Gateway To Xanadu (43 page)

Little’s amusement and satisfaction were suddenly more forced than natural, and it took a look from Radman before he nodded stiffly and reluctantly, then led me again away. The man holding my arm wasn’t very happy about the “suggestion” he’d been given, and that reminded me about the quiet argument he and Radman had been having. I didn’t know what was going on, but whatever it was, Little wasn’t happy about it.

We found James seated in an intricately carved, straight-backed chair, one of the very few chairs in the entire room, a big, ugly hulk of a man standing behind him. James could have been anywhere from fifty on up, but just how far up was impossible to tell. His face looked like leather, but the creases in it had not been made by laughter. He lifted his lean, tall body out of the chair as we approached, and he waited, leaning slightly on a thin cane.

“James, I would like to present Jennifer,” Little said, and his voice had a slight quiver in it. “She and her uncle arrived with me this afternoon.”

James nodded and then moved his eyes to me, and the impact of those eyes was enough to make me try to take a step backward. Those eyes were gray and deathly cold, and if any eyes belonged in the precincts of hell, they were the ones. I was stripped and knocked down and attacked by those eyes in the seconds they moved over me, and then a faint smile touched the leather face.

“How do you do, Jennifer,” James said in a cold, raspy voice. “I’m particularly fond of meeting young ladies as pretty as you are. The combination of innocence and maturity has always fascinated me.”

“No one above the age of five is as innocent as you’re suggesting,” I came back with a tremor in my voice that had nothing to do with playacting. “And even above that, you’re not my type. I don’t like old men.”

I’d been trying to turn him off in the most direct way possible, letting him know that his roundabout compliments were understood and entirely rejected, but he didn’t get the point. His faint smile broadened a millimeter or two, and his gray eyes glittered.

“Ah, spirit,” he rasped, his fingers turning the thin cane. “That makes the game even more exciting.

Don’t you agree, Matthew?”

“Of course, sir,” the hulk behind the chair rumbled, his stone-faced expression changing not at all.

“Matthew is my bodyguard,” James continued, bringing my eyes back to him. “He shares all of my-interests in life. Perhaps you and your uncle would care to be my guests after your visit here is over. I came in my own ship, and there’s plenty of room for passengers. My estate on my own world has everything one could wish for.”

“No,” I told him flatly, feeling a chill at my backbone. “We’re going home after this.”

I expected some sort of argument, but those eyes merely turned flat and hooded. “A pity,” he murmured, his leatherlike face showing no emotion. “I would have found it most diverting. Some other time, perhaps.”

He bowed very slightly from the waist, then sat down again, and Little and I were free to move on.

Possibly dismissed would have been a more accurate word, but whatever word it was didn’t matter to Little. He took the opportunity to get us both out of there, and for once I agreed with him completely.

Anywhere in that room was better than right next to James, and I finished my drink fast and then got rid of the glass on a passing slave’s tray.

We were on our way to another group of people when Val finally showed up with three more men and two women, all of them dressed in the guest motif. The other men and women headed immediately for the slaves with drink trays, but Val headed for me. The good part about that was Little’s hand immediately leaving my arm; the bad part was the look in my partner’s eyes as he came up to us.

“If I’d known what was waiting for me, I would have hurried,” he said with a leer, reaching around to rub his hand over my behind. “You should have come to my room instead of coming here, Jenny. You don’t want to be naughty and make your uncle Val do without, do you?”

“Oh, no, uncle Val,” I whispered, grabbing his left arm with both of mine to get it off my, backside, seriously tempted to let him know the depth of my revulsion. “I’d never want you to have to do without.”

“You’re such a good little girl,” he said with a grin for the way I’d trapped his hand and arm, using his free hand to pat me on the head. “Let’s see if we can find some place for you to be an even better little girl.”

His grin widened with the knowledge that I couldn’t very well refuse him as he began leading me back toward the arch, but two steps of satisfaction was all he got. One of the bearded Sphere people appeared in the arch, then walked to the center of the room.

“The time has come for your tour to begin, my friends,” the man announced, looking around at the guests. “Many of you are upset and impatient, I know, but we’ll soothe that away. Follow me.”

Some of the guests tried to stop him and question him as he made for the far side of the room, but he ignored them and just kept going, not giving a damn that he was increasing their annoyance. The slaves in the room were standing well back away from the guests, and Val made a sound in his throat that was close to a growl.

“These people are really getting on my nerves,” he muttered to me in the base language, reluctantly heading us after the bearded man. “I keep getting the urge to pick one up and smash him into a wall.”

“I have the feeling they want you in that particular frame of mind,” I muttered back. “See if you can get your mind off my backside long enough to figure out why.”

“If you wanted my mind off your backside, you should have stayed in that other dress,” he countered, but it was clear he was only paying partial attention to the banter. My comment had alerted him again to the serious side of life, and he was looking around for an answer to my question.

We and the other guests followed after the bearded man, through a doorway that led into a series of caves and caverns. The red light was redder there and the mist thicker, and we suddenly walked into a scene that was straight out of imaginative fiction. Men and women in red turtlenecks, pants and shoes with small horns pasted to their foreheads were prodding at naked, cowering men and women with sharp, three-pointed pitchforks, and the blood on the ones being prodded showed the pitchforks were for real. The naked victims were chained by the neck to the wall of the cave, and nothing they did fended off the pitchforks. Their mouths were open as though they were screaming or crying, but no sounds came through the laughter of the ones doing the prodding.

“Here’s a simple choice for those whose tastes run to the simple,” the bearded man said when we were all gathered in the cave. “You may be devil’s helper or damned soul, whichever way your interest moves you. The lost souls start here and are softened up, so to speak, and then they’re sent on to further punishment. A taste of the whip, some time on the rack, red-hot pokers, being forced to the pleasure of fiends, that sort of thing. Devils’ helpers perform those chores, and also get first pick of the slaves among the lost souls. In either capacity, the time passes swiftly and pleasantly.”

He sent another amused glance toward the silent victims then moved on, drawing most of us along with him. Two of the women and one of the men were staring at the two groups and licking their lips, but which part of the picture they preferred wasn’t immediately apparent. Val had also been staring, but with no expression on his face, looking at the bearded male victims, and when he turned away from them to follow our guide, I breathed a sigh of relief. It had seemed at first that he would have enjoyed using one of those pitchforks, and if he’d tried I wouldn’t have been able to break my role to stop him.

The next few caves showed us voiceless victims tied to whipping posts, stretched on racks, being seared by red-hot pokers, being locked in tiny cages with spear points all around, being suspended over open fires—no more than your simple, everyday, ordinary tortures. Our guide didn’t even stop in any of them, and when he finally did stop, it was for something special.

“Here we have another opportunity for choice,” he said, waving at the scene in front of us. “Those who are naked are again lost souls, but those in red are demons. Only a very few guests choose to be tormented here, but many choose the role of tormentor. Their victims are, for the most part, slaves.”

Our guide fell silent to keep from distracting us from the scene, and it was easy to tell why most of the victims were slaves. One victim was being forced to walk on a bed of glowing hot coals, another was being prodded between a line of too-close, too-sharp knives, and another was being kept from surfacing very often in a narrow but obviously deep pool by the use of a torch in the hands of one of the demons.

These victims were also screaming without sound, and when the guide turned and left the cave, Val and I weren’t far behind him. Some of those with us had lingered for a longer look, but my partner and I had seen more than enough.

The rest of our tour companions were still looking around and enjoying the sights behind us, and our guide had stopped farther ahead to wait until everyone caught up to him; Val took the opportunity to make a stop of his own in the stone corridor halfway between those two points, glancing around to make sure no one was paying undue attention to us.

“I think I have an answer to your question,” he murmured in the trade language. “If I don’t pay attention to What I’m thinking, I experience pleasure every time I see a bearded man having something painful done to him. I’d guess that under normal circumstances, I’d choose a place in those first two sections to spend my time.”

“Normal circumstances, right,” I agreed, swallowing hard and fighting not to apply a death grip to his arm. My eyes had gone to where our guide had stopped, in front of a large, metal-bound wooden door, and suddenly I knew what had to be behind that door. I’d seen a report once about a certain place in the Pleasure Sphere, but the location of the place hadn’t been mentioned, and I hadn’t added up the clues until right then. I was sure I knew what lay behind that enigmatic door, and also knew that the last thing I wanted was to look at what it hid.

“Are you all right?” Val asked, putting his hand to my face, his eyes sober and concerned. “It’s almost impossible to tell in this light, but you look pale. This place is enough to turn the stomach of a normal mass murderer. Maybe I ought to get you out of here.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll manage to survive,” I told him with a small headshake, knowing I had to continue on with it until I found out where Radman would be later-and alone. “How are you doing?”

“Lousy,” he answered without changing expression, but something in his eyes stirred. “If I ever come across the people who started this, nothing in this universe will save them even if I have to pay for it with my own life. Sickness should be treated, not catered to, and the things who come here are sick.

Even though I know I can’t do it alone, I keep wanting to stop all this.”

“Just remember you can’t do it alone, or we could end up being part of the funk” I warned him. “This is a sovereign planet, partner, and what they do here is their own business. If we don’t like it, we can leave.”

“Yeah, sure,” he agreed with no agreement whatsoever, then took us along with the strengthening trickle of people heading toward that door. Our guide waited until everyone was there, then gestured toward what stood behind him.

“Behind that portal lies the last of your major options,” he said, looking around with approval at all the eager faces. “No guests are permitted to be victims here, for this is the realm of the fiends. These victims also haven’t been silenced, so you’d better be braced for the noise. The fiends, of course, prefer the noise to silence.”

He turned away to step to the door to open it, and the first scream rippling through sent a jagged knife across my nerve ends. The scream had come from a man, and the terror and pain to be heard in it defied all description. Val stiffened beside me despite the impassive expression he’d been wearing through the previous caves, and some of our happy chatter died at the sound. We all moved forward, some with eyes positively shining, and followed our guide through the doorway.

There’s no way to gently or euphemistically describe what went on in that last cave behind the wooden door. It wasn’t as bad as the report I had read; it was worse, so much worse that every other sickening thing I’d ever before seen in my life was relegated to the category of peccadillo. Our guide strolled along when all I wanted to do was run, and then we came to the place where the screaming male victim wasn’t bearded. It took me a minute to realize that John Little’s pretty male slave hadn’t escaped after all, and then I really saw what was being done to him on the surgical table he’d been strapped to. I pulled away from Val, pushed through the interested spectators who were wondering why the scene was being recorded by a wire camera, and ran ahead to the end of the area with a hand to my mouth. The end of the area wasn’t far and there was a door in the wall, and I barely remember tearing through the door and slamming it behind me.

I stood outside the door and leaned against the rock wall, trembling so violently I didn’t think I’d be able to stop. I’d pretended to be sick to get myself out of there, but I wasn’t simply sick, I was on the verge of losing control over myself and killing every one of those scum I could get my hands on. I’d seen a lot in my years as a Special Agent, but that- place outraged me more than anything else I had ever seen, anything I had ever heard of. Our fellow guests had been wondering why that scene out of all the others was being recorded, but I already knew. When it was all over the wire would be shown to the Sphere’s other slaves, an object lesson to teach what happens to those who try to escape. It would not be the first such object lesson, and was undoubtedly the reason the slaves all felt such terror at this place. This was where the unlucky ones ended up, as experimental animals for the mind-sick-or as object lessons. I leaned against the rough stone wall, jamming my palms into my eyes, trying to force myself to stop shaking.

“My poor Jennifer, are you all right?” Val’s voice came from beside me, right after a burst of screaming had sounded briefly with the opening of the door. He pulled me away from the wall and put his arms around me with great concern. “The poor little thing shouldn’t have been shown all that,” he went on, clearly to whoever was with him. “Is there some place she can rest a minute or two?”