, and hoped Rasputin wasn't monitoring him at this precise instant.
“I think I love you,” he said softly.
He continued to stare at the camera, his face a battlefield of conflicting emotions.
“I'm sorry,” he added. “For what I just did, for what I feel, for everything.”
And for what I'm still doing to you every time I go to your office.
Then he jammed the security system again, sat down heavily on the contour chair, and tried very hard not to think of the Madonna doing with her handsome, loincloth-wearing servant what he had done with Suma.
Chapter 8
Redwine spent most of the next morning and early afternoon locked in his office, staring at the Madonna's alien tapestry and feeling very confused. He was so steeped in his own thoughts that he didn't hear Rasputin pounding on the door for almost a minute.
When the insistent rapping finally broke through into his consciousness, he jumped to his feet, startled, and then adjusted the skeleton card to let the Security chief in.
“This just came for you,” said Rasputin, entering the office and handing him a rather heavy package. “I didn't know you played chess.”
“I do, from time to time,” said Redwine, taking the package and setting it down gingerly on a table. Suddenly he turned back to Rasputin. “Who told you you could open it?” he demanded.
“I didn't. But we did scan it. That's part of our job.” He shifted his weight uneasily. “Harry?”
“Yes?”
“I had to tell the Madonna what I found out. I hope I haven't caused you too many problems.”
“More than you can imagine,” said Redwine bitterly. “And you didn't find out a goddamned thing.”
“I think I should warn you that I'm finding out more all the time.”
“There's nothing to find out,” Redwine replied mechanically.
Rasputin shrugged. “Have it your way. I just hope we can still be friends.”
Redwine stared at him. “I don't know if we ever were.” He sighed. “When I met you, I thought you were a pretty nice guy.”
Rasputin shook his head. “I'm a pretty nice Security chief. There's a difference.”
“I know.” He paused again. “Did you monitor my room last night?”
“No. I figured that if you were willing to let the signal go through, there was nothing worth watching.”
“Do you know if the Madonna did?”
“I can find out.”
Redwine considered it for a moment, then shrugged “No. Don't bother.”
“Whatever you say,” replied Rasputin. He began to leave, then stopped in the doorway and turned back to Redwine. “Protect your ass, Harry. I'm getting close.”
“There's nothing to protect.”
Rasputin stared at him, genuinely concerned. Finally he turned and left the office, and Redwine instructed the computer to lock the door behind him.
Then he picked up the package, sat down on a sofa, and began unwrapping it. It took about three minutes to remove all the protective substances, and when he was through what remained was a large, ornately carved wooden box made of what seemed like mahogany from Earth i
tself.
He opened it gingerly and found that all thirty-two pieces had been individually swathed in protective coverings. He removed one of the larger pieces, unwrapped it, and held it up to the light. It was a castle, complete with tiny moat and drawbridge, each brick clearly discernable, with a tiny pennant flying atop it.
It had been created from a piece of milky translucent quartz, which acted as a prism when he held it up to the light, reflecting all the colors of the spectrum, changing its delicate patterns every time he moved his hand. He examined it closely, seeking the name or mark of the artisan who had so meticulously and lovingly crafted it, but he could find no trace of a sign or signature.
He rewrapped the piece carefully, then examined two more, a knight and a pawn, before he came to the first opposing piece, a regal, full-breasted, absolutely beautiful queen wearing a gown right out of Elizabethan England. Every stitch, every pattern, every button, every piece of jewelry seemed to have a reality of its own. At first he thought it was made of onyx, but it too seemed to glow and take on a life of its own when he held it up to the light, and he decided that it must have been carved from some form of volcanic glass with which he was unfamiliar.
He spent the next hour examining each of the pieces, and then gingerly replaced them in their box.
Finally he closed and latched it, and placed it back on the table.
Then he sat down at the computer, but instead of going back to work he found himself staring wistfully at the box. He fantasized about sitting down to play a game with the Madonna, not here aboard the Comet, but somewhere else, perhaps her farm on Pollux IV, possibly in his apartment back on Deluros VIII. The background details were blurred, but he knew that they had been together for a long time, and that they were happy, and that the terrible aching loneliness he had lived with for so long was no longer there.
