Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  “It’s not your brain.”

  She shrugged, and the petals of black leather she’d been wearing were suddenly watercolor silk. I blinked, wondered what she was really wearing.… The image I was trying not to form inside my head formed anyway, and leaked. More tittering laughter. Argentyne smiled. “Fairly accurate,” she said.

  Daric’s frown came back, but he only kissed the back of her neck, and said, “Argentyne, Jiro would like to dance with you, but he doesn’t know how to ask.”

  She turned away, looking toward Jiro. “Delighted.” She pushed to her feet in a wash of liquid color, and took Jiro’s hand. Jiro scrambled up, speechless, and followed her away toward the dance floor. I watched her go, watching her tight dancer’s muscles flow beneath the silk until she disappeared into the crowd. I left a strand of thought tied to her mind even after I lost sight of her.

  As I looked back, across the table from me the Eater stuck his finger down his throat, and puked into the bucket waiting beside him on the floor. When he was finished he began to eat again. More bodies slid into the empty spaces beside Daric, like sand funneling into a pit. I turned to look at the grotesque who was shoving in beside me. The wall of his chest had been replaced with a transparent synthetic. Blood pulsed though veins, wet purple and gray organs churned, muscles slid and contracted. He stared back at me, just as curious.

  Something warm and wet circled my ear, probed inside it. I jerked around, startled. The woman with the long, slitted tongue was back, kneeling behind me. The tongue that had just been in my ear licked her lips again, left them wet and glistening, as her hands slid down across my shoulders, massaging my chest. Her eyes were a golden yellow; her pupils were long slits, like mine should have been. But hers had been engineered to look that way, the way mine had been engineered to look human.

  The thin film of scales on her skin caught the light, gleaming like a sheen of sweat. I reached up, touching her face. The scales felt warm and dry, softer than I’d imagined. Her lips were very soft, opening as I rose up on my knees to kiss them. Her tongue slid into my mouth, as casually as if it belonged there; stayed there, investigating every corner, while our kiss went on and on, and a hot throbbing pressure grew between my legs. I heard a whimper, a stifled groan, from somewhere around the table.

  I tried to break off the kiss, looking back at Daric. I caught an unfocused flash of his knowing smile, someone else behind him, arms circling his waist … And then the woman’s hands were drawing me back and around and down into the cushions beside her. Long deft fingers slid down the seal on my shirt, pulled it open, raked my skin with sharp nails and left me burning. I reached up, cupping her breasts with my hands through the gaps in her slitted ivory gown. She squirmed and sighed, with my pleasure and hers, lowering herself until my lips could reach her. I covered one of her nipples with my mouth.

  Sounds and movement were all around me now, as the others at the table began to melt and flow together in my heat, their heat radiating back along the sizzling filaments of contact into my brain, until it was all one molten sea, and I was sinking into it, “… don’t … stop .…” Begging to drown.

  Someone else’s hands seemed to be pulling at me, hands everywhere, peeling off my shirt, sliding over my skin … unfastening my pants, setting the hard rod of my erection free, to giggles and moans of delight. The scaled woman’s tongue was back inside my mouth now, going deeper. Something sweet and sticky was trickling from a pitcher onto my belly … someone was licking it off.…

  Daric was beside me, smiling, his breath coming in shallow gasps as he lifted my hand. He sucked on my fingers, one by one—sank his teeth into the flesh between my thumb and forefinger until he tasted my blood. I screamed and jerked, screams echoing around me as he gasped and let go, falling back with my pain inside his head. He crawled forward again and dumped a freezing cold drink onto my naked skin. Gasped with my pain again, and laughed—

  I struggled to sit up but the hands weighed me down, the mouths, the bodies … soothing, stroking, caressing, probing. Until my bones were rubber and my mind flowed into the drowning pool again, helplessly willing.

  Something warm and shapeless flopped onto my chest. I lifted my head, saw the suckworm lying there in an oozing pool of syrup. Panting, I watched it squirm along my belly to the music of their laughter … waiting for it, helpless with their hunger, burning with their need, screaming inside. Their hands held me down with silken cords of muscle and flesh, as they drank in the sweet juice of my yearning, the vinegar of my disgust.…

  “Jeezu!” Argentyne’s face swam into sight above me. “What the hell are you doing—?” Staring down at us, her eyes widening enough to take it all in. I had a sudden strobe flash of what it looked like from where she stood, driven into my brain by the force of her incredulity disgust *arousal* anger *arousal* disbelief *arousal* disgust—

  I tried to struggle, tried to hold onto her anger, to push free of the soft, yielding heaviness that was suffocating my will like a pillow of flesh … couldn’t.

  “Argentyne, come on—” Daric crawled on his knees to her, his own clothes hanging open. He reached out for her, pulling himself up her body. “Come and feel the real thing.…”

  Argentyne punched him hard in the gut, doubling him over. She began to turn away, and I grimaced as I saw Jiro’s face behind her. She blinded Jiro with a sudden slap. “You keep your face out of this! Stay there.” She turned back, stepping over Daric’s head, shoving half naked bodies out of her way as she leaned down and picked the worm off of my belly. She hurled it away. “This is my club, I put on the floor shows here. Get your clothes on and get out, you shiteaters.” She kicked a few more bodies; their pain went off in my head like explosives in a sea of mud. I groaned and rolled over as everything imploded; burying my hard-on in the pillows.

  “You—” Her hand caught my shoulder, wrenching me back into the light again. “Put your fucking pants on, you mindraper. Take your freakshow someplace else.”

  I struggled with my pants, struggled with my brain, my thoughts still running out of me like diarrhea. “I can’t.…”

  “Like hell.” She fastened my pants for me, making me gasp; picked up my shirt and threw it in my face.

  I couldn’t sit up. I managed to get over onto my hands and knees. All I could feel now was her, no room left in my mind for any thought, any choice, any decision of my own. “I can’t … help it,” shaking my head. It didn’t do any good.

  She was standing over me, staring down at my back. I felt her eyes catch on something, felt the giddy change of direction as she leaned over to pick it off my neck like a flea. A patch.

  “No, wait—” I put up my hand, but the patch behind my ear was still there. I sat back, making my eyes focus on her while she studied the patch on her fingertip. Her face twisted. She flicked it away. A dose of easy. It took away your inhibitions and your self-control; made it easy to do anything.… I felt the anger drain out of her/me. Not wanting it to go; wanting to be able to feel my own. “All right,” she said gently, “I guess the boy can’t help it, after all.” She reached down, helping me to my feet. “You understand what happened?” she asked me. “Somebody drugged you.” I nodded. “I think you’re going to be ready to kick some ass in a few minutes,” she said. “Or you should be.”

  She let go of me and turned away. Daric was on his feet now too, grimacing. Her knee came up, stopped just short of his crotch. “No,” she said, her voice spiked with spite. “You’d enjoy it too much. You turd. You drugged him, didn’t you? And set him up for this gang-bang—” Her arm swept the circle of chagrined partiers still fumbling their clothes on.

  He shrugged, making odd faces, like a kid caught cheating at Square/Cubes.

  I pulled my shirt on with stiff, clumsy fingers. I couldn’t see my jacket anywhere. I kept my eyes on the floor, because there were so many other eyes looking at me that wouldn’t go away, so many minds.…

  “Come on,” Argentyne said to me. The odd gentleness was back in h
er voice. She took my arm again, making me move forward. I saw Jiro then; he hadn’t kept his back turned for long. I couldn’t make sense out of what flashed into his mind as he looked at me. Maybe he couldn’t, either. I looked down again. Argentyne caught his arm with her other hand, steering us both toward the entrance. “Daric!”

  He followed us through the crowd, across the dance floor, toward the door. He moved slowly but inevitably, as if she held him too, dragging him along on an invisible chain of will.

  My head began to clear out just a little as we left the club. Putting the physical barrier of the walls between me and the eyes and the minds made it easier. I took in long swallows of cold night air, tasting smoke and dankness. The mod that had brought us here came down from wherever it had been waiting overhead, homing in on Daric. It settled onto the street, scattering the ground traffic. The doors popped. I stood staring at it, starting to shiver inside my thin, syrup-soaked shirt. Trying to decide what to do … trying not to wait until somebody else told me.

  Argentyne turned away as Daric came out into the street and the gatekeeper slammed the door behind him. She was back in leather again, this time head to foot, solid and heavy like a trooper. I couldn’t help wondering again what I’d actually feel, if I touched her … see, if I touched her mind.… Desperately I tied up my thoughts, and this time it held. Relief hit me so hard it felt like an electric shock as I realized I was getting some kind of control over the psi again … relief, and disbelief. And then the betrayal and the fury, riding each others’ backs as I turned toward Daric.

  But Argentyne was there first, the mask of control she’d worn inside the club gone, the anger naked on her face. “You bastard,” she said, and the words trembled. “You scumbag, how could you pull a piece of shit like that in my place? How could you do it to me? How could you do it to him—” waving a hand at Jiro, “—or him?” Pointing at me. Jiro stood as silent as stone behind me. People swirled past and around us, making a religion of disinterest. “What makes you do these lousy—” She broke off. There were tears in her eyes. “Why do I let you do it to me.…” Her hands jerked, as if they wanted to beat on him. And trapped behind the transparent window of her anger there was the kind of pain that only grew out of one emotion.…

  Daric stood without resisting, his mind full of the same twisted pain, letting her bury him in garbage, hating/loving it/her/himself.… “I’m sorry,” he said at last, when she’d run out of things to call him, and the energy to spit out the words. “I’m sorry.…” He said it again, as humbly as if she was the taMing, and he was no better than the burnout still face-down in the gutter behind us.

  “Go home. Go back where you belong.” She waved him gone, turning her back on him. “Stop fucking up my life.…” without even the strength left to sound like she meant it. She was facing me again. She pushed her hair back from her eyes, studying me until I had trouble meeting her stare. “You okay?” she said, finally. She was worried about me filing a complaint … she was worried about me.

  I felt the corners of my mouth twitch, like a spasm. “My brains aren’t hanging out any more.… So, yeah.” I shrugged, nodded. “Sex never killed me before. I guess I’ll live.”

  She half smiled. “Forthright,” she said. “You seem to know this territory by heart.” She touched my chest, let her hand drop. “Will you get these lost babes back where they belong? Since you’re the only one who really knows where that is.” She glanced at Daric, Jiro.

  I nodded; felt a smile of my own start, in spite of myself.

  She began to turn away. But it was only her body turning. Her mind stayed behind.… And then suddenly she was facing me again, and her arms were reaching out to pull me against her. She kissed me, long and hard, her nails digging into my back. She let me go and pushed away; stood looking at me again, her open lips smiling, her eyes hot. “Now you know why I had to throw you out of there.” She nodded toward the club, and took a deep breath. “If that helps, remember it.”

  She went to Jiro, kneeled down beside him, gave him a hug. He stayed rigid and silent in her arms. “Oh, baby,” she said, looking away. “Sometimes life’s a bitter drug. If you have to take it, it’s better if you get it from somebody who cares about you.… You dance great. Go on, now.” She nudged him toward the mod. He got in, as numbly obedient as I’d been ten minutes before.

  She passed me again, grazing my thigh with a warm hip; passed Daric, who was looking at her, at me. “It’s your fault,” she said to him. His eyes followed her like a dog. The door to Purgatory swung open as she started down the steps, and slammed shut again behind her.

  I waited while Daric’s eyes tracked back to me. I was ready to smash his face if there’d been anything behind them that even reminded me of laughter. But his mind was the color of the streets, of need and anger and desperation. I turned my back on him too, and got into the mod.

  After a long minute he climbed in, and ordered the mod to take us back uptown. Jiro sat squeezed down into a corner, as far from either of us as he could get. I stared at my feet, not wanting to watch as the mod lifted from the ground. My hand hurt. I looked at it. In the dim light of the street below I could see the black stain of drying blood where Daric’s teeth had gone through my flesh. I focused my mind on stopping the pain, to keep from thinking about how it had gotten that way.

  Daric was looking at the wound too when I glanced up at him, the way a starving man would look at a half-eaten piece of meat. Only it wasn’t causing pain that he still wanted. It was feeling it.… In the moment after Argentyne had left him, there’d been something I could relate to going on inside his brain. It was gone now. “You got any diseases I ought to know about?”

  His mouth twisted. His eyes were empty as he looked away, out the window.

  I sighed, letting my head fall back against the seat.

  “Why did she kiss you like that?” Jiro asked me. His voice was tiny, accusing.

  Me, like she meant it. Me, not Daric. Me, not him … I only shook my head. “Ask Daric.” I lifted my aching hand, pointed it at his stepbrother.

  He didn’t ask. He only squeezed deeper into his corner, trying to get away from the ugliness and confusion in his own head, the images that looking at us only made clearer. And Daric didn’t answer. If he had any regrets about what he’d done to either of us, they hadn’t occurred to him yet.

  I started to reach out to Jiro with my mind, knowing that he needed help, and that no words could help him. But even as I did, I knew I wasn’t up to it. That if I tried to help him now, he’d know it. I pulled back into my own disgust and exhaustion, and left him alone. And suddenly I remembered where we were going to be again in another few minutes. I tried not to wonder who was going to end up getting blamed for everything when we got there.

  THIRTEEN

  I FOLLOWED DARIC back through the halls of the townhouse, feeling like someone who couldn’t wake up from a bad dream. Elnear’s party was still going on, but by now it had shrunk to just one room. Daric ducked in through the first doorway that opened onto light and noise, leaving me behind with Jiro as he lost himself in the crowd. I stared after him, not sure whether relief or envy was winning out in me as I watched him slide back into his other skin with smiling ease. Jiro stood shuffling his feet, not wanting to be left standing beside me, but filled with sudden panic as he thought about facing his family … his stepfather.

  “Go on in,” I said softly. I reached out, put my arm around him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” You didn’t—Repeating the same thing to myself, for the hundredth time.

  He didn’t believe it, any more than I did. He jerked away from my hand and ran into the crowded room without looking back. I stayed where I was, suddenly more afraid of going in than he was, as I remembered what had happened this afternoon. To me it seemed like about a million years ago, by now; but it probably didn’t seem that long to the people in there. I let my mind search the crowd, searching for hypers, or for Elnear. Somehow I had the feeling she’d still be ther
e. She might be a lot of things, but she wasn’t a coward. I wondered what her evening had been like while I was gone; if it had really been as bad as mine, and what that would mean when she saw me again.

  My eyes followed my thoughts restlessly, taking in the scene. The shifting mass of bodies stunned me with its normalness. There were a few exotics, wearing feathers for hair or calico skin, but it could have been makeup, costuming, for all I could tell. There was nobody who looked like they’d be caught dead wearing their guts out in the open. But I could have passed for human.… I could have been in there, having a painless good time, having the best night of my stupid life. I should have been there—

  I wondered what I would have had to say to anybody if I had.… Probably just the wrong thing. I sagged back against the wall again, safe, out of sight, and suddenly too tired to move. Those were the elite of this world and dozens of others, in there—the richest, the most powerful, the most successful. They didn’t need to wear their specialness on the outside, forcing the world to blink when it looked at them, to notice them, to acknowledge they were alive. Their only problem was convincing each other that they were still human, when half their head was full of bioware … when half of their souls were dead.…

  Or all of their brain. My own brain stumbled as it hit a mind as empty as a broken eggshell. My sight homed in, and I stared at him: A perfectly normal-looking total stranger, wandering through the crowd with a drink in one hand. He moved through the same aimless circulation patterns as anybody else, making programmed responses when they needed to be made, circling.… Why? I pushed deeper into the blankness where a mind should have been. I didn’t have to be careful; he couldn’t feel me. The organ was intact, the wrinkled gray container of flesh that should have held all the complicated magic that made him a sentient being. But it wasn’t anything now except a piece of meat. Something was in there, keeping his vital signs up, making him respond.… Programmed. That was it. What was imitating a mind was nothing but somebody’s biosoft.