Tomaso sneered. "How much of that can you attribute to the other drugs floating around? We've got marijuana, grubs, flamers, coke, alcohol, nicotine—"
Tacumsi hissed impatiently, watching the screen. By now there were nine couples, and two trois in varying stages of undress. "What we need is controls. I'm going to have the computer go back over the evening's tapes, and find the people who took no other drugs at all."
"Excellent," Tomaso said. "We'll want to know exactly what the others took, and in precisely what dosage. We'll want to check the synergisms. They may well be as interesting as the primary effects."
Then there was waiting: waiting for the last of the food to be consumed, for the drug to take hold, for the last-minute programs to be debugged and added to the computer burden. And when Tomaso finally smiled, his fleshy lips curling back from his teeth in grim approval, the orgy room was full, and writhing with activity.
"All right," he said quietly, breathing gone shallow. "Let's have Chyrmin again."
The naked bodies of the magazine editor and her lover were projected full-size on the stage. The sweat seemed real enough to smell, and Tomaso walked up to the stand and watched closely, feeling the growing tautness in his own body as he heard their ragged moans.
"All right," he whispered, "let's have the absorption pattern." At the command of the console, their outline became a mass of red, blue lines within the mass tracing outward from the intestinal area, through the bloodstream, pooling in the brain.
"Coordination seems to have decreased, Mr. Ortega. We also have marked pupil dilation " Steinbrenner's voice had gone even colder than usual, and she was keeping her distance from the writhing red shapes. "A large portion of the drug has migrated to the lateral geniculate—"
"Drop the scan—let's have the image again." He hiked his chair up close to the stage and watched with clinical detachment. "Will you look at this? She's drooling." He pointed to a rivulet of saliva running from the corner of the woman's mouth, ignored as she pushed herself up onto the lap of her companion. Their naked bodies strained together in mindless rhythm. She began to shiver.
"We have an orgasm sequence beginning here, sir."
"How long since insertion?"
"Umm ..." Tacumsi tickled his panel. "Four minutes, thirty one seconds. Thirty-four, thirty-five..."
"Fine. What about him?" He thumbed derisively at the male figure, bronzed and chiseled muscles beginning to gleam under a fine sheen of sweat.
"No. As a matter of fact, he hasn't reached the expected point in the male sexual cycle. My guess is that he—wait, let me crosscheck drugs. My guess is the Cyloxibin is retarding his orgasm.. .slightly. It's nothing extreme. We have some excitation of brainwave activity, and from the expression on his face, I'd say there certainly isn't any decrease in pleasure."
Tomaso walked slowly around the figures as they sat on the stage, locked in passion. "Audio up a notch, please." The moans and animalistic sounds grew louder. "Try filtering this mess down. I'm not hearing any words. Aren't they saying anything?"
Klause had come closer, shaking his head. "No. It's not uncommon to find a blocking of the speech centers during extreme excitation. Sex, especially, forces many people into non-verbal, non-temporal mode. Nothing unusual there."
"Wait. Wait—we're getting something." Steinbrenner's voice was excited, and her cheeks were beginning to flush.
Chyrmin seemed to be in pain. Her eyes rolled up into their sockets, and she gripped her partner's arms with fingernails that burrowed for blood.
"I'm getting an intense orgasm here. Look at the flush on the buttocks." She pointed to the heatrash of red splotches spreading up the back. "The same on her cheeks. I would say... hmm."
Her partner, who was resting back on his heels, with eyes closed, thrust up to meet her hips. "This," Steinbrenner said intensely, "is also interesting. The male seems to have entered a pre-ejaculatory orgasmic phase. Pseudo-orgasmic, perhaps—"
At last Chyrmin forced words out, but even with amplification and filtering they were largely unintelligible. They caught only one word, the name "Donny," repeated amid the jumble of sounds.
Tacumsi had left his computer, and the four of them stood around the stage, watching intensely as the couple began to spasm. There seemed to be no release for either of them, only a sexual tension that built up and up, until Donny's teeth were chattering and the blood flowed from the spot where he bit through his lips. Chyrmin moaned and lunged forward, licking the blood from his mouth hungrily, licking at the base of his neck where the perspiration pooled, then ravishing his lips in a savage, prolonged kiss.
They devoured each other, their sweat-slimed bodies twined painfully tight. Chyrmin's hands kneaded his back, biceps tensing as she tried to pull him deeper into her body.
Both were totally flushed, both in a rictus that seemed more pain than pleasure, and both broke that wet, clinging kiss at the same moment. Tomaso felt something electric brush his spine and his knees buckled. He grabbed at the top of the chair for support.
"Good Lord," Klause said fervently.
The couple had gone into convulsions, seemed not to be conscious at all, their hips still jerking spasmodically as they tumbled over, tears streaming down their faces, eyes glassy, legs and arms locked together. They were panting into each other's mouths, chests heaving, and for an instant Tomaso's vision clouded, and he lost the contours, the two figures seeming to meld into one.
"Well," he said, trying to force a steadiness into his voice, "Donny is through for a while. Let's have a look at some of the other guests."
Tacumsi tched, glancing back at his computer at the arcing graph lines. "Let's have a deep scan on them." At his command their flesh seemed to melt away, and once again the stage was filled with a shifting mass of colors in rough human shape. "Look at this. Erectile sequence has already resumed."
"Well . . . Chyrmin was always one to pick a winner."
"Maybe. I'm not saying that it's the drug. I am saying that a level of excitation sufficient to re-engorge within such a short recovery time is . . . formidable." He shrugged, looking at the stage with thinly veiled curiosity. "I wonder . . "he said, then was quiet again.
Tomaso watched him, and hid his own smile. I wonder what it feels like? That's what you were about to say, wasn't it? He looked around the room seeing the same unspoken question in Klause's face, and in Steinbrenner's.
"As I said. Let's move on." The field of view widened until they could see the rest of the orgy room. Tomaso gasped.
It was difficult to tell whether the guests were engaged in sex or mortal combat. There were exhausted, limp bodies everywhere, and the couples still engaged in intercourse seemed to be totally in a world of their own. The two trois had broken up, leaving two couples and two spare men. One man had found a woman partner, the other sat in a corner of the room, masturbating and crying disconsolately.
"Let's have the private bedrooms. Where's Wu?" Klause shook his head like a man coming out of a trance, and plodded back over to his console, talking to it in low tones. Steinbrenner continued to watch the projection field with an expression akin to shock on her face.
Tacumsi did a quick back trace on Wu, from the moment that the man had left the medical suite. "Got him. He's in the third guest bedroom."
"How many women does he have with him?"
"Just one. Just the one he came with tonight." Tacumsi sounded more than a little surprised. "That doesn't sound like him. Let me check on something." He ran a swift side-program and added, "In fact, there's no one in the house who has remained in a trois. And there's damned little homosexuality." He scratched at his short crop of tight dark curls. "I'm not really sure what we have here."
"Neither am I," Steinbrenner whispered.
Klause had regained his composure. "I'm not sure either, but I have some theories." The three heads that automatically turned in his direction just seemed to irritate him. "No, I don't have any answers for you right now. I have about twenty million bits o
f information to boil down in the next few days, and I may have some answers for you then."
"And until then?" Tomaso felt like a school boy talking to his teacher, but at the moment there was nothing to be done about that: he was totally out of his depth.
"Until then, we finish recording the experiment. My readings show that some of the guests are coming out of it. Most of the others have long since entered their plateau stage. That suggests to me that the effective duration of the drug's primary effects is something in the neighborhood of three hours."
"Three hours. Good. That makes it more marketable. I think that we may have a recreational drug here. If it pans out—" His mind began spinning out the possibilities. "Yes—we'll need to work on subliminal marketing—"
Tacumsi shook his head thoughtfully. "Problems there. The harder we push, the faster legislation will move against us."
"This is a new drug, so it's still totally legal. I can tie up the control proceedings, stall the legislature for at least a year. By that time our distribution network can drop totally underground."
He squatted down, taking another look at Wu. The man looked as if he had spent six hours in a Jacuzzi. His alabaster skin was flushed and hot, and there didn't seem to be a solid bone left in his body.
"Whatever it is that we have here," he said, something near reverence touching his voice, "I think that it's going to be worth all of our trouble."
"I might suggest that you wait a moment before you put a down payment on the moon." Klause's eyes were unfocused, looking through the bank of computer equipment. "I said that the primary effects last approximately three hours. Secondary and tertiary effects ... I can't really say at all."
"Are you anticipating any?"
Klause chuckled darkly. "Not offhand, but wouldn't you be a bit surprised if a drug as powerful as this didn't have any after-effects at all?"
Tomaso looked at him coldly. "As long as it doesn't kill them, don't worry about it."
Klause seemed almost amused. "And if it does kill them, make sure it can't be traced back to the source, correct?"
"Dr. Klause, you definitely have a talent for this work." Tomaso shook his arms back into his coatsleeves, and sighed, taking one last look at the equipment and the holo stage. "I think," he said regretfully, "that I need to attend to my guests. Some of them may be functioning in a few moments, and I mustn't be a negligent host."
He nodded to the three of them. "Tacumsi? Steinbrenner? Klause? Excellent work, all three of you. I will expect your report on my screen within two days. Thank you."
He turned and fairly bounced from the room. Tacumsi watched him go, a storm cloud brewing in his eyes. "I don't know if any of you have noticed it, but our leader's personality seems to be going through a bit of a change."
"Oh?" Steinbrenner's lips were drawn into a knife-edge of disapproval. "And just what do you mean by that?"
Tacumsi looked at her, weighed her tone of voice against his urge to speak, and leavened the result with caution. "Just that he seems to be rising to the demands of his position more.. .rapidly than I had anticipated." He walked back to his console and slumped down into his chair. "That's really all." His voice was quiet now. Best to just do your goddamn work, he thought to himself. And watch what you eat and drink from now on. Klause is right. There's something damned peculiar about this drug. . .
After Tomaso helped the last of his guests through the front door, he sighed, shedding his dinner jacket and heading for the master bedroom. It was empty, but before he let disappointment tinge his mood, he checked the study.
Nadine was there. She was seated in his command chair, and she was watching the hall camera. He saw his own back as it disappeared into the study.
She watched him approach with something between fear and fascination in her eyes.
Tomaso smiled. "Was it a good show?"
Her eyes widened, and she started to say something caustic, then thought better of it. "Yes. Damned good." She stuck her empty glass underneath the dispenser to her right, and received a stream of amber fluid. By the ease of the motion, he knew that it had been repeated many times that evening.
Nadine leaned forward in her chair. "You know, I've played hostess to a lot of your brother's sordid little soirees. Maybe you forget that. Never—" She took another drink. There was one part of Tomaso's head that hated seeing her do this to herself, hated seeing her coolness and class disappear under the assault of alcohol. But there was another part that sensed the mood in the room, felt the shift in power between them, and knew that she was a little afraid of him. And gloried in it.
"I only took part with Luis. Except for him I stood back, and watched, and laughed. Well, Mr. Ortega, I was watching tonight, but I wasn't laughing. Not even a little bit. I don't know what it was that I saw tonight, but I don't ever want to see it again."
She waited for him to say something, an explanation or a denial, but he was silent, and watchful. She waited until the silence was stifling, then filled the void with her own voice.
"Something happened here, in this house, that I've never seen before, but I'll tell you what it reminded me of."
"All right. What?"
Her face grew younger and somehow older at the same time. "It was four years ago, right after the Quake. There were food shortages everywhere. Bad ones. I remember my father and brothers out hunting dogs." She shivered. "I was sixteen years old, and I don't suppose that I weighed much more than a hundred, a hundred and ten pounds. Well, there was a time when things got even worse than that—not long, maybe only a few days—but there just wasn't any food at all. There was murder in the streets, and I remember—well, I don't want to talk about that. The point is this—" She looked at him, and through him, and he felt extremely uncomfortable, wondering just what it was that she was seeing.
"The point is that the federal government finally got emergency funds into the state, and the food trucks arrived. It was awful. Armed state mercenaries protecting them were torn to pieces. Many people didn't get any food at all. My family, and some of the others in my building, were the fortunate ones. We got food, plenty of it, and we hoarded it, forming a coalition with the other families in our building, sort of a community protection pact. We had ours, and to hell with everyone else. And for the next few days ... for the next few days there was ... I don't know. Call it a truce with death, maybe.
"I never saw or felt anything like that unnatural calm, that frantic peace—until tonight. It was something that made me want to scream. Everyone was happy—except that they were in pain."
"Pain?"
"Of a kind, yes. And fear. Fear that the peace would be over. Don't expect me to believe that you didn't feel it, down there in the basement, playing with your toys. Only, Tomaso— these people aren't toys. What you were playing with tonight was real. You were tearing their guts out, it was so real. I just hope that you know that. For your own good."
"My good?"
She shook her head. "You're playing the fool, and it doesn't work. I don't know exactly what you did tonight, but I don't mind telling you that it scares me."
"I'm sorry about that." He paused. "I think that you should go and sleep it off. I'll join you later."
She opened her mouth again, then closed it. Her face became a mask. "All right," she said, and drained her glass with one tremendous swig. She rose and walked to the door. Only then did she turn to face him again. "Tomaso, I hope—I think — that you are a man of honor. You made a promise to me. You promised to make me a part of your life, and not just another toy. If you meant that, then listen to me, please."
"Listen to what?" he said blandly.
"Whatever it is—stop now. While you can. Please."
They faced each other, and he marveled again at the perfection of her face and form, and took savage satisfaction in her fear. "Good night, Nadine," he said.
She nodded. "Good night, Tomaso."
Tomaso Ortega's car rose up from the oceanside, and his chauffeur pulled them off the guide
strip and into the cross traffic of Santa Monica. Much of Los Angeles's business had shifted to the beaches after the Quake and Firestorm. Santa Monica was one of the most prosperous areas in Southern California, with some of the tallest buildings and cleanest streets.
Tomaso gazed up out of his window as they slipped through the streets toward their destination.
"You know," he said, smiling to himself, "you would think that after that Quake they'd be a little more careful about erecting buildings as tall as these. Just asking for trouble."
"That's the kind of people we are, isn't it?"
He turned to see the expression on Nadine's face but she had already turned away. The temperature in the car dropped a notch.
Private police patrol vehicles checked their identification at two security points before they finally reached the garage of the five-story building that was their destination. The car glided in, stopping for another security check.
Two guards opened the doors for them, and Nadine exited first, pulling her wrap tight around her. "Where are we?"
"The building is registered as ChemSpec, Ltd. Luis never brought you here?"
"No, and I'm not sure I want to be here." She sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring slightly. "I'm not sure at all."
"Come on, now. I think you'll enjoy this." He was bouncing with enthusiasm, and Nadine tasted something sour that she swallowed. The guards led them to an elevator, where another guard—this one armed—saluted Tomaso smartly.
"I seem to remember," she said as they stepped into the lift, "that Luis didn't have quite so many guards working for him."
"Yes—and of course most of us are still wearing black armbands for dear, trusting Luis." He looked at her, curious. "By the way—where is yours?"
She looked down at her arm, and stiffened. "I mourn," she said. "It's just too easy to substitute symbols for feelings."
"Very good, Nadine." Tomaso watched her, watched the way she turned away from him, then dropped her eyes to the ground.
The doors opened on a green-lit hallway.
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