“All right, that should do it for now,” Serdin said after nearly five minutes, closing the folder he’d been working on and putting it on a small stack of others just like it before bringing those eyes up to me. “I’m glad to see you took my advice about coming to talk to me. If there’s something bothering you, I’ll do everything I can to take care of it.”
“The something bothering me is a Sec named Adjin,” I said, not really using the complaint to waste time. I wanted to see for myself how Serdin would take it, which would, in turn, determine how I finally handled him. “The man delivered Kel-Ten’s rings to the First Prime’s apartment, then decided to kill some of the waiting time with me. He hurt me badly, Mr. Serdin, and I want to know what you intend doing to guarantee it never happens again.”
Serdin frowned at what I’d told him, spending no time on trying to pretend he didn’t know I’d been appropriated by Kel-Ten. His mind went annoyed rather than concerned as he reached to his right on the desk, and then his attention centered, showing he was beginning to read something. I decided he’d called up a dot list to his desk screen and was checking it to see exactly who we were talking about, and knew at once when he found the entry he’d been looking for. The annoyance faded quickly and entirely, was replaced just as quickly with the set of emotions that translates to, “Oh, well, now I understand,” and then his attention was shifted back to me.
“You know, you have every right to be proud of yourself,” he said, his faint smile probably meant to show just how proud he was of me. “Not only have you attracted the attention of the First Prime, you’ve also been noticed by one of the highest-rated Class Zeroes this facility has. There hasn’t been another woman able to do that since I’ve been here, a statistic that makes you more than a little special.”
“That’s not my idea of an answer to the question I asked,” I said, feeling how he expected me to puff up and preen from what I’d been told. “I don’t care if that null is the favorite con of the creator of the universe. He hurt me, and I want to hear that it won’t ever happen again.”
“A beautiful woman sometimes has to pay the price of her beauty,” he returned, more annoyed than surprised at my response, his body relaxing back in its chair. “If her looks cause men to lose control of themselves, it’s the fault of those looks, not of the men who respond to her. And let’s not forget that that’s the reason for those looks in the first place, to attract the attention of men. Judged on that basis, your effort is very, very successful. ”
“An effort you’re suddenly interested in responding to yourself,” I said very low, my crackling anger in no way keeping me from feeling the type of curiosity he’d developed. “You aren’t the sort of man who lets beauty influence him, but you’ve begun wondering what it is about me that the others find so compelling. You have no intentions of helping me, only a brand-new desire to help yourself. ”
“Now, now, Terrilian, you mustn’t let the ability for observation you’ve developed over the years turn you bitter,” he said, folding his hands over his middle as that faint smile came back to his face. “Men are always in competition with each other, even when actual challenges never occur, which means what one or two have, others want. I won’t keep you for very long, certainly not long enough to upset your other admirers, and afterward we’ll give you something to make sure none of this upsets you, either. Everyone will be happy, because happy is the way we want all of you.”
“You know, I really am delighted that happy is the way you want me,” I responded, giving him something of my own smile as I realized he still didn’t understand I was awake, despite the heavy hint I’d supplied a moment ago. “Happy is also the way I want me, and I think we ought to get started seeing to it right now. You very much feel that you’d like to take me somewhere, and I agree that you should. I’ll be ready in just a minute or two.”
The faint smile froze on his face, but not specifically because of what I’d said. My mind had flowed into his, taking complete control of it, and although he began struggling almost automatically the struggle didn’t last long. I was making him believe he did want me happy and did want to take me somewhere, and was more than willing to let me do whatever I had to in order to hurry the time until he could do what he had to. The urge for sex was a large part of it, the very urge he’d developed himself now amplified by me, and everything he felt revolved around the desire to make me happy. He watched me slip out of the foolish shirt I wore and begin to get into the uniform and boots I’d brought along, and his anticipation of the delights to come made the passing time sweeter for him.
It didn’t take more than the couple of minutes Iii specified before I was ready, and once I was Serdin stood up from behind his desk and came around to join me where I stood. His light eyes were very bright and the faint smile on his face reflected only a small portion of what he was feeling inside, but we weren’t as ready to go as he thought.
“That female Sec outside needs to be sent back to where she came from,” I told him, mixing the desire to wait with his anticipation, the result causing him to change his mind about touching me. “I’ll stand behind the door while you take care of it.”
He nodded pleasantly because of the strong need for agreement holding him so tight, turned to the door, then took care of getting rid of the one person who would question what was going on. After that he came back to me and simply stared until I felt we’d given her enough time to leave the area, and then I took his arm and told him we were ready to go and get a ground vehicle.
I’d almost forgotten how quickly underlings obey someone with a great deal of power. No one asked why Serdin wanted a ground vehicle, and when he also dismissed the one who would have driven it for him there was some faint surprise in the minds around us, but nothing of suspicion. The man was free to do anything he pleased, and if it pleased him to drive away with a female member of Medical, there was nothing anyone could say about it. I would have been a nervous wreck while Serdin handed me into the vehicle and then walked around to the driver’s seat, but the part of me in charge of calm and cool made sure I wasn’t. It let me smile at the man I rode with while the gates to that part of the complex were slowly opened for us, rather than letting me faint dead away. Fainting would have felt a lot better, but wouldn’t have been quite as useful.
I had Serdin pretend we were heading for the big building I’d first awakened in at the very beginning of that madness, but once the gates were solidly closed behind us had him head for the distant forest instead. The trees and brush had been cleared away from the complex for quite a distance from its walls, and seemed to be given periodic treatments to keep it like that. The major complex we had just left was about a quarter of a mile from the building we were supposedly going to, and clearly took up more space than the tall but single building. As we bounced over the uneven ground I felt giddy from the realization that I’d actually made good on my escape, but then the more practical side of me insisted on stamping all over the delight of the feeling. I’d escaped, all right, but only from the complex. I still had to face the fact that I had, as yet, no way off the planet.
“How do people come and go from this world?” I asked Serdin, still holding his mind tight with mine. “Where do the transports or their transfer slips land?”