Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum (40 page)

IHS Ilya Turabian
orbiting Asylum Station

Kris awakened slowly, with all the normal sensations of rousing from a long and deep sleep, wondering where she was. The air against her face was cool and lacked the sour astringency of ship’s air, but the subacoustic thrumming of power plants left no doubt she was still on board a ship.
Not a brig cell
, she thought,
and at least I’m not naked this time
. But the clothing against her skin felt strange, not a uniform and not prisoner’s fatigues. It was soft, lightly scented and velvety supple. Very strange . . .

She opened her eyes cautiously and yawned, stretching to relieve the lingering ache in her stiff joints. There was the liquid clashing of metal links as her arms and legs abruptly halted in their motions.
Oh hell, what now?

She raised her head to look about the room and realized she’d awakened into a nightmare—a literal nightmare. The room was decorated in pale peach and cream with burgundy and mauve accents; the furnishings were reproductions of old Earth antiques, right down to the ivory silk bed hangings; there were replicas of antique paintings on the walls, including a large central piece in a heavy golden baroque frame, looking for all the world like real oil paint applied to actual organic canvas, except that the pictures mutated periodically—and she’d seen it all before. Years before . . .

Not possible—not possible—I’m not really awake—not awake—not . . .

She closed her eyes, tried to catch her breath through a wave of nausea.
I’m gonna wake up, now—really wake up
. . . Her eyes opened; she looked down.
Oh fuck—oh fuck
—

They’d dressed her in an outlandish outfit of silk and leather: sleeveless, black and very tight, decorated with iridium studs, completed by spike-heeled boots and black-satin elbow gloves. Her wrist and ankles were shackled in velvet-lined leather cuffs that were attached to the posts of a large canopied bed by gold chains—they rattled as she contracted spasmodically.

“You are awake.” Heydrich’s well-bred voice came from off to one side. “Excellent, Lieutenant. You recover quickly.” He walked out from behind the veil of the bed hangings and moved around to the end of the bed where she could see him. He still wore the dress whites, unbuttoned down the front now; the weight of the encrusting medals caused the jacket to gap unevenly. His left hand cradled a tulip-shaped glass—probably hand-blown—filled with deep red liquid. Blood red, in fact, but much clearer.

“I hope you appreciate the efforts we went to on your behalf. Personally, I would have chosen a more restrained décor, but I wanted you to feel at home.”

The smile on his face—distant and amused, with smoldering edges—told her that even
nightmare
failed to describe this anymore. Beads of sweat began to emerge, itching along her hair line.

Quillan’s hell was full of happy little smiles—Manes’ was simply pain. What’s yours like?

“The details of the outfit were indistinct—I was forced to improvise,” he continued. “I trust I am not too far off.”

She honestly could not remember, and mastering the shock, she understood.

You dressed me in this shit and made up this room this way because you
know
. You had Tweedle-Dum pump me with enough chemicals to go through my brain quite thoroughly
. . .
and Manes
—
fuck’n bastard . . .

Heydrich sat carefully in an overstuffed antique chair, his uniform looking particularly good against the cerise upholstery, and inspected her over the edge of his wine glass, eyes narrow, taking small deliberate sips. “You look ravishing, Lieutenant.” The literalness of the phrase went in like a well-placed needle. Kris shuddered. “Rarely have I entertained such a beautiful woman. Ah!” Heydrich raised his eyebrows. “But you haven’t seen yet.”

He reached out a long arm toward a mahogany-replica desk and fiddled with a hidden control. Molecular modulators caused a luminous mirror to pop into existence in the wooden canopy frame overhead. Kris closed her eyes.

You did, didn’t you? Motherfucker
. . .

Of course, he had. If he went that far with all the other details, he certainly wouldn’t neglect this.

And if I refuse to open my eyes, he probably has a neural projector around here somewhere to show me what I’m missing
.

She opened them. Her stomach rolled sickeningly. The reflection in the mirror showed a tall, wide-shouldered woman with proud features, a shade too hard for pretty, but a beauty you could cut with. They’d washed and tinted her chestnut hair so that it pulled highlights of ruddy brass and amber out of the soft illumination, then braided it into a fashionable coiffure. She’d been made up very skillfully too, the subtly chosen shades tilting her hazel eyes into the green.

Christ, does he have a staff for this?
Or did he do it himself?

The thought of Heydrich so artfully painting her face made the bile rise in her throat.

Stop
. . .
stop
.
Let him have this round. He knows—he knows. But you survived Mankho, you can survive this
. . .

“I doubt you’ve ever looked better,” Heydrich commented dryly. “Do you like it?”

So this is how it begins . . .

Not quite four years ago, Trench had been forced to loan her to Nestor Mankho, the man at the top of Trench’s food chain. She’d not known who he was at the time, of course—they called him merely “Squire Wexford.” The loan had been for two weeks local—eighteen days standard—and in the middle of that time Mankho, furious by his apparent failure to acquire the extremely powerful experimental explosives he needed, had tortured her. He’d driven her farther down than she’d ever gone before—farther than any other time except this one—and the memories of exactly what he did and how had been blurred, diminished, excised by rigorous mental discipline. But not the setting—Mankho’s bedroom—nor the way his staff had made her up and dressed her, nor the props he used.

Trench and his friends, when they shared her, liked wild garish luminous colors—slashes of black and gold, bloody reds, suggestive curling arrows on her back, belly and thighs, heavy layers of iridescent tone-shifting paint.

But Mankho insisted on what he called
class
: subtle shades, elaborately coifed hair, jewelry, supple leather outfits, silk gowns. The visions Heydrich’s people had pulled out of her were muddled—weeks of jaded memories, jumbled and confused. They had gotten the room right—except Mankho’s paintings did not morph—why had Heydrich added that silly detail?—probably because the room was always the same. It was even possible Heydrich had seen images; Commander Arutyun, his chief of staff, had been Mankho’s guest while Kris was there. But the outfits, make-up, and props changed all the time.

Heydrich had almost certainly heard about Kris’s torture from Arutyun. Mankho had bragged about it; they had even shared a session—mild in comparison, almost sickeningly playful. That would have given Heydrich’s people enough data to delve into her brain for more details, but what did they know? What else had Heydrich’s people gotten confused? What did they think they knew but were unsure of? And was Heydrich in this just for fun, or did he have another purpose?

You beat Trench—you handled Arutyun. You can handle Heydrich. This is supposed to freak you out—okay. It did. That’s over now—think. Focus. Ya gotta focus
. . .

Mouth full of cotton, she searched for a reply and hoped it would come out without faltering. “I think you forgot the whip I’m supposed to hold in my teeth.”

The answering smile showed up the lines in Heydrich’s face. One too many trips to the visosculptor, maybe? “I think, perhaps, I would find that a touch overdone—although it can be arranged later, if you like.” He sipped his wine. “The chains, though, are quite becoming on you. Don’t you think?”

Stayed focused
. . . “Not really. Gold’s never been my color—”

“Oh I must disagree, Lieutenant,” Heydrich interrupted easily. “It complements you splendidly—quite the proper accent.” He swirled the wine, carefully studying its claret depths. “Speaking of accents, how did you come by that fascinating scar? It lends your face a rather stern asymmetry I quite admire. It isn’t a deliberate ornament, is it?”

In the mirror, Kris looked at the ornament in question. Heydrich had had it subtly accentuated.

“Not exactly,” she answered, fighting to sound a tad bored. “I cut myself shaving.” Shaving Trench, actually—trying to pare down his throat before she learned better . . .
And why don’t you know that?
Was he just testing?

Heydrich caught the inference. “Ah, yes. Your association with Anton Trench. It seems he rather underestimated you.”

“I was
rather
young.”

“But he had the benefit of extensive observation—”

“Years.”

“Indeed. I should think he would have done better.” He took another sip. “Did you enjoy it?”

Kris couldn’t imagine what he was referring to. “Enjoy what?”

“Killing him.”

“I don’t remember it that well.”
I try not to remember it at all
.

“Perhaps we can work on that—”

“With visual aids?” Kris broke in, acid bright. “Maybe a hands-on demonstration?”

Heydrich chuckled into his wine glass. “I wonder if I shall miss this facet of you. It is well, I suppose, that I decided to have you chained—I don’t usually bother.” He raised his glass to her in a kind of salute. “However, I doubt it shall be necessary for long. Perhaps tomorrow I shall free one hand. Some women can perform absolute
artistry
with just one hand.” His eyes became heavy-lidded. “What of you? Are you an artist . . . Loralynn?”

The sound of her name on his tongue burned like a red-hot coil. Furiously, she contracted her body against the chains.

“Oh, do cease and desist, Lieutenant.” Heydrich’s voice now expressed bland irritation. “That can accomplish nothing but fatigue. And so predictable—not to say tedious. Strength is at a premium, you will find”—he reached behind him to place his glass on a small serpentine table—“Loralynn.”

Kris merely grit her teeth this time.

Heydrich folded his hands in his lap and continued, lazy-voiced. “Such a singular name, Loralynn. Your mother’s choice, yes? Surely such a naming would not occur to a man. A man would come up with something much more like”—he raised an index finger and stroked it down the length of his scar; a contemplative gesture—“
Kris
.”

That struck a jarringly responsive chord: Trench had first called her
Kris
. “A remarkable—if chemically assisted—insight.” She made the reply as snide as she could manage.

“Oh no,” he denied happily, not nettled at all. “Commander Grinnell’s inquiries are strictly of a professional nature. You must not imagine you are unknown to us, Lieutenant. But to ask after personal matters during an interrogation would be . . . cheating.”

Liar
. “So this is a game?”

“Of course,” Heydrich answered conversationally, as if inviting her to assist with some parlor trick.
Nothing up my sleeve
. . .

“Do I get to know the rules? Or do you make them up as you go along?”

The quip made Heydrich laugh softly. “How fortunate that I am recording this. Perhaps I’ll allow you to watch it later.” He crossed his legs at the knee, clasped his hands over them. “The rules, Loralynn, are quite simple. I shall give you things—clothes, something to drink, a moment alone, freedom from pain”—he paused and looked intently at her—“you are not now, I trust, in pain?”

She wasn’t, she realized. He must have had his med-techs give her something to deaden the echoes of Manes’ depredations. “Not the way you mean.”

“Excellent.” Heydrich relaxed into the chair. “As I was saying, I shall give you things, then I shall take them away. Your goal is to keep what I have given you, or to convince me to return it.”

Sounds marvelous
. Kris rubbed her sweating palms on the bedspread.

“As an example,” he continued, “a trivial example, I expect that in a short time you shall become rather desperately thirsty. Then, I will perhaps take, say . . . an article of apparel in return for a drink.” His eyes gestured to a glass of water that Kris had not noticed, sitting on a low table underneath one of the mutating paintings. “Then again, perhaps I won’t.”

He smiled and Kris saw the smolder shine through the urbane mask. “Later, you will be seized with some equally urgent desire, and I may again give something and take something, and so on, over the course of days, until I win.”

“Wonderful,” Kris muttered, tension balling her guts as the full import of his words sank in. “So what happens when you win? We trade places and go for best two out of three?”

His interlaced fingers tapped rhythmically on his knee. “That’s just it, Loralynn: the way the game is played, you won’t
want
to trade places after I win. You’ll be perfectly happy exactly as you are. That’s what
winning
means . . .”

A long moan twisted out of her heart, rippling and shuddering her vitals. She’d underestimated him: she’d expected something of Mankho’s taste in whips, wires, clamps, electrical devices—but it was to be the happy little smiles after all . . . without drugs, without induction therapy, without any of the calm and painless procedures Dr. Quillan would have used to gain the same insipid, mindless, infinitely compliant end.

And you’ll tart me up as your little sex kitten—all purr and no claws—and you’ll play this vid and I’ll smile—always smiling—and giggle and say
:
Bad girl, bad girl. What a bad girl she was
. . .

Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes, leaving tracks of burning silver across the exquisite make-up, running down towards her temples to dampen the elaborately coifed hair. He
must
have lied about Grinnell; how else could he have reached out and so perfectly put a finger on such a personal vision of hell?

His eyes blazed as he watched her now, the composed mask beginning to melt off. She bit her lips savagely to keep down the jagged sobs. It didn’t work; they escaped anyway, sounding strangled and bestial.