The Iron Maiden (33 page)

“Who could do that?” Hope asked, realizing his thrust.

“Who but the Tyrant of Space?”

Hope looked at Spirit. She nodded; she was ready for this.

Hope extended his hand to Khukov. Thus began the former Space Tyrant's political and economic service at Saturn. He was given a personal secretary, who of course reported everything to her superiors.

Her name was Tasha. She was young and attractive and intelligent and even-tempered. She was amenable to Hope's sexual interest. In short, the ideal secretary.

She was also, as it turned out, a mole: programmed to kill Hope when he had sex with her. She did not know this; it was a buried program. So when Spirit was away, and Hope took Tasha to bed, she caught him in a strangle hold. Only the fact that she wanted him to complete the sexual act before he died gave him time, and only his knowledge of nerve attacks enabled him to escape her. At which point she reverted to her normal state, with no memory of the experience.

Spirit learned about it when she returned. “I accepted her seduction, and she tried to kill me,” Hope said simply. “She's a mole--an assassin mole.”

This was alarming news. Spirit had never anticipated such a ploy. “And you don't want to eliminate her?”

she inquired with raised eyebrow.

Hope explained that Tasha was now a known threat, safer than the unknown threat that might replace her. “But it's dangerous,” he concluded. “She still tempts me.”

“You always were a fool about women,” Spirit said. “Fortunately, they always were bigger fools about you.”

“Not this one. If I touch her again I may not survive.”

Spirit nodded. “We shall have to get you a woman we can trust. I will ask Megan.”

“Megan!”

“She knows your tastes, I suspect.”

And so Tasha remained temporarily, while Spirit sent Hope's message to Megan: “Send me a woman.”

Meanwhile, they got to work on the corrupt, inefficient Saturn farming system. They decided to introduce some free enterprise, veiled as “progressive socialism.” In the guise of eliminating corruption, they deported the agents of the nomenklatura. There were soon positive results.

Hope continued to hanker after Tasha, and Spirit knew that they would have to find a safe way for him to have her, before he risked an unsafe way. So Spirit pretended to depart on another business trip, but actually remained close, so she could watch and if necessary intervene. She did not like being a voyeur, but this was necessary.

Hope explained to Tasha that he desired her, but that his taste ran to bondage. She readily agreed, as her normal self had only the desire to please him. They stripped, and he tied her hands and feet to the bedposts. He caressed her, then mounted her sexually. Then it got interesting.

Abruptly Tasha's personality changed. Spirit had expected this, but it was far more dramatic than she had anticipated. Tasha tried to reach for his neck, but could not, and tried to bring up her knees, but could not. “What's this?” she spat.

“This is known as consenting sex,” Hope replied, thrusting deeply. Spirit thought of Thorley, and suffered.

“I'm tied!” Tasha exclaimed indignantly. Evidently she had no memory of the activities of her normal self.

“Why, so you are,” Hope agreed, nuzzling her right breast.

Her torso bucked. The breast slammed into his face, but of course a weapon like that could do no harm.

“I'm glad to have you responding so well,” he said, licking her nipple.

She made a sound like an attacking pig, an ugly squeal, and wrenched her nether section violently about.

This had the effect of hastening his climax. “Thank you!” he gasped amidst it. Spirit suffered further.

Tasha snapped at his face, but he held his head away and completed his enjoyment of her body.

“I'll kill you!” she hissed.

“With kindness, perhaps,” he said, pausing to savor her breast one last time. Then he dismounted. “Thank you for a unique experience.”

She spat at him, literally, but even that missed.

Hope cleaned up and dressed, evidently uncertain when it was safe to untie her. Spirit was nervous about that too. They needed to know exactly when the threat abated.

When Tasha saw Hope clothed, her manner changed. “Aren't you going to do it?” she asked.

“I think I am older than I believed,” he said regretfully. “You are beautiful, but perhaps another day?”

She shrugged as well as she could in her bonds. “I am disappointed, of course. But I understand.”

So they had found a way. But Spirit hoped that Megan would send a safe woman soon.

The enemy was getting impatient. There were other attempts on Hope's life. These were not Tasha's doing; in fact when he was poisoned, she rushed him to the hospital, perhaps saving his life. Still, harm had been done, and that was later to have a dire consequence.

Then Hope acquired an extinct saber toothed tiger. The animal had gotten loose in a biologic facility he was visiting; it might have been another attempt on his life. But he used his special power to tame it, amazing all who saw it happen. Thus Smilo came to join his personal retinue, enhancing his immediate safety and his reputation. Hope had uncanny luck in such matters.

It took six months for the woman Megan chose to arrive. Her name was Fortuna Foundling, more simply called Forta. Khukov was later to dub her “the muddy diamond” with no disrespect intended; he appreciated her value immediately. A good deal faster than Hope did, actually.

Forta was tall and trim and of mixed blood; there were touches of Mongol and Saxon and Negroid derivation in her. Her dark hair was bound back into a bun, and her face was shadowed by a feminine hat that might have been six or seven centuries out of date. She wore a suit that was almost military in its stern cut. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She was definitely no showgirl.

That was not the worst of it. Forta's face was so badly scarred as to make it hideous. It looked as if she had put her head in the blast of an accelerating spaceship. Patterns of scars matted her forehead and cheeks, and the eyebrows were lost in the ruin. Her ears hardly showed; perhaps they had been cut off.

Her mouth seemed to be little more than a slit amidst the tortured tissue.

“Childhood accident,” she said matter-of-factly, evidently used to the very kind of stunned reaction Hope was evincing.

Something was wrong. Spirit knew Megan would not play either a cruel joke or take any kind of obscure vengeance her husband; neither type of behavior was her way. Virtually all of his women had been beautiful, herself included; she knew his taste in that regard. How could she have done this? There had to be a rationale.

Spirit stepped in. “I am his sister. We have a place for you. Let's get your baggage.”

“This is all,” Forta said, hefting her single suitcase.

They went to their rented car. Hope drove while Spirit and Forta talked. Spirit arranged this, knowing that he needed a pretext to keep to himself. She had to fathom the rationale, to find out why Megan had sent this seeming disaster of a female.

“We have been very busy,” Spirit said. "We have been reorganizing Saturn industry, and that entails a great deal of research. My brother interviews the personnel, and I see to much of the implementation.

Are you trained in this area?"

“I regret I am not,” Forta said. “I do, however, have secretarial skills.”

“We already have a secretary,” Spirit said. “We really had not thought of you in that capacity.”

“Naturally not,” Forta said, smiling. The mystery of this woman was growing.

“Are you trained in diplomacy?”

“By no means.”

Spirit was somewhat at a loss. “Perhaps if you would fill us in on your background.”

"Gladly. I was found on Mercury thirty-two years ago, during one of the civil-rights altercations there.

My parents may have been killed by the authorities of South Mercury, or merely driven out and prevented from returning. It is possible that I was left for dead, because of the injury done my face. I was picked up by a relief mission and taken to the Amnesty Interplanetary office in Toria. I understand they tried to investigate my background, but of course things are difficult for those of mixed race in that part of the System, and they had no success. So I was christened Fortuna Foundling, being fortunate merely to have survived as a foundling."

“Apartheid,” Spirit murmured. “I understand that torture is employed in that region. But why a baby should be subjected to--”

“There is no proof of torture,” Forta said. “It could have been a mining accident. The conditions in Mercury's sunside diamond mines--” She shrugged. “I was well cared for by AI. My face healed, but of course they lacked the funds for plastic surgery. I have spent my life with AI; when I became adult I joined as one of their agents. That has been the story of my life, until this point.”

“I wonder if there has been a misunderstanding,” Spirit said. “We are not engaged in the investigation of human rights. We are on assignment for Chairman Khukov of the Union of Saturnine Republics, being in exile from Jupiter. I should not think that you would care to be connected to this enterprise.”

“I did not come as an AI representative,” Forta said. “I volunteered as a woman.”

Spirit was guarded. “You volunteered--for what?”

“To be your brother's mistress.”

There was a silence. Then Hope spoke, not looking at her. “How well do you know me?”

“About as well as any person not of your family or prior staff knows you,” Forta said. “I have made a study.”

“Then perhaps you know that I do not have relations with strangers.”

“True. And you seldom have relations with unpretty women. I intend to be the exception. I think that once you come to know me, you will appreciate my qualities.”

“I do not wish to give offense, but--”

“If you care to read me, you will see that I am confident of your eventual satisfaction.”

“Show me your power,” he murmured under his breath, in the old Navy idiom, with irony.

“Read me,” she repeated firmly. It was definitely a challenge.

Hope met that challenge. Spirit took over control of the car, and he spun his seat around to face Forta, who sat in back. He read her, using his talent.

“You are confident,” he murmured, perhaps unconsciously. “You believe in yourself. I have known hard women, and talented women, and combinations of the two, but none harder or mere talented than you, except my sister.”

That startled Spirit. She did have a scarred face and hands, because of her use of the rocket-propulsion unit to wipe out the pirates. She had never had restorative surgery because she wore her marks with pride. Forta was evidently of this nature, though her scars were far more apparent. But Hope was not looking for an emulation of his sister as a romantic object.

“Strange,” Hope said. “You are changing.”

Changing?

“Helse,” he whispered, amazed.

Spirit had to look. She glanced briefly back. Forta's ravaged face remained, but there was indeed a suggestion of Helse about it, as if the scars covered a fair young Hispanic face. Spirit lacked the ability to read human signals her brother had, but there was definitely something. How could this be?

“Megan,” he said, awe in his tone.

Spirit looked again. Now the scars covered the suggestion of Megan. It was apparent that Hope saw the effect much more strongly than Spirit did.

Forta had shown him her power. She was a signal chameleon: She could emulate the facial and body signals of other people. Her talent was, in a fashion, akin to Hope's: she could generate the signals he could read. Thus she could emulate, in a rather subtle but fundamental manner, those people she had studied--and she had studied his two loves. She could be all things to all men, in a fashion.

They reached their apartment, amazed by this manifestation. When Forta unpacked, it turned out that her suitcase contained not a wide variety of clothing but a most versatile array of costumes and masks. These were not crude plastic; they were contour-clinging, lifelike things that could readily be mistaken for living flesh when animated by her expressions. In fact Forta was an accomplished mime: she could don mask and costume and mimic her chosen character so cleverly that the resemblance was startling.

“Do Megan,” Hope said.

Forta donned her Megan set, as she called it, and in a moment it was as though Hope's wife entered the chamber. The mask-face, the hair-wig, the walk, the gestures, the subtle body signals--Spirit was shaken despite her comprehension of the device.

Then she spoke--and with Megan's voice, complete with the nuances. “Why, Hope--it is so good to see you again,” she said, and extended her arms to him, in exactly the way Megan had done when their marriage was active.

Hope stepped forward and took her in his arms. He kissed her--and did not seem to feel the mask. It looked like a living face, despite their knowledge.

“Can you do me?” Spirit asked.

In moments Forta donned a new mask and wig. “Can you do me?” she inquired, exactly as Spirit had.

Hope's jaw dropped.

They stood before a mirror, and Spirit's own jaw dropped. There were two reflections of her, in different clothing. “You look just like me!” she said--and the other image said the same words at the same time.

The woman had known exactly how she would react, and emulated it.

Spirit shook her head as Forta removed her mask. “If I had not seen it...” she said. “What else can you do?”

“I can also serve as a courier, and as translator.”

“You know other languages?”

“Not exactly. I have translation apparatus that facilitates the limited ability I have in that regard.”

She demonstrated. She had a pocket multi-tongue language computer, with capsules for the individual languages. An earplug enabled her to hear the ongoing translation in Afrikaans, her native language and the one she thought in. It developed that she had been using the translator for English, though she did speak that language, because it was easier for her to hear words in her own language, then translate her reply, than to deal completely in English.