"And five feelie theaters, three dance parlors, two opium dens, and a pawnshop." Yorick looked up and down the street. "Have I missed anything?"
"Yes. But they haven't."
As far as they could see, the street was one mass of blinking, scrambling, writhing holographic displays in garish colors, advertising every form of pleasure conceived by mortal man and woman.
"Wonder what the buildings look like?" Yorick mused.
"Who can tell?" Rod shrugged. "Even if you could see one, you couldn't be sure it was real."
Chornoi nodded. "That about sums up this whole planet, from what I've heard."
"I thought it was a resort."
"It is. And it's amazing what people will resort to, if they can find the money."
"Otranto," Rod said, remembering the planet's reputation, stronger than ever in his own time, five hundred years later. "Isn't their motto, 'It's been a business doing pleasure with you'?"
"No, but it will be," Yorick assured him. He took a deep breath. "Well, folks—we gotta get through it, right?"
"Right." Rod squared his shoulders and stepped manfully in. "Breathe every five steps, friends."
That wasn't as easy as it sounded. The signs weren't just visual—most of them were aural and olfactory, too. And, occasionally, tactile. The company waded through a melange of sounds and smells, their senses assaulted by every glamour in the state of the art. Erotic images gyrated and beckoned, male and female; delectable aromas wafted out to envelop them; images of riches and luxury flashed before their eyes. Holographic hucksters stepped out to entice them, as real as life and twice as pungent. They gritted their teeth and forced themselves to keep going, wading through every distraction they had ever desired.
A sleek, unbelievably handsome young man stepped out of a doorway, muscles rippling underneath his evening clothes, one arm full of long-stemmed roses, the other dangling a diamond necklace. Chornoi swerved after him like a needle to a magnet.
"Hold it, sister." Yorick caught her arm. "Just illusion, remember? Besides, he costs money."
Chornoi shook herself, coming out of her trance with a gasp. "Thanks. They almost got me with that one."
"Close," Yorick agreed. "Courage, lady. You're almost out of it."
"How do you know?" Chornoi wondered.
"I don't—but this kind of thing can't go on forever!"
"Optimist," she snorted.
However, the colony was young yet; the cheapside didn't last more than a quarter mile. They came up out of aromas and sensations with huge, rasping gasps, into clear, quiet air.
"I don't think I could have taken much more." Rod sagged against a lamp post.
"And you didn't even have any money." Yorick finally took his hand off his hip pocket and flexed it. "I think I've got cramps."
Cramps in your soul, friend? Does this mortal world pain you, with its plethora of Philistines?"
They looked up, startled.
A monk stood before them—the real, genuine article, in a brown robe and rope belt. No tonsure, though.
"Why, he is quite like those at home," Gwen cried.
"Uh, well, no, not really, dear." Rod scratched the tip of his nose. "Just looks like it."
"Nay! He doth wear the badge! Dost'a not see?"
Gwen pointed, and Rod looked. The robe had a breast pocket, and in it was a small yellow-handled screwdriver. "You're a Cathodean."
The monk bowed his head in greeting. "Brother Joseph Fumble, though my acquaintances generally call me Brother Joey. And yourselves?"
"Gwen and Rod Gallowglass." Rod pointed at his wife. "She's Gwen." He gestured toward the other two. "He's Yorick, and she's Chornoi."
"Pleased to meet you," Brother Joey said, with a small bow. "I don't suppose any of you would be interested in taking up religion?"
"Uhhhh…" Rod glanced uncomfortably at Gwen. "We're, ah, pretty well set along that line, thanks. I take it you're a priest?"
"No, but I'm working on it."
Rod eyed the man; he wasn't all that young. "But you are a deacon."
"Oh, yes, everything set except final vows." Brother Joey sighed and shook his head. "It's just that I'm not really sure I'm cut out for this sort of thing."
"For what? The priesthood?"
Brother Joey nodded. "I've got the drive, mind you; I've visited nine planets so far, but I've had spectacularly little success as a missionary. Only two converts so far, and they were both religious recidivists." He brightened. "I'm an excellent engineer, though."
"I see the problem," Rod agreed. "But isn't Otranto a rather odd place to be preaching?"
"Apparently it is, but I thought it would be an excellent, ah, 'hunting-ground,' if you follow me. Sort of a virgin wilderness of the spirit. I mean, if there's any planet where people need religion, it's Otranto!"
"Yes, but considering how much money most of them have spent to come here to wallow in pleasure, and how much more the rest are making from giving it to them, it's the last place I'd expect to find people in remorse."
"And, apparently, your expectations are sharper than mine," the monk sighed. "But it seemed such an excellent idea!"
"Yet not all clergymen must needs be missionaries," Gwen said gently. "Mayhap thou wouldst be more suited to a village church."
"Uh, if you two are gonna talk about it…" Rod glanced nervously along their back trail. "Would you mind if you keep walking while you do? I admit it'd take a genius of a bloodhound to track us through that aroma heaven back there, but we did kind of stand out, being live people in the vapor-light district at this hour of the morning. I need room."
"Well, you'll find it in this neighborhood, I assure you." Brother Joey fell into step beside them, gesturing about him.
Rod had to agree with him. The houses, if you could call them that, were far apart and far back from the road, each one sitting centered on several acres of ground, with flawless lawns rolling down to the walkway. The nearest was a gloomy old Tudor manor house, but right next to it was a Gothic castle. A rambling Georgian mansion glowered across from it, and the lot after that held a medieval ruin.
"Odd notion of housing developments they have here." Rod frowned, looking about him, and sniffing the air. "Smells like rain."
"It always does, here," Brother Joey assured him, "and it's always overcast, except for the first half-hour after dawn each day. Just enough so that those who like sunrises, can have them."
"They're doing such wonderful things with weather control these days." Rod shook his head in wonder. "But why?"
"To make Otranto stand out," Brother Joey explained. "There are only a half-dozen of these pleasure-planets so far, but that's already enough to make the competition strong—after all, there are just so many really wealthy citizens in the Terran Sphere."
Chomoi nodded. "And most of them want to go to Orlando."
"Orlando does seem to have the general tourist trade locked up—'something for everyone,' and all that. I understand they have a separate continent for each amusement theme."
"More like very large islands," Chornoi said, "but there are a lot of them, yes."
Brother Joey nodded. "So the other pleasure-planets have to specialize. They draw only a small percentage of the customers, but that small percentage comes to a billion a year. They attract those customers by doing only one theme, but doing it in all the variations that a whole planet has room for."
"Oh." Rod looked around at the ruined castle and the gloomy manor houses, with the heavy gray sky brooding over it all. "I take it Otranto opted for Gothic romance."
Brother Joey nodded. "They even renamed the planet for the purpose. It used to be Zane's Star IV."
Chomoi said, "They've filled it with haunted houses, gloomy moors, and the most elaborate graveyards ever to bear bodies. The tourists get to live out their fantasies, dressing up in full costume and stalking around their borrowed family mansions, listening for clanking chains or moaning ghosts."