The Fifth Quadrant

by C. J. Ryan

  “Yeah,” Pug said, grinning.

  “You keep out of this, young man. I know where you stand in all of this. People like you and Gloria just seem to think you can buy whatever—and whomever—you want.”

  “Right,” said Petra. “Like Gloria bought us this apartment.”

  “Gloria? I was under the impression that your young man paid the rent.”

  “Pug pays the rent, but Gloria got us the lease. It would have taken years to get a place half this good without her help.”

  “Well, that was very nice of her, then, I suppose,” Mrs. Nash allowed. “Of course, the way she works you, you barely get a chance to spend any time here, as it is. Fortunately, you have a mother who is willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice and take care of your precious apartment for you.”

  “Drop what?” Petra wondered. “Tuesday night bingo in Weehawken? The two-crown window at Paramus Raceway?”

  Mrs. Nash tossed her nose into the air and sniffed, “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted.” With that, she swiftly retreated into her guest bedroom.

  “Good,” Petra said loudly enough for her to hear, “then I won’t have to stand here and insult you!” Petra shook her head and turned to face Pug. “Mothers,” she cried.

  Pug grinned at her. “Wait till you meet mine.”

  GLORIA FOUND A CASE OF SONOMA III CABERNET, vintage 3196, waiting at her front door when she reached her penthouse. She briefly debated whether to dump it all down the garbage chute but decided that would be a waste of outrage—and good wine. Instead, she took the case inside, opened a bottle, drank a glassful as she fixed herself a salad, and then another as she ate it. DuBray might have been an asshole, but he knew his wine.

  She supposed she should have expected it. DuBray certainly had the reputation. Still, it had been more than two years since the last time a superior at Dexta had insisted that she have sex with him. Somehow, she had simply assumed that she was beyond all of that now. As a notorious Tiger, she had established a reputation of her own, and even before Mynjhino and her promotion, the Twelves and Tens she had dealt with on a daily basis had shown her a wary respect. If Gloria had sex with anyone at Dexta, it was by her choice and on her terms. Until now…

  Gloria felt like smashing something. But she returned her salad plate to the kitchen intact and poured another glass of wine instead. Rather than smashing something, she decided, she would get smashed. After a day like today, she figured, she had earned it.

  She was so pissed off about DuBray, she had hardly even thought about Charles and his offer. Empress—with real power! That suddenly had great appeal; as Empress, she might have DuBray flayed alive, inch by inch. There were, she knew, catacombs deep beneath the Residence in Rio where such things had actually happened—centuries ago, supposedly. She doubted that Charles had ordered any tortures himself, although he was such a bastard at times that she wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

  Gloria took the bottle and glass and curled up on a comfortable sofa. “Music,” she said. “File C, random.” A moment later, the penthouse reverberated with the raw rhythms of Early Blues. Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Etta James, B. B. King—Gloria knew and loved them all, and when she’d had a little more wine, she began to sing along.

  A little more wine found her dancing as well as singing. Just like a good little Avatar of Joy.

  Her mother would be thrilled when she heard the news. Gloria’s parents were fabulously wealthy, truly wonderful people, and if they couldn’t quite understand why their daughter should want to hold down an actual job—much less one at Dexta—they at least tolerated her attempts to make herself a useful and productive member of society. They had apparently never felt the need to be anything but what they were—a yachtsman of Empire-wide renown and his devoted mate. Currently, they were six hundred light-years away on some watery world for a round-the-planet regatta. Dad knew everything there was to be known about the sea, and used to tell her stories about Nelson and Magellan and Cook. And Mom was loving, smart, and sexy; she would be so proud when she heard that Gloria was an Avatar of the Spirit. She’d be even prouder if Gloria accepted Charles’s offer and became Empress. In her own way, Gloria’s mother was just as much of a snob as Petra’s.

  Fred and Georgia VanDeen were such good people; Gloria missed them desperately at times. Petra’s mother might have been a pain, but at least she was handy. Sometimes Gloria wanted to cry when she thought about how far away Mom was, and how long it had been since she had been able to crawl into that warm, loving lap and tell her all her troubles…like…like how people were trying to kill her, and how they’d missed by that much! How she could still smell the burned hair…

  Ray Charles was crooning about how Georgia was on his mind…and Mom—Georgia—was on Gloria’s mind, too, and she wanted to be able to tell her about…about…the burned hair!

  Spirit! If she’d bent to take her seat a tenth of a second later…

  And suddenly, Gloria was sobbing and shaking. She couldn’t stop. She tried to pour some more wine, but just couldn’t manage it. Couldn’t stop shaking.

  Mom, they’re trying to kill me!

  First there was Mynjhino, when she’d had more narrow escapes than she could count. And then Sylvania, where no one had actually tried to kill her, but Grunfeld’s thugs had tried to rape her…and then, all the burned and ruined bodies at Pizen Flats…Ted, Gus, all of them. Burned the way she would have been burned on Cartago if she’d been just a fraction of a second later…

  Gloria sank to the carpet and curled herself into a ball, but still she could not stop shaking. It all overwhelmed her now—all the close calls, the people who depended on her to do her job, the faith of Norman Mingus, the trust and love of Petra, the confidence of her staff, and Charles, yes, Chuckles himself, back in her life suddenly, and he still wanted her, and that bastard DuBray wanted her, too, an Avatar of the Spirit now, and all of it, all of it, pressing down upon her, and Georgia on her mind and so far away…and the smell of burned hair!

  THE LIMO SKIMMER MADE ITS WAY UPTOWN, toward Harlem. For centuries, Harlem had been the home of the city’s African community, and to the extent that there was still such a thing as an African community in Manhattan, it was still in Harlem. But after more than a millennium of Transit technology and global culture, distinct ethnic communities were getting hard to find on Earth. For anything resembling ethnic purity, it was necessary to travel to the colonies, where physical isolation and (in some cases) intentional segregation had preserved a degree of cultural and genetic distinctiveness. In Manhattan, it was easier to find Chinese restaurants in Chinatown than Chinese people. Gloria’s own six-continent genetic blend was, perhaps, an extreme case, but not really unusual.

  Gloria sat in the rear of the skimmer, smoking a jigli cigarette. Jigli was probably the strongest natural aphrodisiac in the Empire. She had discovered the herb on Mynjhino and still had a substantial hoard of an especially potent, refined version of it. This was her second jigli cigarette of the evening, and it was enough to get the shakes more or less under control. In addition to igniting a fire in her groin and producing an all-over tingling sensation in her skin, the jigli had a calming influence on her. At least, it allowed her to concentrate all her thoughts on one thing—sex—and avoid thinking of other things, like the smell of burned hair.

  But the jigli was not enough. Not on this night. Not after this day.

  Tonight, she needed something more.

  The limo driver found the correct side street and halted in front of a subtle sign that marked the entrance to a subterranean establishment that went by the name of Club Twelve Twenty-Nine. In blue neon, the glowing outline of a clockface perpetually registered the time—12:29. Gloria got out of the limo and braved the brisk January air on her mostly bare body for the few seconds it took her to reach the door of the club.

  She had been here a few times before during her years in Manhattan—usually with friends but also alone a couple of times. It was the
kind of place that well-to-do young New Yorkers knew about from word of mouth, and could frequent in relative privacy and security. As Gloria entered, one of the massive bouncers, who could be counted on to keep media reps and imagers out, nodded to her and said, “Good evening, Ms. VanDeen. Nice to see you here again.” Gloria gave the bouncer a smile, paused for a few moments to let her eyes adjust to the dim, half-light in the club, then headed for the bar.

  Arnold was on duty behind the bar. Gloria knew him a little, the way one knew bartenders and waiters around town a little—not really as people, but as reliable fixtures. Arnold was a good-looking young man with somewhat dusky skin, very short, dark hair, and a worldly gleam in his eyes.

  “Evening, Gloria,” Arnold said. “You know, I had a feeling you might just show up tonight. Avatar of Joy, huh?”

  “That’s me,” Gloria admitted. “How have you been, Arnold?”

  “About the same,” he said. “Altairian brandy still your drink?”

  Gloria nodded, and Arnold went to fetch a bottle. The men on either side of her at the bar were staring at her breasts with obvious interest.

  Arnold returned with the brandy bottle and a snifter. “Pour one for yourself, Arnold,” Gloria told him. “On me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said. He produced another snifter and poured the amber liquid into it. They clinked glasses and sipped a little. He grinned at her. “Smooth,” he said. It ought to have been; Altairian brandy was allegedly one of the best and certainly one of the most expensive liquors in the Empire.

  At the back of the room, a few people were dancing to a small instrumental combo. They were playing twenty-seventh-century Syntho, which Gloria had always thought of as blues by and for computers. In the vast diversity of the modern Empire, and with fourteen or fifteen centuries worth of popular culture to draw on, there was no longer any dominant theme in music, art, or literature. Gloria’s preference for twentieth-century blues was hardly unique, and around town one could find clubs that specialized in everything from nineteenth-century waltzes to the depressing, lugubrious ballads of the twenty-fourth century, to the minimalist syncopations favored by musicians of Gloria’s own generation. Syntho was not at the top of her list of favorites, but she didn’t mind it.

  Gloria took another sip of the expensive brandy, then leaned forward to talk quietly to Arnold. “I think maybe lemon-lime tonight,” she said.

  Arnold nodded. “Whatever you want, Gloria,” he said. “But have you tried the new wild cherry?”

  Gloria shook her head. “I think I’ll stick with the lemon-lime. I’m just a creature of habit, I guess.”

  “Pretty soon,” Arnold said, giving her a conspiratorial wink, “you may want to change your habits.”

  “Oh?”

  “Twenty-nine’s divine,” he said, “but Forty-eight’ll be great.”

  “You have it?”

  Arnold frowned. “Not yet,” he said. “But the word is that it’s being tested on half a dozen of the Core Colonies, and it ought to be available here in a few months. In the meantime, lemon-lime we got.”

  The bartender gestured like a stage magician and suddenly he was holding a small white lozenge between his thumb and forefinger. Gloria took his hand in hers, and when she pulled away again, Arnold’s hand was empty.

  It was called Orgastria-29. If jigli was the most powerful natural erotogenic substance in the Empire, Orgastria-29 was its bioengineered equivalent. Unlike jigli, which simply aroused erotic sensations, Orgastria-29 intensified them. It was one of a class of intensifiers, which flooded the brain with a carefully designed suite of neuroreceptors. Intensifiers could magnify, deepen, and enhance virtually any human emotional state. There were intensifiers such as “sobbers,” which created an exaggerated sense of melancholy and produced a cathartic effect that was considered useful in some forms of psychological therapy and as a mood builder at certain concerts and poetry readings. And “laffers,” which made almost anything seem hilarious. Orgastria-29—or Twenty-nine as it was known—intensified sexual sensations to the point of producing physical seizures at the moment of orgasm.

  Twenty-nine, in fact, was so good at what it did that it was illegal. Orgastria-17 was a safe, legal, and very popular product. Twenty-nine could kill.

  It didn’t kill very often, but often enough for it to be registered as a controlled substance in the Imperial Pharmacoepia. Twenty-nine was generally taken in the form of flavored lozenges the user sucked on, getting small but steady doses of intensified sexual sensations. With her already-enhanced genetic equipment, and with the addition of jigli, Gloria was capable of sustained, continuing orgasmic episodes lasting more than an hour when she was under the influence of Twenty-nine. Most people got by with less than that, but a few wanted even more. They crunched down.

  Crunching down simply meant grinding the Orgastria lozenge to powder between the molars. It produced an almost instant deluge of intensifying receptors that caused the brain to go into something similar to an epileptic seizure—a cerebral electrical storm. Most of the time the seizure was harmless and produced only an overload of ecstatic sensation that subsided after a few minutes. But sometimes, for some people, the seizure overwhelmed and shut down normal brain function. If a neutralizing agent could be administered quickly enough, brain function could be restored before permanent damage or death resulted. Clubs like Twelve Twenty-Nine generally kept a supply of the neutralizer on hand, thus avoiding the public embarrassment and legal difficulties of having people die on their premises. Nevertheless, people did die from Twenty-nine.

  And so, people who wanted Twenty-nine had to get it from people like Arnold, in places like Club Twelve Twenty-Nine.

  “Tell me about Forty-eight,” Gloria said to Arnold.

  “From what I’ve been told, it’s like a whole new level,” Arnold said. “Like crunching down on Twenty-nine, but it’s sustained and you don’t pass out. You just go to the top of the mountain and stay there an hour or so.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Arnold shrugged. “I guess that’s what they’re testing. I don’t think you’d want to crunch down on it, anyway. The zamies aren’t idiots. They don’t want to kill the clients, you know. By the time it’s widely available, I’m sure it’ll be as safe as Twenty-nine.”

  “Sounds good,” Gloria said. “In the meantime, do you have a null-room free for tonight?”

  “For an Avatar of Joy? Of course we do! I’ll just extend our regrets to another party and set you up in Number Three.”

  “Thanks, Arnold. I really appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am. I might even drop in on my break, just to make sure everything is going smoothly.” Arnold smiled at her. Gloria smiled back.

  Arnold held up a pad, and Gloria tapped it lightly with her left index finger, not bothering to read the numbers. The pad registered her fingerprint and did a first-order DNA scan, then charged the total to her account. The purchase of the Twenty-nine would be hidden by the expense of the brandy and the rental of the null-room.

  “See you later, Arnold,” Gloria said. She backed away from the bar and snaked her way through the crowd until she reached Null-Room Number Three. She tapped the entrance plate for another DNA scan, changed the Preferences indicator from Private to Open, then went into the room as the door slid open. She kicked off her shoes, slipped out of the scrap of band skirt, then dived forward.

  She started to fall, but was quickly grabbed by the null field, and floated comfortably for several seconds until she arrived at the dead center of the room, equidistant from walls, floor, and ceiling. Gloria, who paid little attention to technical matters, was vaguely aware that this was not actual antigravity, but merely a convenient approximation of it created by an array of mass-repulsion units similar to the ones in skimmers.

  In some ways, Gloria preferred null-rooms like this to the zero-gravity facilities that were available in some orbital installations. The absence of gravity was simply that, and you just bounced around
like a Ping-Pong ball, which could be annoying. But in a null-room, it felt as if the air itself had thickened to the point where you could swim through it, which you couldn’t do in zero G. The mass-repulsion fields pressed against you gently from all sides, like a ghostly massage, and merely floating there by yourself was sensuous and sexy.

  But Gloria was not alone for long. People in the bar had seen her enter the room and noticed that she had designated it as Open. An engraved invitation could not have been more to the point. Half a dozen men and women quickly floated in after her, and Gloria slipped the lemon-lime lozenge into her mouth.

  They came at her from every angle, every direction, and Gloria sighed in contentment. The tension and frustration and fear drained away from her, and she gave no further thought to Charles or DuBray or the Universal Church of the Spirit or to what had nearly happened to her on distant worlds. All that mattered was what was happening to her here and now in Harlem, in Club Twelve Twenty-Nine, in Null-Room Three. She felt the familiar jigli tingle and the sudden surge of intensity as she sucked on the lozenge, and surrendered herself to the rippling, roaring orgasmic ride that began within seconds of the first penetration of her golden, electric body.

  It went on and on, and finally, when everything was just right, Gloria crunched down.

  GLORIA WENT FLYING THROUGH THE AIR AND landed, very abruptly, ass first on the padding. She was stunned for a moment, not so much by the impact as by the fact that it had happened at all. Petra had actually thrown her.

  Across the small gymnasium, Petra stood staring back at Gloria, a half smile on her face, almost as if she were embarrassed by what she had just done. Gloria shook her head and pushed herself up to her feet. “Got me,” she said.

  “First time.”

  Gloria nodded in acknowledgment. She had been trying to train Petra in the art of Qatsima for nearly six months, ever since their return from Sylvania. Three mornings each week, they reserved this small padded room in the Dexta Rec Center and Gloria attempted to indoctrinate Petra in the subtle, methodical, and wonderfully effective discipline of Qatsima. Part martial art, part acrobatics, part ballet, Qatsima had been developed centuries earlier by humans and the native species on the planet of Songchai. Gloria had taken it up after leaving Charles, principally as a way of keeping her body toned, but also as a means of self-defense; once away from Charles and his omnipresent security guards, she wanted to be able to take care of herself. She had developed a real flair for the art, and was now ranked as a Master—although she was well aware that the true Qatsima Masters could have wiped the floor with her.