01. When the Changewinds Blow (29 page)

She walked to the door of the studio and looked out. Dawn looked to be just breaking. There wasn't a lot of time, and whatever was to be done had to be done quickly. First Boday had to be stopped and brought to heel. Charley had to be sprung, everything then redirected to the journey. This was no time for a test of wills with Boday, although that would surely come.

She fingered the jewel. "All right, demon," she said, "let's put your powers to emergency use." She walked into the bedroom where Boday was sleeping, stood beside the bed, and took the jewel in one hand, aiming its growing light at Boday's head. It struck, and there was that sudden slight stiffening, but Boday was still asleep.

"Boday, can you hear me?"

"Yes, darling! Boday hears," came the sleepy reply.

"Is it true? Were you going to give the permanent potion to Charley and set up your own business? Answer me!"

"Yes, darling."

"Why?"

"Because Boday lives only for you and fears only that you will desert her. This way you will never leave Boday. This way Boday can have you to herself forever."

"No, Boday. If you did that I would never forgive you. I would leave. I would kill myself rather than live with that. I wish you would believe that."

Done.

Boday's eyes opened. "But she has already
done
it!" she exclaimed, sounding horrified. "Boday sent the potion over today so that she would be ready for the move."

"What! Oh, my God! Demon, your clock's off, damn it all! Boday-get up! Put on some clothes that will get you to Charley's place and then wait for me." She turned on the lights and searched through the drawers. Damn! Would
nothing
fit any more? She found some stretch tights that threatened to strangle her lower half or fall down but they had to do. The top was a joke, barely reaching her navel, but the hell with it. Boday had several wrap-around capes that might help. Fitted properly they barely covered her back and went down to the floor, but turned sideways and pinned a black cape made a sort of poncho. It would do. With some difficulty she managed to pull on a pair of the short, soft leather boots, but they pinched like hell. The hell with it!

Boday pulled on a robe with hood and her long leather high-heeled boots. She put up the hood, which covered her head as per regulations and also shaded her face.

"Get some money!" Sam snapped at her. "Then get me to Charley as fast as possible at this time of the morning!"

Dawn was just breaking, but there was always some business in the District. Boday spotted and hailed down one of the horse-drawn three-wheeled cabs and they got in. "Sikobo Royal Tower," Boday ordered, "and quickly!"

The driver was used to picking up strange-looking people, here and taking them at top speed back to higher neighbor^ hoods. They also usually tipped real well. He made damned good time, but Sam used it for questions she didn't like the answers to.

"When did you send it over?" "In the morning. When Boday went to the market." "Then she's had it most of a day. Did she have any clients today?"

"No. There are never clients on potion day, and none tomorrow, either."

"Then we might be in time. She might not have decided to take it yet."

"No, darling," Boday sighed. "We are too late. In the past she has always had a day to think it over, but the potion she had last time is not due to wear off until next week. She was still Shari, and the bottle had Boday's seal on it and the messenger was told to tell her in Short Speech that her mistress wanted her to take it. Boday did not want her to choose this time. The new set-up would already be in place and she might balk. She took it. There is only 'now' to such as her. She would obey immediately."

"Damn it!
Nothing
is a hundred percent permanent except death. You made the stuff. Somehow you can make a way to undo it!"

"Darling, there is not. The brain is like Boday's file cabinet. The top drawer is Charley. The next drawer is Shari. The soul is the person going to the cabinet. With no potion she can go to either one with ease. With the regular potion she is able only to open the Shari drawer, but the other drawer is still there. With
this
potion all of the files in the Charley drawer are taken out and burned. Erased. They are no longer there. Only Shari remains. She will remember every bit of being Shari from waking up blank, so to speak, in the studio, but nothing else, not even the in-betweens."

"If that's true I'll kill you."

"Boday will willingly die for you at your command."

And that was the trouble, damn it! There was no satisfaction in this. No satisfaction at all. There was absolutely no way Boday could be punished, not really.

There was a doorman at the Towers, but Boday knew the password. He looked at Sam with gruff disapproval but he let them in. There were two elevators of sorts, but they were of a very odd type, with no doors. They ran all the time, very slowly, and you just waited, stepped on when a floor presented itself, and rode it up until you stepped out fairly quickly onto your floor of choice.

Boday jumped off and Sam followed, falling slightly and hearing a nasty tearing sound. The tights collapsed around her thighs, but she didn't care any more. It was the second door on the right. No key would be needed-the door was always open for tile service people.

"How long does it take to work completely?" Sam asked Boday.

"You slip into a beautiful, dreamy sleep for twelve hours, darling. Then the new you wakes up."

It
was
a gorgeous apartment and quite luxurious. Each room was different but all was styled to match Charley's own features and design. They passed through the living room, dining room. Sam stopped at the entrance to the small kitchen, reached in, and picked up a bottle next to the sink. A little gold bottle with Boday's seal-and it was opened and empty! She threw it against the wall, and rushed back to the bedroom, which was dominated by an overlarge heart-shaped bed.

Charley lay asleep on the silk sheets, naked, and Sam was struck once again by how absolutely beautiful she was. Even her sleeping position, and the expression on her sleeping face, was sensual and erotic.

"Charley! Wake up!" Sam shouted. The sleeper shifted slightly but did not respond. Sam turned to Boday. "Wake her up!"

Boday threw back her hood and knelt before the sleeping

figure. "Shari. Shari, love. Awake. Thy mistress commands."

Charley frowned, moaned a bit, then opened those big eyes

and saw Boday. She smiled. "Shari greets thee, Mistress," she

said sweetly if a bit sleepily, and sat up on the bed.

"Oh, my God! We're too late!" Sam cried and started sobbing uncontrollably. Charley looked at this stranger and her eyes widened a bit at the sight, but she remained passive and blank. "Mistress want Shari give comfort?" she asked innocently.

But Boday was still hypnotized by the jewel and couldn't respond to anyone but Sam. "Oh, God! I'm sorry, Charley!" Sam sobbed in English. "Everything I do turns out wrong! All I do is hurt people! I'm not fit to live!"

Charley looked at the stranger and frowned. "Jesus Christ, Sam! Is that
you?"
she exclaimed in perfectly understandable English.

"Yeah, it's me," Sam sobbed. "Big and fat and-
what did you just say?"

"It
is
you! Jeez! I didn't recognize you! How the hell did you get to look like
that?"

Sam was in shock. "But-but-you're talkin' normal plain English! You sound like yourself! The potion-it was there! It was empty! I-"

Charley yawned. "Sam, if I'd known it was you I wouldn't have put on Shari. What's the big deal about the potion?" Still shaking and sobbing, Sam managed to tell her the story. "Shit! Good thing things turned out the way they did, then." She looked at Boday. "She's hypnotized, huh? Well, leave her. Come on up on the bed and get hold of yourself. Jeez! I been wondering if you'd
ever
show up!" It took some time for Sam to get a grip on herself, and when she did it was true confession time. She told Charley everything-all of it, right down to the demon and the curse. Charley just nodded and shook her head.
God! She was beautiful!

"Sam, you can't completely blame yourself. You can't. Damn it, you just weren't prepared to grow up so quick." She sighed. "I guess I was."

"But the potion-how did you . . . ?"

"Sam, I didn't trust her from the start, but I knew it had to be done. I figured she was too loopy yet to pull anything, so I went along with all that back in the loft. But when it wore off, I sat there and I thought about it. I thought real hard about the life I lived for those first weeks. Then this nice girl, maybe all of fourteen, dressed all in white, you know, with the mask and all, came by and delivered the little jar of potion. I looked at it and then I came back here and I lay down right here and I went over every single day of 'Shari's' life and every one of the clients. It was easy to do-there isn't a whole lot there, you know, in memories, but there's more otherwise than you think. A lot more. My first impulse was to send the bottle back when the cleaning people showed up, which would be the signal to come pick me up, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. Then I opened it and looked at it and knew I couldn't bring myself to take it, either. I left it there in front of me and thought some more."

"Why didn't you just get out of here?"

She sighed. "Sam-that was the thing. I didn't
want
to go back there. I-this may be hard to understand-didn't want to give this life up. I'm sure it wasn't any of Boday's tricks. I
liked
being Shari. I used to lie in bed some nights and fantasize about this. Being beautiful, glamorous, sexy. So beautiful that men would pay a fortune for just my company. It was more of an Arabian Nights meet Las Vegas kind of fantasy, but this was
it."

"But all those
men
..."

She smiled. "Yeah. I always figured if I ever did wind up like this I'd get the bottom of the barrel types-ugly, middle-aged, stinking breath and drooling, the whips and chains types. But they weren't like that. It was more like my fantasy. Some were middle-aged, sure, and some were younger, but they were mostly nice-looking men with good jobs from their looks and manner. Successful types with something missing in their lives. All of 'em probably had those forced blind marriages. Hell, some of 'em were so inept in bed you kind'a wonder if they had
any
sex life before. Some wanted a few things-oral stuff, mostly-I guess they just couldn't get. A couple of the young ones, I think, wanted some experience before they got married so they wouldn't seem fools. More than one just wanted to be babied, or hold someone. It didn't go all the way every night. One guy just clung to me on the sofa out there and talked and talked and finally cried his eyes out. That's all he wanted. Didn't make no difference I couldn't understand but three words he said."

"Jeez! That's
weird!"

"No, just a little sad. They had no place else to go, nobody to unload on, to get the tensions out. Oh, I'm not saying there weren't a couple with odd wants in sex, but I kind'a liked that, too. I sat here and I realized that I really liked the sex. But the main thing was I was doing something these guys needed and they were willing to pay top money for me.
Me! I
knew I should feel real guilty about it all, but I just didn't. I still don't. So, finally, I poured the potion down the sink and washed it away and decided I'd try it cold. I just wanted to see if I was really nuts."

"Yeah?"

"It was better. With a little practice I discovered I could shift to Shari, actually thinking in that language, and just tune out and go along for the ride. But it was easier with the whole me there. I could figure out the clients better, give them more of what they wanted and maybe some new things, too. In a way, I turned the tables just like Boday did with you. I was in control. I could handle the bad ones cleverly without pissing them off and I could give the good ones extra. And when I got off, I
really
got off! Weeks went by and I still wasn't tired of it. I'm still not. But it was kind'a dull on the off days and in the days. I wanted a way to get out, to be
completely
in control of my destiny, and I figured it out. It wasn't that hard. They paid the money to the account, right? I never saw that. But they also left tips-bigger tips after I stopped the damned potion, if you want to know. Every day the White Virgin would show to collect, but I knew she wasn't no unmarried virgin. In fact, I ain't even a hundred percent sure 'she' was a 'she,' and that gave me an idea. So I started holding out on the tips. Didn't take long to build up a nice little nest egg. I knew the golden ones were the sarkis and I could count."

She got up and walked to a closet, opened it, then went in. Sam followed, not quite over the shock yet and not knowing what to say.

In the closet, a walk-in type, were lots of sexy outfits all designed for Shari, but well in the back and hidden was another, which she revealed and brought out. It was a white robe, white hood, and face mask.

"I knew that my collector couldn't be real. No self-respecting girl of that status would be seen
near
the docks or the District. I didn't know much of the language, but it wasn't hard to get the message across with gestures. If she or he or whatever would get me an outfit like that and not tell Boday or anybody, I'd give her a small fortune. She didn't even wait til the next day. She had the outfit back that afternoon. The first day off I had I put it on and walked out and went down and walked around the block. It was a
wonderful
sense of freedom and total anonymity. I was a little worried at first that the bracelets on my arms would give me away or that somebody would notice the earrings under the hood but nobody ever said a thing. The hair was a bigger problem. I had to let it go down under the hood and then down so it was completely out of sight, but then I had troubles sitting down. You learn."