The Trial of Tompa Lee

  4 Irresistible

  At Dante’s knock, the door to Carolyn Schneider’s quarters opened an inch. The silhouette of a head leaned across the gap.

  “I got a message you wanted to see me when I got out of the meeting, no matter how late,” Dante said to the eye that peered at him. “But if it’s too late, I can—”

  “Please come in,” Carolyn said. The door swung open, with her hidden behind it.

  He stepped into the room, then gave a start. Although Carolyn still wore her black gaucho-style slacks from eight hours ago in the decision room, she now clutched her silver blouse in front of her chest. Her shoulders were bare except for the black straps of an old-fashioned, lacy brassiere of the type that was back in vogue. If he’d taken Dominguez’s offer of discussing the effects of Shon wine, the med tech might have worn something sheer and sexy like this. But Carolyn? Well, you never knew what lurked under a person’s facade.

  “Sorry.” Dante turned back toward the door. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning.”

  “Nonsense. I was getting ready for bed, but that can wait. Come in.”

  Dante looked away as she smoothed the blouse across her chest and clamped the edges under her arms so her bra was covered, if precariously, and her hands were free.

  “Have a seat.” She pointed to a brown leather couch. Next to the couch, the door to her darkened bedroom stood open. Although her quarters were large by Navy standards and there were only two pieces of furniture, the earth-sized couch and desk seemed crowded.

  Dante perched on the edge of the couch, looking at the projection window behind the desk, rather than at Carolyn. The window, framed with frilly white curtains that she must have supplied, was programmable. Currently it showed the most famous place on earth, Galaxy Hill overlooking Kamloops, on the most famous day in history, June 15, 2048. Sunlight reflected off a huge, rectangular craft sprawled across dry grass. A horde of ant-sized dots were all that could be seen of the wary Canadians heading toward the Detchvilli, who had already spread out wares from a dozen worlds, eager to trade.

  Carolyn moved into his field of view, still clutching the edges of the blouse under her arms. When she pressed a button in the wall beside the desk, a panel opened onto a shelf with three decanters. “Remember those wines from Chile I’ve been telling you about at dinner?”

  “Yes, but—”

  He stopped abruptly when her blouse slipped down on one side. Before he could look away, he noted that her figure looked firm for a forty-five-year-old. Dante focused on the window as she poured wine into thick, non-regulation glasses and then covered herself again. The scene changed to a later view of Galaxy Hill, with construction underway for the headquarters of Consortium Earth, which owned and operated the Space Navy.

  Carolyn sat on the other end of the couch, holding amber-colored wine in one hand and red wine in the other. “How was your meeting?”

  “Okay, considering it ended at midnight.” He took the amber wine that she held out to him. “Except for a few details, we finalized plans for an emergency evacuation of our people from Zee-Shode.”

  “Hopefully, we won’t need to do that. You know, don’t you, that we’re staying?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “President Van Tey was in favor of breaking orbit before the Klicks got close, but I overruled her.”

  “Oh?” Klick dreadnoughts were armed like Harkish madmonks on a Mission of Sacred Murder. The Vance was no match for one of them, let alone two.

  “I believe sailors always toast in their native tongue.” She raised her glass toward him. “So, salud.”

  “A votre santé.” He touched his glass to hers, chiming a beautiful, clear note. Crystal—definitely not Navy issue. He sipped the tart, fiery wine. “Excellent.”

  “Told you.” She curled her feet underneath her. “I overruled Van Tey because this mission is too crucial to quit without a struggle. The Navy doesn’t appreciate how embarrassing our status in the galactic trading community is. The Seventeen Races view the humans as upstarts who weren’t smart enough to develop space drive on our own. This must change.”

  Dante nodded as he took another sip of wine. He’d heard this before, of course. The discovery of humans had boosted the Detchvilli’s status in the galactic trading community. In the same way, supposedly, an exclusive trading agreement with a planet-bound race, the Shons, would provide the Consortium with instant status. And, of course, with profit—though Traders considered it heresy to acknowledge that Consortium Earth strove for anything other than the welfare of all mankind.

  “The Kalikinikis aren’t popular,” she continued, “so we can probably avoid serious economic sanctions for violating their territory—if we present the Trading Council with a fait accompli. That means an irreversible change, Dante, a ‘done deal’.”

  “It’s a French phrase, Carolyn,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, “and I’m not stupid. I’m slower than before, much slower, and I’ve been told I perserverate.” He paused, giving her time to ask about the clinical term, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting he knew something she didn’t. He explained anyway. “That means I keep trying even when there’s no reasonable expectation of success. Mostly, though, I just have a hard time making decisions.”

  “Of course you aren’t stupid, Dante.” She leaned toward him to put her hand on his. The blouse, no longer trapped between her arm and torso, again slipped on one side to expose the shimmering black bra and the shadowy bump of a nipple. “Therefore you understand that I must convince the Shons to switch from the Klicks to us, even if it means risking everyone on this ship. Not just for my own sake, but for the sake of humanity.” She squeezed his hand several times and only then pulled the blouse back over her chest. Plenty of cleavage remained visible.

  Realization hit him and made him feel stupid. She was trying to seduce him.

  Well, it wouldn’t work. She didn’t excite him. Not because she was forty-five, but because he didn’t trust her. He wasn’t even sure he liked her. Uncertain what to do about it, though, Dante turned his gaze back to the window. It now showed the Consortium’s completed headquarters, recently opened on the centennial of the Detchvilli landing.

  “Dante, I’m going to show you something I’ve never shown anyone.”

  Startled, he kept his gaze resolutely away from her chest, but she merely went to the desk. He felt stupid again. At her age, she could hardly have been talking about baring her breasts for the first time.

  Carolyn opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic pill bottle. She held it level with her face, letting her blouse fall unheeded to the floor as she stared at the translucent green plastic.

  “These pills are poison,” she said.

  “Oh.” He added, “A lot of medicines are, I guess, if you take the wrong dose.”

  “These aren’t medicine. Just poison.”

  He looked from her face to the bottle and back again. “Really?”

  “Distilled from a Chilean desert plant. They thought that was a clever touch.”

  “They?”

  “The CEO of the Consortium and his henchmen.” Carolyn continued to stare at the pills. Silence lay heavy.

  Dante drained the rest of his wine. “But why?”

  Carolyn sighed. She took his glass and refilled it, then handed it him to him. “Here, you’ll need this.”

  Talk of poison was a strange way to seduce. Maybe he’d been wrong about that. She hadn’t picked up her blouse, but even so her body was pretty much covered. Though she’d joked at the mess table about how they’d flirted with each other when younger, she didn’t seem the type to be particularly interested in sex.

  Not seduction, then. She had poison pills in her hand, she felt the need to tell someone about them, and he was the closest thing to an old friend she had here on the Vance. That’s all.

  “These pills were a condition of getting the position of Ambassador to Zee-Shode.” Carolyn rattled the bottle gently, almost lovingly, then stared into his eyes.
“Nothing makes decisions easier than holding your own death in your palm, Dante. Desires and alternatives become as clear and sharp as the stars from outer space.”

  She sighed, then closed her fist on the pill bottle. “The ambassadorship was a huge promotion for me. I accepted it, and the pills. But if I fail to negotiate an agreement, my orders are . . .” She paused for effect. “To commit suicide.”

  Dante raised his glass and swallowed, scarcely noticing the taste.

  “Suicide,” Carolyn repeated.

  “You wouldn’t actually go through with it, would you?”

  “I have to.” A pained expression wrinkled her face, making him wonder what hold they had on her. She shook her head and gave a rueful smile. “Back on earth, they planted false documents, including diaries I never kept and confessor-psychiatrist sessions I never logged onto, all pointing to a growing megalomania. I suspect my friends would find it all too believable.” She gave a harsh laugh that jarred with her aura of ladylike sophistication. “The idea is to provide the Consortium with ‘plausible deniability.’ That means they’ll admit the small crime of sending a cruiser to a restricted trade zone, but claim that I and I alone turned the small crime into the big crime of trying to steal the Klicks’ monopoly. Ingenious, don’t you think?”

  Dante shrugged. For some reason, the simple gesture felt strange, as though he could throw his arms off his body if he tried hard enough. He shrugged again. It still felt odd.

  “Most of our enemies on the Council wouldn’t believe the trick, but enough of our friends might so the Council wouldn’t vote to impose their worst sanction. Banning us from space.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Dante. I have no intention of losing. The stakes are too high.” She stretched her arms overhead, which did interesting things to the bra. She put her legs up on the couch, her naked feet inches from his thigh. “The volumes of my diary back on earth were written for the Consortium by a master of Quartic Realism plays. I’m sure you know who that must be.”

  “No.”

  She smiled as though she’d won bargaining points from his ignorance. “Well, it sounds like me and it’s superb reading. It’s inspired me to start a real diary. Occasionally I throw in a few details of my plans to twist this innocent mission to my own evil purposes. Just for fun.”

  She gave another harsh laugh, making her breasts jiggle. Now that Dante had had a chance to become comfortable with her sitting there partially naked, he had to admit that she was more enticing than he’d expected. Her long, thin face seemed prettier than before, and her dark hair gave gleamed. But mostly, it was difficult not to stare at the dark circles of her nipples.

  In fact, he was staring. And his mouth was open. He forced his gaze away.

  The window now showed a slender, limber-limbed Detchvilli writhing in pleasure at a concert. Human music plunged them into ecstasy. That was why humanity had star drive instead of being a planet in thrall, like Zee-Shode; not because of the trading acumen of Consortium Earth, but because the Detchvilli had offered materials for five space cruisers, complete plans, and technical help during construction—in exchange for the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra.

  “Why,” he said without looking at the soft curves of flesh that rose from the top of her bra, “are you telling me this?”

  “So you’ll understand why I’ve decided that tomorrow we’ll negotiate the surrender of the Ship’s Ward.”

  Dante turned slowly toward her. One of the bra straps was sliding off her shoulder. “You mean Tompa Lee?”

  Of course she meant Tompa Lee. Stupid question.

  “You have authority over her, Dante, and you’ll play a key role in the transfer. I can order you around, obviously, but I’d rather have your willing cooperation.”

  “It’s against Navy policy to hand sailors over to aliens.”

  “First, she isn’t Navy, merely a Ship’s Ward. Second, we have non-extradition treaties with other aliens, but not with the Shons.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  Carolyn smiled. “Provided I give lip service to the Navy’s pretty little sensibilities and honor, I can do what I want. I’m the head Trader for this mission. Not even God outranks me.”

  “But it’s wrong.”

  “Oh, Dante, act your age.”

  “It’s stupid!”

  “Stupid?” Carolyn arched one eyebrow and sat upright. The bra strap drew his gaze when it slipped another inch. “Stupid, Dante?”

  Words often failed him at important moments like this, but he plunged on with dogged determination. “Tompa Lee is in heal-sleep, so there’s no way we could possibly hand her over now. Besides, hasn’t it occurred to you that this whole incident is a bit too convenient? The Klicks want us to give up Lee. For me, that’s reason enough to do something else.”

  “Like what?”

  He opened his mouth, tried several times to speak, then closed it. He’d just told her that decision-making was his Achilles’ heel, and now she’d used it against him. Maybe he should hold her poison pills in his palm, so decisions came easily.

  “Besides,” Carolyn countered, “maybe the Klicks want us to refuse so they have an excuse to attack. What better way to discredit humanity than to catch us poaching and to casually blast one of our ships to space dust?”

  Dante grunted. The sound seemed to squirm upwards from his belly to his mouth like a slithering snake. He shivered and stared at his glass, which glinted blue and red, reflecting light as the scene on the window changed. Was the wine drugged? He thought of her pills and shuddered.

  “However we respond to the Klicks,” Carolyn continued, “we have to do it before the Inspector from the Galactic Trading Council arrives, or our inaction will count against us. Trust me, Dante; I know how the Council thinks. The Klick space station sent out a call when we arrived three months ago, so an Inspector could arrive any day. We don’t have time for niceties.”

  She leaned toward him, deepening her cleavage. He could see all the way to where her breast curved out of sight, like the dark side of the moon. When she put her hand on his thigh, he went fully erect. It was as though he were a balloon that her touch had inflated.

  “Dante, I want you to order the med staff to use overdrive on the Ship’s Ward and keep it on until the last minute so we can get her down to the Shons quickly.”

  He ran a hand over his face. “But the hangover effect . . .”

  She chuckled. The sound bounced around in his ears before registering in his brain. God, her breasts were beautiful. His fingers literally tingled with the desire to touch them. In fact, his whole body tingled.

  “Ah, yes,” Carolyn said. “The fabled heal-sleep hangover. I doubt it’s as terrible as in the shows, Dante. You know how they exaggerate.”

  Dante shrugged indecisively. The sudden withdrawal of heal-sleep led to disorientation and ferocious headaches. In the most famous scene of the greatest hi-sensory show ever made, the heroine awakened with a heal-sleep hangover after a shuttle crash, yet crawled in agony to her dying lover’s bedside. How could Carolyn expect him to put Tompa through that misery, on top of abandoning her to the mercy of an unknown race?

  Carolyn’s hand stirred slightly on his thigh. “Call the med staff, Dante. Tell them.”

  The errant strap slipped another inch, exposing dizzying curves and part of a nipple. “But . . .” His voice trailed off to nothing.

  “You heard what that Kalikiniki said about the Shons’ high regard for justice. The Shons are angry, certainly, but that doesn’t mean they want to convict an innocent person. They want the guilty party. Tomorrow I’ll ask my contacts on Zee-Shode for information about their system of justice. But first, call the med staff.”

  “You promise she’ll get a fair trial?”

  “Our best lawyers will defend her, Dante.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Trust me.” She picked up his hand, looked at it, then moved it so it almost touched the flesh above her bra. He c
ould feel the heat of her body. “Call the med staff, Dante.”

  He flexed his hand, grazing his fingertips over soft, alluring skin.

  Carolyn moved his hand away so he couldn’t reach her. “Call them, Dante.” For several seconds they both sat motionless, staring into each other’s eyes without flinching. Finally, she looked away and sighed. “That’s an order.”

  He swallowed hard, then activated his mumbler and subvocalized for several minutes with the med staff. When he was done, he said aloud, “Okay. I told them.”

  “Good boy.”

  “Even on overdrive, she needs a minimum of twenty hours of heal-sleep to be able to function. Thirty hours would heal her completely.” He raised his chin defiantly. “I told them to give her thirty hours.”

  She considered this, then nodded. “Good. The transfer will coincide with the ship’s morning, rather than midnight. And even if the Inspector arrives in those last six hours, the transfer will be in the works.” Slowly, lingeringly, she let go of his hand. “You did a good job, Dante. You deserve a reward.”

  She moved her arms to her sides and stared at him with invitation in her eyes.

  He touched her. Her skin was like silk, like nectar, like the first breast he’d ever touched as a teenager. Within seconds, his mind drowned in desire, disintegrating into a lust as powerful as he’d ever known. When her hand sought his crotch he immediately exploded.

  Even then, he wasn’t satiated. Incredibly, he stayed hard while she caressed him and he caressed her. She tore his clothes as she removed them. He responded by reining in his urgency and removing her clothes carefully and gently, although restraint took incredible willpower.

  In fact, part of his brain nagged him that this desire was too powerful, too surreal, to be normal. “What was in that wine?” he asked with his last shred of will.

  “You’ll have to ask the Shons.”

  Dante went still, a hand cupping her breast. “You fed me Shon wine?”

  “It was a gift several months ago from the Shon negotiators. I didn’t know what it was capable of until recently, of course. You’re the only person I’ve given it to.”

  She sounded as though he should feel honored. He pulled his hands away and stood.

  Carolyn gave a languid laugh. “You can’t resist me now.” She lay back on the couch and spread her legs. “Give up, Dante.”

  He swallowed and ordered his body to walk away. Instead, it knelt beside the couch. The sight and aroma of sex addled whatever remained of his sanity; he stared at her, seeking the nirvana that lurked in her triangle of dark hair. As he climbed between her thighs, he noticed that her eyes were wide with triumph. And she still held the bottle of pills.

  He entered her. Before he could start moving in primal rhythm, however, she seized his face in two hands, holding him still, forcing him to look into her eyes. The pill bottle pressed painfully into his cheekbone. “Fifteen years ago,” she whispered, “when you were somebody and I was nobody, you wouldn’t even say hello to me. You couldn’t remember my name from one day to the next.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words were garbled because of the hands grasping his cheeks and jaw, but he really was sorry. The old Dante hadn’t cared enough about people. Increased empathy was one of the few ways the fateful transformer explosion on Deck A had actually improved him. That empathy made him better in the sack, too.

  She grinned. “You’re mine now, former-Ship’s-President Roussel. Mine.”

  Only then did she release his face and allow him to move inside her.

  In her medcasket, Tompa Lee slept peacefully under the thrall of an increased dosage of heal-sleep medicines. Her medical chart read, “Out of danger.”