“You are not a Valcini, then?”
“Bob!”
“No, I guess you’re not.” He walked a little further into the room, over the expensive-looking scatter rugs. “You had no further use for Melnone, and, slug that he was, you got rid of him.” He laughed gently. “Just when I happened by.”
She was certainly a magnificent creature. The foam of the bath prevented him from seeing much of her figure; but the flash of her eyes, indignant, hurt, pleading, the hand so earnestly thrust over the edge of the bath to him, the whole aura of personality flowing from her, all added up to a woman among women. Prestin unmistakably felt the effect she was having on him.
A copper-colored maiden stood lithely and brought a sea-green gossamer veil and held it ready for the girl in the bath. Towels were brought. Despite himself, despite all his own precepts, Prestin could not keep from looking as the girl rose from the bath. He did not see anything, of course. One never did.
Wrapped in the veils and the towels, she swayed toward an opaque glass cubicle where fresh hot air blew.
“You haven’t told me your name yet,” he said.
“Oh, Bob!” The veils and towels fell to the floor as she raised her hands behind the glass. The hazy silhouette charmed Preston, but he wondered what she meant.
“What do you mean, ‘Oh, Bob? You know who I am. Because we busted out of the arena you had an excuse to have Melnone killed. You brought me here. You must want something. Why be so cagey?” He jerked his head. “Cino’s down there with his Mauser and his bullies. What’s holding you up?”
Her handmaids were helping her into a flame-colored negligee. If she wore anything underneath it, Prestin hadn’t seen her put it on. She walked out toward him with a light, bouncing step, doing up the flowing ribbon bow about her waist. Her face was flushed but still meticulously made up, and now very close. She came up to about his shoulder.
“Oh, Bob! Surely you know who I am?”
He hadn’t a clue. He’d been hoping to find Fritzy who’d disappeared somewhere about here, coming through from a landing Trident. Maybe she’d hit among the trees and a Lombok had got to her—he shut his eyes. He’d been trying not to think about that for some time.
The girl’s voice sounded softly in his ear and he could feel her breath on his cheek, smell the sweet warm bath scent of her, feel her softness pressing against him as she raised on tiptoe. “Oh, Bob! And here I’ve been waiting so long to meet you after we talked. Of course you know who I am! I’m Perdita! You knew that all along, didn’t you, you naughty boy?”
“Perdita? The Contessa? The Montevarchi?” Prestin laughed. He took her upper arms into his fists and pushed her back, looking down on the sweet, lovely face staring up at him—seeing the sweetness and the loveliness as a carefully put on covering, “You! The Contessa!” He shook her gently, despite his feelings. “I spoke to the Contessa on the phone. I’d know that voice anywhere. Sorry, baby—try me with another one.”
“You’re a fool, Bob!” She wrenched herself free and stormed across the apartment, its luxury and refinement lost in her anger, her face indrawn and bitter. “What do you know of the dimensions? You puny Earth people think you are Lords of Creation! Well—you’re not—You’re not!”
“But you are?”
The thrust went home. She lifted her head like a snake, and like a snake her tongue flicked in and out. “We are of the dimensions! I am the Montevarchi—the name by which I choose to be known here, and on your world. This is the body of Perdita that I am using, her brain that I think with, her eyes that I see you with, her hands that I touch you with—” She swayed forward again. “Her lips that I kiss you with—”
Prestin fended her off. The three handmaids stood grouped by the door, ready to run. “I don’t want your kisses, Contessa. I don’t know what you’ mean about someone else’s body—”
“The body is mine now! I share it and use it—”
“Yes, well. You’ve had your fun. Now I would like to go back to my own world.”
“You refuse me?”
“I refuse you, yes. I refuse what you are, what you stand for, what your henchmen are. I hate the Valcini. I wish to go home now, and my friend—”
“Todor Dalreay of Dargai? Do not worry about him. He is already shackled among the mine slaves.”
“You cat!” He swung about sharply, some idea of bluffing his way past Cino buzzing in his mind. He could break out, given half a chance. Then Cino appeared at the door. His Mauser served the same purpose as a barred gate.
“He won’t play, Cino. You know what to do with him!”
“Yes, Contessa.” Cino flicked the Mauser at Prestin. “You will come with me.”
“She isn’t the Montevarchi—” said Prestin.
“For now, she is.” Cino jerked the Mauser again, his lips thin and antisocial. “Get with it, friend.”
“Just what did you want with me?” Prestin now understood the grandstand play where, days before, he would have been baffled. “You’ve been after me ever since Fritzy disappeared.”
“Don’t worry about Upjohn. She is—working—for her living.”
Prestin lunged forward and grasped the girl. “Fritzy! She’s alive! She’s all right—”
Cino hit him over the head with the Mauser and, half stunned, Prestin was dragged free of the girl. She shrugged her negligee straight, shuddering. “Take him away, Cino!”
His head a roaring inferno, Prestin was led down the stairs and back down the elevator shaft of the Sorba tree. If that girl was the Contessa, then he had made a pretty poor showing. She had offered herself in exchange for something. Now, Prestin knew, he was going to do what the Montevarchi wanted—without payment.
But Fritzy was alive! And must be somewhere near, if what the pseudo-Contessa had said could be relied on.
Most of the confusion below had been sorted out and Prestin saw squads of men, Honshi guards and ordinary security men in snappy uniforms with helmets, clubs and automatic rifles, maintaining order.
Cino sniggered. “They squirted the old acid all over that Lombok. It shrivels the devils a treat. A pity I missed the fun.”
Prestin could imagine. The lungings and swaying, the growing and shriveling, the clawing retreat, the gaping mouth and the fume of acid… Interesting tastes, friend Cino…
The settlement—or whatever one could call an intrusion by one dimension’s culture into another—sprawled half in and half out of the edge of the forest. Concrete had been used lavishly, and as they walked through covered streets full of box-like apartment houses, Prestin saw gangs of workmen repairing cracks and pouring boiling acids into crevices. He knew that the Valcini lived here from choice—albeit some of their decisions had been forced on them by the Contessa, it seemed—and so he knew they had good reasons.
Their slaves mined the jewel rocks. Evidently, to a Valcini mind, life was less safe there than here.
He saw gangs of slaves chained up, shambling dispiritedly on their way to and from the mines. He recalled Dalreay’s attempt to blow up a mine working, and he knew it would take an army to shift the Valcini now.
“When do you chain me up, Cino?” he said, surprised at his own tone. The absence of hope, the acknowledgement of complete defeat, could act as a drug, making a man drunk on apathy.
“You aren’t slaving in the mines, offal,” said Cino with a sneering grin that no ordinary human being grinned. “You’re joining the Transportation Corps.”
The overwhelming presence of the rain forest at their backs dwarfed everything else about them; one would never escape from that swarming green nightmare. They went into a concrete box with a few windows and a large red star over the door, masquerading as an office block, but even inside the building Prestin felt the domination of the Cabbage Patch.