Gateway To Xanadu (34 page)

“Calm down, Jennifer, it’s all over,” a soothing voice came immediately from right next to my ear while hands smoothed down my sweat-soaked hair. “Just take it easy.”

“What’s wrong with her?” a voice demanded, a voice that was close to outrage. “What the hell did you two do to her?”

“We proved you can scratch her from the possible slave list,” another voice said, a third voice. “No matter how high her rating in sensuality is, there isn’t anything about slavery that turns her on. If we hadn’t been stimulating her artificially all during the situational, she would have turned off and stayed that way. Even the ultimate force play didn’t budge her, and not many female types turn thumbs down on that, I can tell you.”

“What ultimate force play?” the second voice demanded again, but less belligerently. “What kind of a situational did you put her in?”

“You heard me setting the stage for her,” the other voice answered. “She found herself a slave in a palace, a slave whose main function was to give use to the men of that palace. She had no hope for freedom until she was given to a captive prince, who used her and talked to her, then decided he wanted her permanently. She had already fallen in love with him, and when he had broken free and brought his fighters back to take over the palace, he told her that he wanted her.”

“Then why did she get so wild?” the other voice asked, sounding confused. “If she loved him, why wasn’t she jumping for joy?”

“Because he told her wanted her as a slave,” the answer came. “He told her he loved her, that she was entitled to be freed, but he wanted her to choose to be his slave. She was as much in love with him as it’s possible to be-but she still refused to be his slave.”

“I see,” the other voice said, sounding impressed. “You set her up to be crazy about him, and then he asks her to be his slave. If I’d had a chance to put money on it, I would have bet on her going along with anything he asked.”

“Most of them do,” was the agreement. “The only usual exceptions are women who’ve had men lie to them in the past, but she should be too young to have that in her background. As pretty as she is, though, she must have had it handed to her a couple of times even before other girls knew what men were all about. Give me a hand, will you? We’ve got to bring her all the way out of it.”

“Sure,” the other voice answered, and then there were tugs on the straps around my wrists. I didn’t know what was happening, but I did know I couldn’t do as he’d asked. I wouldn’t do as he’d asked, and I kept shaking my head and saying so.

“Come on, Jennifer, and sit up now,” another soothing voice said in my ear, the voice that had done the explaining to the other voice. “It’s all over and you’re fine, but you have to sit up now and open your eyes.”

I let the hands help me into sitting, then opened my eyes to find a dimmer light all around. I blinked, still shaking my head a little, and then I saw him. Brown-haired and brown-eyed, seriously concerned, he stared at me the way he’d been doing earlier, and the trembling came back and brought tears to my eyes.

“No,” I whispered, cringing back against the other arms supporting me, trying to escape his stare.

“Please, I can’t, don’t you understand that? I can’t.”

“Jennifer, what’s the matter?” he asked, frowning as he stepped closer and put a hand out to me. “Why are you crying?”

“Don’t touch me!” I begged, shivering and edging back even farther. “You’re just like all the rest, not giving a damn about me, just what you can get out of me! Leave me alone, do you hear me, just leave me alone!”

“What the hell is going on here?” a new voice demanded as he frowned more deeply and reached out again to touch me. He and the others all turned fast to the new voice, and the man left the doorway to move farther into the light. He was very big, black-haired and black-eyed, and so angry he looked just about ready to strike out at everyone in reach.

“Who the hell are you?” one of the blond men demanded in turn, the one standing near a bank of machinery. “Who told you you could come in here?”

“I’m Valdon Carter, and I don’t need anyone to tell me anything,” the big man came back, the words coming out almost in a growl. “What are you doing to my niece?”

“We’re appraising her,” the same blond man said, a faint tremor now audible in his voice. “If you’re her uncle you’re the one who asked for it, so what are you complaining about?”

“I’m complaining about the fact that nobody mentioned she’d be terror-stricken,” the big man said in the same near-growl, sending his hard, black-eyed stare from one man to the next until he saw him. “And what the hell is he doing here? Is he supposed to be a regular member of your appraisal team?”

“No, he’s not a regular member of our team,” the blond man holding me said when the other remained silent. “But he is a high-ranking member of the middle-Management, and therefore is entitled to . . .”

“Nothing,” the big man interrupted in a very flat voice, his eyes still on him. “I don’t care how big a wheel he is, when it comes to my niece he has no right to anything, and especially not to horning in where he doesn’t belong. Get a blanket. ”

“But she’s not all the way out of it yet,” the man holding me protested. “You can’t just . . . .”

“Get a blanket!” the big man interrupted again, his voice growing even colder. “She’s my niece, and I can ‘just’ do anything I damned well please. Now, move!”

“Just calm down, Mr. Carter,” he said in a smooth, persuasive voice as the blond man near the machinery hesitated very briefly then bent to a nearby cabinet. “If you didn’t know what appraisal entailed, you shouldn’t have asked to have your niece put through it. Any of our staff could have told you what was involved, but you don’t seem to have made the effort to find out. Now you’re angry and looking for someone to take it out on, but it seems to me…

“You seem to think I’m interested in your opinion, Mr. Rich,” the big man cut in again, his tone unchanged, his eyes even colder. “Unlike those you seem to be used to dealing with, I find nothing about you of interest. From now on, stay away from my niece.”

He took the blanket the blond man was holding out to him, opened it as he came toward me, then put it around me. I was still trembling and crying and wasn’t sure if I could trust him, but there had been a shadow in the back of the room that wasn’t there any longer, and I seemed to have some sort of memory of the black-haired man from somewhere that was a good-feeling memory. When he wrapped me in the blanket and lifted me off the table into his arms I put my own arms tight around his neck and my head to his shoulder, and his hold on me tightened in a comforting way. Without another word he turned and took me out of that place, and I felt so safe that before we had gone more than a dozen steps I was already asleep.

“Of all the stupid, bird-brained, mindless things to do, that has to be the prize-winner!” I snarled in the trade language, glaring at my so-called partner. “How could you do it?”

“It was easy,” he answered mildly, popping another grape into his mouth, his feet comfortably propped up on the table in front of his chair. “I didn’t like that appraisal idea to begin with, and when time passed and you didn’t show up, I decided to do a little investigating. I’m still attuned to you, so finding where they had you wasn’t hard, and neither was getting you out. I thought you said there would be nothing to it. What I walked in on didn’t look like nothing. What did they do to you?”

His voice had grown harder by the time he got to his question and those dark black eyes were on me, no longer mild. I knew most of the growl inside him wasn’t for me, but it still made me uncomfortable.

“Never mind what they did,” I came back, shifting around on the wide, beautiful bed I sat in. “Let’s talk about what you did. You blew your characterization, and there’s no way to unblow it. How does it feel to screw up the very first assignment you’re given?”

“I didn’t screw anything up,” he answered with a headshake, the least bit annoyed. “I’m the only one who has the right to mistreat my niece, and I let them know it. There was nothing more to it than that.”

“Nothing more to it?” I almost screeched, seriously considering the idea of killing him. “You practically offered Greg Rich his choice of weapons! Or if not with weapons, -- -barehanded with no holds barred!

That’s your idea of nothing?”

“I don’t like the man,” he said with a grimace, taking his feet down so he could stand and come over to sit next to me on the bed. “Why were you cowering away from him when I came in? What did he do to you?”

“He didn’t do anything,” I answered with a grimace like the one he’d shown, deciding to get his morbid curiosity satisfied. “I wasn’t supposed to be able to remember anything that happened, but despite the heavy jolt of trystisil, I still have it all. It didn’t mean much until I came out of the fog completely a little while ago, but I do remember it. My best guess is that Greg threw his weight around a little too hard with one of those techs, the one standing near the master board, the one named Git. Gil got huffy, then apparently decided to get even with Greg by making him the model for the main male role in the situational they set me into. When I opened my eyes and saw Greg, ail I could understand was that he was still after me to make the decision he wanted. I didn’t know how long I could hold out against him if he kept at me, so I was terrified.”

I couldn’t stop shuddering then, or raging in anger at how terribly that slave I’d been had been taken advantage of. I could still feel the echoes of the love I’d felt for that prisoner, that slime who would ask a woman in love with him to give up something more precious than life to accommodate his convenience.

I felt horribly betrayed, and knowing it hadn’t been real did nothing to ease the feeling. And I also remembered something else that doubled the shudder.

“What was he after you for?” Val asked, his hand on my shoulder very gentle despite the too-soft tone in his voice. I looked up to see his eyes, and couldn’t understand the expression in them.

“We have something to think about more important than that,” I told him. “Before Greg got there I had another visitor, one who showed up right after the trystisil got its claws in me, someone who must have been sent for. He was there right in front of me, Val, and I couldn’t move.”

“Not-” Val began, and then his hand was tightening on my shoulder. “What was he doing here’? And what did he do to you?”

“He didn’t have a chance to do much of anything,” t answered, noticing that my own hands were not quite as steady as I’d thought they were. “What he would have done is another story, but Greg barged in and broke up the party. As for what he was doing here, that’s obvious: your good buddy called him.”

“But why?” Val demanded. “Why would he -call him? What kind of twisted game are they playing?”

“I wish I knew,” I said with a sigh, stirring uncomfortably in the tightened grip on my shoulder, an action which at least made him ease up a little. “Whatever it is, we’ll have to keep going along with it until I can face that garbage without any trystisil in me. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out he’s still here. ”

“I’d be willing to bet against it,” Val said with suddenly deeper vexation, his expression telling me he’d had an unpleasant memory. “When I was on my way to that place to find you, some sort of flying vehicle passed overhead, making everyone around me look up. One woman wondered aloud who the
VIP
was; as far as she knew, flying vehicles aren’t allowed in this area. The man with her said it didn’t much matter who it was; the thing was leaving, not coming in for a landing. If that wasn’t our target, the coincidence would be too much.”

“And if flying vehicles aren’t allowed, then we can’t follow as fast as he can lead,” I summed up, folding my legs in front of me with a growl of frustration. “After being that close-! All we can do now is keep going with your friend. I don’t have to wonder if he got whatever approval he was looking for; if he’s still hanging around, it’s only because another meeting’s been scheduled.”

“As long as I’m there next time,” Val said, his eyes directly on me again. “And speaking of meetings, you still haven’t told me what Rich was after you for.”

“Val, I told you it wasn’t him,” I said with as much exasperation as I felt, suddenly aware again of the hand on my shoulder. “What’s more to the point is that your denying it doesn’t change the fact that you did blow your role. You weren’t supposed to care about me; barging in and dragging me out of there, especially the way you did it, was completely out of character. If you care enough about someone to challenge Sphere officials for them, you don’t sell them to the highest bidder-which is what you’re supposedly up to with me, remember?”

“Well, I can always say I changed my mind.” He shrugged. “Since I can see I’d better keep a closer eye on you, I can claim I didn’t realize what good stuff I had right in front of me until that Rich character tried moving in on it. If I turn out to be lecherous instead of weak-willed, who’ll know the difference?”

“I’ll know,” I told him in sub-zero tones, reaching up to purposely and finally move his hand from my shoulder. “Let’s try saying instead that you didn’t want your merchandise damaged before you could turn it over, and you were afraid Greg Rich would swing a deal before you could. And I want this feud between the two of you stopped right now.”

“No problem in that. ” He shrugged again, looking at me in that strange way a second time. “As long as he stays away from you the way I told him to, there won’t be any call for feuding. ”

“Now, look, Val,” I began, really getting hot. “You can’t just . . .”

“But I can just,” he interrupted, pointing a finger at me. “You seem to have forgotten that it’s uncle Val, and that what I say goes. From what I’ve seen of this place so far-not to mention the sort of visitors you get-you’ll have enough problems doing what you have to without getting any further involved with someone like Rich. You’ll stop encouraging him, and he’ll stop coming around.”

“Encouraging him?” I choked, absolutely furious. “What do you mean, encouraging him? And you can’t just brush him off and expect him to stay brushed off! He’s a . . . ”