Statesman (10 page)

I was taken aback. “I had it in mind to meet with you, then return—”

“To the hospitality of the nomenklatura?”

He had a point. Titan was certainly safer for me, and there was indeed a job I could do here, facilitating the organization of the new base. I no longer represented Jupiter, but it seemed that to the folk of this planet I remained a useful symbol. Symbols are important to all human cultures, but perhaps more so to those of the Orient.

“I would be very pleased to accept your hospitality, if Saturn concurs,” I said. “In the interest of forwarding the Dream.”

“This may be a dream we shall be pleased to share,” he said.

We raised our hands in the gesture of understanding.

The limited treaty between the USR and Rising Sun was considered a diplomatic coup, though all I had done was present a proposal of mutual benefit. It was as though I had gone from Tyrant to Rising Politician, in a sense a retreat, but a comfortable one. Shipments of iron ore (that is, unprocessed material sifted from the nether regions of accessible Saturn atmosphere that was rich in iron) moved to Titan, and a base was constructed on that planet at a near-record pace, while technicians studied the details of the breakthrough process. I interviewed the Rising Sun personnel, weeding out the unfit in my fashion; Saturn retained veto power in this respect, and I was serving Saturn's interest. It was a type of thing I was good at, but since I did not speak Japanese I required Forta's assistance. She translated, using her special equipment, while I judged the technicians' reactions, and it worked well enough. Thus I was making myself useful while also serving the broader purpose of reassuring the Rising Sun public by my presence.

But the work was neither arduous nor dangerous; consequently I began to feel out of sorts. My eye turned again on Tasha, who remained as attractive as ever. I knew I shouldn't touch her, under any conditions, but that only made the temptation stronger.

One afternoon when Spirit and Forta were at the base, seeing to a complexity of its operation, Tasha forced the issue. She produced four sets of handcuffs: the old-fashioned kind, with a mechanical key. She didn't have to say a word; the moment I saw them, I knew I was going to do it.

I went to the bedroom, where Smilo was catnapping in his chamber under my bed. “Sorry, friend,” I said. “I need to confine you for a while.” And I dropped the cage door to the floor, snapping it in place.

He was accustomed to this; it meant that he was off duty for the duration, and could drift into a sound sleep. Animals do not necessarily mind confinement, when they trust the confiner.

Then I followed Tasha into her bedroom, which was adjacent to mine. We represented a small Saturn enclave in the Titan city nearest the developing base; no one and nothing approached it without authorization, making it safe from assassins. We were really very comfortable here, with a benign confinement similar to that I was practicing on Smilo.

Tasha stripped and stood before me. Oh, she was lovely! She stretched, and I watched her breasts lift and her abdomen thin with the motion. I couldn't help myself; I stepped in and hugged her.

“Not yet,” she murmured. “Fasten me down.”

She spread herself on her bed, and I locked the handcuffs on her two wrists and two ankles, and to the available anchorages at the corners of the bed. She was secure.

I was eager with the pent-up desire of weeks, but I made myself go slowly. I suppose I hoped that if I worked her up properly, she would not change to the mole. Perhaps I was merely trying to delay that change, as it was Tasha I really wanted. So I kissed her, and ran my hands across her body, and tickled her and tousled her hair and tongued her breasts, and she responded in the appropriate ways.

There was a growl from the other bedroom. Smilo had realized that something was going on, and that I was touching Tasha, and he didn't like it. I do not think it was jealousy of the attention that motivated him, as I could touch the others without bothering him; I believe he sensed the mole in Tasha, like a lurking demon, and knew her to be a threat to me. He meant well, not understanding that I was aware of this threat and had acted to nullify it. So I understood his growl but had to ignore it.

Tasha was writhing, not with pain but with pleasure. She was on the point of climax, and I had not yet proceeded to the essence. “Please...” she whispered.

Naturally I obliged. This had already been a longer period with the real Tasha, in this mode, than I had enjoyed before; perhaps, knowing the futility of it, the mole would not manifest this time. I embraced her and entered her.

She changed as it happened. Her body tightened, and her teeth bared. “So you summon me again, Tyrant!” she said, her voice assuming a hissing texture. “Enjoy me while you can!”

Damn! I had hoped—but of course that had been foolish. It was entry that triggered the change. I could never truly possess Tasha, only the mole.

Her legs wrenched, first one, then the other. This enhanced my sensation. But something was odd. I glanced down—and discovered that her legs were free. The handcuffs remained, but they had ripped out of the anchorages on the bed.

Horrified, I looked at her wrists—and they too came free, the cuffs dangling. I had failed to check the security of the anchorages; now, too late, I realized that they were inadequate. Tasha may not have known this, but the mole did.

I tried to disengage, to leap off her. But her legs came up to clamp me in a painful scissors, and her arms swung to catch my head and lock it down beside hers. “Now finish your business, Tyrant!” she hissed in my ear, and bit it.

This time I could not get my arms back to press the nerves of her feet, or up to reach her neck. She held me secure, and her grip tightened cruelly the moment I tried to move. She had the chains of the manacles across the back of my neck, digging into it, and I was helpless.

“Scream, Tyrant!” she said into my ear. “I want to hear you suffer!” And those chains abruptly cut in hard.

It was useless, but I screamed. “Smilo!” I cried, though I knew that he was confined and could not help me. I had fashioned my own demise, oh so neatly!

Smilo roared in response. He thrashed about in his cage, trying to break out.

“How delightful!” the mole said. “The animal wants to help.” She bucked her hips against me as well as she could without releasing the scissors, and clenched her internal muscles, trying to force my climax.

In my pain and desperation, I remembered something. The bars beneath my bed were secure—but the bed itself was not. It consisted of adjustable panels, and it seemed to me that these were not locked.

“Smilo—up!” I cried.

There was a pause, then an answering crash. The tiger had stood, his massive body thrusting against the ceiling of his cage, and that ceiling had sprung loose. The base of my bed was designed to sustain maximum weight pressing down from above, not from below. Smilo was working his way out.

“Oh, damn!” she said, as if this were a mere inconvenience. “I'll have to finish you immediately.”

She tightened the chains, drawing them down around my neck, constricting it, cutting into my flesh. But Smilo was wasting no time himself; he bounded into the room. I saw only his shadow as he landed beside us and hesitated; I realized that he didn't want to bite me.

Then he decided on his spot and did bite. His fangs plunged into the mole's shoulder and neck, on the side away from my own head. The woman jerked as those terrible weapons sought her vitality; it seemed that the tiger knew instinctively where to bite to cripple instantly. Her legs released me, and her arms slackened.

I fought my way free of her embrace. I thought she would be dead already, but realized in a moment that she wasn't; she had been paralyzed by the bite, and death would occur more slowly. It was the way of the cat, to allow for additional entertainment by the prey before final dispatch. Perhaps it was fitting that the mole be treated this way, exactly as she had tried to treat me.

Smilo stood over us, his heavy breath blasting down on my head. I realized that he was waiting for me to get clear, so he could finish the prey in his own fashion.

The woman shuddered. Then her eyes opened. “Oh, Hope,” she said raggedly. “Please...”

It was Tasha! The mole had been banished by the terrible bite, or had perhaps deserted when she realized that her mission was lost, leaving the body and the agony to her host. “I'm sorry,” I said. “The mole got free—”

“Please,” she repeated. “One time...”

She wanted me to complete the act I had started! “But you must have medical attention!” I protested.

She only looked at me pleadingly. She was dying, and this was her dying wish.

I realized I had to do it. It was her passion for me that had brought her to this pass, and she deserved its fulfillment. It was the only chance that Tasha proper would ever have to make love to me.

I did it. I thought the twin horrors of her nearly successful attempt to assassinate me and her mauling by the tiger would turn off my own passion, but this was not the case. The moment I made the decision to proceed, the urgency was upon me, and I erupted in her with the sensation of a volcano. I kissed her amidst it, and this heightened and extended the experience, and I knew from the reactions of her body that it was just as transcendent for her.

And all the time, the tiger stood over us, breathing.

It subsided at last, and she sighed and lost consciousness, and then the horror of the situation came to me more strongly. I could not simply let Tasha die!

“Back off, Smilo,” I said. “You've done your job.”

Obediently, the tiger backed off. Perhaps he figured I wanted to play with the prey some more. I checked the two great stab wounds in her neck and shoulder, surprised to see that they were bleeding only modestly; evidently no artery had been punctured. I covered her with a sheet and hastened to the phone.

“Emergency medic,” I snapped, and the phone, tuned to my language, obliged.

In a moment the face of a Rising Sun medic appeared. “Woman bitten by tiger,” I said tersely. “Send ambulance to this address.” I gave the clearance code so their unit could approach our complex.

“It is being accomplished,” he said politely, holding his gaze aloft. That was when I realized that I stood naked before the phone's video pickup, my member only partially detumesced. It was obvious that more than the tiger had had at the woman! Well, it would add only a minor episode to the legend of the Tyrant of Jupiter. I cut the connection.

In a few minutes the ambulance arrived. By then I had gotten into my clothing and taken my stand by Smilo, so as to reassure him about the intruders. They worked efficiently, checking Tasha's vital signs.

She was not dead, but had sunk into a coma. They performed spot medication and carried her away.

Then I cleaned up the blood-spotted bedclothes and reassembled my own burst-asunder bed as well as I could. Smilo had certainly saved my life! While I deeply regretted what had happened to Tasha, I knew it was neither the lady's fault nor the tiger's; it was mine. I had done a foolish thing, and paid for it with the near loss of my own life and perhaps that of my secretary. It was not just that I had yielded to forbidden passion; I had been careless about it. That was what bothered me most in retrospect: All I had had to do was check those anchorages to make sure they were secure. I was getting careless in my age, and I did not like that at all.

In due course Spirit and Forta returned, and I acquainted them with the events of the hour. Neither commented; evidently they hoped I had learned my lesson. I hoped so too.

Tasha, as it happened, did not die. The excellent Rising Sun medical treatment she received saved her life and her health; all that remained was two physical scars that she chose not to have removed, and perhaps a similar number of emotional scars that she chose not to forget. She resigned as my secretary and applied to Rising Sun for sanctuary as a defector, and this was granted. She cooperated fully in their investigation of the nature of her mole; they were very interested in the particular type of conditioning used, and after considerable labor they succeeded in blocking it. She then took a job as translator and office worker for one of their executives, and I'm sure she gave him much satisfaction. Certainly I was pleased to know that she had made the transition; she was a good woman, just unsuitable for association with me. Not while Smilo remained with me. Because even with her mole nullified, there would have been trouble if I had tried to have further sexual relations with her, and surely I would have tried if she had been constantly with me. There is, as the ancient saying goes, no fool like an old fool.

Of course I was left out of sorts, romantically. I was in what might be termed a sexual depression, whether the result of age or reaction to that lady/tiger episode I am not sure, so sought no companion of that nature. But socially I felt a need, and it was difficult to meet.

Thus my attention gradually returned to Forta, who had come to be my mistress but who had not pushed the suit. She remained confident, as she had said, that once I came to know her properly, I would appreciate her qualities. Indeed, this seemed to be true; she now moved into the secretarial position Tasha had vacated, and performed excellently. She helped coach me on the language of Japanese, using her sophisticated translation device, so that I could communicate increasingly well with my hosts. In fact, a great deal of my energy during this period went into the learning of this language. I was always apt at tongues, but seemed slower now than in the past; I prefer to think that this was because of the difficulty of this particular language, but am prepared to concede that at age sixty-one or -two I was not as supple mentally as in my youth. I have no joy of aging, but do try to accept it with reasonable grace. In the course of working with Forta on this, and generally, I came to understand with increasing conviction the remarkable abilities she possessed. She was as versatile a person as I had known.

But her face—it was simply not in me to be physically attracted to a woman who looked like that. I cursed myself as a fool—so what else is new?—but could not override that private repulsion. As a worker she was excellent; as an object of romance, she was a null.

Meanwhile, the base developed, and the pilot project with it. I call it pilot, but it was nevertheless huge, a tiger in its own right. Rising Sun was putting an enormous amount of effort into it, assisting with the financing as well as the personnel; I was involved in the negotiations to give Rising Sun a larger amount of control and credit, in proportion to its practical support. It had become a two-planet effort, and I am glad that my presence and influence facilitated this. There was a constant flow of iron ore from Saturn to Titan, and, before long, a counterflow of Rising Sun expert technicians to Saturn, helping to modernize their facilities and production policies. The work that Spirit and I had done on Saturn was of course not complete; we had set the stage by putting the nomenklatura on the defensive, but it was the Rising Sun practical know-how that made real progress possible.