The 97th Step

by Steve Perry

  Five

  FERRET COULDN'T REMEMBER clearing the boxcar lanes. He'd told Stoll the story, about his father, about running away, and suddenly it seemed they were in Deep, coming up on a point far enough away to shift into Bender drive. Three more days, and they'd be back in the Tau System, back on Shiva's third moon, Vishnu. Back with Shar Li Vu Ndamase, the most beautiful woman on the moon, if not in the system, and leading star of the erotic dance circuit.

  "You never went back?" Stoll said, interrupting his thoughts of Shar.

  Ferret brought his mind back to the ship. "Went back? No. Why? My parents had their farm, they didn't really need me."

  "Time changes things. You aren't a sixteen-year-old boy anymore."

  "No," Ferret said, chuckling, "now I'm a thief and smuggler. I'm sure my parents would be proud. My father would probably either sic the Confed cools on me or turn purple and drop dead of a stroke." He found a small grin. "Now there's a pleasant thought."

  "You aren't curious?"

  Ferret stared at the viewscreen. Curious? Yes. He wondered at times. About his mother, mostly, but also about his father. The old man would be pushing seventy-five. Had he changed any? Not likely, but it was possible. How were he and God getting along these days? How had Baba ever figured out that I was running that last night on Cibule?

  "Not enough to go back," Ferret said.

  "Suit yourself."

  After that, Stoll said no more about it. That was fine with Ferret.

  Vishnu was not an export world; it produced nothing of intrinsic value that could be shipped elsewhere.

  Vishnuvian industry was sufficient to supply power and essential water and sewer services, but almost all of the food had to be imported. There were several small seas, but fishing had never been that big. And yet, if you were lucky enough to be born there, you had a job waiting when you were old enough. The moon had rigid population controls, and it had become, over the last hundred or so years, the place to go.

  For what Vishnu sold was pleasure, in myriad forms. The climate over all of the settled areas was warm enough to dispense with clothing, should you so desire, but not so hot as to be uncomfortable. You could gamble in one of thousand casinos, enjoy safe, disease-free sex in five times that many carefully regulated sporting houses, and, if you had sufficient standards, have your every whim satisfied by a legion of servants. The arts were big: song, dance, painting, sculpture, literature, you name it, somebody did it better on Vishnu than anywhere else. You could buy it, sometimes; sometimes, you had to be satisfied just looking or touching. Even the servants were paid salaries beyond what an average Confederation citizen made, by a factor of about five. After ten years of work on Vishnu, a man or woman could retire and live comfortably on almost any other planet in the galaxy for the rest of their lives, although few did.

  And only natives were allowed to work on Vishnu; offworlders came to play, and they paid handsomely for it. Retired locals got cut rates, of course.

  Naturally, the Confed had its fingers into Vishnu, but with the amounts of money that flowed into the planet, the officials in charge of Vishnu were willing to go along with a lot. Posting to Vishnu was considered the juiciest plum a Confederation officer of any rank could be given. Nobody wanted to upset the golden goose, much less kill it.

  Ferret smiled at his own thoughts as the Don't Look Back swung into landing orbit around the moon. He had first managed a visit to the pleasure world a little over ten years past. He'd been running the ship lanes as a small-time thief and had managed to save enough money for a three-day stay. When it was done, he didn't want to leave. That was how he had met Stoll.

  "Hail the ship Don't Look Back," came the voice over the com. "This is Vishnu Orbital Control. That you, Stoll? And Ferret?"

  "Copy, Control," Ferret said, his grin widening. "Who else?"

  "Hell, you never can tell, Ferret. You might have sold that junk heap for scrap and some poor fool thought he'd try to sneak in here before it fell apart."

  "Salt and eat that, Vishnu. This junk heap will still fly circles around that relic of yours."

  The voice on the com laughed. It was Stoll's cousin, Renaldo. Like Stoll, he was a native. Not Confed.

  "Any time you want to bet money on a run to Brahma and around, Ferret, I'll give you thirty seconds and two-to-one."

  "If only I could, Renaldo. Your cousin won't let me take advantage of you that way."

  "Tell him I'll split it with him."

  Ferret glanced at Stoll, who was smiling at the conversation. The fat thief was glad to be home, no matter that he couldn't stay for more than a month without getting itchy. And hungry for food unavailable on the planet.

  "Well, I could chat all day," Ferret said, "but I would like to land my battered old crate before it falls apart. You want to see if you can figure out a landing glide, Control?"

  "Ah, copy that, Don't Look. Gimme your navigation comp. You, ah, still have a computer, don't you? Or are you spacing that can by line-of-sight?"

  "What a shame," Ferret said. "Professional actors all over are out of work, and there you sit making bad jokes. I think I'll call the Comedians Guild and report you."

  Ferret opened his com channel into the ship's computer, and Vishnu Control took over the flying of the ship. They'd be down in another hour or so.

  The pub was called The Naked Singularity, and it was patterned after a terran men's club in old India, from the time of the British Raj. The palm trees were real, cloned and grown from imported stock; the ceiling fans twirled slowly, pushing at the fragrant blue-gray clouds of flickstick, pipe and cigar smoke; the bar itself was of local wood, worked and stained to approximate mahogany. There were reproductions of ancient flat pictures hung on the bamboo and wooden walls—hunters standing over the carcasses of tigers, or riding the backs of elephants.

  At the end of the large room was a stage. This was not included in the original model for the pub, but no one seemed to mind. The stage and the performers who appeared on it were what brought the customers in, for the most part.

  Ferret walked into the room, wearing the period costume issued to him at the door. The suit was white, neo-silk or some such, with stiff collars and lapels, buttons, and a striped neck-wrap called a tie. The other male patrons wore similar outfits, and women were draped in flowing dresses. It was part of the show, and required for attendance.

  The place was packed, but Majilio, the tender, always kept a couple of stools reserved for last-minute special customers. The little man, was, of course, a local, but somewhere along the line, one of his ancestors had come from a world with a lot more sun; his skin was nearly as dark as the ersatz-mahogany bar. For some reason Ferret did not understand, Majilio had the paying customers call him "Wog."

  Majilio saw Ferret enter, and smiled at him, revealing white teeth with platinum inlays in a kipepeo pattern. He nodded toward the special customer stools. Ferret walked to the nearest vacant stool, aware that some of the customers were watching him, and wondering who he was that he could get such preferential treatment. The waiting list to get into the Singularity usually ran over a week, if you were lucky. He sat, and before he was fully in place, Majilio was there, pushing a glass stein of dark beer across the bar to him.

  "Evening, Majilio." He sipped at the beer.

  "Evening, Sahib Ferret."

  "How's everything?"

  Majilio flashed his platinum butterfly tooth overlays. "Shar Li Vu Ndamase is more lovely than ever." He glanced at the stage. "She knows you have returned?"

  "I thought I would surprise her."

  "You are a brave man Sahib."

  Ferret laughed. "Not me. You know what she does when she knows I am here."

  "Most men would kill to enjoy that pleasure, Sahib."

  "It makes me nervous. And she knows that. That's why she does it."

  The little man shook his head. "Ah, I think not. This is her gift to you. She carries much love for you."

  Before Ferret could reply, the computer-
generated band struck up a fanfare. He turned on the stool to look at the stage. Everyone else in the place had fastened their gazes likewise.

  She came out slowly, walking with the beat of the music. She wore a period costume as well, supposedly what the women of Earth wore in England around the end of the Nineteenth Century: the puffy white dress covered her from the throat to the ankles, with long sleeves to the wrists. Only her hands and face were visible, the latter shaded under a wide-brimmed hat. She was looking down, so that her features were in hard shadows from the stage lights.

  Ferret swallowed dryly, despite the beer. On his homeworld, women dressed similarly, in that they were mostly covered. Hardly so elegant. During his first stirrings of sexual interest, there had been a young woman caught in a sudden wind. Her skirt had lifted, and he had seen her legs, above the knees. He'd almost tripped over his sudden erection. Clothing had always been more provocative than nudity.

  Imagination counted for a great deal.

  The computer hit a musical sting, and Shar snapped her head up to look at the audience.

  Surely, Ferret thought, surely no woman of Earth ever looked so lovely. Her skin was tawny, a shade not quite yellow or brown, but somewhere in between; her eyes were electric blue, an impossible shade, but her own and not due to lenses. When she smiled, it was as if the sun had come up. Ferret heard somebody near him sigh. Every time he saw her, it was like being hit in the solar plexus by a fist.

  The music began a driving beat, heavy with percussion.

  The woman onstage reached up with her right hand and slowly pulled the hat from her head, revealing jet hair knotted up in a bun. She sailed the hat toward the corner of the stage, and turned slowly, until her back was to the audience. She reached up with both hands this time, and did something to the knot of hair. It showered down over her shoulders like black ink, reaching to the middle of her back. She shook her head slightly, and a ripple ran through the jet. The effect was hard to describe to someone who had not seen it. It was a sexual gesture, potent in a way that was hard to believe—a woman shaking her head to free her hair, and it was as if she had freed the lust of everyone in the room.

  Somebody near Ferret said, quietly, " Motherfucker."

  She turned toward the audience, and looked down at the row of pearl buttons on the front of the dress.

  Now, it was as if she had forgotten the audience was there. She seemed much too proper in her demeanor to consider exposing herself to the eyes of anyone. Alone in her room, perhaps, about to undress for sleep or a bath. Ferret felt like a spy, peeping at something he had no right to be seeing.

  Exactly as she intended he and everyone else in the room should feel.

  Slowly—it seemed to take hours—she unbuttoned the garment's fastenings. Slowly—it seemed to take years—she shrugged her way out of the dress, allowing it to fall to the floor around her feet.

  Underneath the dress, she wore some kind of lacy sheath, like a body suit, that exposed her shoulders and arms, but covered her torso and legs to the ankles. It also had a row of buttons, and she started working on them, turning slowly as she did, so that her back was once again to the audience by the time she finished. Another small series of delicate shrugs, and she stepped out of the body suit. As the garment slid down her bare skin, the audience gasped collectively at the beauty of her nude form. She was a lioness, muscles rippling lightly under the tanned skin. Her arms, back, buttocks and legs were clean and perfect, absolutely perfect.

  She turned—it seemed to take centuries—head down and eyes lowered, and faced the audience once more. Another gasp. How could a naked woman, on a world where nudity was commonplace, be so impressive?

  The computer hit another musical sting, a sharp sound, and she snapped her face up as she had done earlier. She smiled slowly—it seemed to take eons—and acknowledged the audience. She raised her arms slowly, then suddenly dropped to her knees, legs spreading at the same instant. Kneeling on the stage, she leaned back until her hair formed a black pool on the floor. It was an invitation.

  The music changed, going into a harder, faster beat, and she was up, leaping high into the air, landing lightly, breasts bobbing. She spun, fanning her hair outward in a cloud, teeth flashing whitely against that tawny, tawny skin. She danced then, oh, how she danced! It was part ballet, part gymnastics, part something that seemed familiar but looked like nothing anyone could name. She used the entire stage, diving, rolling, leaping, stretching.

  Ferret had seen the dance fifty times, and it was never the same twice. She moved in ways he had never seen her move before, close, but not the same. If there were a goddess of Sex, then this was her Dance.

  This was sensual, erotic, lust-inspiring. This made you want to leap upon the stage and join in, ending in a coupling with this magnificent creature who must be more than human. This was what passion was all about—

  Until she stopped.

  The music faded, lowering to a gentle melody. The woman onstage came to a complete halt, crouched low, head down. When she lifted her head, she was someone else. Gone was the passion and desire.

  Now, there was only innocence. She straightened slowly, coming fully upright, and she now looked like a child. Everyone with even a hint of a conscience wanted to protect her, to put an arm around those bare shoulders and keep the bad things of the galaxy from approaching this lovely child.

  She danced again, but the moves were peaceful. Full of love, but lacking desire, save to be the dance itself.

  Ferret held a sigh back, one that would have been all too close to a sob. If magic could be known, then this woman knew it.

  And, as he felt his heart breaking for her loveliness, the woman-child on the stage looked across that crowded pub and saw him.

  It seemed impossible, but the joy on her face increased. The smile grew larger, and she seemed to emanate a love that encompassed everybody—but focused on a particular man. Him.

  Many of the people in the audience turned, to see the object of this wondrous woman's attention. They couldn't see what it might be—there at the bar sat an ordinary-looking young man of no great stature, wearing the same type of costume they all wore. They looked back at the nude woman. They must be mistaken about her attention.

  But no. She moved, walking with languid grace to the edge of the stage, a yukkuri stroll down the steps and across the floor, past the crowded tables. Earlier, many men and as many women would have reached out in lust to touch that perfect body; now, however, none dared impede her progress.

  One did not trifle with a goddess, intent on some Olympian task.

  Ferret sighed, and could not help but return her smile as she approached him. Naked, she stood for a heartbeat in front of him. She did not speak, but leaned forward slightly and kissed him, gently, as a child kisses, save for a small flick of her tongue between his lips. Then she leaned back, turned, and returned to the stage. The music followed her moves now, rather than she the sound.

  On the stage, she did a final twirl and spiraled gently down, to lie on her side. She closed her eyes, and the lights in the pub went to black. Seconds later, when the lights returned, she was gone.

  There was stunned silence. The audience had come expecting to see a strip, and they certainly had, but none of them had ever experienced a dancer of such talent. It had to be seen to be believed, and even then, there was no explanation for it. Some kind of hypnosis. An optical illusion, maybe. A magic spell.

  Ferret felt the gazes of nearly everyone in the pub weighing upon him. He met none of the looks, but turned back to the pubtender. The little brown man flashed his augmented grin, and Ferret shook his head. "I wish she wouldn't do that," he said.

  "Count your blessings, Sahib. Count your blessings."

  He had to smile at that. Oh, yes. Shar was something to be thankful for, no doubt about it.

  Ferret slid from the stool, leaving a ten-stad coin on the bar as he moved. "See you later," he said.

  "Much later, I would wager," the little man said.
Platinum butterflies shined from his mouth as he laughed softly.

  Six

  FERRET LAY ON his back in Shar's bed, head propped on a thick pillow. He looked down the length of his naked body, but his view was impeded at his lean waist. Shar's unbound hair pooled over his loins, waving gently as she moved her hot mouth on him, one of her tawny arms over his belly, the other under his right thigh.

  He groaned with pleasure. She moved faster, using her hands now, too. He felt the pressure build, build… crest… and hold.

  He sighed, and reached down to stroke her head. "Hey," he said, "why don't you come up here?"

  She raised her head, releasing him from the warmth of her mouth, and smiled at him. "Aw, you don't like it?"

  "Up, woman. You. Up here." He pointed at her face, then at his own.

  She laughed at him, and did an exaggerated climb up his form, as if she were scaling a tree. When she reached his face, she kissed him, and sprawled on top of him limply. She faked a sob and then said in a whine, "I work so hard, and you don't like it. What's wrong with me? I should have stayed in the hinterlands!"

  "It's not you," he said, his voice serious.

  She dropped the whine. "I know. It's okay, love. Really. Here, let's try this." She reached down and touched him with her hand, guiding him to her. He found the portal, thrust slightly, and became joined to her, a timeless journey that took only a second. Oh, yes!

  She began to rock, crooning deep in her throat, and the pressure in his groin grew, until he thought he would explode. He waited for her, listening to the wordless tune grow more frantic, hearing her breathing turn ragged, feeling her tension increase. When she started to chant, "oh, oh, oh, oh—" he relaxed his control.

  She began to shudder, her tight and silken muscles clamping and releasing rhythmically, stroking him in waves, calling to his very being.

  He sought her depths, yearning to touch the core of her. His groan was contrapuntal to her chant, until she smothered his lips under hers, thrusting her tongue deeply into his mouth, a small balance for his body within hers. They drove into each other, seeking oneness. Then, for the briefest of moments, they found it.