Then she laughed. “It’s real!” she exclaimed.
I relaxed. At least she wasn’t horrified or terrified. I reached for her, and, of course, she was within reach because it was impossible to be out of reach of anything in this chamber.
I brought her down to me, but she hesitated. “I can’t sit on that!” she protested.
“Certainly you can,” I informed her.
“But ...”
I showed her how. It seemed it had not occurred to her that both it and she could occupy my lap simultaneously. When she discovered how this worked, she was delighted.
And so she sat on my lap, facing away from me, divinely impaled, and I reached around her to squeeze her young breasts in my two hands. I had in mind a considerable period of dalliance in that position before the culmination, but I had misjudged my tolerance. No sooner were we fairly set than I erupted.
“Damn!” I swore, for, of course, she had barely started on her own course of pleasure.
But she had a different reaction. “It worked!” she exclaimed. “You went inside me and you did it, just like the helmet!” She put her hands on mine, so that now her breasts were double-cupped, and squeezed them, pleased at this success.
I decided not to argue. There would be plenty of time for her to discover the other type of pleasure. For now her verification of her own performance seemed sufficient.
Of course, we didn’t stay in the ship all the time. Periodically a sub descended to take us aboard. Amber was given a brief fling at the comforts of civilization, such as a soft and roomy bed, noncanned food, and relief from the stress of prospecting. I had no such reprieve; it was necessary for me to make periodic public appearances so that the populace would not realize that I was in hiding. I might have broadcast interviews, but that would have meant communicative contact with the prospect-ship, and that was too dangerous to risk. So I went physically, which was an odd mechanism for secrecy.
“The former congressmen have announced a government-in-exile,” Spirit informed me. “And challenged you to meet them in debate.”
“That can have no legal status!” I protested. “I am the legitimate government of the U.S. of J.”
“Legitimate but not conventional—or popular,” she reminded me. “The people are paying a lot of attention to this movement. Because these are all former members of the former government, they possess a certain status in the eyes of the majority. We can hold down the random rebellions, but these people can sow the seeds of endless mischief, leading the majority into resistance.”
“I’d better tackle them, then,” I said. “If they want to debate, I’ll debate. The facts support my programs.”
“Yes. But they may be up to something else. We have to be careful.”
“Of course. Set up electronic weapon detectors and have a pacifier ready.”
“They have nullifiers,” Coral said. “But we have null-nullifiers. They will not be proof against pacification.”
“So I can go into their midst personally and brace them and make points for the Tyrancy,” I said. “It should be fun.”
I went, after my personnel had made their arrangements. I really wasn’t worried; this was a group of twenty former senators, of both major parties, all with excellent reputations. Obviously they intended to awe the audience with their credentials and to impress upon that audience—which should include most of Jupiter—the obvious justice of their cause. They stood foursquare for the old ways, the good ways, the ways that should be restored.
However, I was prepared to remind that same audience of the phenomenal problems those old ways had engendered—problems that my reforms were now attacking. Soon the results would begin to show, if we just stayed the course. I didn’t expect my message to be completely popular, but I was sure it would make the more sensible people pause. The very fact that I, the Tyrant, came in person to debate those who pretended to be a counter-government—that demonstrated the extent of free speech that existed today and the openness of my dialogue. Repressive dictators did not indulge in this sort of thing.
They were seated in a large semicircle on a stage, with the media pickups for an audience. Shelia parked her wheelchair at the edge of the stage where she could prompt me, and Coral stood beside her. I tried never to make a big thing of my personal protection; the Navy was never far from me, but Coral looked more like my mistress than my bodyguard. Indeed, on this occasion she wore a fetching red print dress that made her look more like a college girl than a mature woman, and she had a mock rose in her hair. Because of the rigid precautions against weapons, she carried none on this occasion, but of course her entire body was a kind of weapon when required.
This chamber was elegant. It was fashioned in the manner of an ancient Roman hall, with decorative columns and sculpture, and the walls, floor, and ceiling were of brightly phosphorescent material, so that external illumination was hardly necessary. This lent an ethereal quality to the proceedings.
In addition, there were mock stone alcoves set up as fountains, where water flowed and formed little falls. These were made up like portals to the outside, and beyond them was a panoramic holo scene that changed visibly to show the seasons, in accelerated manner. It had been fall as I entered; as I watched, intrigued as I often am by the innocent marvels of civilization, winter approached. The falls congealed to ice, and icicles spread like bars. Delightful!
The program began. I expected an opening diatribe against my policies but was surprised. A senator from my own party rose from his chair, strode forward, raised his hand, and proclaimed: “Hail, Caesar!”
The power failed. The artificial lights went out, leaving only the glow of the walls, and the susurration of the air refreshing system ceased. Of all times for a breakdown!
But in a moment I realized that that it was more than that. The senators were rising together and stepping to the mock windows. They were reaching for the icicles.
Coral was at my side, almost at a bound. “Out, sir!” she hissed. “Exit by Shelia!”
I started toward my secretary, but several senators were already moving to cut me off. Shelia, realizing what was happening, wheeled her chair to clear the exit.
As if in slow motion, while I was striding toward her, I saw it happen. Two men bent to grab her chair. They heaved it up and forward. The chair skidded, turning sideways, then tilted over as the wheel struck the edge of the stage. It overturned, dumping Shelia down into the audience section.
I changed course to reach her, horrified. The drop was not great, but she had been pitched out headfirst, the chair coming down on top of her. If she was hurt—
“To me!” Coral snapped. I saw that the men had closed off the exit, and now all twenty were advancing on me, holding icicles.
Obviously this had been most carefully rehearsed. The setting, the freezing water, generating weapons where there had been none, the power cutoff that prevented either the pacifier from being used or any message from going out. The holo-cameras were dead; no one outside could see what was happening here.
They had never intended to debate me! Now they had twenty against two, and the two were unarmed, and one a woman. In scant minutes a crack Navy unit would burst in here and take over, but evidently the senators believed they had time enough.
“Straight defense won’t do it,” I muttered to Coral as we stood back to back.
“Build a wall,” she replied tersely.
I recognized another Oriental concept of hers. “Right.”
The first senator came at me like a kamikaze, his icicle held clumsily in an overhand mode, stabbing down. I ducked under, whirled, caught his descending arm, and heaved him the rest of the way over my shoulder. He landed heavily, his arm outstretched and in my grip, and I quickly twisted his wrist and took the slippery icicle from it. Then I kicked him hard in the head, so that he would lie still, and whirled to face the next.
I heard a thunk behind me and knew that Coral had landed her client beside mine. She might look like a delicate yo
ung lady, but she was a more efficient and deadly combat specialist than I was. Then I stabbed forward with my icicle, plunging it into the belly of my attacker. The ice shattered, but it didn’t matter; as he collapsed in agony I simply took his weapon.
Another body landed behind: Coral’s contribution. Four down, sixteen to go. We were building our wall. When it got high enough, we would use it as a barricade.
Now the senators paused. They were obviously ready to give their lives in this cause, this treacherous assassination of Caesar in the Senate chamber, but they realized that they were giving their lives without cause at the moment. It was evident that Coral and I could eliminate them handily, one by one.
“All together!” one cried.
They tried to charge together, but it was impossible. One stumbled, his legs tangled with those of his neighbor, and went down in front. I knocked him in the neck with my booted toe, putting him down to stay. Meanwhile Coral spun around in place, and her dainty-seeming foot flung out to score on the side of the head of another, tumbling him unconscious into the throng. Another lost balance, and I caught his flailing arm and brought his face down to my rising knee.
But I felt the stab of an icicle in my left shoulder. There were too many men, all stabbing clumsily with their weapons; I could not avoid them all. I whirled, catching that arm, hauling the man further off-balance, then using an aikido twist to send him back into the throng.
The Navy arrived. Lasers flashed, catching the remaining senators in rapid order. In a moment, of the original party, only Coral and I were standing. She was bleeding also, but it didn’t look serious.
I hurried across to help Shelia. She was bruised but unbroken; she had had the sense to break her fall with her arms and then to stay quiet, knowing she could not help us.
Now a Navy medic was seeing to us, expertly treating our wounds. An officer saluted me. “Sir, how shall we dispose of the prisoners?” he inquired.
Abrupt rage overcame me. “Interrogation, trial, execution,” I said. “Root out the plot.”
“Yes, sir.” He turned to his business.
That was about all there was to it. Coral and Shelia and I had escaped without serious injury, thanks to our immediate and effective action. But I was not pleased. I should never have fallen into that trap!
One might suppose that the public would rise up against the would-be assassins. It was not so. The news media, in a position to ascertain the facts of the case, elected generally to pretend that I was the one at fault. Three sterling senators were dead, several more injured, and the rest were gone from Jupiter society—all because of the whim of the Tyrant.
No, I did not clamp down on the press. I would not violate my oath. But this marked the turning point in the Tyrancy’s handling of assassination and terrorism. After this they were publicly executed.
• • •
The job quickly became routine, despite the evident hazard. We quested interminably for bubbles, but though dust and rocks were plentiful, large objects were rare. Once we thought we spied one, but it turned out to be another prospect-ship.
Tedium was the greatest problem. Oh, certainly we made love, but the novelty of physical sex soon passed. At my age it took time to recharge; I found that about once per twenty-four-hour period was all I really cared for, and even though we did our best to make a production of each one, that left about ninety-five percent of the time available for other things. To some, paradise is isolation with a pretty and willing woman; no one who has actually tried that believes in it any more. For one thing, the challenge is gone. For another, a desire fulfilled is a desire eliminated. When Amber had been anonymous via the helmet, she had been fascinating; each contact was an act of discovery. When she became known but forbidden, she was still intriguing. Now both her mystery and reticence were gone, and there was not a great deal remaining. She was not an intellectual partner; she did not know how to play challenging games. I couldn’t even argue with her; she accepted everything I said or did without significant resistance.
Oh, we got along. But the glow was off. I became eager to find a bubble and get out of the ship, and I suspect that Amber, could she have been persuaded to hold an opinion of her own, would have felt the same. The quest became everything.
Naturally, when we finally scored, it was at the wrong moment. We had tried just about every possible variant of sex, struggling to relieve the boredom, and had discovered a promising game: Pin the Tail on the Donkey. No, no pin, no tail; we used our own anatomy, seeking to make the sexual connection. Naked, we took turns freezing in place, in free-fall, while the other closed his or her eyes and sought to make physical contact at only the key site. The closer the first touch to the bull’s-eye, the higher the score. Amber was leading, having landed her bottom on my left knee, but I had figured out by elimination and by sound what her position had to be and believed I could home in on the site this time. Doing it blind was much more exciting than doing it sighted, and I was really getting into the spirit of the game. If I scored, I would get to complete the act, while she was bound by the rules to remain fixed in position, ravished without reprieve. If I missed, she would get another turn, would probably score, and I would have to remain frozen while she had her way with me and won the game. The victory, at this stage, was more important than the sex.
I drifted through the short space, in my blind free-fall, head, hands, and feet held back, only my center extremity forward, and felt contact with her body. I opened my eyes and saw that I had scored; it was her cleft I was touching. “Ha, wench!” I exclaimed.
And the alarm sounded.
Amber laughed. It was a rule: the alarm severed any play. I had lost my opportunity and would have to start from scratch next time.
“Damn nuisance!” I muttered, and launched myself to the cockpit, my bare anatomy squeezing past hers in what at any other time would have been an interesting fashion. She made as if to bite at my member, and I made as if to knee her in the head. I squeezed into the pilot’s seat, which was clammy to my skin, and she followed to peer over my shoulder.
Ahead was a blip, a monstrous one. “Oops—we’ve drifted out of zone,” I said, disgusted. “That’s a city!”
But immediately I realized that it couldn’t be; we were well below the inhabited level. Any true city-bubble would implode here. It was a city-sized natural bubble!
We homed in on it, and the size expanded as we got close. This thing was huge! It was like a planetoid, a perfect sphere. This was our strike!
We circled it, making sure there were no flaws, before planting our strike marker.
And spotted a marker already in place. This bubble had a prior claim.
For an instant I confess that I felt temptation: to remove the other marker and set our own, claiming this phenomenal strike ourselves. But quickly I suppressed the urge. For one thing, it was illegal and unethical. For another, claims were normally booby-trapped against just such an intrusion.
Sadly we moved on.
About a month later we found a bubble we could keep. It was smaller than the first but still well worthwhile. We staked our claim and contacted the company office, and our tour as prospectors was done. But somehow the disappointment of that first denied strike remained with me. To have been so close to such a fortune in commissions ...
• • •
I was not so foolish as to meet physically with my opposition again. I confined myself to more formal news conferences, and I was confined to my interview chamber: they could attack only my holo image. But that they did.
Some questions were routine, but one man stood and cried, “I call upon all decent citizens to fight without letup to end the terrible Tyrancy! We are being oppressed by a madman and must free ourselves of this yoke by destroying him!”
He paused, evidently having run out of initial material. He had not expected to get this far before being lasered down or hauled out.
“Continue,” I told him. “Free speech is one of the guarantees the Tyrant makes.?
??
There was a ripple of laughter. But it wasn’t very strong, and I could see that there was considerable support for the man’s position. I had indeed progressed from savior to enemy in the minds and hearts of the average folk. They simply weren’t interested in my substantial reforms; they saw only the inconvenience that they themselves suffered at the moment.
• • •
Normally the discoverer of a bubble either took his bonus and retired, or if it was a small strike, went on as much of a binge as it would finance, then returned to prospecting. But I was a management trainee, so we stayed with our bubble, following it as it proceeded from the wild state to the civilized state.
First it had to be brought to the processing level. A gee-shield was installed, so that it was no longer dependent on the turbulent currents for support. Tugs nudged it upward, until it floated just below the inhabited level. Then it was cleaned up and rendered airtight, and a lock installed. The atmosphere was pumped out, the pressure reduced to Earth-normal, and breathable air was instituted.
Then they began fashioning the bubble into a residential sphere. They got it spinning, so there was internal gee, and installed prefabricated units and plumbing and electrical lines and all the rest. Amber and I participated, working on one crew and another, getting the overall picture.
I worked under a Saxon foreman named Gray, who evidently had not been given the word about Jose Garcia’s manager-trainee status. Gray was no bigot and no genius; he just knew his job and wanted it done right. His job was to establish secure foundations for the residential section of this bubble, so that there would never be a collapse after the apartment chambers were installed. Under his direction I had to drill holes into the hard shell of the bubble, to anchor those foundations. This was simple in concept but not in detail; those holes had to be positioned so precisely that they were surveyed in, and the drilling had to be done by heavy-duty laser. Bubblene is the hardest commercially viable substance available and is resistant to breakdown, but the same properties that make it excellent for ships and cities make it hellish to penetrate. Certainly a suitable laser will vaporize anything, but vaporized bubblene is dangerous, as it naturally precipitates the moment the vapor leaves the heat, coating everything it touches with bubblene. That means that the body of the laser drills itself and perhaps the hands of its operator. The first worker to encounter that effect had to have his hands flayed, literally, to get them clean. I used hefty protective gloves, of course; in fact, I was in a light space suit, because though there was now air in the bubble, accidents and leaks were always possible in the early stages of conversion. Still, I had no hankering to play with such vapor. So my unit was set to heat the material to the softening point, so that it could be drilled. My laser was focused in a ring, and a diamond-sonic bit was in the center of that ring, gouging out the material and sucking the debris into a holding chamber. I had had to take a spot course in the use of this instrument, and I watched its indicators carefully, doing my job right. It was tedious, but each successful hole was an accomplishment; I knew that a century hence, this bubble would probably still be in use, and these same holes would be containing the bolts that anchored all its internal structures. That’s a kind of immortality.