Vesta - Painworld (10 page)

‘No more burning witches,' she said, firmly.

Nadia nodded. ‘No, I've had a word with Marlon. Apparently the scenario was supposed to stop short of the actual stake, but his data gathering programme added on the embellishments on its own.'

‘That's spooky,' Ellen put in. ‘I'm not sure I fancy going back on that machine, not if it's got some sort of mind of its own.'

‘It hasn't,' Nadia said. ‘Marlon just hadn't got around to putting in the right bits and bobs in the main programme, so he told me, but he's taken care of it now. According to him, if there's anything you really don't fancy just let him know and he'll ensure it can't happen. In any case, none of it's real, is it?'

‘That's what I tried telling myself,' Lianne said, ‘but it didn't seem to help. I kept wondering what if something had gone wrong? Okay, nothing physical was happening to my real body, but the body my head kept telling me I was in was starting to fry and my virtual bladder, if that's what you'd call it, reacted the same way I reckon my real one would have done if that had happened to me in the real world.' She looked across at Ellen, defiantly sticking out her chin. ‘Yes, that's right,' she snapped, ‘I bloody well peed myself with fright and, when I came out of VESTA, I realised I'd also done it for real. So what would happen if something even scarier happened in there, eh? I've heard of people dying of fright before now.'

Nadia held up a calming hand. ‘Nothing like that will happen again,' she promised. ‘I had a very serious word with Marlon and explained a few things to him. Our little mad professor is a genius with his microchips and things, but he apparently didn't quite understand exactly what we were about. To him, being whipped by a sadistic witch hunter or hangman is no different from getting a severe paddling from someone you'd quite fancy screwing afterwards.'

‘All I can say,' Lianne said, ‘is that it was a good thing I couldn't smell anything. That bastard who was fucking me would have had appalling bad breath, to judge from the state of his teeth!'

 

‘He's agreed to your demands,' Jurgen Koenig announced, brandishing the sheet of paper before him as though it were a sword. ‘This is a print-out of his reply.'

James Naylor allowed himself a satisfied smile, but the big blonde did not seem at all impressed.

‘Of course he's agreed!' she snapped. ‘I have a way of persuading people, as you must surely have realised, and the thought of abandoning his dear sister clearly would never have entered young Mr Vincent's head. The images I sent him were clear enough.'

‘I saw them,' Koenig said, letting the paper drop onto Naylor's desk. ‘Just a trifle extreme, don't you think?'

Christina gave a loud, derisive snort. ‘Extreme?' she sneered. ‘I haven't even started with that red-headed bitch yet. And she's a tough one, believe me. Many a girl would have been begging to be let off my little perch within minutes, let alone hours.'

‘That gag scarcely allowed much scope for begging,' Koenig pointed out, reasonably enough, but Christina shrugged off the criticism.

‘There are ways of begging without the need for speech,' she said. ‘I gave her several opportunities, but she refused to crack. However, give her another day or two in my hands and I'll turn her into a perfect little lapdog. She won't be able to please me fast enough.'

‘What you do with the girl is neither here nor there,' Naylor interrupted. ‘Just so long as you keep her healthy enough to serve the purpose for which we brought her here. Once Vincent's given us what we want, fair enough, she's yours to amuse yourself with, for as long as you want.'

‘Oh, I'll amuse myself,' Christina assured him. ‘Most certainly I'll amuse myself.'

 

For the third time in half an hour, Marlon checked that the door to the room was really locked. Not that anyone would have dreamed of interrupting him when the door was simply closed, for it was understood that this was Marlon's inner sanctum, this low-ceilinged, square chamber high in the roof of Nadia's rambling mansion. It was within these four cramped walls that VESTA had gradually come into being, and although the main hardware was now housed in the largest of the cellar chambers, they still contained an access console through which Marlon could control the entire network.

He sat down in front of the screen, his right index finger moving over the touch sensitive pad, rows and columns of numbers and symbols scrolling before his eyes in a jumble that would have been meaningless to just about anyone else. Except, he realised, to whoever had set up that complex website connection. Whoever he - or she - was would soon decipher this little lot; access codes, barring codes, safety codes - everything.

Turning away from the VDU, Marlon picked up the curious helmet which lay on the side table, turning it over slowly in his hands, eyes narrowed in concentration. Time was running out now and this had to be done right, otherwise there was no telling what these bastards might do to Clarissa. The image of her impaled upon that awful stand was burned into his memory forever. And he didn't doubt for a moment when they told him that what they had done to the poor creature so far was nothing compared to the fate that awaited her if he failed to deliver.

Marlon made a final check on the multi-ribbon connector cable, nodded to himself, raised the helmet and slowly lowered it onto his head.

 

‘Time to go walkies, sweetmeat.'

Christina stood framed in the open doorway to Clarissa's cell, high black boots, black waistcoat-styled jacket and black gloves all gleaming in contrast to the pure white silk blouse and leggings she wore. In her right hand she carried a vicious looking riding crop, which she now pointed at Clarissa.

‘We've got a bit of time to kill, waiting for your brother to come across,' she said, ‘and I have a very low boredom threshold. C'mon, move that fat butt, or do you want me to put a nice red design on it for you?'

‘What do you want with me?' Clarissa cringed back, but there was nowhere to retreat to in the tiny room. Christina chuckled, but it was not a very pleasant, nor humorous sound.

‘What do I want, indeed?' she replied, stepping into the cell and reaching out to clip a leather thong to the front of Clarissa's collar. ‘Well, to start with, it's a very nice day out there and I fancy some fresh air. We're very remote up here and there's some beautiful scenery I like to take in.

‘The problem is,' she continued, jerking Clarissa into an upright stance, ‘that I don't enjoy walking. There's a nice pony trap I can use, but then keeping and grooming ponies is so time consuming, so I prefer to use a different kind of pony - the two legged variety. You!' she grinned, pulling Christina closer to her and forcing her head back.

‘You're going to be my pony for the day.'

‘You're bloody mad!' Clarissa squealed, trying to fight for her breath at the same time. For a brief second a dangerous light flared in Christina's eyes, but it faded immediately and she relaxed her grip on her captive slightly.

‘That tongue of yours will get you into trouble,' she warned. ‘Take care, or I'll have it cut out. Ponies don't need tongues, remember.' She switched the crop into the hand that held the leash and forced her right index finger between Clarissa's lips and teeth, probing deep and causing Clarissa to retch.

‘And afterwards, once Naylor's got what he wants from your Marlon,' Christina went on, ‘I think I'll keep you as my own personal pony.' The leather-covered digit pressed against Clarissa's upper back molars and Clarissa had to fight the urge to bite down, knowing that if she did the consequences didn't bear thinking about.

‘We'll have a couple of teeth out either side, top and bottom,' Christina said. ‘Makes it easier to fit your bit, pony girl. And we'll have this pretty little face tattooed. I think you'd make a good palomino, don't you? However, I mustn't damage the goods too much just yet, must I? Have to let dear Marlon think we've taken proper care of you, otherwise he might not play the game.'

 

Paul Dean had his own private sanctum, also high up in the roof, but at the furthest end of the house from where Marlon worked. His room was also larger than Marlon's, two of the original servants bedrooms knocked into one, for here Paul stored everything he needed for his work, plus copies - hard copies, so unusual in this electronic age - of everything his original outlines had produced.

The rows of filing cabinets contained scripts, prints of photographs, rough sketches and even copies of the final artworks, originally the work of James Naylor before the artist's treacherous greed had driven him to try to betray Nadia's close-knit organisation, and now the creations of the even more talented Sonia Hughes, who had succeeded him just after Paul and Lianne had finally managed to escape Naylor's fiendish clutches and the even more fiendish attentions of his amazonian henchwoman.

With a barely audible sigh Paul opened a drawer at random, picked out the first file his hand encountered and flipped it open. With a grin, he recognised the manuscript as one of the very first he had ever produced for Nadia. The story line had been developed, enacted by a willing cast that included Gavin, Hazel and a couple of other girls who were no longer involved - it would still be another two and a half years before Lianne had become part of the team - photographed from all angles and videoed too, by Simon Prescott, and the final panels produced with meticulous care by Naylor.

The very first Della de Linkwent cartoon strip; probably a collector's piece by now, Paul realised, especially in its original artwork form. Not that he had the original artwork. All of that was kept carefully under lock and key in Nadia's specially constructed vault in the cellar complex; each completed strip, once scanned for printing, sealed in its own fireproof box, inside a fireproof safe, inside a fireproof, bombproof vault of nine inch steel walls and outer jacket of two feet of reinforced concrete.

‘This lot will be worth millions, some day,' Nadia had once told him, confidently, but Paul knew such lavish security precautions were not there simply to protect the fruits of their combined creative genius. Nadia was very rich - very rich - and did not trust too much to banks. Not simply because they were liable to be robbed, because the average bank was more than secure enough in that respect nowadays, but because, in common with a lot of other incredibly wealthy people, she preferred not to share too much of her fortune with the taxman. And in that way, unless you kept a numbered account in Switzerland, banks were far less secure.

Paul had occasionally tried to estimate what Nadia was really worth, but had given up the attempt each time, for to call her affairs complicated would have been doing them a grave injustice. He knew she had inherited this huge estate and that it had been in her family since the time of Cromwell, at least, and that there were other properties dotted around the country, including at least two hotels, an international shipping company, several magazines and a company that specialised in manufacturing everything from latex suits to pony girl tack; an astonishingly lucrative enterprise to a one time naive young writer.

Nadia Muirhead was worth millions, and she was also generous to her friends and employees. Della de Linkwent and Mary Lou were a terrific commercial success, but Paul doubted whether the strip and its spin-off videos and Internet episodes made enough to justify the huge salaries that most of them now received.

Of course, he could be wrong in that assumption, he supposed. After all, none of them ever had any dealings with the financial end of things, Nadia preferring to handle everything herself, closeted away with her team of three personal accountants for three or four days in every month. She never mentioned money directly and none of the elite team ever broached the subject themselves. Della de Linkwent and Mary Lou just were, and that was that.

Closing the file, Paul replaced it in the drawer and slid it shut on noiseless, well lubricated runners. He wondered whether he would still be standing here in this room in another ten years time, or even five, for he had a dreadful suspicion that the computerised age was fast beginning to make creative writers redundant.

Marlon's bloody VESTA machine was probably only the tip of the iceberg, crazy though that might seem. Paul could remember his own first computer, a cumbersome black box with two floppy disc drives on the front and a total memory storage and processing ability that an average modern personal computer could now duplicate a thousand-fold, and in probably one hundredth of the time. Technology was racing forward at an ever-increasing rate, a breakneck speed that Paul, a confirmed Luddite in many ways, found utterly alarming.

He hadn't wanted any part of the VESTA experiment, at least not when it came to being one of the test subjects himself, but he felt he owed it to Nadia to at least make a show of it. Life was pretty good here and Paul, along with all the other team members, was paid handsomely for doing something an awful lot of people would have willingly paid to do. And he knew that even were the likes of Marlon and their electronic wizardry to remove the need for human creativity, Nadia would never drop him. She was a great believer in loyalty.

Moving to the desk, Paul produced a small key from his jacket pocket and unlocked the top drawer, lifting out the neat grey cash box and placing it on the top. He closed the drawer, sat down and used a second key to open the box in turn. Inside, the carefully folded statements and accounts lay atop an inch thick wad of Swiss thousand franc notes, each of the notes worth something in excess of four hundred pounds sterling, the bundle numbering six hundred notes at the last count.