“There’s a refreshment area just ahead of us,” the voice of the guide answered, heavy with amusement.
“She can sit down there and have a drink, and pull herself together. You might be wise to examine some of the lighter pastimes on display there, and choose one of them for her instead of what you’ve just seen.
No sense in having the hysterics of a little girl ruin your own good time.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Val agreed, maintaining a pleasant tone with difficulty. “The refreshment area is that way?”
“That’s right, straight ahead,” the guide said. “The rest of us will be along in another minute or two.”
“Fine,” Val said, urging me along as he began moving. He waited until we’d taken half a dozen steps, then switched languages and added, “Fine, hell. You can’t tell me this time you’re all right. As soon as you stop shaking like a ship with a faulty firing chamber, I’m getting you out of here.”
“No,” I insisted, taking my hands away from my eyes and really making the effort to calm down. “It isn’t what you think. The only thing that happened was that I nearly put us both in the soup. Never in my entire life have I been more tempted to kill in cold blood.”
‘Freezing blood,” Val corrected, glancing down at me as we made our way toward an arch like the one on the first refreshment area. “My blood turned cold the minute we walked into this place, and went down-temperature from there. As a matter of fact, it’s a good thing you ran when you did. I was seconds away from doing something like that myself, and needed the distraction. I still say we ought to get out of here right now.”
“No,” I repeated, filling my lungs with a deep breath. “We’ll leave when we have what we came here for.”
“If you aren’t the stubbornest woman I’ve ever met, I’ll eat these caves,” he growled, sending me a black-eyed look that was all steel and anger. “I don’t need your agreement to do it, you know. If I say we go, we go.”
“As far as the assignment goes, I call the shots,” I reminded him, meeting that look with one of my own.
“If you pull me out of here before I have a chance at our target, I’ll make sure my report lists the cause of failure as due to delicate sensibilities. I won’t name names, of course, but the Council already knows all about my own sensibilities. It’ll be a great first entry in your history file.”
Those black eyes grew even sterner as he stared at me, but he didn’t waste breath asking if I really would do something like that. He’d learned to know me well enough to know I wasn’t above making sure there would be a permanent blot on his record if he screwed up the assignment for me. There’d be very little chance of his getting another assignment afterward, and working as an agent in the Federation seemed to be important to him. He let out some of the growl he was feeling in a soft sound deep in his throat, then dropped the subject of leaving.
The second refreshment area had a lot more seating than the first, and Val sat me down on one of the couches then gestured over a slave with a tray of glasses. I sipped at the glass of wine I was given, pretending it was soothing me, in reality being careful not to let it rekindle the flames of rage that were finally throttling down. Val finished his wine in two swallows and looked around for the slave to get another, but the slave was busy serving the rest of the guests who were just then entering the area.
Instead of waiting for one of the slaves to get free from the tangle and begin circulating, he headed toward the knot of arrivals and one of the trays, too impatient to simply wait. I knew my partner wasn’t pleased with me, but we all have burdens to bear in this life.
That refreshment area was even stranger than the first one, though it had the same reddish lighting and mist curling over the floor. I’d already noticed that it had more seating than the first, but it also had mirrors on the carved-rock walls and chandeliers hanging from the rough-hewn ceiling, which added more glitter than light to the room. I sipped at my drink and worked toward calming myself all the way, at the same time wondering if I ought to tell Val I’d already found Radman and the end of the assignment shouldn’t be too far ahead of us. Under other circumstances I would have already told him, but I still couldn’t trust his reactions. He’d been talking about getting me out of there, but I would have been insensitive not to know how much he wanted to get himself out as well. If I told him about Radman I couldn’t put it past him to kill the slaver right there, thinking that would end the assignment and let us leave. He seemed to have the tendency to forget about the Management and what they could do to us if we were caught, and I couldn’t risk a reaction like that. I looked at him where he stood with the other guests, talking to-of all people!-James and his hulking bodyguard Matthew, and knew I’d made the right decision. Radman’s death warrant was mine to serve, and I’d see that it got served without Val and me being served up right behind it.
The guests spread out and sat down on the various couches and in the various chairs, talking to one another like long-lost brothers and sisters, no longer holding themselves aloof from one another. They were all soul-mates there, they’d learned, and that made all the difference in the world. I finished my wine and put the glass aside, mainly keeping myself aware of where Radman was in the room, and suddenly Val and Little were sitting down on the couch with me.
“Are you feeling any better, Jennifer?” Val asked with heavy sweetness to his concern, reaching over to lift me into his lap. “Poor little thing, you had a rough time.”
“I’m feeling a little bit better, uncle Val,” I conceded cautiously, wondering what he was up to. “As long as we don’t have to go back to that horrible place. We don’t have to go back, do we?”
“Of course you don’t have to go back,” he assured me heartily and condescendingly, patting me on the behind as he pressed my head to his chest. “We’ll just find something else for you to do while I’m occupied, something a little more fun. Can you start it, John?”
“Certainly, Val,” Little agreed pleasantly, reaching to the buttons set into the arm of the couch to his left.
He pressed one of the buttons, and a tri-v picture sprang into being right in front of us. I noticed then that others of the guests were watching something in front of where they were sitting, and remembered the guide’s comment about “lighter pastimes.”
“How about that, sweetheart?” Val asked, still rubbing his hand over my backside. “They’re teaching that girl to be a perfect slave, so she’ll give all the pleasure there is to the man who uses her. You want to learn how to give me all the pleasure there is, don’t you?”
“Sure I do, uncle Val,” I answered, wishing I could curse him out the way he deserved. The girl in the picture was being made to crawl from man to man, being taught the most abject slavery there was. If Val gave the word that’s what I would be taught, and he wanted me to know it. He was trying to force me into saying we could leave, and didn’t care how dirty he had to play to get what he wanted.
“Or maybe you’d like that, Jennifer,” Little put in, gesturing toward the changed picture. “The naked woman is a guest, and the men chasing her are all true rapists, the sort who don’t like giving pleasure to the woman they have sex with. You can see she’s hiding in one of the buildings of that make-believe town, but hiding isn’t enough. She has to get to the other side of the town before she’ll be safe, and if she’s caught she’ll be raped, then sent back to start all over. It’s like an obstacle course filled with fun.”
Fun, I thought as the scene changed again, this time showing two men with two small children. The men were laughing and the children were crying, and Val’s hand froze where it was on me.
“Well, that’s not very interesting,” Little complained, reaching over to fast-forward the action. He paused long enough to see that the next selection showed two women with whips starting to rape a man, fast-forwarded that one too, then settled back to watch a scene where a crying woman on her hands and knees was giving a ride to a big man who liked his own way of doing things. Val was quiet for a couple of minutes, his-body stiff under mine, his breath almost rasping out of the chest I leaned against, and then he started all over again, this time trying twice as hard.
By the time the tri-v show was over, I wasn’t in very steady shape. Val had slid his hand up the slit of my dress and had used some of his expertise on me, and with Little watching I hadn’t been able to do anything but react, and in character at that. Little Jenny just couldn’t resist her uncle Val, and John Little got a good laugh over the way he’d made me squirm. When Val pushed me to my feet then stood up himself, Little straightened off the couch with a chuckle.
“I’m sure you’ll be glad to know we’re now about to be shown to rooms, Jennifer,” he said, watching the way I was trying to slow my breathing. “We’ve got about two hours before they serve dinner to our friendly little group, and I’m sure you’ll put the time to good use. And you can also think about which of those pastimes you’d like to sample.”
“I’ve just about decided to start her with the slave training,” Val put in, taking my arm to wrap around his, also watching me closely. “If you don’t like the idea, Jenny, you can try changing my mind, but I warn you now I’ll be awfully hard to convince.”
“Maybe that training would be best,” Little allowed thoughtfully as we began drifting toward the door on the far side of the room with everyone else. “Once she’s properly trained you’ll be able to enjoy her anywhere, not just in the privacy of your own quarters. They may start out modest and shy in that program, but the trainers don’t let it last for long. You’ll even be able to use her to please your guests.”
Val made some sort of interested answer to that, keeping the conversation going, but I’d stopped listening. My sweet partner knew how I felt about slave training, especially if it was applied to me, but what he still didn’t seem to understand was how I felt about blackmail. He had an objective but so did I, and my objective was damned well going to come first.
The object of my objective, so to speak, left the refreshment room in our group, and walked with us down another carved-out corridor. At the end of the corridor the stone wall slid back to reveal an elevator car, one which easily held the dozen or so people of our part of the group. The car took us upward quickly and smoothly, finally stopping to let us out on a floor that still looked like it was carved out of rock. Doors lined both sides of the corridor-hall, and a pretty woman in a silver gown, wearing a black medallion around her neck, stepped out of a small alcove to smile at us.
“Some of you have already been shown to your rooms on this floor,” she said, glancing at Radman and one or two others. “The rest of you will be shown to them now, and you can do as you like until dinner is ready. Your entire group has been assigned to this wing, and you’ll be eating and relaxing together until your visit is over. Tomorrow, when you choose the program you’d like to participate in, medallions will be issued to you, showing your choice. The medallions are Sisslian silver, and are yours to keep, as a memento of your visit here. Some of our guests collect the entire set, but let me caution you: complete sets are worth a good deal more than the value of the silver, so be wary if you’re approached with an offer for your medallion. If you sell it for the price of the silver alone, you’re losing money. Now, if those of you who haven’t yet been shown to rooms will please follow me?”
Our group split up again, and Radman gave me a last unreadable glance before heading up the hall. I made sure not to acknowledge the glance while pretending I wasn’t watching him closely, and the Lord of Luck applauded my performance by giving me just what L needed. Radman stopped at a door a short way down the hall on the right, knocked once, and was admitted immediately; the female guide was handing out room assignments in the meantime, and ours turned out to be two doors closer to the elevator than Radman’s but also on the right: As I watched Val unlock our door and step inside, I thanked the Lord of Luck and promised I wouldn’t waste the opening he’d given me. If I couldn’t reach Radman from that close a distance, I didn’t deserve to reach him at all.
The room waiting for us was like a room in an old castle, the red lighting and mist-covered floor making it a haunted castle. Heavy, brocade-covered furniture and a large fireplace made the entrance room a sitting room, the lights were artificial red flames burning from wall jets, and the mirrors hung about were dark pools reflecting back nothing they saw. I expected to see cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, but a glance around as I closed the door showed clean stone walls instead. Val walked across the room to open the door there, stuck his head in, then pulled it out to look at me.
“That’s a bedroom, Jennifer, and you’d better sound happy to hear it,” he told me in the trade language. “: My friend who has been our traveling companion told me to make you squeal loud and long-and only then tell you we’re being listened to. This whole apartment is bugged, so watch what you say.”
“I don’t have to watch what I say,” I answered the same way, making my tone go pleading. “I only have to watch what I sound like. Have you been enjoying yourself, you son of a bitch?”
“Not even a little bit,” he came back with a chuckle, his tone teasing. “I’m telling you right now that I can’t take it here any longer, and if you don’t give the go signal without prejudice by tomorrow morning, you’re going to find yourself enrolled in a slave-training class. If I’ll have to be spending my time giving pain to a bunch of poor, helpless bastards, you’re going to be suffering at least as much.”
“But that’s blackmail, uncle Val, and I thought you knew how I feel about blackmail,” I said in a coaxing way, as he glared at me. “You can push until you’re blue in the face instead of red, and I’ll still tell you what to do with yourself. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m going to do it.”
“You can’t do the job if one of us breaks and goes on a rampage,” he said, trying to sound reasonable instead of irate and furious. “We’ll go back upstairs and wait for our target there. If you can’t operate there, we’ll simply follow him to wherever he goes next. You don’t have to insist on what neither of us can live with.”