Deep Freeze

CHAPTER FIVE

Delicate, transparent angel sails extended backward from her shoulders. Her body was humanoid, and shapely. Wing muscles wrapped around her torso, giving the impression of breasts under a filmy garment that took its color from the short, sable fur that covered her. She was as beautiful as a butterfly with her regal stance, her protruding, multifaceted eyes, her delicate face and nose. She stood alone in an alien forest of shifting, whispering, oddly shaped trees.

"Goddamnit, Frank," she called out, "I'm going to break a leg in here. I can't see a damned thing through these freaking bug eyes."

Frank, the director of the largest and biggest ever production of The Legend of Miaree, sighed wearily.

"Frank, I'm an actress, not one of those Old Earth seers who doesn't need eyes," the whimsically delightful female said. "I'm supposed to be contemplating the possible destruction of my world, of everything that I know and love. I'm supposed to be helplessly enthralled by the maleness of a man from Delan, the constellation of the mythical beast. I'm supposed to smell like flowers because I've got the hots and all I can do is stumble over my feet because I see six of everything through these motherless bug eyes."

"All right, everybody," Frank said, "take five." He pointed a long-nailed finger at a technician. "You, Big Brain," he shouted. "It's costing just over four thousand credits per minute whether this crew is working or not. If we were paying you enough, I'd take this lost time out of your salary."

"I wouldn't turn down a raise." The speaker was young, tall, and he was often mistaken by visitors for one of the holostars in the expedition that had come to a frontier planet whose distance from U.P. center was measured in parsecs of four figures.

"Don't give me lip," the director said. "Just do something about those Goddamned bug eyes."

The young man made his way carefully onto the artfully forested holostage, approached the winged female. "I'm sorry, Miss Webster," he said. "Let me have a look."

He put his face close to hers. His heart pounded as he was submerged in the sweet scent of her breath.

"Sorry, Vinn," she said. "The eyes always worked before. Something just went wrong."

The perfection of her form was evident through the skintight garment that simulated the Artunee fur of the alien female, Miaree. The protruding eyes could not hide the classic symmetry of her face. Vinn Stern had never seen a woman who was as nearly ideal as Sheba Webster. He was grateful for the opportunity to be near her. Every day he thanked his lucky stars that he'd stumbled into his job as scientific adviser to the producer of Miaree.

"Well, that's it," he said after having stood very, very close to Sheba Webster for a full half-minute although he had seen the reason for her difficulty immediately.

"Perhaps, Mr. Stern," the director said impatiently, "you will see fit, sometime today, to tell us what it is."

"Makeup put the eyes on upside down," Vinn said.

"Oh, hell," Frank said. He made his way through Vinn Stern's version of a grove of Artunee pleele trees. "Can't you manage to do the scene, darling, without having to redo the eyes?"

"Frank," Sheba said patiently, "I'm supposed to be an alien female. I'm supposed to cease being Sheba Webster and become a being that metamorphosizes from some horrid sluglike leaf-eating creature into a sensitive entity. I'm encapsulated in fur. I'm sweating my buns off. This stuff makes me itch all over, and I'm supposed to be able to feel love for some macho alien male? I'm supposed to be able to project that I'm a lovely, doomed butterfly when I risk breaking a leg each time I move?"

Frank sighed again. It took well over an hour for makeup to prepare Sheba's face and hair. He turned away, lifted his arms toward heaven in supplication. "All right, everybody, power down. We'll have an early lunch.

Back on the set ready to shoot at one-thirty." He turned to Sheba. "Okay?"

"Okay," she said. "You're so very considerate, Frank. It's a genuine pleasure to work with you." The tone of her voice indicated exactly the opposite meaning. She lifted her hands and tugged at the bug eyes.

"No, don't, please," Vinn said, putting his hands atop hers. "Let me do it."

The sable smoothness of the fur garment was sensuous, the knowledge that it was her hands under the fur caused him to take a deep breath. He sprayed a neutrally balanced enzyme dissolver around the multifaceted artificial organs and caught them as they fell. Sheba's own huge emerald eyes teared from the residue of the spray. He produced a clean cloth, touched the corners of her eyes delicately.

"Thank you, Vinn," she said.

"You'd better go along with her, Stern," the director ordered as Shebaswayed away through the pleele trees. "Be sure they do it right this time."

Vinn caught up with Sheba as she stepped off the holostage. "I've been told to supervise makeup," he said.

"Good for you." She turned aside, headed toward a cubicle that had her name on the door.

"Ah, that's not the way to makeup, Miss Webster," Vinn said.

"Come in, I'll need your help," she said.

Sheba's dressing room smelled of girl—perfumes and powders. She stopped just inside the door. "The zipper is just under here." She lifted her long blonde hair away from her neck.

"Miss Webster, I don't think there's time," he protested.

"I'm being slowly boiled," she said. "The zipper, please."

He pulled the tab.

"We have to be very careful of the wings," he said. The zipper made a tiny noise. Girl skin emerged from under the fur. His fingers pulled the tab down the ridge of her spine, over the outward flow of her rump.

"Thank you," she said. She skinned out of the fur and bent over a wash basin to splash cooling water into her face, thereby destroying an hour's work in the makeup room. Her position emphasized the womanly outthrust of hip, the taut roundness of buttock. She wore only the briefest of undergarments. She was so beautiful that Vinn had trouble breathing.

"Would you please hand me the robe hanging behind the door?"

She turned her back to him and lifted her arms. He held the robe for her. She shrugged to nestle it on her shoulders and turned to face him. "If I invite you to lunch, would you be kind enough to fetch it for us?"

"My pleasure," he said.

He was back quickly with two hotpacks. Sheba pulled a small table out from the wall and they sat facing each other. When the lids of the hotpacks were removed, delicious smells joined the feminine scents of thedressing room. Sheba said, "Ummm," and attacked the food hungrily.

Vinn, fascinated, could only watch.

"If you're not going to eat your meat—" she said, looking up at him with her green eyes. Her lips were glossy.

"No, no," he said. "If you want it—"

"Thank you," she said, spearing his filet with her fork. She smiled radiantly. "Don't let it bother you. You're not the first to be amazed by my metabolism."

"You do enjoy your food, don't you?"

"I was my mother's despair," she said. "She was always telling me that it wasn't ladylike to eat like an outworld mine worker."

"Well, you certainly don't have a weight problem."

"Never," she said. "I can eat my weight and not gain an ounce."

"You're fortunate."

"You're not going to eat anything?"

He flushed. She said nothing more. He was not the first young man to be stupefied by her beauty. She never could fully understand it, but she accepted it. In her mind she was just Sheba, the youngest Webster girl.

She liked her body well enough because it was lithe and healthy and sturdy, because it was capable of doing fun things like rock climbing and soaring. After a period of trying to hide her developing body with baggy clothes and a slump of her shoulders when she was a teenager she had learned to be thankful that others found it pleasant to look at her. All of her life she had liked pleasing people and she had developed that skill into a precision art. She had only to walk into a room to be the center of attention. Her beauty and charisma had made a place for her in holofilms, and then she had accepted another challenge and had set out to learn the craft of the actor.

Now, in the full bloom of womanhood, she stood at the pinnacle of her profession, ranked among the top dozen performers, male and female, who were familiar to viewers on hundreds of worlds. She had come to love thelifestyle that was made possible by her looks and by an acting ability that had been developed carefully from nothing more than a small kernel of talent.

"How did you happen to end up out here in the wilderness?" she asked, in an effort to put Vinn more at ease.

"Just luck," he said. "I was working at the Verbolt works on Xanthos—"

"You're one of those?" she asked, widening her eyes.

"Big brain, that's me," he said with a self-conscious laugh.

She was vaguely aware that Vinn, in addition to his other duties, was charged with keeping the film unit's computer in operational order.

"I'm impressed," she said. "I barely managed to fake my way through computer proficiency in school. I could never understand how data can be stored on molecules of liquid." She smiled. "But you were telling me how you came to be a part of our merry company."

"My old computer logic professor at Xanthos University was offered the job of scientific adviser for this film of yours," he went on. "His health wouldn't permit his coming, so he recommended me. I have to confess that I gave the proposition every bit of two seconds thought before I said yes."

"Didn't like it on Xanthos?"

"Yes and no," he said. "All my life I thought that there'd be nothing better than having my own laboratory with limitless access to equipment and funds. I knew that given the chance I could make giant strides in computer science."

"And?"

"And I spent eleven years in my beautifully equipped lab at Verbolt and the only discovery I made was that everything had already been discovered."

"Surely not."

"That's what I told myself as a sop to my ego," he confessed. "I wasalways the bright one in my class, Miss Webster. I was always tops. I was the great hope of my family and my instructors and when it came right down to it I discovered that I was, as our friend Frank says, just a Big Brain. I have an excellent memory. I'm a quick study. And I don't think I've ever had an original thought in my life."

"That's being rather hard on yourself. After all, you're young."

"Thirty-five."

"Young." She gave him her best smile. "Younger than I."

"No."

"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm quite ancient."

"You're beautiful," he whispered.

"Thank you." She winked at him as she lifted a spoonful of a quite delicious pudding, spoke with her mouth full as she put down the spoon and dish. "And now, sir, I think you'd better help me get back into my butterfly suit."

It was necessary for him to adjust the small bulge of the fake wing muscles that blended into the mounds of her breasts. He felt the softness and the heat. For a moment she was irritated as she saw his hands tremble, but the moment passed. He was, after all, not to be blamed for being affected by the fortunate blending of genes that had made her—so one fan magazine had said—the peak product of a million years of selective evolution. She walked beside him. He carried Miaree's eyes carefully. Just before they reached the makeup cubicle he said, "I have the use of an aircar. Have you had a chance to see the desert wilderness from the air?"

"No."

"If you're care to—"

"I'd like that," she said.

"After work, then," he said. "If Frank knocks off in time to leave us some daylight. I can have a picnic packed."

"Wonderful," she said, with a radiant smile.

Inside, he watched as the makeup techs worked. He, himself, applied the enzyme glue to the eyes and positioned them.

"That's much better," Sheba said, looking out through only one facet.

Vinn powered down the generators, put the portable Century Series computer to bed. The film crew was scattering. A pickup groundball game was getting underway in a field that had been cleared for the landings of supply and transport vessels. From one of the living cubicles came the soaring strains of the triumphant movement from Selvin Mann's symphony, The Ascent of Man. The murmur of multiple strings hushed the avian songs from the surrounding forest. The sun, whiter and much more fierce than the kind, yellow sun of Xanthos, was still three standard hours high.

When Vinn knocked on the door of Sheba's quarters she called out, "It's open." He stepped into her smell. Like her dressing room her living area was in a state of charmingly feminine deshabille. The briefs she had worn under the Artunee fur made a filmy, pastel pile on the carpet. The shower was running and the door to the bath was open.

"I hope that's you, Vinn," she called out.

"It's me," he said.

"Come and hand me my towel."

He swallowed, walked into a new smell of steamy moistness and fragrant soaps. The shower stall was enclosed in frosted duraglass, but he could see her silhouette. He found the towel. The rushing jet of water ceased. A slim, tanned arm disappeared above the shower stall.

"I'll be quick," she said, as the door to the shower opened and she stepped out. Her long, blonde hair was tucked up into a shower cap. Her petite, molded body was covered totally with the towel. She removed the cap and shook out her hair. It fell in a cascade of shining brightness. Vinn stood, mesmerized.

She laughed. "If, sir, you would kindly step out into the other room sothat I can get dressed?"

"Oh, sure," he said. "Sorry."

"I hope you remembered that food you promised," she called out to him. "I'm famished."

"Yes, I did."

She appeared in the doorway. She wore lime colored briefs and bra and heels that made her calves arch attractively. "We won't be doing any hiking, will we?"

He swallowed. "No."

"Oh, dear," she said, "I'll bet you didn't have any sisters."

"No. Why?"

"It's obvious that you're not used to seeing a lady being casual in her undress."

"No." He made an effort that surprised him. "But feel free—" He gulped.

"I mean, well."

She laughed in delight. "You remind me of my brother, old Josh. He was always yelling at me to put on some decent clothing."

"I am not yelling."

She winked. "But you're blushing."

"And enjoying," he said.

She lifted her arms high, slipped into a simple little sheath dress that came to a point just above her knees.

"I am ready," she announced.

They were approaching the car park when the director hailed them.

"Where do you think you're going, Sheba?" Frank demanded.

"Sightseeing," Sheba said.

"Our insurance does not cover flight in private aircars," Frank said.

"Mine does," Sheba said.

"Sheba, I'm warning you," the director said.

"Frank, I have a commercial license," Vinn said. "That automatically makes the aircar a public carrier."

"You see, love," Sheba said, "there's nothing to worry about."

Inside the aircar, as she settled in and fastened the safety harness she asked, "Really?"

"Really what?"

"Are you really licensed?"

"Oh, yeah. Unlimited, as a matter of fact."

"Anywhere, anytime, any size vessel?"

"I think that's the way it reads."

"I'm impressed anew," she said. "When did you manage to find time to study and get the field experience for that?"

"Well, I got my private license when I was in secondary school. I picked up some navigation hours in college, on field trips. And then I signed on as third mate on a deep space miner for a two year hitch to finish out the required hours."

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Thirty-five."

"Buster, either you're stretching the truth or you were an early starter," she said, disarming the challenge with one of her finest smiles.

"I entered Xanthos U. at fourteen," he said, as he fed power into the flux drive of the aircar and lifted it smoothly up and away in a soaring arc.

The desert began no more than four hundred miles from the location site. The jungle became thinner, was degraded into savanna bushland, and then, just beyond a tall, rocky range of mountains that stored any stray drop of moisture in eternal snows there was the harshness of aridity.

Barren sands and jutting buttes and mesas gave up the glory of their brilliant colors to the setting sun. Vinn slowed the aircar, lowered until they were crawling along just above the rocky terrain. The colorful upthrusts of the landscape towered above them.

"So beautiful," Sheba whispered.

"Pick a spot. We'll land and have our picnic."

"There," she said, pointing to a parched, rocky mesa. "We should have a fine view."

With the sun low the heat of the desert diminished to the level of comfort. With the coming of twilight it would be quite chill. Sheba spread the cloth from the picnic basket, set out the goodies that Vinn had provided, led the way in diving into them with enthusiastic "Ummms" and other brilliant comments such as "ahhhh," and even, "good."

Vinn, too, found his appetite. The sun sank lower. Sheba shivered and Vinn leapt to his feet to drape a warm wrap around her shoulders. He was still on his feet when Sheba lifted her arm, pointed, and said, "Wow, look."

A blaze of fire was sweeping across the cloudless sky from east to west toward the setting sun. Sheba jumped up, put her arm around Vinn's waist. It was over in a few seconds. The fiery object seemed to be coming directly toward them.

It flashed by overhead and the sonic boom jarred them, reverberated in the arid valley below.

"There's going to be one hell of an impact," Vinn whispered, but even as he spoke the object arced upward, drove toward the blue dome of sky, and disappeared.

"Some damned fool just burned off a few hundred thousand credits worth of insulation," Vinn said.

"Wow," Sheba said, her arm still around Vinn.

"Well, there's still dessert," Vinn said.

She ate the frozen delicacy slowly, licking the spoon with evident enjoyment. The sun was below the horizon but left a lingering farewell in the form of a blazing red sky. Sheba finished her dessert, sighed with satisfaction, snugged the shawl around her.

"Thank you," she said. "That sunset is the nicest gift I've had lately."

"It is I who should thank you," he said.

"Oh, well, if you want me to arrange another spectacular sunset for you, just let me know."

"For coming with me," he explained. He spread his hands. "I still can't believe it. Me, having a picnic with Sheba Webster. You and I have grown up together, but with you on the holoscreen. I saw you first when I was sixteen. I spent hours in the library searching out all the films in which you appeared, and I haven't missed one since."

She laughed. "Good Lord, you saw my early efforts and you still like me?"

"Your acting ability developed steadily. Your beauty just ripened, piling flawlessness atop perfection."

She watched the play of crimson fade on the horizon. "Vinn, I understand what you're saying. When you were watching me in three dimensions and glowing color in a holofilm I was—"

"Bigger than life, because I wanted to see you on the big theater screens, not in a small room."

"And untouchable," she went on. She reached across and placed the tips of four fingers on the back of his hand. "But that's just the work that I do. That three-dimensional image is not Sheba Webster, but what she does to earn her daily bread and keep things from being boring." She took his hand in both of hers and squeezed. "This is Sheba Webster. I'm just a woman. I'm real. I have headaches and if I eat unwisely or drink too much.

I have a bad stomach and my breath gets a bit rank. When the day's shooting is over, I go to my cubicle and I can feel loneliness just as deeply as anyone."

He cleared his throat.

"So don't try to make me something I'm not, some object of awe and worship. I'm human, just like you."

"You're put together better than most women, you'll have to admit that."

"Ummm," she said, still holding onto his hand. "I'm glad for that, because it makes me a rich woman and it makes you like me."

"I do, very much."

"Like me?"

"More than that."

"Well, let's not move too fast. Let's take it one step at a time."

"I've never wanted to kiss anyone so badly in my life," he said.

"That's a small step," she said, leaning toward him.

She closed her eyes as his lips touched hers. She had kissed and been kissed many times, on the stage and in real time. She had never been promiscuous. She was not one of those who, in order to achieve her goal, bartered herself to the rich and powerful. From the first she had made it clear to the moguls and powers of the industry that she was not an object of trade, that she was Sheba, and that was enough to earn her her rightful place. She was not virgin, of course. She'd even been married once. That experiment had ended so badly that for many years she had avoided intimate relationships. However, she was a sensual person. She could take delight in good food, good music, a well done drama, and she could, with the right man, be a bawdy, delightful wanton. She wasn't sure—not just yet—whether she wanted to lower her guard enough to let Vinn Stem into her life, but with his lips on hers there was a moment when her libido stirred.

She let him enclose her in his arms. In the chill of the evening his warmth was stimulating. She widened her kiss, felt the hard muscles of his back under her palms, heard her sister Ruth say, "Sheba, Sheba."

"Ummm," she said, slightly annoyed but not questioning.

"Sheba, listen," said her brother David.

"Sheba, we need you," Ruth said.

"Huh?" She pulled away from Vinn's kiss.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

The voices were still there, heard dimly in her mind, the words indistinct but imparting a disturbing sense of urgency. She shook her head, gave herself once more to Vinn's kiss and the voices clamored in her head, driving away all hints of pleasure and desire.

"That's one step," she whispered, as she pushed Vinn away.

"I want to see you again," he said.

"Every day, lover," she said, rising.

"And at night?"

"One step at a time," she repeated.

She kissed him lingeringly on the steps to her living cubicle and for a moment it seemed that the voices were back. Inside she undressed quickly, cleaned her teeth, climbed gratefully into her bed. They came to her in her dreams.

"Sheba, Sheba."

"We need you, Sheba."

"Please, please, Sheba."

"Sheba, Sheba, Sheba."