The Kapellmeister said, “What are you laughing about, Gaetan du Cheyne?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
o0o
Later, inside the mansion, van Rijn and I sat together in Pasardeng’s drawing room, a big, plush, book-lined room like some old Victorian library, waiting while his people brought in trays of finger food, fine terragenic vegetables, little pots of mayonnaise and sour cream-based dipping sauces, filled icy glasses with some pale, aromatic liquor I couldn’t identify by smell alone.
Pasardeng said, “Ah! Here’s my little Reiko now!”
I turned, expecting a woman, maybe a little girl, translator AI whispering a reminder that rei-ko meant “polite child” in Japanese, a very popular female name among the American colonials who’d built this world.
Yes, and you already told me that Pasardeng was a Filipino name, though this blond, blue-eyed Viking who calls himself after the warrior Tamerlane is hardly... I was jolted by the sight of a little dollie, dressed in a French maid’s apron and cap, creeping into the room bearing a tray full of little square whitebread sandwiches.
Pasardeng kneeled and took it from the thing, set it aside on the table, beaming, “There! There! Good dollie, Reiko!” He ruffled its scalp fur, gave it a little squeeze... Reiko seemed to preen and scamper a bit, tiny feet twinkling on the thick shag carpet, smoothing its apron and batting its eyelids at him.
He gave the dollie a sandwich, watched as it ate the thing oh-so-daintily, never taking its eyes off his, then turned and scampered from the room. “Van Rijn, if these new dollies of yours are half the quality of that one, we won’t know what to do with all the money we’ll make!”
“They’re better. Fresh as the day they were captured. And I’ll think of something...” He took a deep draught from his glass. Smacked his lips. “Ahhh! This is excellent akvavit, Pasardeng!”
“Brought it with me from Earth, bought from a private warehouse in Kiev.” He drank from his own. “You know, if I go again, I’ll have to take Reiko with me. Dollies positively thrive on Earth, and when they’re happy, truly happy...” His eyes sparkled as he kissed his fingertips like some fat whoremaster in an old French comedy.
I said, “You’ve been to Earth, Mr. Pasardeng?”
He seemed to see me for the first time. “Yes. I had my education at École Sankt’Pyotrsburgh. My family have been going there since the twenty-second century, since before we emigrated from poor, old America.”
“And you took dollies with you?”
“Of course. Never go anywhere without at least one.”
Meaning...
The library said, Even if the dollies were still confined to Green Heaven, it seems unlikely that information about them would not be contained in the Trade Regency’s restricted archives.
Pasardeng was looking at me suspiciously. “What are you getting at, Mr. du Cheyne? Don’t you like my dollies?”
I looked away for a second, then said, “I like them very much.”
He snickered, and said, “Never met a man, who didn’t. Come on, let’s eat this fine little meal before it gets stale!”
o0o
Later, I followed Pasardeng down a long, dimly red-lit corridor, illumination the same quality as the engineering lights that you find installed in the accessible spaces of many older spacecraft designs, feet scuffing on a carpet so thick it interfered with walking, listening to him go on and on about how much he was enjoying my visit, listening to a soft voice in my head.
Gaetan?
Not the ship, no, nor library, spacesuit...
A whisper with the distinct tonal quality of the Kapellmeister’s generated voice, voice from a little black box whose existence I’d started to forget about, voice having come to seem like the Kapellmeister’s natural voice, as if he had little lips somewhere, maybe part of the same organ he used to suck his dinner’s blood...
Imagination running riot.
Gaetan, I’ve made a link through the Epipromethean comsat system so I can stay in touch with you through the ship.
I stumbled slightly, Pasardeng catching me by the arm while continuing to talk. Thought, Where? The Kapellmeister had insisted on staying aboard the ship, even though van Rijn was quite sure our host would know all about Salierans and their place in the universe, would be glad to...
Imagination running riot.
The Kapellmeister whispered, I’m going on a little excursion now. I thought you’d want to know.
I pictured the Kapellmeister wandering naked around the nearly uninhabitable mountainscape of Epimetheus, wondered just how much it could adapt to, sans anything that even vaguely resembled an external technology. Just that black box.
Library: The Kapellmeister has been telling us something about the engineering systems embedded in its cellular structure. It’s quite astonishing what a billion years of technical culture can achieve.
What does it take to astonish an artificial intelligence? I thought, Why? Where are you going?
I have a few things I need to do on this world. I just didn’t want you to worry. I’ll be in touch if anything goes wrong, and I’ll be back before morning. We can talk about it then, if you wish.
Now, we stopped in front of a door, just like the one around the corner where we’d left van Rijn. Van Rijn frowning for a moment and staring at Pasardeng, just before the door slid open, taking him in, then closing in our faces. “Here we are then, Mr. du Cheyne. I hope you’ll be comfortable, sir, and in the morning we’ll see what we can do about your little... problem.”
“Um. Thanks.” I tried to think of something charming. Finally just turned and stepped toward the door, which opened to let me in.
Slightly brighter light in the room, coming from a bedside lamp that glowed with a pastel orange hue distinct enough my eyes couldn’t quite mask it out. Room more opulent, if that’s the right word, than anything I’d ever seen before, which isn’t saying much. Antique bed. Wooden dresser with deeply sculpted, absurdly fancy scrollwork, big glass mirror...
Hell. When I merely served in durance sublime at Stardock, I was in the top twenty percent of the Solar economy. Don’t know if anyone on Earth lives like this. Probably the superrich, about whose lives we can know nothing.
Funny. I haven’t taken a good look at myself in a long time... man in rough Greenie bush clothing looking back at me, seemingly unchanged. Maybe a little thinner, something like dark circles under his eyes. No furrows on the brow, though. Nothing untoward about the set of the mouth. Just like old times, I...
Slight start when I realized something else was looking back at me from the mirror.
Christ. I turned toward the chair in the corner, where a little dollie crouched, watching me in silence. Waiting, I guess, for me to... do something. I felt myself go tense inside, had a momentary memory of the way Pasardeng had smiled as he saw me to my room, wishing me a comfortable night. Shit.
The dollie got out of the chair, unwinding to its little height with a sinuous, sensuous movement, padding over to me, walking with a gait I’d never seen one of them use before, a little sway, a subtle movement of the hips. Easily trained. Willing to... do whatever was necessary. Pre-conditioned for their new job by evolution, by selective breeding, by wolfen biological culture... dollies worth a lot of money in the human universe.
The dollie came up to me, stood there, looking up at me, looking into my eyes, just the way, I suppose, it’d been taught. Finally, it reached out and put its hand flat on my belly, moved it up and down slightly, as if feeling my muscles tense. Is that a smile? No. No structures on a dollie’s face that would let it make anything like a human smile.
I whispered, “Don’t suppose they’ve taught you to talk...”
Nothing. Not even dollie words. Dollie’s mottled eyes on mine, hand still on me, fingers curled now, just above my belt buckle.
I thought, Translator.
Silence in my head, then, I’m sorry Gaetan. The pod software is... unavailable.
Then more silen
ce. I think I was waiting for the AIs to start telling me to run. Get out of the room, Gaetan. Find Pasardeng. Tell him to take the dollie away. Nothing. Maybe they remembered what I’d done the other night aboard the ship. Maybe the trusted me now. Trusted me to be... what? Something other than human? They didn’t say.
Finally, I turned away, pushing the dollie’s hand off me, acutely conscious of what was happening in my bloodstream, trying to pretend it was nothing. If you’ve got any strength at all, you must have infinite strength. That’s it. That’s the way it has to be.
When I turned down the quilt, the dollie jumped into the bed and curled up on the pillows, looking back at me expectantly, imbued with some impossible combination of qualities, girl, kitten, puppy, all of them eager for my attention.
“Come on.” I reached out and took it by the hand, led it back over to the chair in the corner and patted the cushion. “Here. This’ll do just fine... whatever they call you.”
The dollie stood looking at me for a second, facial expression as unreadable as ever, body language neutral. Hell, this situation’s probably just outside its training. It hopped into the chair and curled up again, waiting. I turned away, went back over to the other side of the bed, and started getting undressed, while the dollie watched. Slight crawl of uneasiness, something vaguely like embarrassment. Maybe I should turn out the light?
The library whispered, It’s almost certain they can see well in the dark, far better than humans.
I remembered the dimly lit cabin aboard Random Walk. I finished getting undressed, trying to ignore its eyes, the way it perked up when I took off my pants and it saw my erect penis. Jesus. I got in the bed, turned out the light, pulled the sheets up to my chin, and lay there in the dark, listening to my heart pound in my ears.
None of this is your fault, Gaetan. None of this is its fault, either. So who the hell do I blame? Mother fucking Nature?
Soft whisper in the darkness, dollie getting out of its chair and padding softly across the carpeted floor. Slight creak of springs, slight movement as it got up onto the bed, crawled across the covers and sat there, looking down into my face.
Looking for what? No way for me to know, just now.
The library whispered, It’s not just conditioning, Gaetan. Dollies are evolved to include sex with another species as part of their reproductive cycle. It may very well be that the chance biochemical interaction that works so well on the human male hormonal cycle has some effect in the other direction.
Right. It’s certain I’m not going to be able to forget the way my prick is making a little tent in the middle of the bed just now. I thought, You think my smell is making this dollie horny?
It’s unlikely that it’s... exactly the same, Gaetan. More likely, you make it think about the eggs it will now never produce.
It seemed like the stupidest idea I’d ever heard.
I don’t think I need any more excuses right now, thank you.
Silence.
The dollie uncoiled from its sitting position, came up onto the pillows and slid under the covers with me. Lay quietly while I sighed uselessly to myself and tried to work up the will to kick it out of the bed again. Hell, maybe it’ll just go to sleep now and...
Its hand stole up onto my belly, then moved directly down across my abdomen, made a beeline for my dick, curling it’s little fingers into just the right shape, moving up and down with practiced precision and...
“God damn it!” I grabbed its hand, shoved it away.
Dark shadow of the dollie, dark eyes in deep black wells, probably looking at me now. Maybe bewildered, maybe...
Why the hell am I imagining I’ve just hurt this damned thing’s feelings? I turned away, dragging the covers around myself, looking away, at the dim reflections in the mirror. Windows covered with curtains. Light coming in, sneaking round their edges, light from the faraway stars. Maybe it’s bright outside right now, Prometheus huge, brilliant, high in the sky like some impossible moon. I’d like to see that. I...
Dollie’s hand, soft and gentle on my back, insistent.
So where are you now, AIs mine? Why aren’t you telling me to run?
Long silence, then the spacesuit whispered, Times change, and we are changed within them.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
No answer.
The dollie’s hand stole around my side and took hold of my dick once again, started sliding up and down with impeccable grace, the work of a well-trained professional. I lay there, frozen, emptied of all thought, waiting for... something to rise up, something other than the demon that had owned my soul since childhood’s end.
You’ve changed, I told myself. Truly changed. It’s not like that any more.
But... the dollie’s hand.
Nothing.
As if the thing I called me had crawled away, crawled away into some dark corner and pulled the covers over its head, riding out the storm, just like old times.
When I rolled over, the dollie made a soft sound, almost like a purr, sweet breath washing over my face.
I pushed it over onto its back, crawled on top, shoved myself into a warm, wet space better than any woman I’d ever known. I can’t even remember Camilla Seldane anymore. As for the rest them, from Garstang on back to...
When my orgasm let go, I felt the dollie’s inner muscles clench hard, dollie whispering something in my ear, incomprehensible dollie words, telling me secrets I couldn’t understand.
I separated tackily from this thing that had bedeviled me anew, inner demon laughing, letting me know that, however far I might run, I could never hide, not even for a little while. Lay on my back, alone in the darkness, feeling my wet prick subside at last, waiting for the recriminations to start flooding out of wherever they’d been hiding.
The dollie stirred softly. Put its head on my shoulder. Nuzzled the side of my face gently, one hand resting delicately, right in the middle of my chest. Whispered once more in my ear, and seemed to compose itself for sleep.
My God.
Nineteen: Late the next day, Prometheus
Late the next day, Prometheus hung in a pale lavender sky, a dim, gray-brown sliver you’d only notice if you were looking for it. Standing at the foot of Random Walk’s gangway, Timur-Lengk Pasardeng wrung my hand in both of his. “I sure wish you could stay a while longer, Mr. du Cheyne. We just don’t get much decent company way the hell out here in the boonies!”
Like Epimetheus was just a place, some mountain hideaway on Earth, rather than a whole world. Like there was nobody at all living up there on Prometheus. Maybe not. Maybe he doesn’t think of them as people. People, after all, have real money. Money for a mansion full of dollies; money for a starship all their own.
I said, “It’s been... interesting, Mr. Pasardeng.”
He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, skin around his eyes crinkling, grinning a man-to-man grin. “I sure as hell don’t know what you did to Hiroko! Never saw a dollie try to follow a guest out the door like that before...”
The translator whispered, Hiroi plus ko. Spacious child.
I shrugged. Stood staring at him.
Blank look, then, “Oh! Right. I almost forgot.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and held it out to me, palm up, smiling, waiting for me to take the bit of gold-colored plastic he offered. “They tell me it’ll fit into the dongle socket in your control panel. Whatever the hell that means.”
At Earth and Kent, Arous too, I guess, an IFF transponder would be looking for the signal from a licensing dongle, without which, I’d be arrested, at best. “Well. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Hell, van Rijn told me that little thing didn’t cost a tenth as much as he was expecting. You gave him a bargain-basement price, boy!”
And I’m certain he made sure to let you know, so I’d be certain to find out. I said, “Ah. Well. It’s been nice meeting you, Mr. Pasardeng.”
“Sure. I...”
I turned away, started up the stairs.
; “Hey!”
When I got inside the lock, I didn’t look back, just told the ship’s operating system to raise the gangway and start preflighting the engines. From the control room I could look outside, where Timur-Lengk Pasardeng was hurrying away, trailed by his men.
“Gaetan?” The Kapellmeister, already perched in the flight engineer’s chair, was ready, apparently, to go.
“You get your business finished?”
The float of its eyes told me it had, and maybe a little bit more. Something nervous about those eyes. Something has changed.
“You want to tell me about it?”
It said, “I made a visit to the Salieran agent in this star system.”
“A... human?” I couldn’t imagine a Kapellmeister wandering around a relatively closed society like this unnoticed, or able to accomplish much of anything if it did.
“No. There is an Arousian consulate here, associated with the MEI trade legation. We sometimes work with them.”
“So?”
“There was a visit here, some weeks ago, by the Trade Regency’s FTL starship, the same one that later dropped by Green Heaven. I’d previously received a call about this from a... friend back home.”
I wondered if it could read the look on my face then, see my realization that it’d asked to come with me merely as a pretext. So much for the pleasure of my company.
It said, “Gaetan, the ship was carrying representatives of ERSIE, come to hold a meeting with large shareholders, here on Epimetheus. There were other Trade Regency officials at the meeting and... apparently, a move is afoot that will most likely strip B-VEI of its patents.”
Well. So much for political victories and legalisms. So much for rule of law.
The Kapellmeister said, “This will add urgency to the Interventionists’ cause, back on Salieri. My friend was quite concerned. What is your phrase? The balloon may go up sooner than we think.”
Do you really care about this, friend Kapellmeister? I wonder why.
It said, “Gaetan, I need to drop by Snow. Can we go there now?”
The navigation subsystem whispered, 22.91 light years from 40 Eridani to Groombridge 1618.
Acts of Conscience Page 36