Somatoys

Somatoys

BY RAY ALDRIDGE

Illustration by Pat Morrissey

/Science Fiction Age, March 1993/

The hermit Berner climbed up to his shrine, as he did every morning at sunrise. The sun’s hurtful glare rose swiftly above the surrounding mountains. By the time Berner reached the top of the hill, harsh light filled his valley. The shrine was a bronze statue– a naked woman, life-size. She lay back on a gray boulder, legs spread, hands laced comfortably behind her head, smiling up at the sky. Sharp little knives tipped her small breasts.

«From death into life, from life into death; the same door,» he prayed, so quickly that the familiar words ran together. He lay his forehead against the smooth belly of the shrine, still cold from the desert night. Soon the shrine would be too hot to touch, which was why he performed his devotions at dawn.

He rolled his cheek against the metal, trying to remember how it felt to touch a real woman. Nothing but a sort of abstract revulsion came to him, mixed strangely with a tenuous longing. «You’ve been here too long, too long, too long,» he told himself, as he did every morning. It was as much a part of the ritual as his prayers.

After a while, Berner pushed himself away from the shrine and went down to his posole pod plantation. He took a hoe and labored among the wiry vines until the sunlight became dangerously intense.

Then he retreated into his cave.

Tawny posole fiber mats covered the walls and floor. A cool spring trickled pleasantly at the back of the cave. Berner owned a hammock, a small library of sacred books, and a good med-unit. He looked around at this comfortable dwelling and felt a desperate surge of boredom.

He took a bowl of posole to his table. After 30 changeless years, the thin gray gruel had lost whatever appeal it might have originally possessed. But it was nourishing, and the pods grew without too much trouble. He stared down into the bowl. «What I wouldn’t give for a tomato,» he said. «Or even a stinking squash. And I hated squash.» He sighed and forced himself to eat.

In his hammock, Berner was settling toward sleep, when he heard the rumble of descending engines. The cave trembled and dust fell from the mats. He rushed to the entrance. Looking out, he saw a squat black starboat at the edge of the posole pod field, descending in a blossom of orange fire.

The starboat stood silently in the noon glare. The posole vines beneath the boat smoldered for a bit.

Nothing else happened.

Berner soon retreated into the relative coolness of his cave. In late afternoon, Berner again ventured to the cave’s mouth. The sun still hammered down, and the heat rose from the red soil in shuddering waves. Bemer watched for long minutes, gasping in the fiery air, but no one came forth.

An hour after dark, when the air was cooler and the moonless night blazed with stars, he thought he heard a sound from the boat. A scream? Had he heard anything at all? What sound could escape the armored hull?

A little later, the boat’s lock revolved and fell open.

A pneumatic gangplank unfurled from the starboat; an impressive man descended. He wore black glitterskin and a silver-thread tunic; he was tall and lithe; he moved with an air of irresistable authority. A mask of gold and silver microscales cloaked his face–a prosthesis attached directly to his facial muscles, as mobile as the skin it replaced. The features were impossibly noble, inhumanly precise. Bemer stepped cautiously from the cave.

The visitor made an easy gesture of greeting, and strode forward. «Good evening,» said the visitor, in a resonant tenor as beautiful as his mask.

«Good evening, sir...» Berner’s voice broke.

The visitor smiled, his mask glimmering in the starlight. «A lovely night. It must be one of the compensations of your life here. Where, may I ask, are your companions?»

Berner was unprepared for so direct a question and answered without guile. «There’s no one here but me. It’s an empty world.» «Oh? A shame. Aren’t you lonely?» Dark eyes twinkled within the mask; the voice sang on. «But where are my manners? My name is Warven Manolo Cleet, a citizen of Dilvermoon, on a journey of rest and renewal. And you?»

«Ah... Brother Bemer, a lay dedicant of the Stringent Mystery.» Bemer hesitated a moment. Something more was required of him; he felt it strongly, as if Cleet jerked at him with invisible hooks.

«Oh... Berner said, finally. «Will you come in?»

So, you’re alone here. Have you no other visitors?»

Cleet lolled elegantly at Berner’s table. He had taken the only chair, without hesitation.

«The Mission circuit ship stops every five years.»

Cleet leaned forward, taut. «Ah? When did the ship last visit?» «A year ago. Do you know of the Stringent Mystery?»

«Yes,» said Cleet, relaxing. «I know of your sect.» A sneer trembled on his metal lips. «You worship an idol... a naked demon, correct? She reclines, her legs are open and her nipples are knives. You regard sexuality as a mortal sin, in the most literal sense. Not so?»

«The shrine is an allegory, not an idol.» In spite of all the times Berner had doubted, he resented this sleek Dilvermooner’s contempt. «It’s true, we regard sex with women as its own punishment.»

«What of sex with men?»

«There’s little theological difference. Men use each other as women. In our view the sin is undiminished by the physiological details.»

«I see.» Cleet seemed to be struggling not to laugh.

«Why are you a hermit? Others of your sect prosper in the settled worlds.»

Cleet was prying into sensitive areas now, and Berner set his jaw and looked away.

Cleet finally did laugh, a sound somehow unpleasant, for all its silvery perfection of tone. «I understand. Beyond touch, beyond temptation; is that the plan? Did you prove particularly susceptible to the charms of women? Particularly weak in your faith?» Cleet’s eyes glittered.

«That’s none of your concern, Citizen Cleet,» Berner snapped.

Cleet leaned forward, and the hard contours of his mask flowed like molten metal, shimmering with several unidentifiable emotions. «You’re wrong.» A nerveburn appeared in Cleet’s hand. Cleet pointed it at Berner’s chest.

Berner stared down at the weapon, horrified. «I’ve nothing worth stealing...»

Cleet grinned. «You think I’m a thief?» He chuckled throatily, shook his head. «No, no. It pleases me to be served, and you’re the only servant to be found on this ugly little world, so... you must dedicate yourself to a new mystery.»

Berner drew back. «I’m sorry. I can’t take on any additional responsibilities. My devotions... my work in the fields...»

«I’m your god now, hermit,» said Cleet. He triggered the nerveburn.

Berner found himself suddenly damned. Horror assaulted all his senses. An indescribable sound clawed at his ears, sent spikes of ugliness into his brain. Cleet changed into a thing so hideous he could never afterward remember its shape. His mouth filled with the taste of maggoty rot, he choked on a supremely vile stench. Fire shrieked along his nerves, shuddering waves of agony. The world disappeared. Nothing existed but the pain, it filled his universe from edge to edge, it went on and on, until he had forgotten its source.

When it ended, he lay on the floor in a puddle of vomit and urine, and he was a different man.

«Have you changed your mind?» asked Cleet.

«Oh yes,» said Berner.

Cleet allowed Berner to clean himself and put on his other robe, then he took him to the starboat.

The boat was furnished in luxurious style, with deep carpets and soft pastel walls. In the central well of the boat, a slow-spinning stairfield floated them up into the bow. Here the walls were bare alloy, studded with holoprojector lenses. To one side was a heavy metal door, set with an armorglass port.

A round plastic bladderbed filled the center of the floor. On it lay a naked woman with blood-streaked thighs. She was very still, but she breathed.

«Your first job,» said Cleet, and indicated the woman with a languid gesture. «Hose her down, and get her into the med-unit down on the cargo deck.» Cleet turned a sharp glance on Bemer, and the beautiful mask shifted, displayed a stern expression. «Keep your prong in your pants, hermit. Or rather, under your robe. Yes, yes, I know of your religious prohibitions, which I trust you still cling to; but heed me–certain of my facilities I don’t care to share with the help.»

«I haven’t touched a woman in 30 years,» Bemer said.

«That’s exactly what causes me concern,» said Cleet. He smiled crookedly and left.

Bemer stood for a silent moment, confused, wondering how the world had changed so much, so quickly.

He looked down at the woman. She was pale, with tarnished- silver hair, cut short. Her body was smoothly muscled, her breasts heavy, her hips rather narrow. Bruises bloomed under her skin. She smelled of blood and sweat.

One arm was bent beneath her body awkwardly. He bent down, rolled her enough to free the arm. He saw a glint of metal at the back of her neck–the oval mating surface of a personaskein implant. «A beaster,» Bemer said, repelled.

He glanced around the deck. In a bulkhead locker, he found a hose, stowed on a reel. A bucket held a soft-bristled brush and a soap dispenser.

Warm water sprayed forth when he pressed a button. He scrubbed away the worst of the grime that encrusted her, as gently as he could. When he was finished, he turned the hose on the rest of the chamber. He touched another button and warm air sighed from the hose.

She was soon dry. He lifted her, and she lay motionless against his chest. Her skin had a lovely silky texture, which he tried not to notice.

He stepped into the stairfield, and was carried down to the cargo hold. In one comer a large med-unit waited.

He laid her down on the med-unit’s tray. An odd emotion touched him briefly. He frowned. Would he have preferred to prolong that warm contact? «Let’s not kid ourself, Brother Berner,» he muttered. He slid the tray into the diagnostic chamber.

He stood by the med-unit’s port, watching as limpet sensors crawled over her body, assessing the damage. The med-unit’s readout panel flickered briefly with amber warning lights, but quickly cooled into steady yellow-green. Bemer smiled.

«You should be pleased,» Cleet said.

Berner jumped and turned to find Cleet at his shoulder.

Cleet leaned forward, looked into the port. «Yes, you should be pleased. We must hope, you and I, that she remains healthy. If I should use her a bit too harshly and she should die–then I might have to appropriate your stringy flesh. Though it would be a sorry exchange. The med-unit is good enough to implant the skein interface... and make any other changes I might require. Well. At least you have good bones.» Cleet winked grotesquely, his mask sparkling. He reached out, touched Berner’s cheek. Bemer edged back.

Cleet transferred his attention to the woman. «She’s a pretty little thing, my Candypop. Isn’t she?» he said. «An alley clone. Her cellmother was a beauty queen on some backwater agworld. Think of it–a million farmers would have laid down their manure forks to court her–and she’s my very own somatoy....» Cleet sighed. He appeared to take no pleasure from this observation.

He turned to Bemer. «Come. I’ll show you your place.»

Bemer hung back. «I’d prefer my cave, if it would please you.»

Cleet’s mask became an inhuman and incomprehensible surface. He jerked his arm and the nerveburn appeared in his trembling hand.

Bemer hung his head. «As you wish,» he said in a thin voice. He tried to conceal his rage, but not his fear.

Cleet’s mask rippled, regained a semblance of humanity. The nerveburn disappeared. «Wise,» he said.

Cleet took him to a cubicle. «You’ll wait here until I call,» said Cleet, and left. The door swung shut with a click.

Berner pushed at the latch, was unsur prised to find it locked. He looked about. A canvas pipe berth hung on one wall; in the comer were a sink and toilet. A dark vid- screen over the door completed the furnishings. Light came from an overhead panel; after a minute it dimmed to a faint red glow. Berner lay on the berth and waited for sleep.

A long time later he felt an urge to perform his devotions. Evidently morning had arrived.

The light panel grew brighter. Strange, he thought. In yesterday’s dawn he had gone up to the shrine and worshipped, as he had for ten thousand mornings. He had loosened the dust around the posole vines, had gathered the ripest pods. That routine should have continued until he lay down for the last time.

He had imagined his old passions to be thoroughly quenched in the emptiness of his world, his fascination with the flesh lost to the slow abrasion of unchanging days and nights.

He thought of the woman and wondered if he had been a great fool.

Hours passed. Finally the vidscreen lit, and Cleet’s gold and silver face looked down at Berner. «Awake?»

«Yes,» Berner said, sitting up on his berth. «May I return to my cave? I’m a little hungry. I could have breakfast there, or fetch back a stock of posole, if you preferred.» He hated the subservience in his voice, but he was still terrified of the nerveburn.

Cleet smiled, an oddly empty expression. «You will never return to your cave, hermit.» He shook his head, slowly. «But you may take your breakfast in the refectory; I’ve finished. When you’re done, come up to the astrogation deck. We’ll have a discussion.» The screen blanked and the door sighed open.

Berner found the refectory, a long cabin that followed the curve of the starboat’s hull. A narrow strip of tinted armorglass ran along the outside wall. Berner looked through the glass. The posole vines drooped gracefully in the gathering heat, and the black mouth of the cave seemed a lost haven, unbearably sweet in memory. Berner was taken by regret so strong his eyes watered. Eventually he turned away.

At the far end was a counter, cluttered with dirty dishes. Berner sat at the counter. Shutters slid back to reveal the terminal of an autochef. He ordered something called proolie, which turned out to be cooked grain, sprinkled with a bitter yellow spice.

When he finished, he stacked the dishes in the sanitizer. He went to the stairfield and floated upward until he reached the astrogation deck, which identified itself with a flashing prompter.

Cleet stood before a hemisphere of smoky armorglass, looking out over the badlands, a pensive expression smoothing his mask. «Ah, hermit,» he said, turning toward Berner. «Can you make civilized conversation?»

Berner stood awkwardly, hands knotted together. «I don’t remember,» he said finally. «It’s been a long time.»

Cleet laughed. «You are at least honest and unassuming, two useful virtues in a person of your station–though such attributes would seem grotesque in a person of my station. Wouldn’t you say?» Berner could think of no safe reply.

«Never mind,» Cleet said. «I won’t expect too much of you. So. Tell me how you came to be here. Be brief, be accurate, be entertaining.» Cleet’s mask now showed no emotion at all. «Sit down,» he ordered, pointing at a bench that ran along the hull, beneath a bank of storage slots.

Berner sat. His mind was empty of words. Cleet watched him expectantly, eyes fluidly alive in the cold metal of the mask. Finally, Berner spoke. «I came here 30 years ago....» Immediately, Cleet interrupted. «Think of it! Thirty years of nothing. But tell me of your life before you came here. Remember, you must amuse me.»

«I’ll try....»

Cleet turned away, appeared to fix his attention on the badlands outside. «Continue.»

Berner cleared his throat. «I was a miner on Silverdollar....» Again Cleet interrupted. «Silverdollar. Isn’t that a cold world? Ice and snow? What beasts live on Silverdollar?»

Berner remembered the ice fields, the drifting smokes, the distant white sun. «Many animals live on the ice,» he said.

«Roverees, sealynx, white snowlions... I killed one of those, my last winter on Silverdollar. It broke through the baffle over my vertical shaft and came down, looking for food and warmth.

Found me asleep in bed...»

Cleet chuckled, shot him a swift sideways glance. «With a friend? Oho. Thus we have the reason for your religious impulse? How banal, how predictable, how like a bad sensiedrama. She failed to survive, no doubt, and this tragedy impelled you into the skinny arms of the Stringent Mystery. No?»

«That’s the gist of it.» Memory played on: the sound of the animal’s breathing, the corrupt stench of its breath, the wrenching of its teeth in his flesh. A shudder twitched through him.

«Well, spare me the details. Your lover died from bad locks, not bad sex; can’t you see this?» Cleet spoke peevishly, returning his gaze to the badlands. «Tell me of the snowlions. What are they like?»

Berner shut off his memories. «They’re not much like lions, really; they’re long and thin and very quick. They weigh up to a thousand kilos, and older males stand two meters or more at the shoulder. They have certain otterlike characteristics, if you can imagine an otter that hunts small whales. Well, not really whales, but that’s their niche....»

«Never mind the whales. How do the snowlions breed?» «They spawn in geyser sloughs, birth free-swimming larva, so I understand.» As he spoke Berner glanced toward the nearest storage slot. He was astonished to see the grip of Cleet’s nerveburn protruding from the slot, within easy reach. He looked at Cleet, who seemed oblivious. No, he thought. It’s a trap, it’s too easy. Would Cleet be so careless? No. The nerveburn was surely discharged, or otherwise disabled.

«Continue,» Cleet snapped.

«I’m sorry. I’m no biologist.» He forced himself not to look at the nerveburn.

Cleet hissed, a sound of exasperation. «You’re as dull as I feared.» He moved with blurring speed, scooped the nerveburn from the slot. «It took you five minutes to notice it, and then you were terrified. Did you suspect a trap? Did you? So what? It was a chance, your only chance, and you did nothing. What sort of jellyfish are you?»

Berner hung his head. Cleet was right, he should have tried. Cleet’s voice became softer, more introspective. «Surely you’ve understood that you’re not likely to survive my service. Isn’t my nature clear to you? So why not take the chance? Why not? Any other animal would have taken the chance.»

Cleet opened the butt of the nerveburn, slipped out the power cell. Its charge indicator glowed a bright poisonous green. Cleet slid it back in, snapped it shut.

Berner stared at the nerveburn longingly.

«Well, you were right,» Cleet said. «It was a trap; I wondered if you’d really learned your place. You could never have beaten me to the nerveburn. I’m much too fast for you. I own the best body mods money can buy.»

Cleet pointed the nerveburn; his finger trembled on the firing stud. «I could punish you for your cowardice,» he said. His mask flowed into repose, cool and distant. Berner half-turned, raised his hands in useless defense. Cleet flicked his hand and the nerveburn disappeared. «But I won’t; I’d never get the smell out of here. Besides, now that we know what a coward you are, we’ll all be able to relax, won’t we?»

The breath sighed from Berner.

«You’re a weak animal, hermit, but we’re all animals, no more and sometimes less.» Cleet looked again at the badlands. «Often less. Animals live, mate, die, with no thought for the time to come or the time past. They bum brighter than most sapient creatures. You wonder at my certainty? Then I’ll show you what I mean. Go fetch Candypop; hers is the pink door on the cargo deck.»

«Where should I bring her?» asked Berner, feeling completely defeated.

«To the bed, of course.»

Berner tapped at the heavy alloy door, but his knuckles made almost no sound. Still, the door opened very quickly, and Candypop stepped out, still naked.

«Yes,» she said, in a resonant contralto. He saw that her eyes were a clear deep amber and that she was a great deal more beautiful than he had realized. Vitality glowed from her – an astonishing thing, under the circumstances.

«Cleet sent me to fetch you,» he mumbled.

«All right,» she said. When he didn’t immediately move, she took his arm in a firm grip and turned him toward the stairfield. «Let’s not keep him waiting,» she said. «That would be stupid.»

She walked toward the field with long graceful strides. Berner hurried to keep up.

«I’m sorry,» he said, as they stepped into the field and floated up.

«For what?» She seemed genuinely curious.

«For running his errands... whatever they are.» Berner was trying to bank the fire of his anger, to preserve it against a time when he could fan it into a blaze.

«Don’t be silly,» she said, just before they reached the top of the field. «Who could resist such a great monster?»

She walked in and seated herself on the plastic bed, as if she had done so a thousand times before. Berner admired her bravery; he wished he could feel as unafraid as she seemed to be.

«Now,» said Cleet to Berner. «Let me show you my library.» He went to the locked door, pressed his palm to the lockplate. The door hissed, moved aside.

Berner followed Cleet into the small room. Cleet turned, waved his hand in a gesture that took in the entire room. Banks of small stasis chambers made up three of the room’s walls; there were thousands of the little glass-fronted boxes.

«My collection,» Cleet said, mask shimmering with delight. «Here,» he said, touching a chamber faceplate. It lit, displaying green characters in the angular Dilvermoon script: SUCCISA PRATENSIS, Male and Female.

«You don’t understand?»

«No, Citizen Cleet,» Berner answered.

Cleet touched another faceplate, which displayed: TURSIOPS TRUNCATUS, Male and Female. «Personaskeins, hermit! An inheritance from my grandsire, who was also unusual in his tastes.» Cleet thrust his face close to Berner’s, and Berner smelled perfumed decay, as though Cleet were rotting away behind the beautiful mask. «The blood runs thicker in me than it did in my ancestors. In here I keep the souls of ten thousand creatures. Mostly terrestrial lifeforms, though I own many alien ones too.» Cleet laughed and pushed at the faceplate, which folded in. Cleet snatched out the two personaskeins that lay in the chamber, two scarab-shaped oblongs of metal and red plastic.

Cleet went to the door. «I won’t lock the door. But if you interrupt me, you may expect pain. You may watch, if you wish to understand.» An undecipherable expression slid over the golden mask. He went out, closing the door behind him.

Berner at first resisted the urge to look through the armorglass port. He stood before the inner wall and touched faceplates. He discovered that a second touch would display a labeled image of the creatures whose psyches were bound in the personaskeins within. Here were tigers, there crocodiles, over there fanged alien predators with six long legs and gorgeous feathers.

A third touch displayed a scrolling description of the alien predator’s mating behavior. Berner watched for only a moment, before shuddering and turning away. He hoped Cleet would not use that particular set of personaskeins; the woman would not survive the experience.

A lovely blue luminance drew him toward the port. He went, though he felt a premonitory disgust with Cleet–and with himself for not resisting so ugly a curiosity.

The holoprojectors had created an underwater world. Tall green- black strands of kelp wavered in lazy currents. Tiny silver fish glittered among the fronds. The blue light fell through the kelp forest in streaming rays, illuminating the two who floated in the center of the transformed cabin.

Cleet’s long body was heavily muscled, as if Cleet spent much time in a tissue stimulator. The woman’s rich mouth bore a wide, fixed smile. She swam in Cleet’s embrace, accomodating his thrusts with swift graceful movements. He shuddered, and a stream of silvery bubbles came from her laughing mouth.

Bemer turned away from the port, somehow sickened, though he had seen nothing brutal or evil. He sat down in one comer and composed himself to wait.

When Cleet came for him, he was nodding with sleep. Cleet nudged Berner with his boot, and Berner shook his head.

He jumped to his feet. «Sorry,» Berner said.

Cleet’s mask bore a quirky expression, as if Cleet was somehow exasperated with Berner. «You found my performance boring?»

Berner hardly knew what to answer.

«Never mind,» Cleet said. He replaced the personaskeins in their stasis chamber. «To work.»

He led Bemer out into the cabin, where the woman lay motionless on the bed, looking up at the ceiling.

«You know what to do,» Cleet said. «She won’t require the med- unit tonight; just clean her up. Oh, and this time, see that she combs her hair. Perfume her, make her lips red. Take her to her room on the cargo deck; you’ll find what you need. Make her presentable. Then go to your own cubicle. I don’t want you underfoot.»

When Cleet was gone, Bemer unreeled the hose from the bulkhead.

When the water sheeted over her, the woman jerked and rolled away. «Stop for a moment,» she said in a muffled voice. «I feel like a prize hog, just out of the wallow. Were you a hog-washer in another life?»

Berner shut off the water. «Not that I remember,» he said apologetically.

She sat up, and rubbed her hands over her face. Her hands trembled. «Let me stand, at least.»

«Of course,» said Berner.

While he held the hose so that the water fell gently, she scrubbed at her body with the brush, until her pale skin was pink.

He watched in unwilling fascination as she dried herself in the warm air, her body moving slowly from one graceful pose to another.

«All right,» she said, finally. «Let’s go back.»

Her cabin was a dusty place, with a littered vanity in one corner and no other furnishings but a bed. The bed had a shallow woman-shaped cavity and a transparent cover. She sat down on the edge of the bed, seemingly at ease.

He found a pot of lip paint and a jeweled comb on the vanity.

He held out the comb uncertainly. She shook her head calmly. «Would you be so kind?» She turned away, back straight, head up.

He lifted the comb and drew it through her hair; it caught in a tangle. «Be careful,» she said. «Can you believe it, there was a time when I could sit on my hair. I kept it in a braid as thick as my arm and only let it loose for my lovers.»

He worried at the tangle, concentrating all his attention on that problem, so that he would not notice that he was touching a beautiful naked woman.

Gradually the tangle yielded to his efforts and her hair lay sleek and shining.

He stopped, feeling a powerful urge to continue. She turned back toward him and looked into his eyes with a frank curiosity.

«You were gentle,» she said. «But Cleet told me that you were a devotee of a cult that hates women.»

«No,» he said. «Not women. Only the act of coupling with them. Women cannot help what they are.» He felt a curious detachment, and his pronouncement seemed suddenly a bit foolish, a bit naive.

Her regard cooled. «What are they, do you think?»

«Gateways into life... but also gateways into death.» His words felt as thin as paper.

Suddenly she smiled, an odd quirk of the mouth, a bitter amusement. «Well, in my case you’re at least half-right. Bed me and Cleet will kill you.»

He didn’t know what to say, then. After a while he fetched the lip paint and the little fine-pointed brush that lay beside it. He offered them.

«Try your hand,» she said, and closing her eyes, she lifted her face.

His fingers steadied, as the brush traced the relaxed curve of her mouth, and he felt a rush of some almost unendurable emotion. It’s not lust, he thought. I’ve forgotten how to feel that, haven’t I?

«And perfume, he said,» she reminded Berner, when he was done. He had done a passable job with her lips; they glowed a velvety crimson. An odd memory jumped into his mind; he recalled that on some worlds, fashionable women painted their nipples.

He turned away and searched among the perfume vials that crowded the vanity until he found something he liked, a sweet flowery scent with an earthy subnote. He wet his finger with the perfume, touched the pulse at the base of her throat–then, after a moment, the soft fine skin between her breasts. He snatched his hand back, as though she might burn him.

«Sorry,» he said, feeling his face burn.

«I’m somewhat inured,» she said, laughing low–it wasn’t a sound with any humor in it. «You’d have to take far more brutal liberties before you’d earn my enmity.»

Abruptly she slumped; a great weariness filled her eyes. «Well, now I must sleep–and let the bed feed me–if I hope to recover my strength. It hurts more when I’m tired.»

«How can you be so matter-of-fact?» Berner felt a strong simple pity for her.

She shrugged and didn’t answer.

Finally, he sighed and stood. «Myself, I’m so afraid of Cleet that I can’t feel anything else.»

«Cleet knows how to control his possessions–that’s his great genius.» She lay down, lifted her legs into the bed’s recess.

«You must hate him,» he said, and was immediately embarassed, that he had made so foolishly obvious an observation.

«Hate?» she murmured. «Do I hate him? I don’t know... that would be like hating the typhoon that sinks your boat, the disease that steals your health. Like hating death or pain. A pointless exercise, don’t you think?» She shut her eyes.

He closed the bed’s cover and watched as tendrils crept forth from hidden recesses. Thick plastic worms full of nutrient fluid attached themselves to her wrists. Wires no thicker than silver hairs sank into her flesh in dozens of places. Her body began a subtle rippling movement, as the bed worked at maintaining her muscle tone. She smiled, her back arched slightly.

She moved as if in the embrace of a ghostly lover.

He turned and fled to his cubicle.

Cleet released him from his cubicle at irregular times, allowed him to eat, and then ordered him to fetch the woman.

More and more often Berner succumbed to the temptation to watch. He told himself it was the holoprojec- tion that so fascinated him; each time the chamber became a different world, lovely or terrible or incomprehensible.

Sometimes Candypop seemed to take an ambiguous pleasure in the act, face trembling between shame and desire, between smiling and crying. Sometimes she screamed continuously, her features rigid with fear and horror. Most often her expression was unreadable.

After her personaskein timed out, she often lost consciousness for a while. The most alien of Cleet’s creatures put her into a coma-like state, sometimes for hours.

Occasionally she emerged uniryured, but usually Berner would have to carry her to the med-unit to be treated for contusions, sprains, and minor fractures.

«How can you stand it?» he asked one morning as he helped her from the tray.

She shrugged. «What are my alternatives?»

«I don’t know,» Berner said, reluctantly. It seemed monstrously unfair. She seemed a kind and guiltless person, undeserving of so ugly a bondage. «Doesn’t it ever get any better?»

«Has Cleet given you his lecture on the cyclic nature of wealth? No? Well, cruelty has its cycles too.» She smiled wearily. «Sometimes he dresses me in jewels and gives me gifts and acts like an adoring husband.»

«That’s better, isn’t it?»

«Not really,» she answered.

As the weeks passed, Cleet became less talkative, seemed to find less entertainment in shocking or terrifying Berner.

He now occasionally missed a night with the woman, and toward the end of this time, went days without taking her to the forepeak. He spent much time on the astrogation deck, apparently occupied with his thoughts.

Cleet no longer locked him in his cabin, apparently assured that Berner was harmless. In any case the stairfield would not permit him access to any secured areas, so that Berner was confined to the cargo deck and the upper deck. He grew restless.

Once Berner visited the woman as she slept her enforced sleep. She seemed irresistably beautiful, lying in her jewel box of a bed. He left before she woke and never again violated her privacy.

He desired the woman; this he was finally able to admit to himself. He pitied her, an emotion that soon outgrew the desire. But finally neither desire nor pity seemed appropriate; she was, like him, just another trapped animal, a toy. For all her beauty, for all her bravery.

He found his only entertainment on the upper deck, browsing in Cleet’s library of souls. Hour after hour he watched the displays, and sometimes it seemed to him that the universe was full of nothing but copulating animals, all frantically eluding death in the only way that lay open to them.

Cleet occasionally allowed him to dine in the starboat’s wardroom, at a long black lacquer table. Berner’s place was near the foot of the table.

Usually Cleet ate in watchful silence, studying Berner with an impersonal intensity. But tonight Cleet was talkative.

«So, hermit, tell me of your creed. The weak invent such religions endlessly, justifying their weakness. But no sex? That seems universally unappealing; how do you attract converts?» Berner looked warily at Cleet. «Wisdom comes unbidden to the chosen.»

«Ah? Then you would say that I am unwise? Or unchosen?» «I wouldn’t presume... said Berner, looking down at his plate. «Quite right! But please, elucidate freely. Perhaps you’ll convert me. Why must we refrain from sex?»

Berner drew an unhappy breath. «I can only quote the Nameless. ‘Consider the amoeba. Does it die? It knows not the ephemeral pleasure of coupling, nor the eternal terror of the grave.»

«No animal fears death.» Cleet said this in an almost gentle voice.

«Perhaps not, until death is upon it. Then...»

«But the Nameless, was he not martyred?»

«Yes, on Aragon, by a mob of angry whores. Our belief does not promise unending life in this body, though dedicants have recorded remarkable spans. Accidents occur, violence endures. It’s the life of the soul we hope to preserve. We’re realists.» Cleet laughed his beautiful unwholesome laugh. «Realists! Tell me, how old are you?»

Berner hunched his shoulders. «One hundred and seven standard years. But I came late to the Mystery.»

Cleet laughed again. «An infant. A grizzled gray infant. You might have lived another hundred years here–if that long. I saw your med-unit; very basic, very basic indeed. I was bom 863 years ago, on Green. And I’ve had ten thousand lovers, at least; I am the more youthful for it. What of your realism, now?»

Berner had no answer.

«I know what you’re thinking,» Cleet said. «You’re thinking, ‘wealth’. And you’re right, of course. The wealthy need never die, so why should we ponder the state of our souls? Have you an answer?»

«No,» Berner muttered.

«No, of course you don’t.» Cleet seemed to turn his thoughts inward, and a stillness spread over his shining mask. «But you’re thinking, ‘if Cleet is so wealthy, what is he doing on this empty world, with a dull religionist for a servant?»’ Cleet’s shoulders twitched, and he blinked his eyes rapidly. «You have no personal understanding of wealth, so I excuse your ignorance. Wealth, you see, is cyclical. The truly wealthy move through these cycles; amassing, then spending. Of what use is wealth, if it cannot buy amusement? And the wealthier one is, the more expensive one’s taste in amusements.»

Berner was terrified by Cleet’s expression, at once despairing and enraged. He stared down at the remnants of his meal and hoped that Cleet would not temper his pain with Berner’s.

But Cleet’s thoughts were elsewhere, occupied with some bitter remembrance. He continued to speak musingly. «So, I find myself at an ebb in the cycle. I own nothing but this wretched boat, a piece of pretty meat, a few games–and you, of course. I would take the boat to Dilvermoon and sell it, if I could, but it’s keyed to my persona and would die without me. Also, jealous enemies dog me, and Dilvermoon is unsafe, just now.

«This is as good a place as any to wait, until I’ve made new plans. Why change aimlessly through the void?» After a while he smiled, as if his memories had taken a more pleasant turn. «My grand- sire gave this boat to me during my Manhood Year, so long ago. So long ago. A month later I poisoned him and took my inheritance. Became a man in truth.»

A silence ensued. After a time, Cleet rose and went up to his private suite.

Berner hid his face in his hands until he stopped shaking.

That evening, Cleet wore the mind of a great snake that dwelled on a world of sand and thorns. He was especially savage with the woman, so that when he was finished, she was bloody.

Berner hid his anger when Cleet called him from the library. «To the med-unit?» he asked.

«Why not,» Cleet said, with an air of boredom, and went away. «I wasn’t always a coward, Candypop,» Berner whispered, while he helped her wash.

She looked up at him, smiling a little. «Why do you call yourself a coward? What could you do against Cleet? He’s not a man anymore, he’s too strong, too quick, too cruel. No unaltered human being could best him.»

When he assisted her to her feet, she sagged against him and he felt the pressure of her breast against his side, To his shame, he felt a twinge of desire.

The med-unit treated her quickly–apparently her wounds were superficial–so Berner was able to walk her to her own cabin a few minutes later.

Cleet came in behind them, moving on noiseless feet, startling Berner.

He looked down at Candypop. «You know, don’t you?» Cleet said, in a soft musing voice.

Berner understood that something important was occurring, some ritual exchange. Some dire message had passed between Cleet and Candypop.

Cleet fixed his stare on Berner. «Things change, hermit. You’ve noticed this, even in your short life. We won’t be here much longer.»

«What do you mean?» Berner could not seem to get his breath.

«I’ve been away from my life for too long. And I’ve tired of my Candypop.» Cleet shook his head, looking oddly diminished. «Old toys,» he said, in a voice so low that Berner barely heard the words.

He went silently away, and Berner picked up her hairbrush with a trembling hand.

Candypop looked up at Berner. Her face seemed astonishingly unafraid. «Pay no attention, Berner. He likes to frighten people; that’s his hobby, you know. Before he leaves, he’ll put you out and let you go back to your old life. Just do nothing to make him angry. Never act contrary to his expectations and you’ll be all right. He’s not a casual murderer. You’ll survive, Brother Berner.»

He wanted to believe her. «He’s threatened to morph me into a woman, if...» His fear shamed him; he was sick with it.

«If I die?» She shook her head. «Don’t worry. That will never happen, believe me. I mean no offense–probably you’d be a handsome woman–but Cleet has very... specific tastes. Oddly enough.’’

«But he sounded... he really sounded as if he means to kill you.»

She nodded, still inhumanly calm. «Of course he means to kill me. That won’t be a first. He’s owned me for a long long time. But afterward, he’ll put me in the med-unit, and it’ll put me back together, good as new. As I say, he’s really not a murderer; it’s not murder if you don’t stay dead, is it? He’ll never get rid of me; I’m the perfect woman. For Cleet. But you’ll be all right. Believe me.»

Berner was suddenly sure that she spoke the truth. «That’s awful for you,» he said.

«It’s not so bad,» she said, shrugging her lovely shoulders. «I never remember being dead.» But then her composure slipped a little and her eyes darkened. «It’s the dying that hurts.»

Berner went to his bed full of pitying admiration. Sleep eluded him for a long time, but when he finally slept, a terrible dream seized him.

The dream followed no logic; disconnected images floated across the stage of his mind. Nor did Berner himself play any part in the dream. He was an observer, entirely without volition.

Candypop’s strong face watched him, from some inner distance. He seemed to perceive her only out of the corner of his eye, but she was the heart of the dream. After a while he noticed that the beautiful flesh that cloaked her skull had grown translucent, so that white bone glowed through. Murky expressions swirled through the translucence–a river of secret emotion, flowing over pale stone. Behind the lovely eyes black caverns. Behind the lush mouth the long sad teeth of the dead.

In the dream’s foreground Cleet struck a series of awkward poses, in a slow ritual. His eyes at first were dull. His mouth hung open, slack. He seemed possessed by an interior life, as if another creature inhabited his body, one not quite human and unsure how the human body was supposed to move. Now Cleet stood on one foot, the other foot lifted high, his arm twisted behind his back. The arm rose, appeared to dislocate, and became a spine thrusting from the back of Cleet’s neck.

The dream shimmered and Cleet was a poisonous fish, a warty horror with frayed fins, eyes as lifeless as pebbles. And at the same time he was still Cleet, and Berner felt a chilly shock of recognition.

From her distance Candypop watched soberly, her skull lit by an inner fire.

Cleet twisted and became a man again. He dropped to a spraddle-legged crouch and Berner saw a spider. Then a snake. A shark, a hyena, an alien thing with horns like razors, a tenta- cled monster of the deep. With each transformation, Berner felt an acceleration of terror. He needed to scream; his throat ached as though it would burst.

But he couldn’t scream, couldn’t flee, and his helplessness seemed to attract Cleet’s attention. The monster now watched Berner with glittering eyes. The transformations took on a shuddering urgency, the shapes changed faster and faster. Berner could no longer identify the shapes; all he could see were the eyes, which began to draw closer.

He was certain that he was about to die. He tried to shift his attention to Candypop... and then he saw something that saved him.

Up through the skull and its waning film of beautiful flesh, another face rose. A young woman, smiling, full of joyful life. Her eyes were warm and innocent. Trusting.

He struggled to recognize her.

By some miracle he was seeing Candypop as she was before Cleet had possessed her.

His terror faded, replaced by a wrenching sorrow.

He woke with tears on his cheeks and an irresistable urge to see her.

By the time he stood over her bed, his tears were gone, but not the pain. She lay still, and in the artificial composure of her drugged sleep, he could see the young woman of his dream. He glanced at the bed’s timer. In a few seconds the tubes and wires would withdraw from her body.

The bed clicked and hummed. The hardware dropped away. Her eyelids fluttered, and Berner was seized by a dangerous impulse. He felt driven to perform some act of tenderness, however small, so he bent over her bed and touched his lips to hers... feeling an absurd pleasure, feeling a giddy terror.

She woke as he kissed her, but her only reaction was an infinitesimal shake of her head.

He nodded, but he bent over her again and pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, «If I could do anything, I would. I would.»

«Yes,» she said softly. «I believe you. Yes.» Her hand came up to touch his face, a cool, brief contact.

«Yes?» roared Cleet, at Berner’s back. «Yes? Yes, what?»

Berner sprang away from the bed, but Cleet swung his heavy arm and knocked Berner sprawling into the comer. In Cleet’s hand the nerveburn twitched, and Berner readied himself for a descent into hell.

Cleet’s voice dropped into a rumbling register Berner had never heard before. «What did I tell you, hermit? Can you remember?»

Berner couldn’t speak.

«What did you tell him?» asked Candypop in a low, amused tone.

Berner glanced at her. She perched on the edge of her bed, her body arched into an oddly provocative pose. Her face was full of sly triumph.

Cleet turned toward her. «I might think an unpleasant thought,» he said slowly. «I might think you were taunting me. I might believe you seduced the lout just to annoy me.»

«Really?» She laughed, and it was an ugly jeering sound. «You didn’t really think the little coward would ever have defied you. Without a great deal of... help. Did you?»

Cleet fired the nervebum.

Bemer watched her flop and flail, her shrieking face contorted into an inhuman shape. All her beauty lost. He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t.

When it was finally over, Cleet left without another word.

Berner helped her to the med-unit and lifted her into the tray. Before he slid it in, he took her hand. «Why? Why did you take the blame?»

Her shoulders lifted in an approximation of a shrug. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. «He might have killed you, and what a silly waste that would have been–he’s almost ready to let you go. Besides, I’m used to it.»

«Thank you,» he said, unsteadily.

Again the tiny shrug. «In a thousand years, what will it matter?»

In the library, Cleet lingered over his selection. «Which should I pick, hermit?»

Cleet opened the box labeled HYAENA EXTRO-BRUNNEA, took out the skeins,

weighed them in his hand, watching Berner with opaque eyes. «Shall I use these?»

Silence stretched out, and Berner felt the tug of Cleet’s will, impelling him to answer. «It would be presumptuous of me to offer an opinion,» Berner said, finally.

Cleet smiled. «Very good. Well said; I knew you were trainable. I think I’ll wait one more night for these.» He replaced the skeins, took down another pair. «Tonight, something sweet, I think. Gentle. For contrast.»

When Cleet had gone to her, Bemer tapped the faceplate behind which Cleet had replaced the hyaena skeins. He watched the display, sickened.

Over a scrubby plain, the beast shambled on six stumpy legs, heavy-shouldered, armored with mud-brown fibrous plates. Ttifts of hair grew in sparse patches. Its head was naked, its fangs curved up past its porcine snout, its eyes glowed with some intense excitement.

It stopped, tossed up its head, nostrils opening wide. An instant later, it set off at a windmilling trot, and foam lathered its muzzle.

It caught the female in a grassy swale. The female, whose belly sagged gravidly, was smaller and less agile. She whirled to face the male. But he rolled into her, knocking her sprawling, exposing her belly. His fangs slashed, and an instant later her belly gaped open. A greenish crawling mass moved within her, began to spill out. The male stood over the body, spraddle-legged, and a dozen slender organs extruded from flaps in his chest. Streams of yellow fluid splattered down on the mass.

By the time the female was thoroughly dead, the mass had differentiated into a swarm of small maggot-like creatures, which began to feed on their mother’s corpse.

Bemer turned away from the display. It seemed a hideous process, though no doubt the beasts saw it differently. He thought of Candypop, lying empty and dead under Cleet. How could Cleet do such a thing?

Cleet took the skeins from the box labeled HYAENA EXTRO-BRUNNEA. He looked at Bemer, mask unreadable. His eyes closed for a moment, then opened, and an uncertainty lay under the glittering anticipation in them–or so it seemed to Bemer.

«Never mind. Never mind,» said Cleet, with a violent shake of his head. «After we’re finished, I’ll let you go. Back to your cave and your brazen woman and your superstitions. You did your best, such as it was.»

Abruptly, Berner understood that Cleet was telling the truth. His heart gave a great stumbling leap in his chest, but he didn’t speak.

«When I’m gone... remember me, hermit.» Cleet smiled, almost sweetly, and allowed the door to fall shut.

Berner spoke to the door. «Yes, I’ll remember.»

Berner watched from the beginning, compelled, his heart pounding.

Cleet went to her. He parted the hair at the nape of her neck, mated the per- sonaskein to her receptacle. Instantly she rose to all fours, moving with an alien quickness. Cleet snapped in his own skein and fell into the same gangling crouch.

The holoprojectors picked up the data stream from the now-active skeins and the deck transformed into a narrow murky cavern. Slabs of rotting wood and crumbling plaster reached into a darkness far above, and the air was almost palpably damp. Berner’s perspective twisted subtly, and he seemed to be looking into a dimly lit space between some giant’s walls.

Candypop was circling Cleet now, and he swayed rhythmically, waiting for her. The golden mask displayed eagerness, pure and uncomplicated.

Not until she sprang at him, and pushed her body under his, did Cleet begin to seem confused. His eyes flicked from side to side; the mask shimmered with mild puzzlement. But the personskein gripped him as strongly as it did her, and he thrust into her, his body straining. He shuddered, pressed himself to her, clinging, pumping.

Cleet seemed to shrink a little, as if he were pouring some essential part of himself into her, and she in turn seemed larger, becoming, even while she writhed beneath him, the dominant figure.

He slid away from her to lie gasping, and now confusion rose up to cloud the golden mask. He seemed to realize that something had gone awry.

Candypop turned and looked at Cleet, eyes alive with a new hunger.

Cleet began to rise, reaching for the skein at the back of his neck.

She sprang; she buried her strong teeth in his throat. Blood spurted; he fell back. He flailed at her ineffectively, eyes impossibly wide, mask convulsing. Blood covered both bodies.

Cleet gathered the last of his strength, threw her off, and pulled the personaskein from his neck. He crawled toward the window, glaring up at Berner with burning eyes, rage contorting the mask into a dreadful shape.

Berner was frozen, hands twitching against the glass. Cleet would kill him in some terrible way, and the woman’s suffering would continue. How foolish he had been, to think that he could trick so powerful and elemental a being as Cleet.

But as Cleet reached the door and tried to stand, his vitality failed him. The terrible eyes went cloudy and in a moment had emptied of everything but a dim perplexity. He slid to the floor, and Candypop leaped onto the body.

Berner turned away when she began to feed. He tapped the faceplate of the chamber into which he had switched the Hyaena Extro Brunnea skeins. The faceplate lit, displaying the name of the species that the woman now emulated: LATRODECTUS MACTANS. He tapped it again and watched the spiders copulate, the slender male riding the female’s huge black abdomen. He watched the female kill and eat the male.

He was grateful for the soundproof door.

A few minutes later, her personaskein timed out, and she collapsed on Cleet’s orn body. Berner went forth, removed er skein, and crushed it under his heel, grinding it into small bits of plastic and metal.

The boat was dying as he carried her out. The stairfield flickered and whined, visibly unsafe. He used the emergency ladder instead, moving slowly and carefully, her weight across his shoulder. On every bulkhead he passed, screens bled data and went black, and he could hear the rattle of solenoids as the systems shut down. By the time he reached the lock, which had opened as automatically as the mouth of a corpse, the boat was dead and silent.

IT WAS TWILIGHT, BY A HAPPY COINCIDENCE, but Berner was surprised by the heat the ground still held. Sweat poured from him and mixed with the blood that covered Candypop. Before he had reached the cave, he was gasping, and her body threatened to slip from his cramping arms.

But he carried her into the cave and laid her on the mats, which had grown dusty during his absence.

He fetched a basin of water from the spring at the back and had washed away most of the blood by the time she woke.

She struggled to her knees, looking at him with wild wide eyes. Then she vomited up her last meal.

He wiped her face and helped her to the hammock before he cleaned up the mess. She hadn’t spoken; he wondered if she would ever speak again. He carried the bloody mat outside.

When he returned she was sitting up in the hammock, long legs dangling. Her eyes had cleared, and she gave him a small haunted smile.

«He’s dead?» she asked, as if she couldn’t remember.

«Thoroughly,» he answered. He arranged a pile of spare mats in the corner by the spring and lay down, taking off his sandals.

After a while she lay back. She fell asleep long before Berner did.

He fell gratefully back into his old routine, though he no longer performed his daily devotions; his former faith now seemed childish. Candy pop stayed in the cave for the first few days, silent and still.

One morning she came to him in the fields, wearing a smock he had given her. She looked both older and younger, somehow. She stood and watched him loosening the soil in a bed of posole seedlings.

«My name isn’t Candypop,» she said, finally.

«Oh?»

«It’s Kariel,» she said. «Kariel Antrine. I’d almost forgotten.»

«A nice name,» he said, concentrating on his work.

Another silence fell. The sun rose, and Berner sweated over his seedlings.

«I’m grateful to you,» she said, in strangely resentful tones.

«No need,» he said. «I was saving myself as well.»

«He wouldn’t have killed you.»

«That’s not what I meant,» said Berner.

«Oh.» But the resentment was still there, and it puzzled Berner.

She seemed to searching for the right words. «Listen,» she said. «Cleet told me... that you’ve been celibate for 30 years.»

«True.»

«I’m afraid you’ll have to wait another 30 years,» she said, all in a rush. «At least.» She seemed both angry and embarassed.

He smiled at her and leaned on his hoe. «I understand. But I don’t think it’ll be quite that long. The circuit ship is due in four years or so, and then we can both get out of here.»

Kariel had apparently been holding her breath; she let it out and gave him her first true smile.

He basked in that radiance for a long moment, and then he went back to his hoeing. □