It was a revelation; the birth of her private universe. It made her want to lock the door and masturbate. If he’d still been conscious she’d have let him have her. She owed him. He had written down for her, all over the walls and floor, exactly what she was.
Later the stories about him came out, how he used to cruise at night for partners, usually younger or poorer or less intelligent than himself. He had hidden it from his family and had kept it apart from his public career, as would she; but she would do it better. His attempts to hide it were really quite mediocre. She hated mediocrity.
Her early sexual experiences were unsatisfactory, and now she knew why. Sex didn’t have to be shared with others. It could be done to others, and could be heightened by hurting them. She cruised for strangers. She never chose family, or people she knew at school or university, or military colleagues: always, it was strangers. She cruised cities for them like a smaller-scale Faith, random and motiveless, beautiful and brilliant. And perhaps also like Faith, she did it out of a compulsion which she wouldn’t acknowledge, preferring to call it choice.
Occasionally she thought What have I become, but that voice was distant, and the voice that said This Is What I AM was louder and more insistent. It would not be denied. Her earliest episodes were technically rapes, but even that distinction grew blurred: some of the later ones, though disturbingly violent, were almost consensual. Nothing, even then, was simple. And occasional episodes of pain and violation in dark teeming rooms weren’t enough. She wanted more than bits of opportunism. In the future it should be larger-scale, not the exception but the rule. It should be what it really was, a regular part of her life.
That was when she made her other choice, and became something quite unusual, a female serial rapist. She preferred Multiple or Random; Serial implied a process of growth and increase, whereas she saw it as a large but stable part of her life: something important, but something which had found its allotted place and wouldn’t grow to engulf her. Later, the distinction would be lost on the media who covered her trial. Predictably, they labelled her The CYRial Rapist.
At first, her military career flourished. She was high-achieving, high-profile and glamorous. She won Commonwealth and Olympic small arms medals, but that was only her hobby. Her career was large scale weaponry, ships’ weaponry, and she excelled at it. Her ability was natural, but not like Kaang’s; she had to work hard at it. Her military colleagues, sensing this, surrounded her and adored her, unaware of the moral toxin she carried.
She had chosen this career in the hope that she would find a legitimate outlet for what was in her, but this was one of her few mistakes. The conventional military of course dealt in violence, but only as a means and not an end; and not, usually, random or gratuitous violence. It was the suspicion of fellow crew-members which finally brought her to trial.
No, she told the court, it’s absolutely not a compulsion, it’s a conscious choice. I can choose not to. Mere serial rapists have to follow a pattern. I don’t. It’s not a compulsion.The prosecuting counsel nodded in agreement, then told the court It’s a compulsion. She’s described it very precisely. Her descriptions are always very precise.
She was sentenced to indefinite confinement in a secure mental institution, and then the Department came for her. Part of the arrangement—the unwritten part—was that, in return for using her proven talents on an Outsider, she could continue cruising; she could even continue enjoying the pain and violation, but—they told her—she had to be able to prove it was consensual and negotiated. Get them to sign a contract, they told her. Here’s a draft we’ve prepared.
And she remained very wealthy; the Department supplied her with lawyers to fight her family’s attempts to disinherit her. Her family could afford the very best lawyers, but the Department’s were better.
Most of the others on Foord’s ship had done things by compulsion. She absolutely knew this wasn’t the case with her. For her it was always by choice: free, rational, conscious choice. And because she realised she wasn’t the same as the others, she treated them warily, even though many had abilities she respected. She regarded Smithson as foul and pompous but very clever, with an intuition which was irritatingly accurate; Kaang as uninteresting except for her almost supernatural ability as a pilot; Thahl as competent but enigmatic; and Joser, before he had the good taste to die, as someone whose scheming far exceeded his talent.
Foord had some of all these features, but not enough of any to unbalance or skew his performance; the best and worst of them, but mostly the best. Cyr could not deny that she had feelings for him, but they were bleak and grudging. They could hardly be anything else, given what each of them were. She often teased herself with the irony; they might almost be viable partners, if it wasn’t for everything they were.
She gave herself a project: to find out what he had done to make the Department come for him, as it had come for her.
She had the wealth and resources to uncover his story. She embarked on the project as carefully and obsessively as Foord himself might have done, and eventually she found it; all of it. His parents and the orphanage and the rape and the priests he’d killed. Even the bit where he had later told the Department that he wished he’d known a Sakhran who could teach him how to kill more priests, more efficiently. She smiled. I wish you’d known me back then, I’d have taught you; and I’d have taught you how to enjoy it.
—You realise what this is? Mr. Gattuso, the proprietor of her favourite couture house, asked her when she described what she wanted. —Yes, she said, I know exactly what it is. Please make it for me. —I don’t, Mr. Gattuso said, want to annoy one of my best customers, but I have to ask, Are you sure? If you wear this, it may produce An Effect. —I’m aware of that, she said. Now please make it for me. You know how I want it tailored. It must hang just so….
And it did produce an effect, one which amazed her. She had no idea that a mere garment could have such an extraordinary effect on grown men, but she quickly adjusted and learnt how to use it. She found it very satisfactory; she could glide among them acting as if she was unaware of it.
Prior to meeting Mr. Gattuso, she had completed her research and knew exactly what she wanted. She found the designs for the orphanage uniforms, and described them to him with her usual precision: box pleats on the front and back of the skirt and bodice, a fabric belt and belt-loops, buttons on the shoulders, and so on. Going into such details, so obsessively, was like entering Foord’s private universe. She found herself following the paths of his obsessions as tortuously as she followed the cramped burrows of his ship.
Cyr suddenly let out a laugh of delight. It startled her deputy, Nemec, who’d been lurking in a corner of the weapons bay, quietly ogling her.
She understood it. Suddenly, and instantly, and all of it. Not even Smithson had seen this. Cyr only saw it because she had an instinct for weapons and how they were used, but now she knew it all, exactly how Foord would use them. You clever bastard, she thought. She’d seen what Foord had specified: what was inside the nose cones, what kinds of charges were packed in the distended bodies, what kinds of drives they had and the range over which they’d operate, and—most important—how fucking simple they were. You clever, brilliant bastard, she thought. If only