in the walk-in closet, poured plastic over and around it, then—with Prill’s help—run a current through the plastic. The closet had been just the right size.
The bed smelled of age. It crinkled when he moved.
“Fist-of-God,” Louis Wu said into the dark. “I saw it. A thousand miles high. It doesn’t make sense they’d build a mountain that high, not when…” He let it trail off.
And suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, shouting, “Shadow square wire!”
A shadow entered the bedroom.
Louis froze. The entrance was dark. Yet, by its fluid motion and by the distribution of subtle shadings of curvature, a naked woman was walking toward him.
Hallucination? The ghost of Teela Brown? She had reached him before he could decide. Totally self-confident, she sat beside him on the bed. She reached out and touched his face and ran her fingertips down his cheek.
She was nearly bald. Though her hair was dark and long and full-bodied, so that it bobbed as she walked, it was only an inch-wide fringe growing from the base of her skull. In the dark the features of her face virtually disappeared. But her body was lovely. He was seeing the shape of her for the first time. She was slim, muscled with wire like a professional dancer. Her breasts were high and heavy.
If her face had matched her figure…
“Go away,” Louis said, not roughly. He took her wrist, interrupted what her fingertips were doing to his face. It had felt like a barber’s facial massage, definitely relaxing. He stood up, pulled her gently to her feet, took her by the shoulders. If he simply turned her around and patted her on the rump—?
She ran her fingertips along the side of his neck. Now she was using both hands. She touched him on the chest, and here, and there, and suddenly Louis Wu was blind with lust. His hands closed like clamps on her shoulders.
She dropped her hands. She waited without trying to help as he peeled out of his falling jumper. But as he exposed more skin, she stroked him here, and there, not always where nerves clustered. Each time it was as if she had touched him in the pleasure center of his brain.
He was on fire. If she pushed him away now, he would use force; he must have her—
—But some cool part of him knew that she could chill him as quickly as she had aroused him. He felt like a young satyr, yet he dimly sensed that he was also a puppet.
For the moment he couldn’t have cared less.
And still Prill’s face showed no expression.
She took him to the verge of orgasm, then held him there, held him there…so that when the moment came it was like being struck by lightning. But the lightning went on and on, a flaming discharge of ecstasy.
When it ended he was barely aware that she was leaving. She must know how thoroughly she had used him up. He was asleep before she reached the door.
And he woke thinking: Why did she do that?
Too tanj analytical, he answered himself. She’s lonely. She must have been here a long time. She’s mastered a skill, and she hasn’t had a chance to practice that skill…
Skill. She must know more anatomy than most professors. A doctorate in Prostitution? There was more to the oldest profession than met the eye. Louis Wu could recognize expertise in any field. This woman had it.
Touch these nerves in the correct order, and the subject will react thus-and-so. The right knowledge can turn a man into a puppet…
…puppet to Teela’s luck…
He almost had it then. He came close enough that the answer, when it finally came, was no surprise.
Nessus and Halrloprillalar came backward out of the freezer room. They were followed by the dressed carcass of a flightless bird bigger than a man. Nessus had used a cloth for padding, so that his mouth need not touch the dead meat of the ankle.
Louis took the puppeteer’s burden. He and Prill pulled in tandem. He found that he needed both hands, as did she. He answered her nod of greeting and asked, “How old is she?”
Nessus did not show surprise at the question. “I do not know.”
“She came to my room last night.” That would not do; it would mean nothing to an alien. “You know that the thing we do to reproduce, we also do for recreation?”
“I knew that.”
“We did that. She’s good at it. She’s so good at it that she must have had about a