The Sardonyx Net Part 42

"Cara won't talk to me. But that's not the point." Her fingers began to clench. She relaxed them. "I'm doing this badly. The stories may be true. But they aren't true to me. They can't be. The Zed Yago I perceive is -- a gentle being."

"You don't know what you're saying," he whispered.

"I know what I'm saying. Those stories are like that book I've been reading: one version of something that happened in the past, to other people.

Isn't that a definition of history?" He understood. She was seeking a way to offer him the thing he most desired, and with all his strength he knew he could not take it.

"I'm a fool," he said bitterly. He threw the bed covers aside and got out of the bed. He put his hands on her shoulders, feeling the soft curve of bone and vein, muscle and nerve.... He wanted to tell her to leave, get away, get out of the room -- it was too soon, too quick, too dangerous. His searching fingers found without thought the hollow in her shoulder where his thumb could go. He lifted his hands and locked them together. "G.o.d, woman, get away from me. I don't _want_ to hurt you."

She had not moved. She said, "I don't think you will."

Her confidence was terrifying. Zed walked to the terrace doors and laid one shaking hand on the cool gla.s.s. "You don't know."

She didn't answer. He turned around and saw that she had stepped out of the gown. He saw a flat, smooth stomach, b.r.e.a.s.t.s with dark nipples, a ruddy triangle of hair. She beckoned to him. He moved like a stick away from the doors, frightened to touch her. Her mouth brushed his with the feel of flowers, wine, silk; a dense and sensual texture. The dark self, crouching, waited for the scent of helplessness.

She led him to the bed and tugged him to sit beside her.

She dimmed the light. Gently she began to touch him with her palms and fingertips, stroking his back and his sides. His muscles knotted. In the near- dark, he glimpsed her face. Her eyes frowned behind a curtain of hair. She concentrated, lower lip caught between her teeth.

He moaned, trapped in a private agony of antic.i.p.ation, and tore himself from her touch. "Go away," he said, when he could speak. "You aren't safe."

She said nothing; she simply reached a hand to him. Like a wild thing coaxed from its lair, he moved slowly back to the bed. She pushed him into it.

The dark room drugged his resistance. She loomed over him: Rhani, not-Rhani, lover, friend, sister, stranger, slave.... She rested her palms on his sternum, tracing circles on his chest, his belly, lower. Her hand encircled his s.e.x, and it warmed and stiffened.

He lay frozen to the sheet.

She rested beside him, fingers flickering between his nipples and his groin. With painful care, he lifted one hand and laid it along the soft skin of her cheek. Maybe, he thought, as his body responded to stimulus older than he was, oh, G.o.d, maybe.... She lifted over him. Her body descended, closing, warm and seeking, and he cried out as they joined as if she had entered him.

The first time he was clumsy, still afraid to touch her, and his erection died before either of them attained completion. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry." Her fingers brushed his dry lips. She pulled him over her, long legs scissored over his. They rocked in slow time. As her hips against his own clenched and released, clenched and released, Zed saw, reflected in her eyes, a long-forgotten stranger, the image of a gentle, ardent lover who had once inhabited his room and his body: the boy he had once been.

*Chapter Eighteen*

Dana tapped on the bedroom door. "Rhani, are you ready?" he called.

Rhani said, "A minute!" She glanced once more at the letter from Loras U- Ellen before stuffing it in her pocket. It said, "_Domna Rhani: I agree with great pleasure to meet you. Please come tomorrow to Rad's Alley, number four, at the tenth hour of the morning. Please keep this message private_." It was signed, coyly, "_L. U_-_E_."

"I'm ready," Rhani said. She went to the door and opened it, feeling strange and self-conscious in her clothes. She'd never worn anything like them before -- coa.r.s.ely woven, almost webbed pants and a transparent purple tunic.

Red glitterstick outlined her eyes; her skin felt sticky, as if she were wearing mud. Dana looked just as garish, in a vermillion jumpsuit with arrow-shaped earrings dangling from his lobes and a matching pendant around his neck. She scowled at him. "I'm ready, but I feel a fool!"

He grinned at her. "You look terrific," he said. "A little out of place in this house, that's all. But when we get out to the street, no one will look at you."

"That's ridiculous," Rhani said, but she left the room and headed for the stairs. "How can they not look?"

"Oh, they may look," Dana said, "but they've seen Hypers a thousand times on ten different worlds, and all Hypers look alike to them. It's costume. h.e.l.l - - it's half of why we do it."

She caught his arm. "Do you mind?" she demanded.

His face grew still. "I don't know what you mean," he said.

She said, "Dana, you know. I'm not a Hyper. I have no right to these clothes."

He shrugged. From various doorways in the long downstairs hall, slaves, and Kyneths, were staring at them. "If there were another way to get you to the Hyper district without being recognized and without telling the Abanat police, I'd prefer it," he said. "But there isn't -- at least, you couldn't think of one."

It had posed an interesting dilemma: how to get her to the address on U- Ellen's letter -- which had been hand-delivered in the middle of the night by someone who even the night guard had not seen, he swore -- without being noticed. Imre had suggested telling the Abanat police. But Rhani had little confidence in the Abanat police since they had failed to identify or control the "Free Folk of Chabad." Aliza, facetiously, had suggested disguise. It was Dana who had said, later, privately, in bed to her (she had smuggled him into the pink room) -- "Why not be a Hyper, Rhani?" Her nose itched, and she scratched it carefully, so as not to smear the glitterstick.

Dana, watching her, laughed. "You know, you'd look more realistic if you didn't think you had to look perfect."

She scowled, and smeared glitter on her thumb. "All right." She reached out and streaked her thumb across his cheek. It left an attractive red smudge.

"Now you're not perfect, either." They walked out to the street. Rhani swung her legs and hips to try to copy Dana's walk, but it was no use, she could not move like that. It made her feel sullen, uncertain, out of her depth.

They took the movalong. It detoured at Auction Place, turning one block west. Another block, Rhani thought, and it would go right by what was my house.

She had no desire to see it. Soon -- she had not realized before how close the Yago house was to it -- they entered the Hyper district. The small houses crowded together made her uneasy.

"Where does this movalong go?" she said.

"To Main Landingport," Dana said. "We get off in a block." He steered her to the left, and off. She was annoyed at his knowledge -- after all, this was _her_ city. But this was a part of the city to which she did not come.

On the movalong, surrounded by tourists, she had not felt particularly conspicuous. But here -- she glanced around. It looked different (narrower, messier, older), and it smelled different. The streets were chipped, and the people strolling by looked dreamy and dangerous at the same time.... She heard her own thoughts, and shook herself.

It was dangerous to romanticize the Hypers, she told herself sternly.

They did it themselves, of course, with the glitterstick and the traditions and the clothes. But she did not have to. "Now where?" she said to Dana.

He slowed. "Now here."

Here was an alley, dusty and dry, which ended in a wall with a door.

Dana scowled. "I don't like this," he said.

Rhani nodded. In a place like this, anyone would find it easy to corner them. She had a brief electric sense of what her brother would say to this escapade. Her brother -- was Darien Riis at the estate? Was that why, when she called, he had seemed so cold?

Dana said, "Rhani-ka, wait here." Before she could protest, he slipped his arm from hers and strode into the alley. She watched him go to the door and then come out again.

He beckoned.

She joined him. "I think it's safe," he said softly. "There are no other doors here, it's all one building. Go to the door and knock. It's the right address...." As she marched toward the door, Rhani thought: This is stupid.

Suddenly she _knew_ that Loras U-Ellen would not be behind that door. What if it's all a trick? she thought, and her heart pumped furiously, what if Michel A- Rae is behind that door; what if Dana is kidnapping me?

Oh, h.e.l.l, she thought, and knocked. The door opened.

A person stood in the doorway. At first she was not sure what it was, or what s.e.x it was: it wore a bright green gown, made of some light elegant cloth that shimmered, and its hair was glossy black. Its fingers, ears, and nostrils were elaborately jeweled. A hand extended out of the dazzle. "Domna Rhani," said a man's deep voice, "how nice." Suddenly Dana was at her side, one foot firmly in the door, holding it open.

"There are two of us," she said, focusing on the dark eyes. "I hope you don't mind."

He smiled. "I expected it. Please come in." She walked in. U-Ellen closed, but did not, as far as she could see, lock the door.

They had entered not a house but a courtyard. In the center of the s.p.a.ce was a fountain: water arced up and outward from an abstract metal mouth. A colonnaded walk bordered the court. A lawn gleamed under the morning sun. In the middle of the lawn, near the fountain, accessible by red-flagged paths, were three chairs, a cabinet, and incongruously, a com-unit.

U-Ellen removed his outer robe, to display pale green pants and tunic of a somewhat more modest cut. He waved them toward the chairs. "Just like home,"

he said. Bending over the cabinet, he produced, like a conjurer, a gla.s.s of fruit punch for Rhani and for Dana a gla.s.s of what looked like red wine. He lit a cigarette. "Now we can be comfortable," he said, seating himself. Rhani sat, too. Dana prowled the courtyard.

Rhani focused on her host, noting that he had very white teeth, very thick dark eyebrows, and no hair, not even stubble, on his chin. She had heard that the men of Enchanter often removed their beards. "You are Loras U-Ellen,"

she said.

He smiled. "I am. Who else?"

"It would be nice to have proof."

His smile broadened. "Do you have a miniscanner? Would you like to see my I-disc?"

She said, "Who is Family Yago's drug dealer in Abanat?"

He looked at her, and then chuckled. "Sherrix Esbah. She _was_ Family Yago's drug dealer in Abanat, Domna. She's on Ley, now, vacationing."

"How did you get her to do that?" Rhani asked, stretching her legs and sipping the punch. It was delicious.

"Bribed her."

"Did you ever meet her?" Rhani said, curious. He nodded. "What does she look like?"

He shrugged. "A dumpy woman. Bad teeth."

Rhani wrinkled her nose. She had forgotten that Enchantean penchant; they all believed the human form was plastic, to be molded according to fashion -- it came from living with the labs, she thought. "Don't you care who my companion is?" she asked.

"Starcaptain Dana Ikoro," said U-Ellen. "Currently a slave. Picked up for smuggling -- or attempting to smuggle -- dorazine into the sector. One of your brother's, ah, acquisitions, I believe." His smooth voice was just barely contemptuous. Rhani felt her temper begin to rise. She thought: My friend, my enemy if that is what you make yourself, you would not say that _that_ way if my brother were sitting in this chair.

Recognizing the anger, she damped it down. Dana came to stand beside her.

"We're alone," he said.

"Thank you," she said, and gestured to the third seat.

They all knew that there could be six different kinds of recording equipment hidden around the courtyard, all of which could go undetected except to the most sophisticated instruments. But if U-Ellen wanted to record this meeting, he could. She watched the smoke curl lazily from U-Ellen's perfect mouth. "Tell me, citizen," she said, "according to my informants, you live in Palaua on Enchanter, are forty-seven years old, and play the Enchantean flute.

You are also an executive of a major Enchantean corporation. What are you doing cavorting around with drug dealers on Chabad?"

He sucked the smoke up through his nostrils and beamed. "That is what I love about you Chabadese," he said, "so forthright. Do you know, on my world it is unutterably rude to come to the point unless you have first spent at least an hour involved in some terribly trivial gab!"

Indeed, Rhani thought. But you are on my world now, you superior, supercilious son-of-a-kerit. "Are you in exile?" she said.

He waved the cigarette. "Oh, no. I'm here on business."

Rhani said dryly. "So am I."

"Oh, dear," he said, "now I've offended you. I beg your pardon." He exhaled. Rhani's teeth ached, and she realized she was clenching them. "But you must have suspected, Domna, that one motive behind this rather elaborate charade was to attract and hold your attention."

"Charade?" she said.

He brandished his hand at the walls. "Well, as you point out, this is hardly where one would expect to find an officer of a major planetary corporation." "One never knows," Rhani said. "People are so strange." She watched him begin to frown as he realized that he'd been insulted. "And I've never been to Enchanter."

"Nor I to Chabad," said U-Ellen. "I find it -- charming, though a bit bleak."

"It can be, yes," Rhani said. She wondered how long it would take him to come to the point. "Of course, this is not a typical city district."

"I a.s.sumed not. But I'm afraid I haven't had a chance to see Abanat properly. Indeed, officially I am not here." U-Ellen smiled, and breathed smoke.

"How did you do that?" Rhani asked. I have a reputation to uphold, she thought, as a forthright Chabadese. Besides, he might actually be willing to tell me.

"Oh, I had help, Domna," U-Ellen said. "From The Pharmacy."

Rhani felt as if she had just been punched in the chest. She said, "I am astonished to learn that a respectable Enchantean businessman has any contact with The Pharmacy."

He nodded, pleased. "We are partners." He spread his hands. "You see, I trust you."

Rhani did not see at all. She wondered if U-Ellen were telling the truth.

"Who is 'we'?" she asked.

"My company." His eyes gleamed from his smooth face. His physical perfection -- even his hands were unmarred, delicate as gla.s.s -- made her uncomfortable.

"I am flattered," she said gravely. "What you have just admitted would be of great interest to the Federation Police. How can you be sure I won't go to them?"

"Go to the Hype cops?" U-Ellen chuckled. "Domna, I'm not a fool. You would never go to them. Besides, they know it. Or rather, Michel A-Rae knows it.

He's known it for years."

"Really?" Rhani said. "Then how is it that you are not in jail?"

U-Ellen choked, and coughed. His complexion darkened. Rhani glanced at Dana. His fingers were tapping on the arm of his chair. U-Ellen recovered sufficiently to say, "Domna, you have no idea how humorous that is."

"Enlighten me," Rhani said.

"Michel A-Rae is my cousin," U-Ellen said. "Michel U-Anasi that was. And even my fanatic cousin Michel is not about to hunt down and incarcerate the members of his own family."

Cousin? she thought. She looked for the resemblance -- but you could not trust physical correspondence when dealing with Enchanteans. They were all changelings. Michel U-Anasi, she thought. I'll remember that. "Do you ever see him?" she said.