Chains of Freedom (41 page)

"Should you take those if you're not wounded?" Right's voice held as much curiosity as it did concern.

"Who says I'm not wounded?" She just shrugged. "It won't hurt me, and I need the pickup." She smiled as the strength returned to her body. "Sometimes, I think it's all just some horrid dream. I keep hoping I'll wake up. I don't mean to take it out on you, Right. You just have the misfortune of being closest. Sometimes I think I'm going mad."

"Sometimes I'm sure of it," Right said with a supportive smile. "I understand the pressure you're under, Jessy. I understand it because I'm under it, too."

Jessica stood up suddenly and moved from behind her desk. She stood in front of his chair and looked down on him, sizing him up in a way that made him squirm.

She smiled. He wasn't at all bad-looking. She clapped her hands together in delight at her idea. Then she looked him right in the eyes, and without so much as a blink announced, "Let's have sex."

Right returned a look of pure shock. "You've got to be kidding!"

"What? You don't find me attractive?" She sounded hurt.

"I'd have to be dead not to find you attractive." Right pressed his hands together to stop the shaking.

"What's the problem, then?" Jessica leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips.

"Isn't this sort of sudden, Jessy? Shouldn't we . . ."

"Shouldn't we what, Right?" She knelt on the floor in front of him, and ran her hands up the inside of his thighs. "Wait for the moment to pass? Because that could happen, Right. The moment could pass, and wouldn't that be a pity? To think that you might never know the things that I might have done for you, Right. Things that you have never even dreamt of." She started to undo his pants. If he was going to resist, he'd already missed his cue. Her hands touched his stomach as she untucked his shirt, and any apprehension he'd had slipped away.

By the time they finished, Jessica Kirk owned him mind, body, and soul.

Right watched her, enjoying watching her dress almost as much as he'd enjoyed undressing her. He was smiling stupidly. He knew he was, and he didn't care.

Jessica finished dressing, sat at her desk, and started playing with her keyboard looking at file after file. She seemed to notice for the first time that he was still lying in the middle of her office floor naked. She raised her eyebrows as if she had no idea how he'd arrived there.

"Come on, Right. There's work to be done." She seemed to have found the file she wanted. "Get dressed and get in touch with Jago. Now that RJ has her army, we're going to have to have more manpower."

Right dressed hurriedly. He was angry, and he didn't look at her until he was pulling on his boots. She was looking over some chart. Business as usual. His breath caught in his chest at the thought. He finished pulling on his boots, and stood up. She still didn't look at him. He looked down at her, and the full impact of her use of him hit. He felt cold all over.

"You bitch." He cleared his throat to remove the choked sound from his voice. "You cold, calculating cunt."

"Is that any way to talk to a superior officer?" She didn't even look up. She just smiled smugly and continued looking at her screen.

He had never admitted, even to himself, that he had any feelings other than fear and respect, and at one time friendship, in regard to Jessica Kirk. But she was, among other things, at least half Argy, and she would have known how he was feeling even if he hadn't. She would have known that physical contact would have made those feelings impossible for him to ignore.

"Damn you, Jessy. I love you. You knew that. I don't want to think that this is all there will ever be,"

She was silent.

"It don't mean shit to you, do I?"

"Actually, I like you a lot, Right." She shrugged. "Serve me well, and who knows?"

He knew what she meant. "I'm not going to be a pawn in your game forever, Jessy," he promised. He turned on his heel and left.

Jessica turned her computer off. She hadn't really been looking at it any way. "I don't need you forever, Right. I only need you long enough to kill RJ."

The hardest part had been convincing Mickey that it was in RJ's best interest to have him next door to her instead of the midget.

He had done it with a knife on the wall inside his closet with the closet door closed. It had taken him an hour, and had filled his nose with stale plaster dust. But it had been worth it.

He wiped the sweat from his brow as he peered through the hole. He had been doing this for most of the four weeks since they'd returned to Alsterase. At first he felt dirty and guilty afterwards, but with constant repetition it had acquired the wholesome feeling of routine.

These days, all he felt afterwards was alone.

The whole time he was contorted in his closet, digging and sucking in plaster dust, he told himself how wrong it was. How sick. But he hadn't stopped. Not once. Now it all seemed normal. As normal as if he were the man with the woman, and right at this moment, at least in his mind, he was.

Long after it was over, he still watched. It had become important for him to experience the whole of the ritual. From the earliest beginnings of foreplay right up to the moment that they fell asleep in each other's arms. He told himself that this was in case they said something that would prove she was a freak, but the truth was that, for some reason, it made him feel less perverted.

She lay beside Whitey, her arm around his waist, her head resting on his chest. His arms were wrapped tightly around her.

"I love you," she told him, and he held her still closer.

"I love you, too." He contorted himself so that he could kiss the top of her head. "You're wonderful."

"I know." She laughed.

"You're also a smug bitch." Whitey laughed gently.

"I know that, too." She moved onto her elbow and looked down at him. "You love me anyway," she stated.

"Hell, woman, I love you
because
of it." He pulled her down on him again, and they held each other tightly.

This was the RJ that no one else ever saw. The RJ that only Whitey knew. Well . . . Whitey and Alexi.

She looked at the clock on the table and grimaced. "Guess we'd better get up and get ready to go hear David's speech." She got up and started to dress without much enthusiasm.

"Ah, come on, RJ!" Whitey begged in an exasperated voice. "This is the fifth speech he's given since we got back. Every time the man gets a fart turned crossways, he gives another damn speech."

RJ laughed. "We still need to be there." She threw him a shirt.

Whitey mumbled something under his breath and got up."Lately he thinks he's God, or some damn thing. I sure as hell don't like the way he talks to you."

"That's just David," RJ said, shrugging it off. "He's always talked that way to me."

"No, he hasn't," Whitey disagreed while looking for and finally finding his boots. "His voice never used to lack respect. But it goes deeper than that. I can feel it, and I know that means you can, too. He really thinks he knows it all now. It's like he doesn't care what you've said or done. At this point he just wants to disagree with you so that he can see how many people will agree with him instead."

RJ laughed. "You worry too much about what people think of me. I don't give a shit as long as they obey orders." She wrapped her chain around her waist. "Let's go and get it over with."

Whitey nodded and started to follow her out the door. Suddenly he stopped and scooped something off the floor.

"You're getting a little careless, aren't you?"

She turned and looked at what he held. "Damn." She took the kit from him. "It must have fallen out of my pocket." She opened it to make sure nothing had fallen out. Then she smiled at Whitey. "All good little freaks must carry their kits with them at all times." She didn't want there to be, but there was a bitter tone in her voice.

"Don't call yourself that," Whitey said quietly. "Don't be ashamed of what you are."

She kissed his cheek and, hand-in-hand, they walked from the room, closing the door behind them.

They were gone. Alexi pushed away from the hole in the wall and zipped his fly with a smile on his face. He stood up so quickly that he hit his head on the clothes rack. He stumbled out of the closet and went to the dresser. He fumbled through the drawers looking for the projectile weapon which he no longer used, and which he had saved for this very purpose. He found it under a pile of clothing, extracted it, and checked the load. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip with a trembling finger.

"Steady on, Alexi old boy." He forced a smile. "Now's the time you've been waiting for." Gun in hand, he started out of the room.

Hate had become obsession.

Obsession had turned into love.

Love had driven him completely insane.

Alexi joined them late. He stood beside RJ and she moved.
Soon, she won't feel that way
, Alexi thought with a smile.

David was in full swing. ". . . Soon I will bring our message of freedom to the whole world. Every view screen will come alive with my message . . ."

"The whole world," RJ frowned at David's words. They had never planned to broadcast the message planet-wide. Only to Zone 2-A. To go worldwide now would pull troops from all over the globe. They weren't ready for that. She shrugged it off and chalked it up to poetic license.

Soon the speech ended, and the crowd started to disperse. Alexi moved till he had a clean shot at RJ. He carefully filtered crap through his brain so that neither she nor her big friend would feel his intent. Alexi swallowed hard. It was now or never.

"RJ!" he screamed loudly enough that he got everyone's attention. "I know what you are, RJ!" He raised the weapon, and started to pull the trigger. There was a noise behind him; an all-too-familiar noise. His finger on the trigger went limp. He felt the warmth spreading down his back. RJ turned to stare in disbelief as the gun fell from his fingers. Then he was falling, legs, arms and back losing all feeling as the paralysis crept over him. His face hit the road. David reached his side first. He rolled him onto his back, and Alexi saw RJ standing over him. He didn't really see the others.

"Why, Alexi? Why?" David cried in a tormented voice.

Alexi knew he was dying, and in that instant he regained at least part of his sanity. He didn't have time for David. He had to tell her. He had to tell her now.

"I'm sorry, RJ," he said in a voice choked with tears he didn't have time to shed. "I knew it wouldn't hurt you. I would never do anything to hurt you. I'm sorry for everything. I love you, RJ. I only wanted you to love me back, and I didn't know how to make you do that. I never knew."

Having made peace with himself, Alexi died on the cold, hard streets of Alsterase, the city of malcontents. He died in the shadow of the prophet and the warlord. A man whom he had used and taken for granted, but who had loved him like a brother, and a woman whom he had loved with all his heart, who had only contempt for him. He died as he had lived, in ambivalence.

Whitey and some others pushed back the crowd. Poley walked from the crowd, blowing smoke from the barrel of the projectile weapon he carried.

"Are you all right?" he asked RJ, and she nodded.

"Yes, thank you, Poley." She hugged the metal man. He hadn't saved her life, but he had kept her secret. She couldn't be sure that any of them would follow her if they knew what she was. To her amazement and delight, the metal man hugged her back. "Getting a little sentimental, aren't we, Tin Pants?"

"I find . . ." his voice dragged, and at that moment sounded every bit as mechanical as it was, ". . . I feel an affection for you," he stammered out. "I'm programmed for affection, you know." He said it defensively.

RJ laughed and hugged him again.

"You are messing up my suit," he informed her.

She kissed him on the cheek, then let him go.

"Did I do a good job watching Alexi?"

Now he was fishing for praise. RJ straightened his collar. "You did an excellent job." She looked to where David knelt over Alexi's body. "I had better go talk to David. You try to get rid of this crowd." The robot nodded, and was gone.

RJ approached David. She put a hand on his shoulder. Behind them, they could hear the crowd. They were understandably upset. A member of the inner circle had tried to kill RJ. Murmurs could be picked out as to what they should do with this traitor's body.

"He's the first friend I've lost in this thing, and he didn't die in battle." David didn't try to hold his tears back any more. "Why did he try to kill you? Why? It doesn't make sense."

"I'm sorry, David," RJ said, consolingly. David was not consoled. He stood up and turned an angry face to her.

"Didn't you hear what he said, RJ? Can't you feel something for him?" he said angrily.