The Iron Maiden

by Piers Anthony

  “What?”

  “It’s the pirate way, Hope. The groom’s clan has to witness the victory, so that no one can claim he didn’t perform. And if anything happens to the bride, I will be obliged to seek revenge—”

  “You?”

  “I gave her the knife, Hope. It’s real; no rubber one this time. I’m responsible for her until you win her. So whatever you do, don’t kill her, because if she dies and I don’t kill you, her clan will be honor-bound to do it, and—”

  He stared at her, suddenly knowing that she would do it. That might be a positive sign.

  Spirit sent Isobel to talk to him, to impress on him the reality of the need. Then he called Straight, who advised him to strike fast and hard, and to give up the marriage if he didn’t succeed in the first minute. He ever put his wife Flush on, who clarified that she would never have respected Straight if he hadn’t conquered her first. But Hope still seemed uncertain. Spirit dreaded the coming encounter.

  The time came. They took their places in chairs set around the sides of the bride’s chamber: Repro, Phist, Mondy, Emerald, and Spirit herself. Brinker operated the video camera, and Juana was in a corner making shorthand notes. The Groom’s official witness team.

  Roulette was beautiful as she sat on the bed; she wore a pale blue negligee that offset her red hair dramatically. Her tresses were artfully wild, making her resemble a waiting predator. Her figure was so full and lithe it would make any man pause, even the three male witnesses. In fact when Rue caught them looking, she opened her décolletage, giving them a better view of her fine breasts, and let her full thighs part. Repro and Mondy smiled briefly; Gerald blushed. Spirit appreciated the tease; the girl had some humor. Even Juana, a well-formed woman, looked envious. Only Isobel was unmoved.

  Spirit checked her watch. “Time.” The room darkened, though not completely; they had to be able to see the event.

  Roulette got silently off the bed and went to stand beside the door panel, her knife ready. She intended to ambush him as he entered, and the witnesses could not interfere in any way.

  The panel slid quietly open. There was a pause, then something entered rapidly. Roulette was on it, stabbing downward. Then a second form leaped through the door, caught her from behind, and rendered her unconscious with a neck strangle. She had fallen for the oldest trick in the book: a decoy shirt thrown in first. It was a good start.

  Hope used the shirt to bind her wrists, then used the bed sheet to tie her ankles and tore off a section to gag her. She recovered consciously quickly, but was helpless. She didn’t even struggle; at this point it was useless. He had won the first round by abducting her.

  They moved to the groom’s quarters and took new chairs. Spirit untied the bride and restored her knife to her while Hope stripped. This was according to protocol; the bride had to be able to defend herself from the rape.

  He approached her; she struck with the knife, and he disarmed her again. He let her go, and she went after him with nails and teeth. He nullified her again, and whispered something in her ear, then let her go. She attacked again, but he caught up her negligee and entangled her in it, whispering to her again. He let her go once more.

  The utter fool! He was playing with her.

  And it cost him. She got her hand on the dropped knife, and this time she managed to graze his leg. Yet still he played, snatching parts of her negligee away as she slashed at him.

  Then he turned strange. Oh, no! He was going into a madness vision. He stared at Roulette, muttering something.

  Then he approached her, neither feinting nor dodging, as if she were welcoming his embrace.

  She stabbed him in the left shoulder. He merely shrugged as the blood flowed. She stabbed again, and this time the blood jetted; she had severed an artery. But he ignored it and closed for a kiss. She bit his lip, hard, but he remained as if it were a true kiss.

  He had to finish it quickly, before he bled to death. Yet the blood no longer jetted.

  After a moment he drew back, and the cloud left his face. “You stabbed me!” he exclaimed, perceiving the blood. “And you bit me!”

  “Well, you hugged and kissed me!”

  “And you’re not Megan.” Then Spirit understood at least part of it: Megan was the other woman he thought he could love. He must have seen her in the vision.

  “Who the hell is Megan?” He struck her, a slashing openhanded blow across the side of the head. Her head rocked back, her mouth open, but he caught her again on the other side with a backhand. She fell on the bed, blinking. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  And the blood stopped flowing from his wounds. They simply closed up, leaving only red scars. Roulette saw it, and her mouth hung open. It was as if she faced a bloodless ghost or zombie.

  This was a side of Hope Spirit had never seen before. He had not returned to his normal self. The madness had taken over. It gave him weird control of his entire body.

  “I never saw you like this!” Roulette gasped.

  “You never saw me at all, you arrogant bitch!” he snapped. “You like me better now?” He jerked his right hand and forced her right hand to strike her face.

  “You brute!” But it was neither fear nor horror that governed her now. Her tone was one of discovery and admiration. “Kiss me again; I won’t bite!”

  Was it another trick? She might be feigning surrender, hoping to recover the knife. Instead Hope spat blood and saliva in her face. “I’d as soon kiss a snake!”

  She shuddered, not with anger but with rapture. She spread her arms and her legs. “Do it now!” she breathed. “I can’t fight you when you’re like this. You’re a real man after all!”

  It seemed real. Now was the time for him to do it.

  He drew away from her and stood by the bunk. “Look at me,” he said. “I don’t want you. You’re not Helse, you’re not Megan. What good are you?”

  “Revile me!” she whispered. “Hit me! Make me scream!”

  “You aren’t paying attention, you pirate slut,” he said. “Look at my member. You don’t turn me on at all.”

  And indeed he showed no sexual desire. “You have failed as a woman,” he told her.

  Enraged as a woman scorned, she snatched the knife from the bed beside her. She pointed it at his groin. “I’ll cut it off!”

  “Go ahead.” He raised his arms and set his hands behind his head, not retreating from her. The total fool!

  And she couldn’t do it. Spirit saw her shudder. Hope had entirely vanquished her.

  But she had another ploy. Slowly she brought the blade to her own throat. “If you won’t have me, no one will.”

  “Spirit,” he said.

  Oh, damn! But she had to play along. Spirit rose from her chair. “Yes, Hope.”

  “If she dies, you are bound by honor to kill me.”

  Spirit hesitated. She wanted to call a halt to this awful alternative, but she could not oppose her brother. Especially when he was like this; she was in awe of him now. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Set the laser.”

  Slowly she brought out her laser pistol, adjusted it, and aimed it at his face.

  His eyes had never left Rue’s. “You see we honor the pirate convention. Do you believe Spirit will kill me?”

  Roulette turned her head a moment to gaze at Spirit’s face. “Yes,” she breathed. “She doesn’t bluff.”

  “So you may safely kill yourself,” he continued. “You know you will be immediately avenged, and there will be no onus for your father to bear, no embarrassment to your clan.”

  Roulette flung the knife away. “You bastard, you have mastered me! Finish it!”

  And finally, as it were reluctantly, he did. Roulette made no resistance; rather, she cooperated vigorously. He had not raped her body so much as her soul.

  And when it was done, she demanded that the videos never be played, and the witnesses be silent. She and Hope had visible injuries; those would suffice to tell the story. This had been a rape like none ot
her.

  • • •

  Thus was the alliance made. Roulette was assigned a song, “Rue” whose words suggested the wasting of women by men, and her nickname became The Ravished. She liked that. She was, as it turned out, a masochist; she could not truly turn on unless brutalized. Thus their marriage was an ongoing contest, as he tried to make her respond to gentleness, and she tried to make him treat her cruelly. Each seemed to be making progress with the other.

  The fleets merged, and with Emerald’s genius guiding them, they defeated the other pirates, band by band. Then, when they were on the verge of completing the cleanup of the Belt, there came the betrayal.

  Gerald was the first to learn of it, and it appalled him. “What is it?” Spirit asked.

  “I am ordered by the Jupiter authority to assume command of the Task Force and place your brother under arrest for insubordination and other charges.”

  Spirit stared. “But he’s guilty of none of that!”

  He shook his head. “He is guilty of being too effective in fighting crime. Pirates have nerves extending to high places. I am in a position to know.”

  For he had lost his own career that way. “Oh, no,” she breathed.

  “And I must arrest you too,” he continued miserably. “And ground the fleet.”

  It was as though the Solar system had foundered, but for the moment it was the personal aspect that stung her. “Is this the end for us?”

  “I very much fear it is.”

  She kissed him. “Then do your duty, Gerald.”

  “Consider yourself relieved of your position,” he said. Then he braced himself and went off to find Hope.

  Gerald Phist did his duty like the good soldier he was. All of the top officers were interned and held incommunicado as the fleet headed back for Jupiter.

  Then several significant things happened: The Beautiful Dreamer, deprived of his drugs, died. The marriages of Hope and Roulette, and of Gerald and Spirit, were dissolved, and on Mondy’s insightful suggestion Gerald married Roulette, to preserve the necessary connections. It was an irony, as Gerald and Roulette loved not each other but Spirit and Hope, but each understood the other’s position perfectly. They were to be a successful long-term couple publicly, and possibly privately, perhaps because of that common passion.

  Hope wrote the narrative of his migrant and military memoirs, settling his soul in a way that Spirit could not. She suffered her loss of Gerald alone. She was, after all, the Iron Maiden.

  The woman of QYV met with Hope, and they made a deal: Helse’s key for Jupiter citizenship and information on Megan. Hope and Spirit, at the ages of thirty and twenty seven respectively, were honorably discharged from the Navy—in fact Hope was hailed as the Hero of the Belt—and they came at last to the planet of Jupiter. It was not by their choice, at this stage, but was the best compromise settlement they could manage. As it turned out, Hope’s core unit was not destroyed; it merely became invisible, and his officers went on to consolidate power in the Navy, supported by a solid cadre of enlisted personnel. Some liaisons did not follow official chains of command, but were as potent. That was to have significant later effect on Jupiter politics.

  CHAPTER 9

  SECOND LOVE

  It was as though they were starting their lives over, leaving all they had known to join a new world. Both Hope and Spirit knew that they would never recover their Navy relationships; they might as well be dead, just as their family and refugee friends had been dead when they first came to the navy. Hope was in depression, and Spirit sustained him as well as she could, whether by diverting him with inconsequential talk, or holding him. He was not ashamed to show his weakness when they were alone together; she could not afford to show hers, needing to be strong for him. It would take time for their pain to fade. Meanwhile they faced the future with nominally positive attitudes.

  Jupiter up close was ferociously beautiful, with its mighty bands and spots. It was also somewhat daunting, because the atmospheric pressure at the residential level was five bars: five times that of Earth’s surface. Spirit tried to bury the feeling of being crushed. She was used to vacuum, emotionally, dreadful as it was.

  They came to the city of Nyork, a giant bubble about one and a half miles in diameter. Once they were inside, Spirit’s tension eased; it was like being in any other bubble, except that this was larger. It hardly mattered whether the surrounding substance was atmosphere or vacuum; both were similarly lethal to unprotected human beings.

  They were treated to a parade in their honor. They rode in a wheeled vehicle with the mayor of the city, and throngs of people cheered. This was weird; could it really be for them? It seemed it was. Theoretically Jupiter’s press was open, but it was clear that the real situation had not been publicized. So they were retired champions rather than cashiered outcasts.

  When they entered the Hispanic section, the chant became monstrous. “Hubris! Hubris!” The car was pelted by flowers. This conspicuous waste embarrassed them, for ornamental plants were precious in space. Spirit made the most of it: she picked up several that fell inside the car and made a bouquet that she set in her hair, and there was a deafening roar of approval. She made another, her nine fingers nimble enough, and put it in her brother’s hair, and the noise swelled yet farther.

  A girl launched herself into the car, and flung her arms about Hope. “Hubris, I love you,” she cried in Spanish.

  A Saxon policeman pursued her, but Spirit interceded. “Let her stay, officer,” she urged. “She will be no trouble, I’m sure.” She put her arms protectively around the girl.

  But the girl had another notion. She snuggled closer to Hope. “Hero Hubris, why don’t you stay here in Nyork and become mayor, and I will be your mistress!”

  He was so surprised that he choked. Spirit knew why: the girl was obviously under the age of consent by a year or two, though her anatomy was fully formed. Hope had sex with women of all ages, but in recent years had settled on nominally legitimate ones. He had never anticipated such a bald proposition by a stranger.

  Spirit decided to rescue him. “My brother has already arranged to settle in Ybor, in Sunshine. He will get married.”

  “Married!” the girl cried, clutching him.

  “He is not for you,” Spirit said. “You would be too much woman for him. He is thirty years old.”

  “Thirty,” the girl repeated, evidently shocked that anyone could be such an age. Then she reconsidered. “Still, a married man needs a mistress, too, and May-December liaisons can work out. Sometimes an older man can be very considerate and not too demanding—”

  “And he has been long in space,” Spirit continued, keeping her face straight. “The radiation—”

  “The radiation!” The girl glanced down at Hope’s crotch as if expecting to see crawling gangrene. Of course space radiation did no apparent physical damage; it merely sterilized men who remained off-planet too long without taking special precautions. That was why the navy needed no contraceptives. Most men had stored semen samples in shielded reserve if they later decided to become fathers. Regardless, the notion had done the trick; the girl was no longer much interested in seducing him.

  But soon the crowd became a riot, and they were in danger as the car was stalled by aggressive Saxons who thought Hispanics were taking their jobs. Spirit exchanged a glance with Hope: they knew what to do.

  “Crowd control procedure,” he said. “Cover me, Spirit.”

  She reached into her blouse and brought out a pencil-laser pistol. “Covered.”

  “Hey, you aren’t supposed to be armed,” the mayor protested. “Weapons are banned in—”

  Spirit pointed the laser at his nose and he stopped talking. Hope jumped out of the car and ran ahead. For a moment no one realized what he was doing; then a worker pointed at him and shouted.

  But by that time Hope had reached the leader. He caught the man by the right arm, spun him around, and applied a submission lock.

  “You can’t do that!” another man
cried, reaching for Hope. Spirit was ready; a beam from her laser burned a hole in his shirt and stung his chest. It was only a momentary flash, just enough to make him jump. Jump he did, falling back, staring at the car.

  “That was just a warning,” Hope told him. “Stand clear.”

  The others stood clear, realizing that the Navy personnel did indeed know how to conduct themselves in a fighting situation, and that the presence of the weapon made them far from helpless. Lasers did not have to be set at trace level.

  A kind of hush descended on the crowd as Hope marched the labor leader to the car. Spirit’s gaze remained on the crowd, not on Hope, and she fired again, stinging the hand of a man who was getting ready to throw another brick. She had always had acute reflexes and perfect marksmanship with whatever weapon she chose. Hope got the leader into the car.