No doubt, Cama was in Moro now.
Moro gave him a tiny triumphant smile and gathered Val close in a careful hug. Val cried again and didn’t care. He couldn’t even wail against the unfairness of finding Moro and losing him on the same night. He drew a little strength from the man’s forgiveness and determination.
A change in the news channel’s tone made them both look up.
“Oh Cama, not again!” Val growled as the scene showed a dozen news crews outside Vaclav 17. He grabbed for the remote.
Moro got it first and turned up the volume. “In a stunning development earlier this evening, the multitrillionaire director of Rio Sardis made an announcement concerning the disappearance of the bonded gladiator stagenamed the Diamond. Stand by as we go to a closer feed.”
Val stared, feeling Moro’s embrace turn hard and fierce.
SARDIS, THE RECLUSIVE head of one of the League’s biggest corporations, patted his handsome face with a white tissue and addressed the jutting forest of audio pickups.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I’ve called you here to set right the honor and dignity of a young man I knew as Moro Dalgleish. I met and fell in love with him almost nine years ago. He was an ordinary man from an ordinary colony but blessed with incredible potential. This is the Moro I knew.”
A video insert appeared on the screen, showing a much younger Moro with a mop of wavy black hair, simple clothes, and a bulky armful of holo readers and antique paper books. He leaned against a battered wooden table in a room lined with bookshelves. He gave the unsteady recorder a teasing grin and wink before the insert flickered back to a close-up of Sardis.
The director continued, tears brightening his eyes. “We were lovers for a year. He’d finally agreed to marry me. Then he was kidnapped by terrorist factions hoping to depose me from Rio Sardis. I paid a large ransom. In return, I was given a holo showing my Moro gunned down by the faction thugs. Body parts followed, delivered by unknown couriers. I grieved, swore vengeance, and sought solace in my business dealings. But recent information has proved the remains I buried were cloned tissue. Moro had been sold into bondslavery instead. Sold, brainwashed, his speech centers maimed, and his body forced into degrading entertainments as a common arena fighter and whore.”
Sardis’s voice was a whip crack of fury and loss. “I tracked him here, tonight, but I was too late to prevent his kidnappers from spiriting him away again. The man who allegedly owned him, a minor business partner of mine, has committed suicide rather than reveal his involvement in this despicable plot. I am asking the good citizens of Cedar-Saba to keep watch for Moro and contact the police with any sightings. I know my beloved is alive, scared, on the run or captured, and probably believing the lies his captors have surely told him about me. But I know he can be healed. I still love him, and I still want to marry him and make him heir to my holdings in Rio Sardis. I am offering a reward of fifty million credits to any person who can lead me to him.”
VAL PRIED THE remote from Moro’s grip and turned off the wall screen. Moro sagged as he released Val and slumped on the bed. He stared at nothing, his hands motionless in his lap.
Val sighed, weighing options and discarding most of them in an instant. “This wasn’t simple to start with,” he said. “It just got a little trickier. Fifty million is a lot for anyone to walk away from. We’re going to have to be more careful getting up to the embassy. If you survive Cama, I need to make sure you have the whole Commonwealth on your side.”
Moro looked up.
Val saw the fight-or-flight reflexes harden the dying man’s face. “I’m not letting you hide and die in this hole. I’m not turning you in, either,” Val said.
Moro tried to speak, but a racking cough stole what was left of his voice.
Val put a fresh water bottle in Moro’s hands. Then he sat calmly beside Moro and picked up the remains of his shredded coat. He ripped long ribbons of the amber silk lining. “Sardis is a complete liar,” he hissed, uncomfortably aware his new grin verged on a possessive snarl.
After a long drink Moro croaked, “Y-y-you b-believe me?”
“What, I’m not betraying your trust for fifty million credits? I think my family has that in pocket change, or damned near. I’m fairly certain those tears were a glycerine solution. Too sluggish for real tears or saline drops. And anyway, I’ve seen and heard the real video. You withstood Kott, but you lost all control when he talked about Sardis. I know terror when I see it. Sardis is the one you’re running from, right?”
“Y-yes.”
Val divided up the ribbons and reached for a plastic comb in one coat pocket. “Well, then, he can’t touch you now. Hold still, Moro. I need to comb your hair. If you have an intact body by the time we land again, I want my people to know who you are to me. And we’ll need a safe word in case the worst happens and we get separated.”
MORO COULDN’T COMBINE the concepts of “safe word” and “Val” in the same thought. Not as Moro knew safe words. Not that anyone had ever allowed him such grace!
Blushing again, Val shook his head. “For rough sex? Maybe later. No, we need a private code so we’ll know which messages are ours. My word for you is Knifehound,” he whispered into Moro’s ear.
Moro shivered. “Ow-ow-owl b-b-boy,” he stammered out.
“‘Owl-boy’?” Val repeated, grinning.
“F-for y-y-your eyes.”
Val kissed him again, and the world went away for a glorious minute or two.
Afterward, Moro let Val neatly and quickly comb out the worst tangles. Val brought up matched sections of black hair on either side and twisted them together on top of Moro’s head. He tied them off in a gathered crest exposing Moro’s face and damaged ears. The crest spilled down his back in a single segmented tail.
“Wh-why this?” Moro gestured at his hair.
VAL HAD SEEN the ancient hairstyle on formal occasions and in wedding pictures of his parents. Of all the daydreams he’d had about this exact moment, none matched the absurd, poignant reality. He regretted his own pale-gold hair was too short for a dignified matching display.
“Wh-why this?” Moro asked
“A pledge from me to you, which any Camalian will understand,” said Val. He tapped the remote, turning the wall screen into a huge mirror. As Moro stared at himself, Val slipped off the bed and knelt before him. “My name is Valier Antonin ne’Cama. Doesn’t mean much to you, now, but it’s important. I’ve given you a betrothal crest, tied in my family’s color. I can’t really ask you yet. You’re not Camalian. But if you were, would you marry me?”
“T-t-to p-protect me?”
“Yes. If you live, Sardis can’t touch you ever again. But it’s not just about that. Or my idiotic obsessions.” Val nodded toward the bed. “I told you. Whoever you really are, I want you in my life. My Moro.”
Moro’s sad smile made Val’s breath catch. Long, strong arms scooped Val up into another crushing embrace. “Y-y-yes,” Moro whispered.
“Good,” Val answered into Moro’s clammy neck. “Now, let’s go start a war with Rio Sardis.”
Twenty-Two
ELSEWHERE IN CEDAR-SABA, Dennis Vance snagged a bottle of beer from a tray and waved away an attendant. He walked through the club’s crowded tables toward the back booths.
He owned the place. Made sure it was clean of homosexual filth, catering to human customers only, and specializing in sentimental Old Earth songs and cuisine. A curvaceous female singer in a silvery, sequined gown stood onstage, her blonde hair glowing in a spotlight as she crooned an ancient torch song suitable for the late, intimate hour.
Reaching the last booth, Vance ducked in and closed the curtains behind him. The club noises cut off as the security field activated. “Good show tonight,” said Vance.
The round-faced man looked up from his martini. “I try. Do you think these sheep ever really listen?”
“Enough will, when the time comes,” said Vance. “I have bad news. About our mutually beneficial opportunity thi
s evening? It’s gone south.”
“How far south?” asked Mark David Moore, squeezing a little hard on the hand-blown martini glass.
“All the way to Vaclav Sector.” Vance sat opposite his guest. “My associates followed the Camalian boy. The last message I had, they’d tracked him through one of Vaclav’s industrial buildings to the roof. They were going to brain him and send him over the edge. But either the kid or somebody else got them first. Cops have been asking around. My men were found splattered below the artery, wearing only their skivvies.”
“And our insufferable Camel-demon aristo?” Moore’s face flushed red.
Vance glared at his beer. “Vanished. We’ll pick up his trail again. It’s a good idea you had. We’ll still find an embarrassing way to off him. Make the Camels run for their sins.”
“They’re already running,” said a now-grinning Moore. “A little bird in Cedar’s Transportation Bureau told me they’ve been tracking Camels all evening. All heading to the embassy. Maybe my last few Timely Warnings got to them.” Then the talk show host stopped playing with his glass, leaning forward. “Dennis, you know my part in this must not be traced? I can hint, inflame, and argue all I want, but I can’t actually come out and tell decent humans to ‘Go kill those plague-ridden bastards before they take over the League!’”
Vance nodded. “Don’t worry. There’s a nice big Channel 15 office full of lawyers and publicists between you and the people who listen to you. So your public gets a little wild? It's not your fault if they blow off steam.”
“Still,” said Moore. “It could be a good thing the Camels will all be in one place in a few hours.”
Vance looked thoughtful. “Do we know anybody in Public Works who can get underneath the embassy? I still know the guy at the Siwana Space Museum.”
Moore was silent for almost a minute. “Yes. Maybe.” Then he sat up straighter. “You mentioned Vaclav? Didn’t you have a grudge against a pimp down there, Michael Something?”
“Michol Kott. The off-worlder. One of his bonder whores killed my oldest grandson. And because it was an arena fight with signed waivers, I can’t prosecute or sue.”
“I heard about it. Karl Vance, was it? The one you were going to disown because he was a pervert?”
“He was trying to get better. Going to therapy,” said Dennis. “Taking medication, even. Then he went to a party where Kott dangled the Diamond like bait in front of Karl and the other lads. Karl put his name on the roster without telling anyone. He showed the Diamond how a red-blooded free human fights! Then the Diamond murdered him a month later. Kott and his pet are on my list too,” he finished.
“The police didn’t tell you. Kott killed himself a few hours ago,” said Moore. “And turns out the Diamond was some kidnapped bed toy owned by none other than Lyton Sardis.”
Dennis Vance nearly spilled his beer. “Sardis? With a man? Isn’t he Terra Prima?”
“In public, no. His ex-wife is.” Moore’s voice lowered. “I’ve had hints Sardis is a real patriot, though, no matter his private perversions. He’s playing a long, long game. If he needs the Diamond for something, sex is the least of it, and the whore’s off-limits to the likes of us.”
Vance laughed. “If Sardis owns the Diamond, then my Karl will get his vengeance and then some!”
Twenty-Three
THE SECURITY ROOM commandeered by Rio Sardis was empty of all but two people watching the spectacle outside on monitor screens: Terise Volker, and a tall man who had her eyes and chin. She said, “Vilam, please get me the—”
“Bill,” he said, with a familiarity of a long-running debate. To annoy or disarm people, he went most often by an antique nickname.
“Vilam. The updated traffic data, if you please?”
He gave her a discreet little black tablet, its screen crawling with a complex map of central Saba’s ground and aerial arteries.
Satisfied there were no recording devices active inside the room, Vilam Volker Sardis leaned down and whispered, “So. I see how this little drama will play out. I’m the dutiful errand boy. You’re the procuress. And Father will marry Moro and make him heir to a controlling share of Rio Sardis. Have you told your Terra Prima knitting club why they shouldn’t disown us for this?”
“Vilam,” muttered Terise Volker, not looking away from her screen, “you are my heir. Be very thankful Lyton didn’t make you his heir too.”
The only born offspring of Lyton Sardis was a few inches shorter than his father, mingling both parents’ good looks in a toned body, tanned skin, and gray-streaked brown hair slightly longer than his mother’s. At an unaugmented forty, he appeared older than Lyton.
“Just like the ‘long-lost sons’ he pulls out of remote orphanages or uncaring families the moment they turn eighteen?” Bill asked. “Those poor boys dazzled by wealth and power? They don’t even know they’re clones. I met the last one before I knew what was really happening. He wanted so much to be my little brother, he actually cried when I welcomed him to the family. He hugged me! I never saw him again. Disgusting business.”
“It’s business,” Terise said. “The foster families and orphanages are well compensated for their service and silence. The clones have decent lives before they’re harvested.”
“Moro isn’t business,” Bill growled. “I’ve seen Father get hard just thinking about him. What I cannot figure out is, why the hell you two sent your precious catamite off to that old baboon Kott in the first place? If Moro’s so valuable, why not keep him under leash with you?”
“Moro’s body required martial-arts training. We needed to reinforce his sexual submissiveness, increase his pain threshold, and lessen his psyche’s connection to his body. Repeated trauma often leads to dissociative disorders, so the arena lifestyle fit our goals. Lyton also thought the contrast would help. After a few years with Michol Kott, perhaps Moro would be more tractable in a kinder setting.”
“For what? The sex?” Bill laughed. “I’ve had him. A nice body and a hot mouth are hardly worth an empire.”
Terise slapped him. “Vilam! Bad enough Lyton has these base desires. I didn’t raise you to admit them in yourself!”
“I don’t just admit them. I happily wallow in them when I get the chance. Father gave him to me, once. And watched. You didn’t raise me,” said Bill, stepping away. “You were too busy with medical conferences and Terra Prima. A host of robots and scared nannies raised me.” He broke off at something in his mother’s expression. “Wait. It’s years before Father needs a new clone. He’s not planning on Moro as a replacement body, is he?”
At her silence, Bill shook his head. “It can’t work. Forcing one brain pattern and personality into a neural network not genetically related. Even with clones, the process is dangerous.”
Terise smiled, her hand creeping up to touch a simple golden circle on a thin chain around her neck. The Terra Prima symbol was too small to be a finger ring. “The possibility existed. We have been researching it for years. We have found a solution. It might save all of humanity and give us a fighting edge against the Sonta.”
“Through a painted gladiator stolen off a strip-mined frontier world? Why is he so damned special?”
“Moro Dalgleish is a key from God, fallen into our hands,” said Terise.
“You’re both insane. This company is thousands of years old, and you’d both happily destroy its resources for a phantom myth and a war that isn’t going to happen.”
“Vilam,” said Terise, “Lyton is a visionary. A genius. He may not think he’s doing God’s work, but he is. So I grant him allowances that haunt my soul, even now.”
“Really? I didn’t know you had one.”
Terise’s fingers gripped the frail chain around her neck. “Vilam, I’ve warned you about indulging the shameful traits you share with Lyton. God will call him to account, no doubt, and me. But you should be more careful of your own soul’s purity. When Lyton let you play with Moro, was it before or after the last time I upgraded the limiters
?”
Bill thought back. “Why? What difference was there?”
“The old limiters simply overloaded the boy’s nerves and muscles. Clumsy but effective. They allowed me to activate his pleasure centers against his will. But the newest conditioners permit dedicated remote access to motor control. It was a necessary phase in testing our theories about personality transfer. Only Lyton has that biometrically coded access, Vilam.”
Bill stared at her, implications swarming over memories in his agile mind.
He remembered staring into wide black eyes half-closed in desire. Black hair tangled on platinum-gray silk sheets. Pale skin sheened with sweat. Moro’s silent, stunning body had been almost virginally awkward as he fulfilled the younger Sardis’s previously unfocused longings for a male mouth and male flesh. The bonder had been a gift from Bill’s father, who sat in a deep armchair not ten feet away. Watching. Lyton Sardis had been fully clothed, inert and passionless, only a faint, triumphant smile on his lips.
“Oh God. It wasn’t Moro?” Bill whispered. He’d put down Moro’s silence and slightly clumsy responses to Lyton’s drugs or to exquisite training. Bill had been charmed enough to grapple with the gorgeous bonder once more that evening. And to submit himself, sobbing out his rough pleasure as Moro fucked him against the wall.
“Likely not,” agreed Terise. “Be very thankful you are not Lyton’s heir.”
The door opened on an angry Lyton Sardis.
“Call our lawyers and have them take down Channel 98. With extreme prejudice,” snarled Lyton as he slammed the door behind him. “And a bitch named Deljou Shannon. Someone’s stirring up old trouble about Ventana.”
“Yes, Sero Sardis,” said Bill, retreating to professionalism. He hoped his face wasn’t alternating between red shame and white fury, or that Lyton couldn’t guess the stunned thoughts rattling through Bill’s mind: My father had sex with me via a controlled body. Was I just another systems test? Or a conquest?
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