Gateway To Xanadu (36 page)

“That’s much better,” he said with a chuckle, letting his hands move all over the back of me. “I was regretting the time together we were done out of earlier, but I think it may well prove for the best after all. I think you’re more ready for me now than you were then.”

Ready was too pale a word for what I was feeling, and even though I struggled against it, I couldn’t make it stop-He removed my arms from around his waist and picked me up, chuckling again when I transferred my hold to around his neck, then carried me back toward the room he’d come out of,

“Bring two glasses of wine,” he told the slave as we passed him, and then we were behind the draping and into the other room. Done all in silver and gray, it was the most sensually obvious bedroom I’d ever seen. The bed was a low, wide square right in the center of the room, the light was flickering candlelight, and the mirrors threw back numberless images at us amidst the fur and silk decorations. Greg wasn’t carrying me quite as easily as Val did, but he still managed to get us to the barely raised platform that was the bed and put us both down on it.

It was no more than a minute’s work getting me out of my shorts outfit and deck shoes, so I was as naked as the slave when he brought the wine Greg had asked for. Greg was just stripping down to his shorts when the slave appeared next to the bed, but all he did was throw him a glance while he stripped the rest of the way. I lay flat on my back in the middle of the silver fur that was the bed’s cover, so badly in need I couldn’t keep from moving around, but some small part of me still remembered the role I was supposed to be playing.

“Greg, send him away,” I asked, looking up at the light eyes staring down at me. “You know I don’t like to be watched like that.”

“Jennifer, you’ve got to get over those provincial attitudes,” I was informed with a grin that brought a faint smile to the slave as well, and then Greg was lying beside me, to my left, no longer hampered by clothing. “What harm does being watched do you?”

“I just don’t like it,” I answered lamely, glancing again at the smiling slave before turning on my side to Greg. “I thought you were anxious to make love to me.”

“I am,” he answered with a wider grin, then slid a hand between my thighs so fast that I gasped and tried to push it away. “And you, it seems, are anxious to have me make love to you. Does it bother you so much to be watched that you’d refuse to let me touch you if the slave stayed?”

“Greg, please!” I whispered, growing even more frantic as the flames began roaring high and consuming me. “Please send him away!”

“But, Jennifer, what will we do without wine?” he murmured, lowering his head to my breast. I was already so far gone that that nearly finished me, and with a sob I threw my arms around him, begging for what I needed so desperately, not giving a damn if the entire planet was watching. Greg laughed and took me in his arms, and the flames rose up to claim us both. It was somehow not quite long enough before it was over, but by then the slave was gone. Greg lay beside me sipping from the glass he’d been given while I tried to push aside wide, unformed thoughts of vague dissatisfaction, and he smiled when my eyes finally came to his face.

“You were better than ever, sweetheart,” he assured me, reaching above my head to retrieve the other glass of wine from where it stood on the floor. “Being watched wasn’t quite as terrible as you thought it would be, was it?”

“No,” I conceded in a small voice, making sure I blushed a little and looked briefly away from him. The slave had stayed through the entire performance, getting a lot of fun out of watching what Greg had done to me. I was really raw over being put on display like that, but I found myself wanting to blame the slave instead of Greg. Love, even artificial love, tends to turn people stupid, but I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t refuse the wine with a shake of my head. If I gave the drug a chance to flush out of my system, I might be able to do something about the rest of it.

“Now that you know there’s nothing wrong with watching, maybe you’d like to do a little of it,” he said, returning the glass I’d refused before sipping at his own. “I owe your uncle a little something, and tonight would be the perfect time to pay up on it. If you like, you can join me.”

“What do you intend doing to him?” I asked, suddenly more alert than I had been. I attended only to Greg, but I couldn’t let him hurt Val.

“I intend doctoring the placement testing he’ll be going through tonight,” Greg answered, his chuckle somewhat on the rough side. “Everyone coming into the Sphere gets filtered through this placement camp, the night’s stopover being used to find out what they really want. They’re drugged and then put through a series of experiences, and the drug makes them react honestly. Some women talk endlessly about equality and superiority, demanding their rights to do as they please, but what they really want is to be captured and enslaved and raped without mercy. Some men shout about how strong men have to be, how they can never let women get the upper hand, but they’d love to be shouted down, whipped hard and long, and then be made to kiss a woman’s feet. After the testing we know what direction to send them in, and that way they get the most out of their visit and usually decide to come back again.

Somehow, I doubt your uncle will want to come back again.”

“But what are you going to do to him?” I insisted, getting up on one elbow to look at him more directly.

“I told you, I’m going to change his testing experiences,” Greg said with more of a grin, reaching over to touch a finger to the tip of my breast. “In the routine sequence he would start out being captured and enslaved by a female, would be given the chance to escape and take the female captive in turn, and then, if the second part of the sequence was completed, be given the chance to free the female and share pleasure with her without forcing it on her or having it forced on him. Some people get the most pleasure out of sharing instead of taking or being forced to give, and we take that into account, but there are other things to be taken into account as well. Different people have different tastes, and we have sequences to cover it all, but those sequences can be modified. What do you think would happen if your uncle was accidently put through the forced slave sequence alone, for example?”

“He’d really flip out,” I answered slowly, finding something ugly in his grin of delight. “But what will happen if he complains? If he gets put through something like that he’ll know it was you, and he might complain.”

“I’ve already thought of that,” he said with even more of a grin. “If his complaint was passed on I’d really be in it, but I’ve already seen to it that it won’t be passed on. And tomorrow, once he comes out of it, I’ll let him know that there have been occasions when guests have had terrible accidents or have disappeared entirely. It usually turned out that rogue slaves were responsible for those awful happenings and the slaves were tracked down and then harshly punished, but the punishment came too late to be of any help to the unfortunate victims. I think he’ll be smart enough to take the hint p and let it lie after that, not to mention keeping his hands off what other people have expressed an interest in. But enough about him; let’s talk about the zone I’m going to be taking you through.”

He began describing something called the orange zone then, a place that appeared to be one non-stop party, but I was listening with only partial attention. I didn’t like the sound of what he intended doing to Val, but I couldn’t very well say so, and as long as his plans didn’t include anything really harmful I’d have to go along with them. I didn’t want to believe Greg would hurt Val, and after a couple of minutes I’d convinced myself he was only looking to even the score a little. That made me feel considerably better, so much better that I could listen to his descriptions of what we’d be doing together with as much anticipatory eagerness as he was showing. After that he put his glass aside and took me in his arms again, and the way I felt almost made his lovemaking something I’d been looking for all my life-if it had been more satisfying. For some reason the inner me was expecting more from him, and when it didn’t come it was more than disappointing.

We stopped for a quick snack before getting dressed, then left the pavilion in the slave’s keeping and went outside. It wasn’t long past sundown but the camp was oddly quiet, as though everyone had turned in early to get a good night’s sleep. Greg put his arm around me against the cool of the night, and led the way through and around the silent pavilions to a pavilion that was four times the size of the others, was colored in what the lights around it showed to be lilac and black, and which had two men in Sphere uniform standing in front of ii. The two men nodded to Greg as they stepped aside, and we went on in through the hanging drape.

Inside was brisk efficiency, with the entire interior partitioned off into small cubicles which held very sophisticated equipment, people either sitting in front of that equipment or hurrying from place to place.

Our destination lay at the back of the pavilion, which we reached by moving along the aisle stretching between the cubicles, no one paying any particular attention to us until we got to where we were going.

Inside that cubicle the man at the equipment looked up, then flashed Greg a quick grin.

“You’re in time to watch the last of his fun,” the man said, gesturing toward the screen in front of him.

“He’s as high as a kite, and has been going through those slaves. like a bull through a herd of cows. It’s too bad you missed the rest of his performance. I’ve picked up more pointers than I knew there were. ”

“Never mind how good you think he is,” Greg said with a snort of dismissal, not even glancing at the screen. “I’ve got something to change in this program, and I want you to set it up now. When the projectors go on, I want it all ready.”

The man at the screen raised his eyebrows, but still got up and went to a different piece of equipment with Greg, and began listening to Greg’s low-voiced explanation. Since I knew what he was talking about I could afford to let my attention wander, and where it wandered was to the screen. The picture was somewhat small but extremely sharp, and what it showed was something I’d never seen unemotionally before: my partner using his talents on a woman. Right then the woman under him was crying out hysterically, but with pleasure rather than fear or pain. He rode her like a master equestrian, his grip gentle but unbreakable, his assurance complete, his ability at pace-changing demonstrated without effort. The woman screamed and then wept, helpless to do anything but give him. his due, helpless to do anything but continue on at his command. She looked as played out as the two others who lay limp in pick-up range, but the man who had made them that way wasn’t yet through taking his pleasure.

I stood and watched Val until he finally let it end, impressed in spite of myself and more than a little curious. The three slaves he’d chosen were all brown-haired, and I didn’t understand why they all looked so exhausted. He hadn’t used the third nearly as long as he usually used me, and I had never ended up that exhausted. Overwhelmed and very impressed, sure, but not exhausted. I didn’t know what was wrong with the girl, but the question left my mind as soon as Val lay down on the bed next to her. His eyes closed and he seemed to fall immediately asleep, and the two other slaves stirred where they lay on the floor and began to get to their feet.

“Why the hell are they taking their time?” Greg demanded, showing he was looking over my shoulder at the screen. “They’re supposed to get the contacts on him as soon as he conks out.”

“You can’t blame them if he was too much for them,” the tech said with a chuckle, coming back to reclaim his seat. “They don’t often find themselves serving a stallion like that, and they aren’t used to it. I don’t think it’s hard figuring out what he really likes; if he was putting on an act, he wouldn’t have used all three of them.”

“But we’re not here to guess, are we?” Greg said with grim satisfaction, watching the two slaves on the screen pull out a bunch of contacts from under the bed and begin to attach them to their victim. “We need to see with our own eyes how he reacts to a given set of circumstances-like the standard sequences we just set up. How long until the projectors go on?”

“Loads of time,” the tech answered in distraction, playing his board like the delicate instrument it was.

“Minute and a half at least. And the last contact is just-about-set. Nothing to do now but wait.”

The tech sounded very satisfied at that, but it was obviously meant to apply only to Greg and me. He himself continued to touch his board in a definite rhythm, and the two slaves on the screen had left Val and were pulling and tugging the third slave off the bed she’d been lying on. It seemed to be important to them to get her off the bed, and just as they managed to tumble her to the floor, the screen began to flicker.

“They’re lucky their timing’s so good,” the tech commented with a chuckle, nodding toward the fading image of the three slaves. “Another five seconds and she would have been in toe sequence with him.”

“Which she would have really regretted once this was all over,” Greg said with a hard edge to his voice.

“I don’t want him having a single out not provided by us.”

“What’s happening?” I asked, feeling a chill move over me at Greg’s tone. His worldly, easy-going attitude was just about all gone, and I didn’t like what was left behind.

“The projectors are reaching through the contacts to him,” Greg answered, absently putting an arm around me. “He’ll be drawn into the sequence that way, and he’ll also color the sequence with his reactions. We’ll be seeing the composite on the screen, just as though we were there in the sequence and watching it. Of course, if he wasn’t hooked up, there’d be no sequence to see; it can’t be run without a central subject.”

I nodded briefly in understanding, and I did understand. We would see how Val really felt about what was being done to him, and everything that happened would be based can that. He would not be able to control what was being done, but his reactions to it would be strictly his.