Gateway To Xanadu (25 page)

“And how do you plan on doing that?” he asked, ignoring the rest of what I’d said. “An established character is usually difficult to change.”

“I’m just going to have to reveal my ‘true’ character,” I said, shifting in place again. “Some time during the meal, find an excuse to leave Little and me alone. I’ll take care of the rest. Now, is there anything else we have to talk about? If not, I’m going back to my cabin to sit down for a while.”

“There’s nothing more to discuss, but we have an exchange to make,” he said, turning away from me to walk to the wall near our communicating door. There was a bright piece of flowered cloth hanging there, something like the cloth hanging in my own cabin, and he took it down and held it out to me. “This is what you’ll be wearing to dinner tonight, just this and nothing else. My outfit is hanging on your wall.”

“Looks like they go for informal dinners on this vessel,” I observed, taking the rectangle of yellow and brown cloth with a small amount of surprise. “How do you know I’m supposed to wear this, and what if I don’t want to? Or, more specifically, what if someone with a whole lot of money and pull doesn’t want to?”

“That girl who led us here told me about it,” he answered, watching me examine the cloth. “And anyone who tries refusing to wear one will be stripped forcibly and stuffed into it. She didn’t put it quite that bluntly, but the message still came through loud and clear. We all signed contracts when we got off the shuttle, I was told, and this sort of thing is enforceable under the contract.”

“I guess you could call it breaking the ice the most direct way,” I said, shrugging at his implied question.

“A lot of people shuck their inhibitions with their clothes, but if you left them to do it on their own, they’d take forever at it. This way it’s like jumping into really cold water; once the initial shock is over, you can settle down and start enjoying the swim.”

“This is one swim I don’t expect to enjoy,” he said, still looking down at me. “No matter how many times I jump in. You’d better watch your step with these people very carefully. If I see you taking unnecessary chances, I’ll come down on you myself. I don’t like unpleasant surprises like being told about sudden, fatal accidents.”

“If anyone tries telling you I’m dead, insist on seeing the body,” I advised him, making the decision to ignore his jittering. “If there are no marks on me, I’m not dead, I’m drugged, so grab the carcass and run like hell. Other than that, play it cool and loose.”

His glance of annoyance told me how well he liked my answer, but he didn’t say anything aloud as he followed me back to my cabin to claim the blue-and-red-flowered cloth that was his dinner outfit. It was really getting closer to sundown, and we had to dress for cocktails and dinner.

More accurately, it was necessary to undress for cocktails and dinner. I stripped off that stupid dress and the underwear I’d been forced to put on under it, then wrapped myself in the length of cloth before getting comfortable on the bunk again. Val had given the open wall of my cabin an unhappy look once the cloth that was his was in his hand, and then he had gone back to his own cabin and closed the door with very little enthusiasm. It occurred to me then that he and most of the others would feel as if they were stripping in public when they changed, even though we were out in the middle of the lake and there didn’t seem to be anyone watching from the bank. The open wall had to be another inhibition-relaxer, and led me to wonder how many more of them there would be. It looked like Little had been right when he’d said the trip would not be dull.

The fiery red sun was already down behind the darkening trees on shore when a tap came at my door, and then it was opened by the dark-haired woman who had been our guide. I’d noticed immediately that the doors had no locks-and with nothing movable in the cabin there was no way at all to bar them-but it would have been out of character not to be startled by the abrupt entrance. I quickly turned my attention from the scenery to the intruder, sitting up at the same time, and got another friendly, soothing smile for my efforts.

“My, how pretty you look,” she said, briefly examining the yellow and brown cloth I wore. She wore the same cloth the same way I did, wrapped one and a half times around and tucked in under the left arm, but hers looked a little more fitted than mine did. Not that mine looked all that bad. Even without a mirror I could tell that the thin cloth was clinging to me, hugging my curves all the way down to the middle of my thighs. Being shorter than I was hers came down a little lower, but not so much that it really made a difference.

“Thanks,” I responded with a brief smile of appreciation for her encouragement as I got to my feet. “Is it time to go?”

“I’ve already called Mr. Little,” she answered with a nod, stepping back to give me room to get out into the corridor. “Once your uncle is with us, I’ll show you all to the dining area. ”

She turned away then and headed for the door to Val’s cabin, and when I pulled my own door closed and looked to the right, I found Little’s eyes on me. Radman’s lieutenant leaned against the dark wood of the corridor wall with one shoulder, his arms folded casually across his chest, his thin body bare except for the blue-and-red-flowered cloth wrapped around his hips. He wore it wrap-style rather than loincloth style, and it came down longer on his thighs than mine did on me. His eyes were already on me when I turned to see him, and although he didn’t move or change his pose at all, I could feel the rushing around inside his head as he automatically began assessing my value on the current market. His eyes touched mine in a very businesslike way, possibly looking for the fear I’d shown him earlier, but that particular line of attack had become inadvisable to continue. I returned his stare very briefly, a fatal calm in the look rather than empty challenge, then turned my attention toward the plain, polished-wood wall directly in front of me.

A minute later the dark-haired girl stepped back from Val’s cabin door to give him access to the corridor, and the look in her eyes showed how hard she was struggling to keep from being visibly impressed. Val wore the same strip of cloth Little had on and had wrapped it in the same way, but where Little was of average height and slender of build, Val wasn’t. The cloth that was long on Little nearly had trouble covering Val well enough, and the massive chest above it-not to mention the broad shoulders and strongly muscled arms-turned my partner into something to make a woman lick her lips. I glanced at him with no outward sign of interest whatsoever as he came toward me, but the dark-haired woman who trailed along behind him couldn’t say the same.

“John, this is intolerable,” Val complained to Little as he passed me with the same sort of glance I had given him. “Don’t they know people came in different sizes? I feel the next thing to naked in this rig, and it isn’t fair.”

“I don’t think you’ll mind for long, Val,” Little said with an amused chuckle, quickly pulling himself out of the fixation he’d had on his good buddy. That stare had been half professional assessment and half personal interest, but he’d let it go before Val might notice it. “There’s a reason for dressing us all this way, and you’ll be compensated for any inconveniences you might suffer. The Management won’t let you continue feeling put-upon.”

“Are you sure you won’t tell me what to expect?” Val asked in the same half-petulant tone he’d been using, looking down at Little in near annoyance. “Anticipation of delights adds to one’s pleasure, you know.”

“And anticipation of unknown delights adds to it even more,” Little countered with another chuckle, then looked at the dark-haired woman. “You came to guide us, I believe?”

“Yes, sir,” the woman answered, sliding carefully past Val to recapture the lead position of our little party. “Right this way, please.”

She headed back toward the spot we’d boarded, moving slowly so as not to get too far ahead of us. Little and Val stood aside to let me go ahead of them, but there was nothing gentlemanly in the double gesture, at least as far as Little was concerned. He wanted me to know I was being watched carefully, probably in an attempt to dig for the fear again. I hated to disappoint him, but knowing how Val would react to my playacting had forced me to a complete revamping of my previous plans. I glanced at Little as I passed him, with the new me just beginning to peek out, and followed our darkhaired guide without comment.

When I got Little alone during the meal, he would understand completely about my change of character.

The smooth, clean boards of the vessel’s deck were not very difficult to walk on bare-footed, and even if they had been we didn’t have very far to go. Our boarding point was all closed up when we passed it, no more than a pretty little colored lantern marking the spot, and then we were moving into the center of the vessel, where there were already more than the dozen people we had come aboard with. Most of them were standing around admiring the spectacular sunset, and with the gorgeousness all around me it took a bit of effort to remember that this was the enclosed part of the ship. The large, roomy section had to be almost all vu-cast window, or at least the two supposedly open sides did. We followed our guide into the center of the area, feeling a gentle lake breeze caress us, smelling the clean, fresh air all around, and then we were being directed toward a man. He was a surprisingly big man in his early thirties, almost Val’s size, in fact, but instead of black hair and eyes his were light brown, his face square and strong with an easy arrogance, his big body well muscled and clearly in top physical condition. His cloth wrap didn’t fit any more easily than Val’s did, but the look in his eyes said he was no more than amused by it. He sipped slowly from the glass of wine he held, his eyes moving around the large room, but when we all stopped in front of him, his complete attention was ours.

“Mr. John Little, Mr. Valdon Carter, may I present Greg Rich, your host for this voyage,” the darkhaired woman said, standing just a little behind the big man while he bowed slightly in a somewhat sardonic fashion to the men he’d been introduced to. “if there’s anything about this voyage that disturbs you in the least, you have only to speak to him about it and he’ll have it taken care of.”

“Immediately,” the man called Greg Rich added, obviously meaning it despite the amusement in his eyes. “We’d like this little voyage to be a pleasant beginning for you, so if you come across anything you don’t like, don’t worry about saying so. We expect to have the impossible asked of us, and we also expect to be able to supply it.”

“Then how about something decent to wear,” Val said immediately, bringing a flash of surprise to Little’s eyes. Most people wouldn’t have had the nerve to complain to Greg Rich about something the big man obviously approved of, but Val wasn’t any more like most people than I was. I felt sure it would have been more in character for him to keep quiet-as Little’s surprise seemed to indicate-but all Rich did was grin faintly.

“Giving you something else to wear would not be impossible, but it would be impractical,” he said with no hint of apology whatsoever, his eyes surreptitiously measuring my partner. “I know how you feel about this silly little outfit, but the Management believes that the sooner we get people to relax, the sooner we can give them what they came here for, and one of the methods of quick relaxation they picked is these sarongs. Being in it may bother you now, but in a little while you’ll forget you even have it on, you have my word on that. Talla, see that the gentlemen are supplied with whatever they’d like to drink, and then show them the sunset.”

The dark-haired woman smiled and gestured Little and Val after her toward a mobile bar that was being tended by another sarong-clad, attractive female, and with Little’s help Val was convinced to go along.

Both of them seemed to have forgotten about me, but when I tried to follow after them I found a big hand on my arm.

“For some reason, you seem to have been excluded from the introductions,” Greg Rich said to me, his light brown eyes looking at me with a directness that not many men were up to. “I’ll have to remember to speak to Talla about her absentmindedness. Would you like to tell me who you are?”

“I’m Jennifer Kent,” I supplied, meeting his gaze with what I hoped was an appropriate curiosity. “I’m here with my uncle Val and his friend Mr. Little. Are you the one representing the Management here?”

“Among others,” he nodded, his amusement increasing. “Would you be impressed to know that those others all report to me?”

“Why would I be impressed?” I asked with a shrug. “Unless you own the whole shebang, you report to someone, too. And even if you do own it, you probably have stockholders to report to. Having to answer to other people isn’t particularly impressive.”

“That’s very true,” he agreed with a widening grin, looking down at me with increased interest. “I have a feeling I’ve been misinterpreting something about you. How old are you, Jennifer?”

“I’m almost seventeen,” I said with a heavy sigh designed to show exasperation. “I know being that age in this place is just short of illegal, but I’m tired of hearing about it, and it shouldn’t be for much longer.

Every time I get a lecture about what I can and can’t do, I age a little more. Before you know it, I’ll be ready to retire.”

“I’m not about to let you age that fast.” He laughed, taking another sip of his drink. “You’re much too attractive at the age you currently are, and I have news for the people who have been lecturing you: on Xanadu, there’s nothing you can’t do-especially if you do it with me. Suppose we start by getting you a drink.”

His hand came to the middle of my back, and then I was being guided to another mobile bar, one being tended by a very handsome male in a male sarong. He accepted my request for two inches of ambrosia without blinking an eye, and my new friend Greg Rich didn’t make a sound either. He just stood looking down at me as though he were examining me in detail, which led me to wonder just how much interest he was developing in me. It was probably nothing more than the urge for some bed time, in which case I could simply indulge his curiosity and then forget about him; in the unlikely event that my luck had turned so sour that he was interested in more than a simple roll in the hay, it would definitely be a problem. I had enough problems without adding new ones, but the big man wasn’t likely to leave the choice about his doings to me. I accepted my drink with a friendly smile for the attractive young male doing the bartending, trying to be obvious enough about my interest to send Greg Rich looking elsewhere, but the vessel’s Management rep was too sure about his own power to attract to be bothered even a little.