by Steve Perry
He saw a tiny frown pass over Veate's face.
There were other things to which Wall needed to attend, aside from his artificial fantasies and worry about the medical side of his plan. He sent forth splinters of himself to take care of these tasks.
A robot ship carrying several million tons of high-grade uranium ore through the outreaches of the Haradali System garbled a beam-reflect, despite the triple-rendundant navigation gear designed to prevent just that. The ship veered off course and slammed into a city-sized asteroid at speed. The ship was destroyed, the ore scattered, and the asteroid was knocked sufficiently out of its safe orbit so that it would make planetfall on Tatsu within three months. Such an intersection would destroy a fair chunk of real estate on the world, probably killing a few hundred thousand in the bargain. It took a military-engineering unit nearly four thousand work hours and three million standards to correct the course of the asteroid.
A computer error infected the Bank of Spandle's mainframe and backups so that every customer on the planet, as well as any in the four wheel worlds in the Mu System, suddenly had their account balances tripled. Most of the customers reported the mistake. Some of them withdrew their new wealth in negotiable precious and caught ships for other systems. Some of it would be recoverable, when the thieves were caught, but the upfront loss amounted to several hundred million stads.
The air-ground traffic control grid on Mason went into a snarl during rush hour on a busy Firstday, effectively shutting down three fourths of the planet's transportation for seven hours. It was worse than if the system had simply gone completely blank; it was as if some malevolent force had entered the grid.
Landbuses were directed into dead ends; traffic signals on noncontrolled roadways all instructed manual controllers to go ahead; half the bumper magnetics switched polarity. Two hundred people died in accidents, another six hundred were injured, and the property damage was estimated in the ten million stad range, not counting lost work-time.
The leader of a reincarnation cult on Maro, the eldest son of the Martyr of Maro, received a divine visitation, after which he and fifty of his most faithful devotees took to the streets of Notzeerath, armed with ancient temple axes, striking down any who chanced to be in their path. Seventy-three people were ritually decapitated and seventeen more were badly injured before the local police managed to shoot or capture the surviving fanatics.
The galactic edcom channel aimed at Level 1 children (bright T.S. three-year-olds to average T.S. five-year-olds) interrupted its showing of holographic number and counting animations with a broadcast of a hardcore entcom feature depicting a highly graphic multiple-partnered sexual orgy. This was followed by what at first seemed a personal apology by the head of the Galactic Network, until, in the middle of it, the camera flashed a wide-angle view of the man, showing him naked and masturbating.
Tens of millions of parents suddenly found themselves answering billions of questions they had not expected to be asked for some years.
In his computer cocoon, Marcus Jefferson Wall smiled an electronic smile. The lack of flesh had some compensations . Power was one.
The gym in Emile's hotel did not have any free weights, but there were some magnetic piston machines, and full range-of-motion swivel gear. It was better than nothing. Dirisha and Geneva were practicing the Ninety-seven Steps in the area behind the pool, gliding along smoothly in the intricate sumito fighting dances.
Emile's daughter leaned against a wall next to the muscle-building machineries, watching Bork.
Bork was nervous. He'd stripped to a pair of shorts, a workout shirt and slippers, although he kept his spetsdods on. Since the swivel machines had padded grips, he didn't need gloves.
The machine looked something like a big exoskeleton, mounted to thick uprights that ran from floor to ceiling, where they were anchored on structural I-beams. There were several braces, to simulate benches in front and back, and side supports for the more esoteric exercises. The device was simple enough to operate. You stepped into the shoe clamps, stuck your hands into the grips, and were ready to work out.
This was one of the old voice-actuated models; the newer units had myosensors that read impulses and lactic acid build-up and adjusted automatically to take the worked fibers to a preprogrammed percentage of use, ranging from mild to failure, depending on the initial setting. Bork didn't much like the machines, preferring his own biofeedback, but you had to make do with what you had.
He stepped into the machine, adjusted the height and reach, and ran through a fast r-o-m warmup with a few kilos. There were a lot of ways to do a workout, but Bork preferred the old standard of going from the center of the body outward. He usually started with rowing and latpulls for his back, crunches for his abs, pecdeck and upright benches for his chest, then worked his low back, legs, shoulders and finally arms. Thirty or forty minutes a session, four or five times a week, was all it usually took to keep the tone up, three or four sets a body part were plenty, though you had to do more if you wanted to build new muscle or gain strength. He was already big enough and strong enough.
Once he got his joints warm, Bork forgot that Veate was watching him. There was no point in working out if you didn't concentrate on it, and he'd learned how to shut out distractions a long time ago. He'd see somebody come through the door with a gun if that happened, but anything less dangerous would have to wait until he was done.
Lats, first, he decided. Start light and pyramid the poundage. "Lat pulldowns," he said."A hundred kilos."
He felt the muscles under his arms adjust to the strain as the r-o-m gear took up the slack and pulled his hands up over his head. "Wider," he said. The grips moved slowly apart. "Hold."
The motion was the same as if he were doing wide-grip chins when he pulled the handles down. Since it was less than body weight, it was easy enough. Once he kicked the resistance up, he'd have to use the braces and shoe clamps to hold him in place.
He brought the grips straight down until they were level with his shoulders.
Okay. That's one…
Because Bork was calling out the amounts of weight he was using in the exercises, Veate got an idea of just how strong he was as she watched him. She had known some powerful people, men,women, mues of both sexes, but none of them came close to Bork. With his back braced he was currently pushing straight in front of himself to arms' length, something close to four times her weight as if it were no effort at all.
And he had forgotten she was there. She moved several times, in ways she knew attracted sexual attention, but she was wasting her time. He was into this, and she could have been invisible.
Several other people in the gym had stopped what they were doing to watch Bork, and Veate heard one man gasp as Bork ordered the machine's computer to increase the resistance on the squat exercise. His muscles bulged under the thin skin; she could see the ridges and lines of them, the tortuous veins popping up across his thighs and in his calves as he moved. He was pumped up even larger than he had been before; it seemed as if he would burst if the swollen knots got any larger, but they increased and somehow, he did not explode.
His breathing was heavy, sweat runneled down his back and face, and his skin grew redder. When he worked his arms, first the backs, then the fronts, then the backs again, they grew so that they were easily as big around as her head.
The harder he worked, the more excited Veate became. She fought it, because she knew it was unreasoning. Here was one who could protect her from anything and the call was primitive and urgent, built somehow into her genes with her pale skin and sexual self. Seek the dominant male for a mate. It went against her sense of being, ofmindful determination, of her unwillingness to depend on anyone but herself, but it was there nonetheless. She could resist it, but she could not deny it. Mine, she thought, as a two-year-old child will claim all she perceives. Mine, mine, mine!
After a time, Bork began to warm down, using smaller and smaller amounts of weight. Finally, he was done.
Veate tossed him a towel as he disengaged himself from the machine and stood there breathing heavily.
"Thanks," he said, wiping the sweat from his face and neck.
She wanted to leap on him right where he stood.
"Come to my room," she said. She allowed her pheromones to sing, she became the most potent of Sirens,she was totally ready for him. She would make him weak before she finished with him. She had never met her match, and he might be as close as ever she would get.
He took a deep breath and let it out. "I don't think that would be a good idea, Veate."
If he had slapped her she could not have been any more surprised. "What?"
"I'm as old as Emile."
"What has age got to do with anything? Don't you want me?"
If he said no, she would kill herself. She couldn't be that wrong, she could feel him yearning toward her.
"Yeah, I sure do.A whole lot. But it's not right."
"Listen, Bork, if I want you and you want me, what the hell is wrong with it?"
"You don't love me. I don't love you."
She stared at him, still unable to believe it."Love? What are you talking about? You've never been with anybody as good as I am! You never will be!"
"Yes, I have. It isn't about technique. It's about love."
Her rage was too much to bear. She turned and stalked out of the gym, striding past Dirisha and Geneva and the other patrons of the gym. Even in her anger, she could feel the others watching her, was aware of how many of the men and women looking at her would give all they had to possess her in the way she had just offered to that apish lout who had turned her down.
Turned her down! Nobody hadever refused her! Not ever!
"What did you say to her, Bork?" Dirisha asked. "If eyes were lasers, you'd be a grilled slab on the floor."
Bork shook his head. "We, uh, had a disagreement."
"Wait until Sleel hears that one," Geneva said. "He thinks Dirisha is the master of understatement."
Bork twisted the towel uncomfortably in his big hands. Sweat dripped from it onto the floor.
Oh, man, he thought. She sure enough was mad, all right. Maybe he ought to try to explain it to her. It wasn't her fault.
Then again, given how upset she was, maybe he'd better wait a while before he said anything.
Chapter Eighteen
VEATE'S ANGER STILL bubbled in her, but it was more a simmer thana roil when she happened across Sleel in the hotel's bookstore. He was in the philosophy section looking at a holoprojic display when Veate found him. For just a heartbeat, he looked embarrassed to be discovered there.
"How's it going?" Sleel said. He edged slowly out of the philosophy display, past the racks of marble-sized stainless steel recording spheres in their soft rubber sockets, trying to seem as if he hadn't had any real interest being there.
"Tell me about Saval Bork," she said.
Sleel laughed. "What's to tell? He's a big mue, got muscle he'll never use and more testosterone than a ball transplant bank."
"Then why won't he have sex with me?"
The comment obviously caught Sleel off guard. "Huh? Uh, well, if you're looking for somebody to, uh, fill in, I, uh—"
"I'm not," she said, snapping out the words. "What about Bork?"
Sleel shook his head. "Let's go to the bar. This might take a few minutes."
She followed him from the bookstore. She was not fond of puzzles and she wanted to solve this one, now.
"Can I ask you something?" Bork said to Geneva .
The blonde was watching the metroplex's traffic from the balcony outside Khadaji's room, as Bork stepped out to stand next to her. Below on the surface streets, wheeled vehicles rolled past; in the air above the ground, computer-controlled carts stayed in their tightly defined lanes, carrying passengers to and fro. None of the lanes inside the city were stacked high enough to reach the level of their rooms.
"Sure," Geneva said."About Veate, right?"
"How did you know?"
"Come on, Bork. How long have we known each other?Ten, eleven years?"
"Yeah, well, I can't figure out why she's so mad at me."
"Let me guess. She wanted you and you turned her down?"
"What, you taken up mind reading? How'd you know that?"
Geneva turned and flashed her smile at him. Even though most of her attention was focused on him, he could see her scanning the air and hotel facade, much as he continued to do. "I can't think of anything else that would piss off an albino so much. She'd be more than used to getting proposals; turning somebody down would be as easy as breathing for her. Butgetting turned down isn't something she'd have much experience at, if any.Especially by you."
"Why would I be anything special?"
"Because even a blind woman could tell you wanted to go somewhere and roll around and break furniture with Veate. Chang, anybody who tried to walk between you two would have bounced off the lust like it was a force field."
"Yeah.But it wouldn't be right," he said. "She's Emile's daughter. And besides—"
"You don't love each other," Geneva finished.
Bork shook his head. "You could get work in a carnival or something, you know?"
"Bork, Bork, Bork. I can see. Back at the Villa, you remember how I looked when I fell for Dirisha?"
He grinned."Yeah.Dopey."
"Nomore dopey than you did whenever Mayli was around."
He turned and stared out at the city.
After what seemed like a long time, he said, "I really miss her, you know."
She laid a hand on his arm. "I know. We all miss her. And some of that is going on now with Veate."
He shook himself out of the memory. "Still doesn't explain why she got so mad."
"You took away her power," she said. "Look at it like this: suppose you went into a weightlifting contest against somebody, and he could somehow wave his hand and reduce your physical strength to, oh, say, my level. He's over there pressing half the planet overhead and the best you can do is maybe fifty kilos.
How do you think that would make you feel?"
"Pretty bad," Bork admitted. "No offense, Geneva ."
She laughed. "No offense taken. But you see my point? Your physical strength is something you take for granted. It's a part of you. If it suddenly disappeared, if somebody couldmake it disappear, you'd probably resent the hell out of them."
"Yeah, I expect you're right."
"That's what you did to Veate. Her attraction is something she's always had. She was born with it, it's her power, and when you turned her down, you raised a doubt in her she probably never had to deal with before. I imagine it scared her worse than anything else you could have done."
Boric sighed. "I wasn't looking to do that."
"I know. Eventually she'll figure it out, too. But her first reaction was from fear. Her very best, her most potent trick suddenly didn't work anymore. Her first thought probably was that something was wrong with you. But her second thought would have been that something was wrong withher .Had to be pretty scary."
"Yeah, I guess it must have been." He reached out and hugged Geneva, being careful not to hold her too tightly. "Thanks," he said.
She beamed at him. "Sure. What are friends for, if not to point out when you do stupid shit?"
The hotel bar was like a dozen Veate had been in before; the colors were too bright, the sounds too loud, the decorator's taste less than superb. She sipped at the small beer she'd ordered,then shook her head. "Mayli Wu was a whore?"
Sleel nodded. "Best I ever had. They called her Sister Clamp; we all met at Emile's pub on Greaves, back when he was doing his one-man war against the Confed. We didn't know it, what he was doing, but that's where Dirisha, Bork, Sister and I first got together."
"Mayli was a medic, full M.D., before she went into the pleasure business. Applied research, she called it."
"Later, she was at Matador Villa with us.Taught a course in love. She and Bork, they wound up partnered, and it was something to see
them together."
Veate felt an irrational stab of jealously. "So, what happened to her? Why'd they sunder, if this was such a cosmic connection?"
"She got killed. We hit a power station on Earth, during the Revolution. We lost Geneva's father, Red, there too."
Sleel rubbed at his shoulder, as if it suddenly pained him. "I was wearing a prosthetic arm at the time. It ate a couple of explosive rounds and got blown away; I also lost a foot. Wound up having to regrow the stupid damned foot along with the arm. Anyway, I went down, looked like I was gonna be a war history footnote."
"Bork was right next to Mayli and Red when they got hit. He grabbed them both up, carried them to our transport, then came back and collected Dirisha and me like we were toys. I'd have been dead otherwise."
Sleel laughed. "Hell of a business, revolution. Maybe I'll skip the next one, run an ammo concession or something. Anyway, that's Bork.Always saving somebody's ass."
"So that you don't take things personally, you ought to know that I don't think Bork has been with anybody since Mayli died. He took it hard.Real hard."
Veate stared at Sleel. "He's been celibate for more than five years?" Such an action was beyond anything she could personally imagine. Oh, sure, she knew it was possible. Not for an Albino Exotic, but for tintskins; there were religious reasons and like that, it sometimes happened.
"That's what I'd bet on."
Buddha. How could she compete with a ghost? And this Saval Bork was getting more complex every time anybody said anything about him. Maybe it wasn't her. Maybe she had been right when she'd felt him want her. But now what was she going to do? Sure, there were billions of lovers out there; she could just walk away and do what she had always done, pick the lucky ones from the lines waiting. Somehow, though, that didn't seem as satisfying as once it had. She wanted Bork. He intrigued her as no one else ever had. She had never wanted a lover she couldn't have. It was a painful feeling. Was that what other people felt like when she refused them?
