Murmuring in Kelric’s ear, the gold girl stroked his chest and thigh. No, that couldn’t be her touching his leg. It had to be the sultry one. Except she was still holding his elbows.
He looked down and found a third provider lying at his side, a beautiful youth with gold curls, a lithe build, sapphire eyes and restraints, and a sapphire ring in one ear. He gave a lazy, drugged smile and put his arms around Kelric’s waist.
“Now, wait a minute,” Kelric said. “Stop that.”
The gold girl tickled his ear with her tongue. Startled, he turned to her, and she kissed him, her lips tasting of nanogels. So warm. So soft. Almost without conscious thought he kissed her back, all the while stroking the body of the girl in his lap. When the dark one murmured, he stopped kissing the gold one and turned back to her.
His mind hazed, he took the sultry girl’s breast into his mouth again. The gold one moved against him in a sensual rhythm, her hair drifting over his shoulders and arms. The youth reclined along Kelric’s side, caressing him with a skilled touch. Right now, in his daze, all he could think was that if for some strange reason these three spectacularly beautiful people wanted to make him feel good, who was he to argue?
Still suckling, he slid his hand between the dark girl’s thighs and played with her soft folds, so moist with her wanting him. Yet even as he pleasured her and himself, he kept remembering how the Aristo had watched him. Smug bastard. What did he want?
Then, suddenly, Kelric knew. He lifted his head, evoking a protest from the girl in his lap. He knew exactly what the Diamond lord wanted. Didn’t the Aristos ever stop trying to cheat one another? He had no doubt that in normal circumstances, the lord would have to pay dearly for the service he hoped Kelric would give now for free. He probably threw in the boy as inspiration, in case Kelric’s interests made him less inclined to perform with the girls.
Stunned into a semblance of rationality, he nudged away the gold girl and the youth, gently, but leaving no doubt what he meant. Then he lifted up the sultry girl so she was no longer arched over bis arm. He intended to put her away from him too, but she came up straddling his hips—and he groaned as she slid onto his erection.
“No,” he protested, even as he pulled her closer. Against her ear he said, “You’re incredible, a lonely man’s dream. But I won’t have a child of mine born into slavery. Not with either of you.”
He wasn’t sure if they were past the point where they could understand, too far gone in an induced sea of eroticism. The gold girl put her arms around him again and the boy resumed his caresses. The pheromones of the three providers, the Kyle resonances between their minds and his, and their sheer sexualized beauty magnified his reaction. He began to move with the dark-haired girl, his resolve fading.
Then he felt it. On her back. Gently he moved aside her hair and looked down her body. And he froze. Within the last hour, someone had taken a belt to her, leaving swollen welts.
“Ah, no, I’m sorry,” he whispered. His Kyle link to the girl jarred her out of the protective mental cocoon she had created to repress the incident. He felt the echoes of her pain. Rocking her back and forth, he murmured I’m sorry over and over. She said nothing, only buried her head against his neck and held on to him as if he were an anchor.
After a while he lifted her off his lap, freeing her before he gave her his seed. “I can’t do it,” he said as he moved her to his side. “I’m sorry.”
In a just universe, she would have never wanted him after what had so recently happened to her. It was a cruelty of their owner that he drugged them past rationality, augmenting their desire and appeal until neither they nor Kelric could control their responses. He had no doubt the two women were also primed on fertility drugs.
The dark-haired girl slid her arms around his neck and he drew her close to his side. She hid her head against his shoulder as she pressed along his body. Holding her around the waist, he slid his leg between hers. She clasped her thighs around it and began to move, trying to find her release that way.
Then the youth folded his hand around Kelric and took up where the girl had left off.
“Stop that.” Kelric didn’t know which disconcerted him more, having the fellow touch him or having his body respond.
The youth looked up at him. “Whatever you want, tonight you can have.”
The gold girl slid down alongside the boy, her front to his back. Regarding Kelric through her long lashes, she put her arms around the boy’s waist. “Do you prefer to watch? Him and me?” She nodded toward the other girl. “Or me and her?”
“Saints almighty.” His face flamed with his blush. “Behave yourselves.” Even more embarrassing than her suggestions was the way his body reacted with such enthusiasm.
The gold girl slid across the boy and stretched out so she was lying between Kelric’s legs. Then she kissed him where he most wanted to feel her touch.
“Ah … don’t do that.” He didn’t know how much more of this he could take before he lost what little restraint remained to him.
“Shhh,” she said. “We’ll tell him we did what he wanted. He won’t know we didn’t.” Softly she added, “You’ve been kinder to us in these few minutes than he’s ever been. Lie back, beautiful man. There are ways that won’t leave either of us with your child.” She tilted her head toward the Aristos. “Just for a while let us forget them and find comfort with one another.”
Just for a while. He stared at her, mesmerized, his arm around the dark girl. The gold one lowered her head and took him into her mouth, exactly the way he wanted, as her empath’s mind sensed his reactions and responded in kind.
He had been raised in the most conservative sector of Skolia, a son of the Ruby Dynasty and the Imperial noble Houses, his interactions constrained by six thousand years of history. He had just spent eighteen years in an even more conservative culture. With such a history he could never have done this. Under normal circumstances.
But their sweet succor poured over his mind. He gave that sensual comfort back to them, multiplying it by his own Kyle strength. For this brief time, perhaps they could forget grief and despair.
It seemed that sometimes, just sometimes, life offered solace in unexpected ways.
Kelric floated in a reverie, half sitting among the cushions. The sultry provider lay between his legs with her head pillowed on his stomach. The gold one dozed in the circle of his arm and the boy was sleeping farther down, his head on Kelric’s ribs, his legs tangled with those of the dark-haired girl. Kelric felt their contentment as well as his own, drowsy and sated.
It unsettled him to realize he was coming to understand the Aristos. He felt as if he owned these providers. Then again, maybe he would never understand Aristos, because what he wanted for these three was their happiness, to take away their shadows and care for them. He would treat them much better than Lord Hizar.
But still. They reacted to him as if he were an Aristo to please rather than another provider like themselves. He had done nothing to discourage that attitude. He liked being pleased. He liked having providers. He didn’t much like what that said about him, but he couldn’t deny its truth.
He knew the answer now to his question about whether they understood the ideas of self-determination and the right to control their own bodies. No. They had no clue. The Aristos blocked them from even forming those concepts. As angry as that made him, still, he couldn’t stop thinking of these three slaves as beautiful works of art that belonged to him.
But they don’t, he thought. They belong to themselves. They have a right to freedom. Would you really want to own them? You could have had concubines after Corey’s death. You chose not to. That you understand part of why Aristos act as they do doesn’t make you an Aristo.
He knew this much: if he ever escaped, he would have a unique and invaluable window into the workings of the Aristo mind.
A rustle came from nearby, soft shoes on the carpeted stairs of the dais. Opening his eyes, he saw a taskmaker kneel by his side, a nondesc
ript man in a brown jumpsuit. The fellow spoke in a low voice. “They have to come back now.”
The girl with her head pillowed on Kelric’s stomach opened her eyes and murmured a protest. Kelric pulled the other girl against his side, drawing the youth closer as well. Then he glowered at the intruder.
“I’m sorry,” the taskmaker said. “But if they don’t come back, Lord Hizar will be angry. With them.”
Kelric knew he would only bring the providers trouble if he refused to give them up. With reluctance, he relaxed his hold.
The dark-haired girl sat up, rubbing her eyes. Tendrils of hair curled around her face. She leaned forward and kissed him, her mouth warm and full against his. Then she drew back and smiled. Although she remained silent, she had a less haunted look now.
Sitting up, the boy pushed tousled gold curls out of his eyes. He rubbed the back of his hand over Kelric’s jaw, his touch lingering. Kelric ran his finger over the youth’s palm. Although he would never have expected to hold a youth in his arms, it had happened and he had no regrets about their time together.
The gold girl at his side gave him a farewell kiss. As she pulled back, Kelric murmured, “Good-bye, sweet flower.”
“Be well,” she said softly.
Then they left, descending the dais with the taskmaker. Kelric watched them walk across the hall together, headed back to their owner. It made him angry. Conditioned and subjugated, they would never know how much more they deserved from life.
A rustle came from the other end of the dais. He turned to see a taskmaker approaching with a large diamond bowl and a pile of white furs. She knelt and set the sparkling bowl next to him. Crystal-clear water filled it, with white flowers drifting on its surface.
The taskmaker gave him a sponge bath and dried him off with a plush fur. Then she helped him dress. After she left, he sat on the top step of the dais and watched the Aristos at the other end of the hall.
Incredibly, the broadcast hadn’t finished. It had been over an hour since it started and the thing was still droning on. Now a Highton was speaking, a tall young man with broad shoulders. Kelric was too far away to hear. He wondered what the kid could be saying that so riveted the attention of every Aristo in the banquet hall.
He glanced at the archway where he and Tarquine had entered the hall. It stood open like a taunt, a false promise of freedom, as if he could just walk through it and leave.
Kelric glanced back at the Aristos. No one was paying him any attention, not even Tarquine. They were all intent on the mysterious broadcast playing out on the holostage.
Well, why not? He got up, went down the stairs, and walked out the archway.
Several guards were in the antechamber outside. They glanced at him, then turned back to the wall screen, which showed the speech playing on the holostage in the banquet hall. Kelric wanted to listen, but he couldn’t take the chance of drawing attention. So he walked right past them.
The corridor beyond led to Tarquine’s suite. Inside, he retrieved his belongings from the nightstand. He slid the armbands onto his biceps, five on one arm, six on the other.
Kelric started to tie the pouch onto his belt. Then he changed his mind. He sat on the floor and emptied the pouch. A rainbow of gems spilled across the white carpet: pyramids, cubes, balls, disks, polyhedrons, cylinders, cones, bars, rods, spirals, squares, and other shapes in every color of the spectrum.
Then he played Quis.
He wove his observations of the Aristos into patterns. It was like manipulating 3-D equations, with each die as a symbol or a collection of symbols and the Quis rules as mathematical operations. With his insights into Eube and the Aristos, surely some pattern existed that could help him design an escape.
A shape began to form. It took on definition, becoming clearer, oddly simple, almost done—
A right angle?
Kelric blinked. “Great,” he muttered. So much for his brilliant insights.
He tried to continue the game, but the moves kept leading back to the right angle. If the structure had been ragged or incomplete, he would have thought the drugs in his system were interfering with his ability to play Quis. But he kept making a perfect right angle.
Kelric rubbed his chin. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the only right angle in this entire suite was where the wall met the floor. Even that curved, rather than making a true ninety degree angle. The room was circular, with a domed ceiling. The arched entrance came to a graceful point. Now that he thought about it, the windows he had seen both here and on Taratus’s yacht all came in ovals, octagons, diamonds, and circles. So did the tiles and gems. No squares, no rectangles.
All right. Eubians disliked right angles. So what?
He cleared the playing area and tried a new game, this time using his insights to model Aristo behavior. The structures soon became complex. They resembled fractals. He didn’t have enough dice to build a true three-dimensional fractal, but the pattern was obvious.
Curious now, he tried modeling the behavior of providers. The patterns simplified. Red and blue dice dominated. It didn’t surprise him: blue was often used for love, and red for passion.
He began a third game, this time combining the simplicity of provider designs with Aristo intricacy. It led him to—
A right angle.
“For crying out loud,” he said. What was he supposed to do with a right angle? Straight edges. Ninety degrees. Right angles were direct, in a mathematical sense. No wonder Aristos avoided them, with their passion for complexity. But how did that help him?
Aristos were the only Eubians with self-determination. They also avoided straightforward behavior with one another. Providers had straightforward lives, but no self-determination. They had no idea how to direct their own lives. It just wasn’t in them. For that matter, an Aristo could no more imagine a provider taking control of his or her life than could the provider.
Except: I am a provider who acts, in some ways, like an Aristo.
Self-determination. Direct behavior. Kelric doubted Aristos could conceive of those two traits together in a provider. Yet to a Skolian, separating the traits was arbitrary. Of course, Aristos saw how Skolians behaved. But he doubted they fathomed Skolians any better than he had understood Aristos a few days ago.
He knew Aristo scholars tried to understand Skolia. But they were watching from “outside.” They probably applied their own modes of thought to Skolian behavior without seeing it, just as Skolians did the reverse. He wasn’t sure what conclusions the Aristos formed, but he doubted it was any more an accurate assessment of the Skolian mind than Skolians had of the Aristo mind. How could it be, when Skolians and Traders interacted only in the stiff forums of their strained diplomacy? Their meetings took place via holostage. It was the only realistic choice: Skolians in Aristo territory became slaves, and Aristos in Skolian territory became war criminals.
How many Aristos had dealt with someone like himself in a milieu natural to Aristos? Providers made up only a fraction of 1 percent of the Eubian population. Only a fraction of those were Skolian, and those few were unlikely to have his background or military training. He was the unexpected. The wrench in the machinery. He wasn’t sure what good that did him: Aristos lived in environments crammed with security, monitors, guards, and webs dedicated to controlling people, wrench or no wrench.
An idea came to him. An outrageous idea. He couldn’t.
Could he?
Kelric put his dice back into the pouch and tied it to a belt loop on his trousers. Then he went back down the hall to where the taskmakers were watching the broadcast.
He tapped a guard on the shoulder. “Open the door.”
The man pulled his attention to Kelric. “What?”
“The archway.” Kelric indicated a blank wall, hoping it had an exit. “Open it for me.” He used direct language, not as a provider speaking to another slave, but as an Aristo addressing a taskmaker, though he was careful not to be too overt with his tone and manner.
Incredib
ly, the taskmaker lifted his palmtop and entered several commands. The wall shimmered and an archway appeared.
Kelric nodded, somehow keeping his face composed.
Then he walked out the door.
16
Right-Angle Turn
Kelric entered a black and white tunnel with a hexagonal shape. Holding back his exultant grin, he set off at a fast, easy walk. He wanted to run, but he resisted the urge, knowing it would draw attention.
Although he had no idea where he was, his general knowledge of spacecraft would help him figure out where to go if he could get a sense of his location. He doubted his freedom would last long. He had to make the best of it.
He walked through the maze of corridors, keeping track of every turn. Soon he came out into a multilevel concourse with shops and apartments. Far above, the ceiling vaulted in arches of a sparkling white composite groined with black diamond. Two taskmakers were leaving a shop up ahead. He averted his gaze as he passed, trying to fade into the background. Deep in conversation, they ignored him.
The concourse was almost empty. It puzzled him. Although it was “night” according to ship’s time, it wasn’t late. He would have thought some people would still be up and about.
Passing a café with an open front, he glanced inside. The patrons were crowded around a small holostage at the back, watching the young Aristo give his speech. Again he wondered what the fellow had to say that so fascinated everyone. But he couldn’t risk stopping.
On the far side of the concourse, he found what he sought. An elevator. He entered a request for passage to the ship’s docking tube. His knowledge of the Aristo language gave him a unique advantage: the panel only accepted Highton glyphs. Aristos never taught their providers to read.
The more he skewed outside expected behavior, the better. Aristo minds worked like clockwork, precise and uniform. They seemed like a great glittering machine to him, each Aristo a cog in the total. It gave them a formidable capacity for organization and union of purpose, but crippled them when it came to the unexpected.