The Metal Maiden Collection

by Piers Anthony

  Elasa glanced at Adela again. “He’s not bluffing,” Adela said.

  “None of us are,” Kop said.

  “I do not promise total candor,” Elasa said. “But I will facilitate the dialogue. You have answered my question about why you should bargain: you want something of us you will not obtain if you destroy us. Now I will answer your question: I had an ongoing relationship with Pauling, and liked him well. I realize I can not dictate to you how he is treated, but I will be significantly more cooperative with your designs if you can show me that you have not hurt him.”

  “My designs?”

  “You desire me sexually. You may be an alien in a human body, but your immediate impressions and emotions are governed by that body.”

  “You are correct. I am incidentally curious how you know, since you are neither telepathic nor Aware.”

  “I am trained to observe men,” Elasa said. “When I do this, your pupils expand.” She separated her knees more widely, giving him a glimpse almost to her crotch. “Also when I do this.” She leaned forward and inhaled while her decolletage fell loose.

  “Ah. You have powers of observation beyond those of a mortal woman.”

  “I do when I focus, though all women know the standard ploys. It facilitates the business I was designed for.”

  “It does indeed,” Kop agreed.

  “But if you know me for a machine, why do I turn you on?”

  “You turn me on in significant part because you are a machine. I am unable to read your mind or fathom your personal future, yet I know you are conscious and feeling. I have never encountered that before. It lends intriguing mystery. I think I can’t trust any native girl with the truth about my situation, but you are more rational. I can truly interact with you, physically and mentally.”

  “So you know you will have to work to earn my favor.”

  “I do desire your favor. Therefore I will demonstrate that I have not harmed Pauling Hudson.”

  In a moment his expression changed. “Hello, Silver,” Pauling said.

  “That’s him,” Adela said.

  “I was never aware of you,” Pauling said to her. “I never heard of Awares before.”

  “We are folk who somehow know our immediate situations,” Adela said. “We can seldom be surprised. I have been helping Elasa manage you.”

  “She already knows how to tempt a man,” Pauling said wryly.

  “In connection with the coming invasion of the Maggots.”

  “I never heard of them either,” Pauling said. “Not before Kop took over.”

  “He will surely fill you in,” Elasa said. “You sound normal. Are you all right?”

  “Apart from being captive, yes. Kop lets me handle routine matters. It is easier to delegate tasks than to micro-manage.”

  “So you simply serve a new master.”

  “That’s it.”

  “You’re not fighting him?”

  Pauling shook his head. “I can’t fight him. This is not coercive. It is as if I suddenly decided to follow a new course. I am now his loyal assistant.”

  “You don’t even want to be free of his control?”

  Pauling considered briefly. “Objectively I can see that I should oppose him. After all, he will implement policies that destroy my world. But it seems that my motive center has been revised. I am satisfied to do his business.”

  “And while he is governing, where are you?”

  “Here, observing. It is as if I am seeing a movie, appreciating the action without being directly involved. To the extent I am involved I am like a horse in harness, not questioning the directives of my rider.”

  “So he is not a monster.”

  “He is not a monster,” Pauling agreed. “He is an alien master. He has motives and feelings similar to mine. He merely serves a different cause.”

  Elasa nodded. “I am satisfied, Kop. You are not mistreating him.”

  “Thank you. Now I will tell you that I was observing when you first encountered Pauling. When you seduced him, you seduced me, though I was at that point merely a spectator. When he fell in love with you, so did I. I would do almost anything in my power to win your favor.” His mouth quirked. “I’m sure that was one reason you were selected for this mission. Your Aware associates anticipated my tastes.”

  “They did,” Elasa agreed. “You can win my favor by canceling the invasion.”

  Kop shook his head. “You of course know that is beyond my power. I am a functionary, serving my master as you serve yours. Make some other demand.”

  “Tell me everything you know about the Maggots.”

  He laughed. “That is not what we call them, but is nevertheless apt. But the telling would take some time.”

  Elasa was surprised. “You will do it?”

  “In return for your favor, yes.”

  “My sexual favor is available in return for information. My emotional favor has to be won, not bargained for.”

  “I will settle for the first, and hope for the second in due course.”

  Elasa was uncertain. This was too easy. “I think we need the Lamb,” she said to Adela.

  “I will fetch him,” Adela said, rising.

  “I know of no lamb,” Kop said. “This is a pet animal?”

  “The pet of a friend, yes. He has powers you will appreciate.” She glanced at the table, where there was a briefcase. “Suppose I organize the material, as I normally do, while we wait? My presumption is that you prefer to maintain Pauling’s routine as much as is feasible, until you substitute your own.”

  “Official business mixed with an unofficial affair,” Kop agreed.

  Elasa stood, went to the table, opened the briefcase, and slid out the papers. She scanned their content. “This is not routine.”

  “It is my routine rather than Pauling’s,” Kop said. “You do not have to do it if you find it distasteful.”

  “I do find it distasteful. This is a plan for the biggest and most sophisticated slaughterhouse ever built.”

  “One of a number. I have three months to get the local ones set up and staffed. All living tissue will be processed in the course of the six months following.”

  Elasa was surprised again. “You are telling me this? I’m the enemy!”

  “You are not my enemy, Elasa. You are the enemy of the Maggots. So am I.”

  “But you are doing their business.”

  “Because if I do not, they will feed me immediately into the grinder, literally, and substitute a better performer. I survive only because I am a capable administrator. When this task is complete, I will be ground up regardless. They don’t keep workers beyond one planet. So I perform, for the sake of less than a year of extended life.”

  She considered that. “So you really do want my favor. To make your last months happier than otherwise.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if I tell our government, we can organize resistance.”

  “Your congress? Lots of luck. We have our agents there too, though we hardly need them. They will not believe you, and if they did, they would still accomplish nothing. All you would achieve would be mass panic, if the corrupt media even ran the news.”

  He had a pretty good grasp of local politics, surely gleaned from his host. Elasa was coming to appreciate why the Awares were operating secretly. There was nothing to be gained by publicity. So she shut up and organized the papers. It seemed that Kop would be making presentations in the name of Pauling to promote a secret military building project that no one would dare veto. Military projects were sacred, regardless of their cost or irrelevance. Congress would probably not even inquire into the nature of these huge buildings. There was, after all, a lot of money to be made from construction contracts.

  Adela returned with Bunky. The Lamb sniffed the man and backed off, recognizing the alien quality.

  “Telepathy!” Kop exclaimed. “And precognition! Maybe there is yet hope.”

  “Hope for what?” Elasa asked.

  “Hope for y
our salvation. Food-species legend has it that three things are required to balk the Maggots even temporarily: telepathy, precognition, and power. My folk had the first two but not the third; our space fleet was only a fraction of the Maggot swarm. So we were doomed.”

  “Power is not necessarily military,” Elasa said.

  “Indeed. But what else is there, in the face of an armada? Imagination?”

  “So it seems that we also are doomed,” Elasa said.

  “You’re lying. You believe you have something.”

  “I did not promise you complete candor,” she reminded him.

  “Which gives me faint hope. My world is gone. I would help save yours if I could. Meanwhile I will build the slaughterhouses.”

  Elasa put her arm around Bunky. “Is he serious?”

  “Yes,” Bunky bleated. Then he and Adela departed.

  “Remarkable,” Kop said. “The creature is not close to human intelligence, yet his telepathy enables him to understand and respond. But I fear that such mental qualities limited to an animal mind will not suffice to accomplish much.”

  “Nevertheless, the Lamb endorses your sincerity,” Elasa said. “Then I will be your lover, while you tell me all about the Maggots.”

  “Gladly.”

  “Starting with the best way you think Earth might save itself despite your construction program.” She started removing her clothing.

  “You can’t balk them militarily,” he said as he undressed. “The only way you can possibly save your planet is to persuade them that Earth is more trouble than it is worth. Since it is worth half a year’s food for them, that’s a lot. But if you should succeed, they will bypass you and move on to the next edible world.” He advanced on her, human penis erect. Obviously he was more than ready to make sex the native way.

  “We will ponder it,” Elasa said as she opened her arms to him. Kop had already given them much to ponder, and the Lamb and Awares would be working on it. Kop might not think the Maggots could be stopped, but she believed they would find a way.

  “Now tell me the rest,” Elasa said as she took him into her. She knew she could keep his sexual interest indefinitely, and he would have her interest as long as his information held out. “I want your personal story, too. From the beginning of your contact with the Maggots.”

  “You shall have it,” he gasped as he ejaculated into her.

  Chapter 6:

  Invasion

  I was making love to my sibling Qqess when the call came. “Inferno!” I swore. “There’s an emergency at the observation station. I must leave you, Kess.”

  She was used to emergencies, for my profession was to handle them. “I will be here when you return, beloved, with my cloaca hot.”

  I bit her ear affectionately as I disengaged. “I love you, sister.” Then I departed.

  Space Command had detected a blip, and the power precognitor reported it was dangerous. All of us have precognition, of course, but the vicissitudes of changeability make it virtually worthless for routine things. What point to precog the next day’s highlights, when one’s very awareness of them changes them? The routine is similar regardless whether one takes one route or another. So we normally survey our near future routinely each day to be sure there is no significant mischief, such as a blip in the motor causing the flyer to crash, then proceed satisfyingly null. Similar with telepathy; the Qqq mind is one of the most complicated objects extant, and reading other minds soon makes a person queasy; they are filled with disorderly thoughts and impressions that one would never tolerate in one’s own mind. I have thoughts of my own to organize without having to struggle with the messiness, desires, and guilts of others. It is better to stick to verbal and visual communication, allowing each other comfortable privacy while sparing ourselves avoidable disgust. Professional precogs, however, have far greater powers, not wasted on personal interactions, and can spot future events that need to be expeditiously handled.

  Such as that blip. It was at the extreme range, and ill defined, but already carried the aura of menace. It might be a false reading; at the fringe reliability suffered. But it was not worth the risk of ignoring. Not until we were sure. I am also an Aware, which is another reason for my position, and I knew this situation was wrong. There was genuine mischief here.

  I gave commands. It was my profession to assess borderline risks and categorize them, relaying them to the appropriate authorities for resolution. First I had the visual and auditory scopes orient on the blip, to get a literal picture of it. It fit the profile of a space ship. None of ours were that far out. That was in the direction of the Oumic realm, a pseudo-civilized species with which we had very limited contact. We probably would have been at war with each other, were the costs of interstellar combat not so wastefully extreme. Had they now embarked on the foolishness of a physical invasion of our sphere? That did not seem to make sense. They were reprehensible but not crazy.

  Yet as the analysis was tallied, it turned out to be true: it was an Oumic ship. Worse, it was definitely foreboding. Menace was migrating to doom. If we let that craft into our region of space, we would pay a hideous price. The precogs were certain.

  But I was not. I did not want to make a planetary case of a potential misunderstanding. So I alerted our military arm to organize, then messaged the alien contact crew. “Beam them a warner,” I said. “To justify their approach, retreat, or be demolished.” Beam communication is of course the fastest, and protocols were in place; the Oumic would receive it. They would respond, or else. They knew that, just as we would if we foolishly invaded their space.

  They did not respond. They kept on coming, and the aura of menace intensified. “Do not let them get within mental range,” the head procog warned me.

  But protocols are tedious, and by the time we had to act, the ship was in range. The precogs went wild. “Get rid of it!”

  This seemed apt. I turned it over to the military, which had been eagerly waiting permission to blast.

  And nothing happened.

  I rechecked. “Why aren’t you blasting?” I demanded.

  “The order was mislaid,” the general responded, evidently out of sorts.

  “Well, recover it,” I snapped. “The precogs are losing their minds.”

  Yet somehow nothing was done. The alien continued on course, its menace growing. It was not blasted.

  I was furious, but also perplexed. Such mismanagement was not typical of our personnel. Always alert for the unexpected, I checked with a private telepath, the kind who could survey a distant mind and identify a deviance from the normal pattern. “What’s going on?” I asked him. “Why aren’t the blasting orders being executed?”

  He checked, and expelled a whistling breath through three vents. “There’s an interference in their minds. They are unable to execute the order.”

  Aha! “What is the source of interference?”

  “It is masked, but seems to originate in the alien ship.”

  “So it is a mind attack preceding a physical attack?”

  “This may be the case,” he agreed uncertainly. “The masking is subtle.”

  I messaged our Supreme Coordinator. He responded immediately, knowing that I took such a step only from urgent need. “I fear we are under attack by the Oumics,” I reported. “They have nullified our triggermen so that their ship is not being blasted. That means they are in our minds.”

  “I am aware of the situation,” he said. “Abate your concern.”

  I chilled. My Awareness does not function long-distance, but I knew that this was not right. In fact I feared that the enemy had already reached and corrupted a key mind: that of the Coordinator himself.

  “Thank you for your reassurance,” I said politely. “My concern is abated.”

  We were definitely under attack. But what could we do, with our top official already corrupted?

  I did what I could. I prepared an all-points bulletin. WARNING! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK BY AN ALIEN FORCE. THE MINDS OF TOP OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN
CORRUPTED. DEAL ONLY WITH THOSE YOU TRUST. That at least would get the word out and give us a better chance.

  And my bulletin did not go out. Key minds in that chain too had been corrupted. Then I knew it was bad.

  I went home and communed with Kess. She agreed that any further effort on my part would only attract attention to me and get me killed by one of the corrupted personnel. We made desperate love, and her cloaca was indeed hot, but much of the joy in it was gone.

  We watched as the alien ship arrived at a planetary port unscathed. There was no commotion; it never made the planetary news. That was more evidence that there was suppression, as an alien landing should have been phenomenal news. Instead the normal planetary routine continued.

  Months passed, and things happened. Huge new buildings were constructed near the largest municipalities, their presence also unremarked. Special highways were cut through neighborhoods to terminate at those buildings. Traffic formed, a seemingly endless line of transport trucks, driving into one side of the local building and out the other side, lighter. Still no news. A rail track was laid down, extending from the building to the hugely expanded spaceport, and a continuous line of boxcars rolled along it, unloading something that the giant alien spaceships carried away.

  But some citizens were curious, and managed to peek into the building without being seen. Thus I received word: it was a slaughterhouse. For animals and people.

  Our world was being rendered into meat to feed the aliens. And it seemed that there was nothing we could do about it.

  “We can’t trust anyone else,” I told Kess. “I have to do it myself.”

  “Do what, my love?”

  “Disrupt the process. I will bomb the slaughterhouse. That will at least slow them down.”

  “Not for long,” she said. “A bomb will demolish only a small portion of it, which they will soon rebuild.”

  “I have access to a small nuclear bomb.” One of the prerogatives of my position was knowledge where such things were stored, and I had the access codes to reach it and transport it. It was almost as if our forerunners had known there would come a time when such access was needed.