“Are you mad at me?” She had a hurt look on her face that gave him a sort of choking feeling.
“No, I’m not mad at you. I’m just upset. They’re going to send me away. They’re going to take me off the detail.”
“They can’t do that! We won’t let them.”
“No choice, I’m afraid.” He walked to the couch and sat down. “Probably all for the best. I’m sure this is playing right into the hands of those women in the Science Police who think men have no business in the agency. We can’t focus on anything but our penises.”
“That’s just stupid. Obviously they don’t know any men.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they know us too well.”
“You need to not think about it. Why don’t we have breakfast? Have you eaten?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then let’s just sit and talk.”
“I don’t really feel like talking either.”
“You remember when you first interviewed me?”
“Yes.”
“We took turns asking questions.”
Andrews smiled despite himself. “That’s right.”
“Let’s do it again.”
“Okay, but you go first.”
“What’s your favorite sport? Is it that rugsby?”
“Rugby. Yes. Your’s?”
“I liked baseball when I lived in California, but since I’ve been living in Europe, I mostly watch football. Did you play rugby growing up?”
“Yes. All the boys did. It got pretty brutal. I busted my chin open and had to have six stitches right here.” He lifted his chin and pointed to a thin scar. “It was mostly just an excuse for the bigger boys to beat the crap out of the smaller boys, but it was a lot of fun.”
“Okay, your turn.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about your nose ring.”
“Yes?”
“Piffy and Ruth have the side of their nostrils pierced, and so do other women I’ve seen with nose rings, but you have it right in the middle. Why?”
“Do you think it makes me look like a cow?”
“No. But I can see how people might make that connection.”
“I wear it for two reasons really. One: it kind of touches on this submissive streak that I feel inside, but don’t otherwise let show. And two: it just pisses a lot of women off for some reason, and that’s always fun.” They both laughed. “Okay, my turn. What’s your favorite food?”
“A month ago, I would have said tacos, but now I have to go with hot dogs.”
“Have you had a chilidog yet?”
“No. Hey, you snuck an extra question in there.”
“Oh no,” she said, her eyes large with mock surprise. “Maybe you’ll have to punish me.”
“Maybe.”
“Ask me two questions then.”
“Why are you interested in me?”
“You’re very handsome and I miss being with a man.”
“But you don’t really know me.”
“Maybe it’s better that way. That brief period when I was getting to know Simon was the best time of our relationship. But by the time I was sure that I wanted to be with him forever, he was gone.”
Andrews was silent for a minute.
“You have another question, you know.”
“How long have you and Penny been lovers?”
Steffie opened her mouth in shock. Her cheeks flushed red. “How did you know about that?”
“I’m an investigator after all. It’s not that hard to read the body language, not to mention a few subtle clues in her last solo album. You’re Submissive Olive.”
Her face went from slightly flushed to bright red.
“How long?” he asked again.
“Off and on as long as we’ve known each other. Not since you’ve been with us though.”
“Hmm.”
“Does that bother you? I mean is it a deal breaker?”
“Which? That you and she have slept together or that you enjoy it when she calls you a bony-assed bitch?”
She licked her lips. “Either.”
“I don’t think so. I honestly don’t know how I feel about any of this. You’re all so different and I can’t help but find the variety appealing, but it’s overwhelming. It’s like eating too much candy. When I stop to think about being with any of you, I can feel the adrenaline rush kick in. It makes me a little bit sick to my stomach, but it makes me excited at the same time.”
“Let me make you feel better.” Steffie reached down and began to unfasten his belt. He pushed her back.
“No.”
She bit her lower lip and the red returned to her face.
“I’ll decide what you going to do, and when,” he said. “Isn’t that what you want to hear, my little hussy?”
She nodded but snickered. “Nobody says ‘hussy’.”
“No?”
“No.”
“I’ll have to work on it. I’ve never played the dominant to anyone’s submissive before. Come on, I’ve worked up an appetite now… for food.”
They ordered a brunch assortment to be brought by room service, and within a half an hour were dining on a spicy frittata and corn muffins. Their conversation went back to normal, non-sexual topics, such as his life growing up and her home in Switzerland, food, exercise, skiing, and recreation in general. When they were done, Andrews looked at his watch.
“It’s time to meet the others. You have to go to your photo shoot.”
With a smoldering kiss, Steffie left. Andrews met her and the others on the roof as he, along with Wright, dashed through the rain to their waiting airflivver and took off for the penthouse photo studio of Anna Solomon. The photographer was an attractive woman who looked far younger than her sixty years, despite having let her hair go completely silver. She quickly ushered the Ladybugs into her studio where an army of assistants began painting their faces, dressing them in unusual costumes and placing them in bizarre sets. Andrews and Wright sat quietly in the back of the studio and watched the transformations.
The first series of pictures were relatively tame. The girls wore their stage costumes and stood in fairly standard rock and roll poses. Then came a series of poses in which the four Ladybugs were in various stages of undress, though the pictures were kept from becoming too explicit by carefully placed hands—either their own, or each others. Andrews was surprised when he was called over by Miss Solomon. She placed him in the center of the setting with the four girls around him, now all topless.
“I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m in enough trouble already without pictures.”
“These are just for us, silly,” said Ep!phanee.
After a few quick shots, he returned to his seat and a group of artists with airbrushes went back to work. When they were done, and a few bits of fur and feathers were added, the girls were transformed into animals. Steffie was a zebra, Ruth a panther, Piffy a peacock, and Penny was a lion.
Then the women underwent a final transition and each was dressed as a figure from history. Piffy became Cleopatra in a black wig with charcoaled eyes, her brazenly displayed nipples painted gold. She held a snake in one upraised hand and a scepter in the other. She stood before a stone god with her foot resting on a slave girl. Penny became Boadicea with golden breastplates, a chainmail loincloth, and a large animal fur draped over her shoulders. On her head was a horned helmet and in her hands were a sword and round shield. Ruth became Queen Elizabeth I. She wore a huge golden and purple dress with a giant white ruff around the neck. Her hair and body was covered with jewels, and she had a white circle drawn on each cheek, an homage to Elizabeth’s powdered white face, that made her look rather doll-like. She sat stoically on a gilded throne. And Steffie was dressed as Marie Antoinette, her sky blue dress every bit as elegant as Ruth’s, her white hair done up in a very high beehive as she poked her head through a guillotine.
Andrews had to admit that Anna Solomon was more than just a famous photographer. She was a keen judge of charac
ter. Piffy could easily have been queen of the world, and Penny could just as easily have been a warrior woman. Ruth fit the name Good Queen Bess far better than the real Elizabeth did. And Steffie had, as the fated queen of France, demonstrated the ultimate act of submission.
When at last the women were back in their own clothes and ready to go, it was quite late. Andrew’s stomach was growling. He grabbed Steffie and pulled her aside.
“We’re not going with the others. You and I are making a little side trip, my tart.”
She laughed. “Tart? I suppose that’s better, but…”
They headed for the roof, but not before Miss Solomon gave Andrews her card and invited him to pose for her. Once on the roof, they found the airflivver they had arrived in, and a second one just like it. The other three Ladybugs stood in the rain and watched with curiosity as Steffie climbed into the new vehicle with Andrews. Then they and Wright boarded their own aircraft and both took off.
“Where are we going?” asked Steffie.
“You’ll see.”
The craft flew south through the rain for almost an hour as the ladybug looked out the window, and Andrews mostly watched her. At last the airflivver circled around a small town and sat down on the lawn of a huge house.
“Where are we?” asked Steffie.
“Newport. That’s all I’m telling you. Come on.” He pulled her out of the vehicle and though they rushed to the front porch, they were drenched by the time they got there. Andrews knocked on the door and was rewarded by a woman in a black suit and tie that exactly matched his own, excepting only that she wore a skirt instead of slacks. As they entered the room, they saw another woman standing by.
“Monica?” gasped Steffie, rushing forward and grabbing the other woman by the shoulders. “Where’s Lars?”
“He’s right in here,” the woman replied, indicating the door behind her.
Steffie burst in the door and they could all hear the shout of “Mommy” and tearful and generally incomprehensible replies from Mommy herself. Monica closed the door after them and turned to the two Science Police Agents.
“So you’re the man,” said Monica. “Steffie said you were handsome.”
“And you’re the sister,” replied Andrews. “And she didn’t say anything at all about you. But thank you for coming.”
“Are you kidding? Three days on a dirigible… with a babysitter? Besides, Lars needed to see his Mom. Auntie Monica is mean.”
Andrews turned to the other agent. “Thanks Jane.”
“My pleasure. I owed you.”
“Do you have food here? I’m starving.”
“They have dinner waiting for us. Come on into the dining room. Your girl and her boy will be fine until they’re ready to join us. The house is secure.”
A large table in the dining room was set with five place settings and as soon as the three of them sat down, a chubby redhead began delivering plates loaded with sandwiches, potato salad and baked beans. A roaring fire in the fireplace warmed them as they ate.
“So, Monica Sin.” said Andrews. “What do you do besides take care of Lars?”
“I’m a graphic designer and in my spare time I’m the boring older sister of one of the most famous rock stars on the planet. Did I hear Agent Stanley say that she owed you one?”
“I tutored Jane when we were in the academy together.”
“Tutored?”
“German,” said Agent Stanley.
“Oh. That’s a lot less exciting than I thought it would be. It wasn’t even French.”
“I could tell you about your sister and me.”
“No and eww.”
“I don’t want to hear about it either,” said Agent Stanley, before taking a bite of sandwich.
When Steffie arrived in the dining room with her six year old boy, the three had finished eating and were talking like old friends. Steffie’s son Lars was a cute boy in a little pin-striped suit with short pants, whose sandy hair was slicked back exposing his green eyes. He looked in wonder at the man seated at the table.
“Agent Andrews, this is my son Lars. Lars, this is my friend Agent Andrews.”
Lars stared at him for a moment until Steffie moved his hand forward so that Andrews could shake it. “Pleasure to meet you Lars. Call me John.”
“You’re the first man he’s ever seen.”
“Sit down and eat. I’m sure you’re both hungry.”
“Where are we and how long can we stay?” she asked.
“This is a Science Police safe house, and we’ll be here all day tomorrow. Then on Wednesday I have to get you to Hollywood for the next concert.”
“That will eat into Penny’s time with you.”
“I’m sure you can work it out. Now, you eat and visit with your family while I talk with Agent Stanley.
Andrews and Jane Stanley left the three Sins in the dining room, finding a small but comfortable library where they sat and talked about what had been going on in each of their lives. Though he considered her his closest friend from his academy days, Andrews found himself loath to go into too much detail about his burgeoning relationships with the Ladybugs, and Stanley obviously didn’t want to hear it either. This was no surprise to Andrews. Instead she caught him up on her own five year plan, which she was now two years into, to move up the hierarchy of the agency before vatting her cells for a baby.
At last he said goodnight and with the help of the chubby redheaded matron, found his room at the top of the stairs. He pulled the copy of Allan and the Ice Gods from his breast coat pocket. Undressing, he lay down in bed and read. He was just finishing a chapter and thinking about turning out the light when there was a faint knock at the door. Steffie opened it and came in.
“Lars is asleep,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“But I want to.”
“In that case crawl over here, my little slut puppy.”
Her eyes widened and then her cheeks flushed. She climbed onto the foot of the bed and crawled toward him.
“That’s more like it,” she said breathily. “You’re a fast learner.”
“Sie haben keine idee.”
Chapter Fourteen: The Hollywood Bowl
The next day was an idyllic one for Steffie, and a relaxing one for Andrews. It was, he reflected, the first really relaxing day since he had joined the Ladybugs in New York. They ate breakfast as a group and then Steffie spent most of the morning playing with her son. Andrews talked with Jane Stanley and Monica Sin, and spent the remainder of his time finishing his book. After a light lunch, they played a game of football on the vast lawn behind the house, males against females. They enjoyed a dinner of chilidogs and sat together in the parlor as Lars watched Adventure Island on radio-vid. That night Steffie reprised her submissive role and added to it.
Lars, his aunt, and Agent Stanley were delivered to the train station the next morning, where they boarded a train that would take them to San Francisco, from which they would board their dirigible for the flight back to Switzerland. After a tearful farewell, Andrews and his Ladybug drove back to the house and their waiting airflivver which took off for Los Angeles.
It was an almost eight hour flight to LA, necessitating a stop along the way both for fuel and to give the passengers and pilot a chance to stretch their legs. The pilot, a blonde in her thirties named Henrietta Palmer, set the vehicle down at the Sacramento airport. Sacramento was on a small outcropping of land which jutted into the San Joaquin Channel, the fourteen mile wide strip of sea water which separated the island of California from the rest of North America. The San Joaquin Channel, which before the Science War had been known as the San Joaquin Valley was, like the almost twenty years of constant rain in the Oregon area, a result of that conflict.
Andrews inquired at the information counter and found that there was one of the many new fondue restaurants popular in the north only a short distance from the airport. Though he invited Miss Palmer to join th
em, she demurred and so he and Steffie took a cab to the dining establishment. Attractively dressed, Steffie was not wearing anything that would have marked her as a rock star. She had on a simple blue miniskirt with a matching short sleeved top and a pair of platform sandals. She had worn her hair down ever since Andrews had indicated that he liked it that way. Nevertheless everyone seemed to recognize her, and if they weren’t actively pointing, they were at least staring.
“I don’t know how you can live like this,” said Andrews as he held the chair for her to sit down.
“How do you mean?”
“With all these people staring at you all the time.”
“Maybe it’s not me they’re looking at. Maybe it’s you.”
Andrews smiled. “No. For all they know, I’m just another faux man escorting a famous woman to dinner.”
“That could be,” agreed Steffie. “Most women have been away from men so long they have forgotten what they are like. Women expect them to be big and brutish, and you John are very pretty. On the other hand I expect that our interview has been seen by about a billion people by now, so most people know we have a boyfriend.”
Andrews looked around sure enough; at least half of the looks in their direction seemed more focused on him than his dinner partner. Their food arrived just about the same time that the first women approached for autographs, and while he wasn’t asked to sign his name, more than one was suddenly struck by their reaction to him. He and Steffie ate, dipping bits of meat and vegetables into the small pot of boiling oil, and talked about how pleasant the previous days had been.
“That was really one of the nicest things that anyone has ever done for me,” said Steffie.
“I knew you wanted to see him and I knew you didn’t want him near the concerts, so this seemed like the perfect alternative. Fortunately I arranged for it before my superiors heard about the interview. I don’t know if I could get them to go along with anything I suggested now.”
“Are you sure that Lars will be safe on the way home?”
“Jane… that’s Agent Stanley, would lay down her life to protect either Lars or your sister. I would trust her with everything I have.”
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