The Eternity Brigade (23 page)

The room had expanded out to its full limits, squeezing the other rooms of the bubble into nonexistence. Into this vast open space was crowded the most unusual assortment of people Hawker had ever seen. They were all derived from human stock, but they’d been so altered that no two of their bodies looked alike. Heights ranged between one and three meters; some bodies were stick thin, others quite well rounded. Hair, eyes and skin colors were of every imaginable shade. Some of the people had more than the standard number of limbs, some had less; others had outré appendages like horns, antlers, wings, or lobster claws. Some were clothed, some not, but both sexes were adequately represented—sometimes even within the same body.

Hawker looked for his friends, and spotted them over by Green’s couch. Symington and Belilo were equally aghast at this freak assemblage, while Green was still in his coma. Hawker rose from the chair where he’d been sleeping and pushed his way through the curious crowd to his comrades’ side. “What in hell is all this?” he asked them.

Amassa, who’d been standing just a short distance away, came over to them. “I’m glad you’re all awake now,” she said breezily. “These are a few of my friends. They were so excited to hear I was entertaining some primitives, they all wanted to come meet you. Be polite to them.”

One short female, her face covered with peach-like fuzz, walked boldly up to the group of soldiers, who crouched together for mutual protection. She looked over each of the three in turn and stopped in front of Belilo. “I’m Nya,” she purred. “You interest me.”

“Me?” Belilo said. “But I….”

“Don’t be so coy. I’ve heard how savage you primitives can be.” Nya ran an exploratory finger down the front of Belilo’s uniform, between her breasts. The rest of the crowd watched with delicious anticipation. Belilo tensed and clenched her fists, prepared for a fight. She’d show Nya just how savage she could be.

Then Amassa touched Belilo lightly on the shoulder. “Remember, you must behave yourselves. Life can be awfully unpleasant for those who don’t cooperate. Nya won’t hurt you.” She looked over to the woman whose hands were continuing their exploration of Belilo’s body. “You
won’t
hurt her, will you? It would be such a waste of such unique material.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Nya said, her eyes not wavering from Belilo.

“See?” Amassa said to comfort her frightened captive.

But Belilo was far from comforted. She tried to break away, but two other people had sneaked up behind her. They pushed her forward, straight into Nya’s arms. Nya laughed as she embraced her prey, and Amassa joined the laughter. The general tone throughout the room was one of high amusement.

Symington and Hawker both started forward to help their friend, and fell flat on their faces. Strong anklets had grown out of the floor, wrapped around their feet and held them securely in one spot. They could do nothing to help, and could only watch the fate of their comrade impotently.

Belilo tried to use her combat training against her attacker. One foot lashed out a vicious swipe that caught Nya off guard. The smaller woman went flying across the room, knocking into several onlookers. Amassa clucked and shook her head, then reached down to her belt. Belilo’s left foot, still on the ground, was instantly shackled just as the men’s had been.

Belilo stood awkwardly poised with her right foot still in the air. She tried to catch her balance and keep the foot away from the floor so it couldn’t be caught like the other one. While she was engaged in that delicate maneuver, other guests came up behind her and grabbed both her arms, while two more grabbed her free leg and held it outstretched.

Nya got slowly to her feet and came forward to face Belilo. The smile on her lips wasn’t cruel, merely devoid of any warmth. Nya reached out to touch the struggling but helpless woman again and gently unfastened the front seam of her uniform. “Such passion, such fire,” she remarked to herself as she began to peel Belilo’s clothing methodically from her body. “Primitive, indeed.”

Belilo spit in her face, but Nya kept stripping her undeterred. In just a few minutes, with the aid of her accomplices, she had Belilo standing naked before the crowd. Nya inspected the body, nodding approval of Belilo’s muscle tone and admiring the scars she’d acquired during her long military career. Then, as Amassa dissolved the ankle restraint, Nya and her friends carried Belilo through the crowd and out of Hawker’s sight.

Amassa released the restraints on Hawker and Symington. “I suppose you should be commended for your primitive impetuosity, but a little of that can grow tiresome. Let’s see if you can be just a little more civilized, shall we?”

“What was civilized about that?” Symington asked as he stood up, but he never received an answer. He was almost immediately encircled by a group of admirers—mostly female, but some male—exploring his large, muscular frame. They began stroking him and tearing at his clothing, sexual hunger naked on their faces.

Amassa came over to Hawker as he knelt, and spread her wings around him protectively. “This one’s mine,” she announced to the crowd at large. Then, looking into Hawker’s face, she said sweetly, “There’s nothing to fear. I won’t let anything hurt you. Here, try some outgo.”

Before he knew what she was doing, she popped a tiny tablet into his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but she held a hand over his mouth with more strength than he would have thought she had. He refused to swallow the pill, but it made no difference; the tablet dissolved on his tongue with a fizzy sensation. The fizziness spread outward from his tongue to his cheeks, and finally upward to his eyes and his brain, where it exploded like fireworks on a summer night.

The room did not spin, exactly, but it did go off center, and his every movement to right himself only made the situation worse. The swirling patterns of the walls, which had seemed so subtle before, suddenly shrieked at him; the red lanced at his eyes, the yellow threatened deadly flames and the blue licked his feet like an inviting ocean, tempting him to drown in its depths, The noise around him, the talking of Amassa’s guests, dopplered in and out of his range like an obscene siren. His skin itched from the feet of a million imagined ants, but his mind was bathed in honey balm and scarcely noticed. His tongue tasted of peppermint and sour apples, while his nose was filled with the musky scent of his own body, unbathed for several days.

His mind moved, his body remained. He was floating well above the tumult, an omniscient but impotent god. Amassa’s guests danced and wheeled, just as he had seen their bubbles dancing through the sky. Gravity was no master to them; they defied it at their will, soaring and spinning through the crowded space, their bodies touching and rubbing in sensual patterns as random as they were erotic.

Time became elastic, stretching out before him like a rubber band, only to snap back painfully in an instant. Sometimes the actions of the people around him seemed like a speeded-up movie, and he wanted to laugh at the comical antics, while at other times everything around him came to a dead stop and he wanted to shout to get them moving again.

The ceiling, with its changing patterns of light and darkness, became the most fascinating object in the universe. He devoted his entire attention to it. He realized that things were happening to his body, but they never fully penetrated. He could tell he had an erection, and the tension built to a monstrous orgasm, an ejaculation that went on endlessly through time and space. But those were
distractions
, and he wished they would go away so he could concentrate more fully on the ceiling. That was
really
important.

It was not long after that when shadows crept up over the horizon of his peripheral vision and engulfed him in a merciful darkness of sleep.

***

His tongue was fuzzy and his eyeballs ached. Those were the first sensations to hit him as he drew out of the pit into which Amassa’s strange drug had cast him. His nose was stuffy; he had to breathe through his mouth. His body was naked but cool, and he felt as though he were floating in a swimming pool. Another body was pressed tightly against his—a female body, soft and smooth and delicate, her slender arms encircling him.

“How did you get your wings?” he heard his own voice ask, as though he’d been in the middle of a conversation.

“I had them bio-adapted when I was nineteen. Aren’t they magnificent?”

Hawker finally opened his eyes despite the throbbing that caused. He was staring directly into Amassa’s face, and she was gazing at him with a beatific smile. The two of them were floating in the air in the middle of her bubble; she was holding both of them aloft, with her beautiful feathered angel wings spread wide apart for his inspection.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like them.”

Her eyes narrowed and she looked at him critically. “It’s worn off, hasn’t it?”

“What?”

“The outgo.”

“I guess so.”

“Would you like some more?”

“No!”

Her expression told him instantly his reply was much too vehement, and he tried to soften its impact. “That is, I... not right now. I’m not used to it, I need time to recover. Maybe later.”

Amassa smiled and ruffled his hair. “I must remember, my darling primitive, that your body is not as adaptive as ours.”

“I’m afraid not.” He hesitated. “How long was I… under?”

Amassa pouted; time meant little to her, and she hated having to think about it. “Oh, about three days, I think. Does it matter?”

Three days! Who knew what could have happened in all that time? Would the army still be searching for him, or had Singh’s ruse put them off the trail? “Where are my friends?” he asked.

“The twisted one is still with me—he wasn’t much fun, and no one else wanted him. As for the others….” She shrugged. “They’re off somewhere. I’m not sure precisely where.”

“Will I have a chance to see them again?”

“Perhaps.” Amassa’s tone made it plain she was annoyed at the direction the conversation was going. “Right now, though, they’re no concern of yours. You should be more interested in pleasing me.”

To emphasize her point, Amassa rubbed her body suggestively against his. Her smooth bare skin pressing tightly to his own had the desired effect; Hawker came quickly erect, and Amassa moved her hips slightly to allow him to slip easily inside her. She threw her entire being into a grinding motion that left Hawker gasping with raw desire.

They spun rhythmically through the empty air, and a sudden wave of vertigo almost made Hawker lose his erection. Sensing this, Amassa redoubled her efforts and restored him to full potency. Hawker pushed from his mind the fact that they were floating in midair, refused to think about the spins and somersaults Amassa was putting them through. Amassa was right; he had to please her if he wanted to escape from this glorious, frightening prison. Hawker concentrated all his feeling into the sexual passion of their union, letting the pressure build until it exploded in a climax so intense it was painful.

His body went limp, and Amassa lowered them both the ground, to which she gave a soft, spongy consistency. Hawker lay panting on his back while she traced the muscles of his arm with one long, delicate finger. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?” he said when he’d regained his breath.

He could feel her fingers pause over his skin, fingernails ready to pierce him if he displeased her. “Is it about your friends?” she asked coldly.

“Not exactly. I was just wondering whether the army was still looking for us. Technically we’re deserters, and the army doesn’t like to let deserters off too easily. Also, we stole Green away from them before they were finished studying him, and I don’t think they were very happy about that.”

Amassa relaxed once more. “There’ve been some bulletins about fugitives, but very vague. Something about your being armed and dangerous.” She smiled, as though at a private joke. “But we know better, don’t we?”

She was so smug, so superior, and yet Hawker knew there was nothing he could do. She had too much control. “Are you going to turn us in?”

“Maybe, someday. Not for a while, though.” She grinned greedily. “You’re much too... entertaining.”

“I thought you were involved with Consakannis.”

“Oh, sometimes,” she dismissed casually. “Right now he’s over with Nya’s group, involved in something or other. He’ll wander back into my life, eventually.”

Hawker lapsed into silence again, resting in the afterglow of the fantastic lovemaking. His body was coated with sweat, and he felt too weak to do anything. The exertion, following such a long period under the influence of the outgo, had worn him down. Right now, he couldn’t force himself to care what his future might be.

After a while, Amassa asked, “Why did you do it? Why did you and the others desert?”

Hawker paused and took a few deep breaths while he tried to sort the story out in his mind. “Friendship,” he said. “I didn’t like what they were doing to my friend.”

“I don’t understand.”

Slowly and carefully, Hawker told Amassa the full story, from Green’s malformed dubbing through the decision to free him from the laboratory to the actual escape and flight, ending with their “rendezvous” with Amassa and her friends. He was hoping to win her sympathy, thinking that if he told the story well enough he might actually touch her heart and gain her support. But even as he spoke, he could see it wouldn’t work. Amassa had no soul, no pity. The very word “friendship” was not the same for her, and the concept of self-sacrifice to help another was alien to her culture.