Padma turned out to be as pretty as I had feared. (Actually, I find most healthy, trim, athletic young women to be fairly attractive. Go figure.) She looked Indian or Pakistani, with long, straight black hair that fell down past her shoulderblades. Her skin was quite dark, which brightened up her eyes a lot and made her smile seem absolutely brilliant.
When she and Mike 'ported in, his arm was across her shoulders and she was giggling at some joke he had just told her. That's our Mike. He's a good-looking guy, with great hair and a great smile. He can be quite the charmer when he wants to be. And, to be perfectly honest, I had never seen an ugly side to him. But there was one, or so I had heard.
Regardless, he presented her to Shelley and me as Padma Reddy and we shook hands all around. Over the course of dinner, we discovered that she was from Hyderabad, in the southeastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. She spoke excellent, if accented, English, which didn't surprise me much. Four of the current Primes were native English speakers, as was Prime Commander, and the two others besides Padma spoke it fluently.
After dinner, Shelley told me to show Padma around while she and Mike cleaned up and, I assume, she briefed him on our encounter. All through the meal, Padma had been casting admiring little glances his way, hanging on his every word and giggling at his every joke; now she seemed a bit worried at the thought that they might be separated. Or maybe she was scared of me, goodness knows why. I look harmless, or so I've been told. Or maybe she was just nervous about being in a new place.
"Wizzit," I called out as I motioned for Padma to follow me down to the girl's wing, "is Padma's room set up for her?"
"Ready-ready," he replied. "Her things are there and Prime Violet's belt is on her bed."
"Thank you." We walked down the hall and I stopped in front of her door. "Here it is," I said, quite unnecessarily.
The idea of preceding me into the room seemed to bother her. "Please go inside," she said. "I will follow."
"I can't. The door will open only for you."
That seemed to surprise her. "You mean, no one can get inside my room except me?"
"That's right. Well, I imagine Prime Red or Prime Commander could get in if it were an emergency, but except for that, no one. Not unless you let them in." I tried the door, but it refused to open. "See?"
"Yes. I see that it is locked." She pushed on the door herself, and it opened easily. She nodded to herself and stepped in. "You may come inside."
I entered and looked around. The spartan layout was almost identical to my room. "I know it looks kind of bare, but you can furnish it any way you want."
She looked into the small attached bathroom, tested the bed, and opened a few of the drawers. "No, this is fine." She glanced over at me and then stopped, her brow furrowing with concern. "Are you feeling quite all right?"
"Hm? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." I knew what she was seeing on my face. This had been Robin's room. I hadn't seen the inside of it for close to a year, and of course all her things were gone. Still, being inside it again was having an effect on me that I hadn't expected. I took a deep breath, shook myself, and pulled on a grin. "Your, uh, your Prime Violet belt is over there. Why don't you try it on?"
She picked up the slim black belt, looking at it dubiously. "This is made from leather? From cow skin?"
"No," I assured her. "It just looks that way. It's all synthetic."
"I see." She slipped it around her slender waist and hooked the two ends together, gasping as they melded into a single piece.
"It'll come off whenever you want it to," I said. "That just prevents anyone else from taking it off of you."
Wizzit's voice came from the buckle, "To activate the Prime Violet force shield, say 'Prime Violet, activate.' To deactivate it, say 'Prime Violet, deactivate.'"
She looked a question at me, and I indicated that she try it out. "Prime Violet, activate!" she said firmly. In an eyeblink, she was surrounded by a sort of light purple haze that made her features indistinct. "Prime Violet, deactivate!" The purple haze blinked out.
"You should wear the belt all the time for the next few days," I said. "It'll take about that long for your body to adjust to it. Mostly, you'll find that everything just works a little better: your vision gets sharper, your reflexes get faster, you have better balance, things like that."
"It also makes you sterile," Wizzit volunteered helpfully.
It took her a moment to process what he said, but then her eyes went wide. "What? Do you mean to say that I can never have children?" She took hold of the belt with both her hands and began trying to tear the buckle apart.
"Too late!" Wizzit told her cheerfully. "It happened when you activated the force shield."
"It's only temporary," I put in hastily, mentally cursing Wizzit. And myself, because I should have expected this. He does it to every new Prime Violet, or so I've been told. I know he did it to me. Either he's fascinated by humans' attachment to their ability to reproduce, which is what he says, or he thinks it's funny, which is probably also true. "It lasts about a month."
She looked up at me, clearly worried. "Do you mean that now I am unable to have children, but one month from today, I would be . . . what is the word . . .?"
"Um, fertile?" I guessed.
"Yes, fertile. One month from today I would be fertile again? I do not intend to be a Prime all my life. I want to have a family some day."
"The effect renews itself every time you use the force shield. Once you quit the Primes and stop using the force shield, then after about a month you should be able to . . . uh . . . to get pregnant without any problem." I was starting to become uncomfortable with the direction this whole conversation was taking. Why had Shelley given me this duty, anyway? Why hadn't she had this talk with Padma herself, or told Trina to? (I knew the answer, of course: I was available and Trina wasn't. And maybe she had planned to talk with her about this later. Didn't stop my face from turning bright red, though.)
Padma was still staring at me, obviously expecting me to explain further. I cleared my throat. "It, um, it's a side-effect of some of the things the belt does to your body. And, um, some of the Primes think that it's not such a bad thing. You can have sex without worrying about anyone getting pregnant, and that's pretty much a requirement."
If she had been worried before, now she looked positively alarmed. Somehow I had said the wrong thing. "Having sex is . . . a requirement?" she said, starting to back away from me.
"What? No! No, that's not what I meant!" Geez, could this get any more awkward? "Not getting pregnant -- that's a requirement. You can't be pregnant if you're a Prime. It would, uh, it would put you and the baby at too much risk. Having sex is . . . it's your own business. No one really cares who or how often or anything, as long as it doesn't affect what you do as a Prime."
She had backed up all the way to the wall now. She had crossed her arms in front of her and her mouth was set in a frown. "Trevor, let us be frank here," she said firmly. "Are you hitting on me?"
"Huh?" I blinked. That had come from so far out in left field, I'm not sure it was even in the ballpark.
She looked unsure of herself. "I . . . believe I am using the phrase correctly," she said. "To hit on someone means to try to get them into bed . . . to have sex with them."
"Yeah, that's what it means," I said, feeling more than a little dazed. "And no, I am not hitting on you."
She looked as if she didn't believe me. "Mike told me you would hit on me as soon as you got me alone. He said you always hit on the female Primes, and that you would not take it well if I refused you."
I shook my head slowly. "That's . . . just not true."
She looked at me hard. "Nevertheless, I am feeling quite uncomfortable being alone in this room with you. I must ask you to leave. Now, if you please."
Weirder and weirder. It was probably best just to humo
r her. "Uh, sure, Padma." I shrugged. "Whatever you say." As I stepped out into the hallway, I heard her close the door firmly behind me.
Chapter 8