Wild Thing (32 page)

'Heel.'

Hardly believing his eyes, Harmon watched as the woman clutched at herself, obviously humiliated.  But a feverish hunger seemed to underline her every gesture.  Maestro reached out a finger and ran it up the inside of one bare thigh.  The woman shuddered all over; her head arched back.  When it ended, she slowly straightened up again; then sank to her knees on the floor.

'A demo for you: scope and beep.  Two hundred of scope: one hundred beep.  A good combo,' Maestro gestured at the woman, noting Harmon's disbelieving stare.

'Micrograms?  And… this is the result?'  Harmon wrenched his eyes from the woman's display.  His earlier idea returned.  The two in combination…  'How much?' he asked.

Maestro smiled.

Chapter 36 

At breakfast, although Sara complained about the taste of the Orange-o-Tang
^TM
, she drank it all the same.  He had decided to start with a sub-therapeutic dose and build up.  With only tens of micrograms, he expected to see no change.

However, about lunchtime, he glanced at the gym monitor and noticed her straddling the narrow beam, rocking gently forward and back.

'Well, well, well.'  He watched as the scene continued for a full fifteen minutes.  'Who would have guessed you could be
so
responsive, little one.'  His rational, clinical side was pleased by the prospect of the smooth introduction of this new tool.  On the other side, in a sort of pre-conscious mental maneuvering, a coil of desire wound itself one degree tighter, choking back the beginnings of shame.

But as the days passed and he gradually increased her dosage, he found
himself
being slowly gripped by the trap he had devised for her.  It felt as if his own body was being gradually infiltrated by strands of sexual energies.  She had long been proud of her body: aware of it.  But under the influence of the drug, she had become actively interested in it – even fascinated by it.  More and more, she touched herself – sometimes just lightly, gliding her fingers over her cheeks, then down her neck, appearing to revel in the feel of her own soft skin and the delicate touch of her fingertips.  Sometimes she ran her hands down her sides, or clenched her legs… and he watched.  He could not resist watching, as those fingers slid over that taut skin, dragging his eyes along with them.

Each touch seemed to reach inside
him
, winding his own tension tighter; each sensual gesture another weight piled on top of some invisible mass pressing in on him, so that at times he found himself physically straining, every muscle taut, and had to force himself to relax.  It was almost as though he had been taking the drug too.

It was a good thing that most of the Institute's workforce was robotic, these days.  Humans would have commented on the change in her behavior.

By the time he had increased her dose to a combined eighty micrograms, he knew neither of them could contain the building pressure.  His work lay forgotten: as she spent more time “exercising,” he became less able to concentrate on anything but her.  Her dancing in the gym had become very like what he'd seen in the strobing lights of those dark dives where his eyes had been opened.  Anticipation gripped him as each of her unconscious sexual signals dragged him deeper into the web of his own desires.

She had become his drug.

In a rare moment of lucidity he recalled with near-astonishment his original plan.  The weapon.  Blood.  The ceremony.  He'd been tidying the files in his private pocket of the net when he discovered he had even written himself a script.  As he read his own notes from just ten days before, the enormity of the change struck him with a clarity so intense it was painful.  These cool, detached words, this clinical air – only faint echoes remained.

He entertained the fancy that he
had
, in fact, been drugged; even ran exhaustive blood tests on himself.  But no.  Sara lay at its heart.  He realized this the day he emerged from his lab to find her slinking down the corridor toward him.  A hot wave flooded his mind and thought ceased.  She wore only the briefest white bikini, startling against her sun-darkened skin.  No time seemed to pass; she was simply there, pressed against him, hugging him, stroking his face….

Desperately, with a shudder, he drew the tattered remnants of his will together.  Remembered his earlier plan.  He disengaged from her arms, shakily.

'Come Sara, I have something for you.  A present.  For hunting.'

This, in turn, awoke a spark of her old self.

'Hunting?'

'Yes.  Come, I'll get it for you.'

He walked ahead.  He didn't think he could cope with the view if he walked behind her.

Neither spoke as they made their way to his office.  As he opened the door and crossed the room, Sara followed silently behind.  The door closed with a soft “snick” behind them.

He crossed the room, and while his face and hands were shielded from her view, he prepared a mindmeld spell.  As he moved behind his desk and caught sight of her again he subtly released it, and for the first time in months, she appeared not to notice as it settled over her.  He kept an especially light touch.

«She watched him closely as he bent down, his fingertip unlocking the drawer
.  She
herself scarcely knew how she
felt.  T
he burning
emptiness
seemed to grow by the moment.  She bit gently at her lip as he slid the drawer open and placed the
brown paper parcel in the middle of his desk.

«She approached slowly, the feel of her heated skin tight against her skull
.  S
he was confused:
more than aroused.  Like she was being stroked, all over.

«The
edge of the desk bumped her thighs.  She stopped moving, raising her eyes slowly from the parcel to
his
face.  Slowly, she closed her eyes
again, savoring the strange tight heat that twisted through her almost painfully.»

Her feelings were so intense that he himself felt an echo of them.  It was such a peculiarly uncomfortable sensation he dropped the mindmeld.  Yet, as if her reaction had spread to him somehow, he felt a surge of that same compelling heat.  It was only with an enormous effort that he managed to drag his attention from her.  Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to concentrate on what he was doing. 
Soon,
he promised himself.  Soon.

She still stood facing him across his desk, eyes shut.  He had the distinct impression that despite her enormous curiosity, the mystery of his gift was barely holding her attention.  He noticed she was
not
standing still: slowly, subtly, she was shifting her limbs; gently rotating her hips, constantly bringing parts of her body in and out of contact with one another.  A dreamy look came over her face, her eyes half-closed.

'Unwrap your parcel, Sara,' he ordered, breathing hard.

She opened her eyes and reached for the parcel.  With an ease that surprised him, she tore away the wrapping and cardboard to reveal the gleaming chrome and black slingshot.  It had a pistol grip; a long steel spring.  It looked sure and deadly, blunt power sketched in every line.

'It's called a “PowerShot”,' he told her.

The weapon snapped her out of her auto-erotic daze.

'Ohh,' she breathed in wonder.  'It's beautiful.'

He watched her fingers tighten convulsively around the sculpted black hand-grip.  With her other hand, she pulled the spring back – with less effort than he himself had needed when he'd tried it earlier.  He suppressed a shiver.  She gently released the tension, her expression now dramatically different.  Practically carnivorous.

She laughed: almost a deep, coughing growl.  He felt cold as her eyes fixed on his.  Her other hand reached out, somehow guided surely to the small box of steel ball-bearings that were the device's ammunition.  Abruptly, he wondered how he could possibly have watched the thing's demonstration, yet claim he had not understood he supplied her with a lethal weapon.

She was making him nervous.  'Sara, I hope-'  He shifted his perception to the Imaginal and his voice cracked.  Her aura
boiled
.  He'd never seen anything like it.

It was happening!

She was starting to Unfold, right here in the Institute.  Following the archetype of the Huntress.  With a lethal weapon in her hands.

With dismay, he realized he suddenly had no idea what she might do.  'I hope I don't have to impress upon you how important it is not to use this weapon in or too near the Institute.  It must be our secret.'

In answer she only cocked her head to one side.  'I'm going out hunting,' she declared, and stalked silently from the room.

He slumped in a sudden release of tension: laughed, shakily.  At any rate, he needn't have worried so much about her losing touch with the role for which he had prepared her.  She had slipped back into it like a shark beneath water.

He eased back into his seat, eager to observe what promised to be her so long awaited Unfolding.  Centering himself he slipped down inside, finally leaving his body.  He would follow her Imaginally until she'd left the building, at least as far as the barriers – and make sure she wasn't going to attack any of the Institute personnel.

He wondered what she would kill.

Chapter 37 

Outside, Sara stalked through her Jungle, but it was a jungle strangely changed. 
She
felt strange, too. 
So
strange.  Her head ached; her mouth was dry; and the light was much too strong.  The colors glowed so brightly they hurt her eyes.  And the liquid ball of hot pressure was still building in her chest.  It felt like something was squeezing the breath from her; like her skin was stretched too tightly over her body.

She didn't like it.  She felt like she might explode.

The trees were filled with birds, somehow squawking and shrieking straight into her ears.  It was unnatural, too much.  She had only two anchor points in the cauldron broiling her: the cool, firm grip of the weapon in her hand, and the knowledge that she held the power to kill.

She held onto those two truths as the world beat upon her with such intensity she felt physically sick.  At last, though, she held an adult's weapon.  She clung to the thought.

The sound of the wind, of creaking branches and rustling leaves, all pressed in against her, so close that she spun around, suddenly sure that the forest had somehow come alive, stretched out and swallowed her.

She half-wished
She
would appear.  She'd tear Her into little tiny pieces.

But the noise just kept pounding her, trying to drown her.  She focused on the sounds from the tree she now stood beneath, a pigeon cooing in an absurdly booming voice.  As if it had perched right against her ear.  The volume of it frightened her a little.  She couldn't get away from it.  She scanned the branches to locate the source of the horribly loud sound.  And as she did, it was like a holo contrast-control had just been turned all the way up – another shape suddenly resolved itself from the deeper darkness of the tree, hidden deep inside a bower of branches and leaves, that moments before had been darkly impenetrable.  The weapon sat heavy in her hand.  She raised it, sighted, her other hand slipping a ball bearing into its pouch and drawing the spring smoothly back.  It was an owl she aimed at, she suddenly knew.  Its eyes blinked open in the deep shade of its retreat.

She tasted its imminent death while color, sound, and smells seemed once more to pile up in waves against her.  She imagined her uncle's voice whispering to her: Kill!  Kill!  Yet somehow, the taste was wrong, the victim wrong.  Too unsuspecting, perhaps?  Too unaware?  She didn't understand, but felt it would be an insult to… something… to make the owl her first victim.  Deeply wrong.

She snarled in frustration.

A moment later, the cooing ceased in a painfully-loud thrashing of wings: the pigeon that had been tormenting her, scared into sudden flight.  A fat bird, it hadn't even left the branches of the tree as she spun, sighted, and with a curious certainty that she could not miss – that her sling bullet
must
hit, or had already hit – loosed.

Its head literally exploded, and the bird's flight collapsed into a plunging fall.  The sight of her success tore a cry of joy from her, shocking through her with a totally unexpected surge of relief, of
release
, her whole self shuddering with the missile's impact.

The small body plummeted to the ground, striking one branch after another on the way down in a series of sickening thuds, before thumping into a bush at the foot of the tree.  To lie unmoving.

Sound and color drained abruptly back to their normal levels.  Though she wanted to collapse to the ground as the sensation of release burned through every nerve, she locked her legs stiffly apart and struggled to contain the shocking pleasure, resisting as she strained to fight it down; panting with effort as she fought her own body for control.  A part of her felt horror, dismayed that the death had felt so good.  It shouldn't feel
good.
  Not like
that
.

She would
not
give in to it.

For a full minute she stood trembling on the brink of some dreadful cliff before she felt able to trust her limbs again.  At last, still shaky, she tucked the grip of her weapon into the waist of her shorts and moved over to her fallen prey, plucking it from the tangles of the shrub.

A fat gray pigeon, made both still and ugly by its violent death.  It lay warm in her hands, blood still oozing from its neck.  It looked pathetic.  She felt sad, somehow.  She had ended its life.  That fact was dreadfully real; dreadfully final.  Some distant part of her, some tiny spark, seemed to be trying to whisper to her, to warn her; but the whisper was silent: a mere breath.  It made her think of an old man, for some reason.  But the wisp of memory slid away.