He took a step closer to me, but the bedpost was between us. He really wasn’t taking any chances.
“I would love to begin with you now, but in the interests of my own safety, I must wait awhile,” he said, his death cold eyes glittering at me. “Have a pleasant night, and let the thought amuse you that I’ll be with you again in the morning.”
He walked out of my area of vision, leaning on his thin cane, and a minute later I heard the door close somewhere behind me. I took all of my weight on my wrists and gave the post I was tied to a two-footed kick that would have felled one of Dameron’s vairs, but the damned thing hardly quivered. I hadn’t really believed it was wood just because it looked like it, but I’d had to try something. The jolly thought of what was waiting for me in the morning was enough to chill my blood.
I turned to look at the window, and it was still deep night outside. I didn’t know how long I’d have to wait, but the wait wouldn’t be short. Naturally I didn’t waste my breath trying to yell; those apartments were soundproofed, and if the ears in the room were still in operating condition, James would never have spoken to me as he had. At least I now knew for sure why Radman had joined our group. He had clearly decided to peddle merchandise to a private buyer in the Sphere itself, most likely from Little’s first reports to him and from his personal visit to the physical exam area. No wonder Little had been so afraid and had tried so hard to talk Val into selling me to the Sphere itself-if the Management had caught them trying to go private on even a semi-official guest like me, not even Radman’s special status would have saved them. I forced myself to relax to wait it out. They had to untie me sometime to get me to their ship, and any slip of their part would be the last slip they made. My good luck had suddenly changed to bad, but there was no benefit in crying over it.
By the time it was full light out I was in agony. The night had stretched out impossibly long, and my arms and legs were tortured from the position I was tied in. After a couple of hours of standing and shifting from foot to foot I’d tried hanging from my wrists to give my legs a rest, but it hadn’t worked too well. My arms were strained to begin with and couldn’t take the weight very long, so I’d had to stand up again. After I don’t know how many hours of waiting my legs were like two giant blisters, and my arms were numb. At least they were numb until I tried leaning on them, and then they burned as if they were being boiled in oil. I was in such a bad way, I was almost looking forward to James’s coming back. I knew I couldn’t take much more of just standing there.
Despite what I’d decided I could and couldn’t take, another couple of hours passed before I heard someone at the door. I had almost passed out a few times, but hadn’t been lucky enough to make it; a high pain threshold isn’t always a blessing. Someone came in and closed the door behind them, and when I heard a lock click the adrenalin started pouring through my system. I managed to stand almost straight, but couldn’t turn my head.
“Have you been waiting for me, my dear?” James’s voice came, slowly getting nearer. “I’m sorry it’s been so long, but it was all for the best. Anticipation often heightens the pleasure of an undertaking, you know. You should be ready, and I’m anxious to get started.”
He came up behind me, grabbed a fistful of hair, and forced my head back. The strain it put on my arms made me gasp, and that produced a chuckle in him.
“Just about done to a turn, I think,” he said while I shuddered. “We can begin any time now.”
I didn’t know what he was about to begin, and I didn’t want to know. In desperation I lifted one of my leaden legs and kicked backward, trying to break his kneecap, but I just didn’t have it in me. He grunted with the small amount of pain I’d managed to give him and stepped back, letting go of my hair.
“You will be my prize, I think, after you have been with me a while,” he said, chilled and chilling delight in his voice. “Right now, you must learn what attempting to do me harm brings. ”
He took another step away from me, hesitating very briefly, then suddenly my back was on fire from the stroke of something he’d hit me with, something that opened my skin the way a fingernail would open cellophane. My mind went instantly terrified with the memory of that time with the whip and those terrorists and I screamed and tried to pull away, but my wrists were tied with razor-sharp rope and my arms and legs were useless. He hit me again and then again, and each time I could feel the cut going deep and I couldn’t control my screaming.
“Sing to me, my pretty bird!” he gloated as he panted and laughed. “This cane will teach you the song I love best to hear! You’ll sing for me many times, but the first song is always the best!”
He kept on beating me until my entire body blazed with agony, his laughter filled with such absolute delight that I wanted to curl up with my hands over my ears. I screamed until my throat closed up, and then I just hung there whimpering. He was gasping with his effort when he stopped just as suddenly as he’d started, something unexpected pulling his attention away from his delightful time. His footsteps went to the door, and through my own harsh breathing I heard what sounded like a small panel being slid aside.
“What is it, Matthew?” James panted, thick annoyance coloring his tone. “I’m busy now.”
“Something has happened,” Matthew’s rumble came. “I think you should know about it. Radman’s been found dead. ”
James, made a noise of surprise, reclosed the panel, and I heard the lock click.
“How did that happen?” he asked as he opened the door.
There was no answer, just the sound of a scuffle, and one single blow. Something heavy fell to the floor, and a heartbeat later Matthew was next to me with a knife in his hand.
“Hang on,” he said, looking up at the pseudo-rope. “I’ll have you out of that in a minute.” His voice sounded strange and his eyes and fingers avoided the blood running from my wrists, and I finally woke up to what was happening.
“Val,” I said, but it came out a whisper. “What are you doing here like that?”
“Matthew” didn’t answer, he just went at that rope with the knife. I knew it was a good knife because it was one of mine, but it took at least several minutes before the last strand parted, and when it did my legs collapsed under me as if they weren’t there. Val grabbed for me and caught me, but the pain was almost too much. He lowered me as gently as possible until I was sitting on the floor in the mist, then leaned me sideways against the bed.
“Do you think you can hold out until we get to the shuttle port?” Matthew’s voice asked, his eyes as hard as eyes ever got. “We’re getting out of here now.”
“No!” I whispered, trying to grab for him and causing myself more pain, pure panic flooding me at the thought of what he wanted to do and my own helplessness to keep him from it. “Go back to yourself and call the Management. Please, Val! We’ll never make it any other way!”
He seemed both outraged and frustrated, and for a minute I was sure he would ignore me again, but the strengthless death-grip I had on his shirt must have made an impression on him. Suddenly his features blurred, and he was back to looking like his own self.
“You’d better know what you’re doing,” he growled in his own voice, putting a gentle, faintly trembling hand to my sweat-soaked forehead. “If you think I’ll give any of that filth a chance at you again, you’re crazy.”
He straightened up from the crouch he’d been in and went toward the sitting room, and when he passed through the doorway I noticed James. He was lying on the floor in a heap, his bloody cane half buried under him, his head tilted at an odd angle. I stared at him through the burning pain washing over me, shuddered in a way that increased that pain, then looked away.
I must have passed out for a few minutes; the next thing I heard was the voice of our ex-guide, sounding put out. “. . . never allow something like that to happen here,” he said. “We have very strict rules.”
“You’ll see in a minute how much good your rules are.” Val’s voice sounded hard and uncompromising.
They came through the doorway and the bearded man glanced at James’s body, then came over to me.
He blinked at the condition of my wrists, but when he leaned over to look at my back he was abruptly more silent than quiet. His face came into view again when he straightened, and the vexation of unnecessary trouble was in his eyes-right next to the anger of vengeance anticipated.
“It won’t be much longer,” he told me seeming distracted, absently patting my arm. “The doctor is on his way.” He came back to attention and turned to the sitting room as someone came in from the hall, then called, “This way, doctor.”
A man came in carrying the sort of bag doctors have carried for centuries. He came straight toward me and followed the half-annoyed gesture of the bearded man, directing him to my back, abruptly reaching for his bag when he saw it. I tried to catch Val’s eye, but he was staring at James’s body with no expression on his face. I wanted to tell him not to let them put me out, but I didn’t have the strength to get the words out, and it probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway. The doctor’s hypo hissed, and then the room with everyone in it melted away.
Waking up the next time was a good deal more comfortable. Granted, I was flat on my face in a bed that had straps pulled tight across my hips, but my torn-up wrists were bandaged and I could hear those special non-sounds that mean the unnatural quiet of a hospital. I pushed myself slowly up on my elbows, trying to figure out if I was still on Xanadu, and two strong hands took my arms and forced me flat again.
“You shouldn’t have come out of that yet,” a brisk female voice said from behind me. “Don’t move around or you’ll mess up the surroskin. It hasn’t had time to bind yet. ”
“Where the hell am I?” I demanded, trying to see who I was talking to, too well aware of the heavy, logy feeling that meant pain killers. If I was still in the Pleasure Sphere, I’d do more than move around a little.
“You’re in the hospital section of Xanadu O.S., if you must know,” the female voice answered. “But you have time to worry about it later.”
I craned around in time to see a hand with a pressure hypo, but not in time to do anything about it. The hypo hissed, and I went back to dreamland.
When I finally regained consciousness, the restraints were gone and I was on my back. I was all alone in the room, so I struggled to a sitting position slowly enough to keep the tearing sensation in my back down to a minimum. Thanks to the pain killers, movement wasn’t impossible, but until surroskin binds itself to you at every point, it makes you feel as though you’re about to rip open. I knew from experience that it would be a good week before I was free of the sensation.
The room was about twelve by fifteen, large for a private hospital room anywhere but on a Station like Xanadu. The high bed I sat in stood off the wall at my back, and a squared, narrow, drawered table was just to the right of it. The room’s door was farther down in the wall to my right, and the wall to my left had a vu-cast window like the ones in the Station’s suites. The view it showed was of a snow-covered woods, white and silent in an early morning beginning, a sun just starting to rise high enough to shed some warmth. The reality of the scene was excellent, caught at just the proper angle to make you think it was really there, and the subject itself was geared to show you that bed was the best place to be just then.
I ran my fingers through the tangle of my hair, then moved my gaze to the cozy table and chairs arrangement standing against the far wall. If I’d thought my legs could hold me I would have been in one of those chairs, but between the beating I’d taken and the subsequent work to repair the damage, I was in no shape to be walking around. I could almost feel the various levels of pain hovering just beyond the protective wrapping of pain killer, waiting to set me afire as soon as the wrapping faded. I tugged at the neck of the hospital gown they’d put me in, trying to loosen it as far as possible, trying to figure out what day it was. Stupid hospital gowns in stupid hospitals, where you had to launch a major campaign just to find out the standard date. I hated hospitals, hated the reason for them-and refused to-let myself think about the waiting pain.
No more than a minute later, the door to the hall opened and a nurse came in carrying a tray of bandages and oddments. She was a tall woman, as solid as a nurse sometimes has to be, but still having a pleasant, obviously female figure. She had brown hair and mild brown eyes, but her eyes lost their mildness when she saw me studying her. She put the tray she’d been carrying onto a rolling table standing near the door, then approached the side of my bed.
“You do have a fast snapback, don’t you.” She frowned, looking annoyed. “You shouldn’t have come out of that sedative for at least another half hour. And what are you doing sitting up? Are you trying to ruin the work that’s been done on you?”
I recognized her voice as the one I’d heard the first time I’d opened my eyes, and her automatic assumption of command aroused my temper. I was really in the mood to take some of my aggression out on her, but instead of sounding off and thereby putting my foot in it, I fell back on my well-known acting abilities and started the tears going from my eyes.
“What is this place?” I sniffed as if I didn’t remember waking up earlier. “And why are you yelling at me? What have I done?”
Even the gruffest of nurses are mostly good-hearted, and that one was no different from any other. She melted as if I’d poured hot water on her, and came closer to put her arm around my shoulders.
“There, there, Red, don’t cry,” she soothed, patting my hair and cheek. “You haven’t done anything at all.
You’re safe in the hospital on Xanadu Station, and no one will hurt you again. I didn’t mean to yell at you, it’s just that your uncle has been driving me crazy since they brought you in. What in the world happened to you down there?”
It took everything I had to keep from straightening in shock, because I’d actually forgotten about Val! I didn’t know what had happened after that doctor had knocked me out, but obviously Val had managed to get us back to the Station. And it looked like he was worrying about me again. Considering the fact that I knew what would happen all. too shortly, it would obviously be best to distract him with other considerations.