The Metal Maiden Collection

by Piers Anthony

  “Now we must have a welcoming party for the Plant,” Mona said brightly. “Brian and I will attend. Tomorrow night.”

  “But I have an appointment with Pauling Hudson,” Elasa said. “I don’t think it wise for him to see Venus.” Because that would give the information to Kop, who would relay it to the Maggots. That was likely mischief, since the Plant was supposed to relate to the resistance effort in some manner.

  “That is covered,” Mona said.

  “Are you sure?” Elasa had not discussed any of the Maggot threat with her friend, fearing that would just put Mona in danger.

  “Adela will take him to visit with her people.”

  Mona knew of Adela? That meant she was in the loop. The Awares were going to meet Kop? It was true that he was one of them, in a sense, but this seemed phenomenally risky. Yet if the Awares wanted it, there had to be a reason. “Then I leave it in your hands.”

  “Adela will pick him up. They know each other.”

  They did, but Elasa wondered how much Mona had been told. Did she have any idea of the magnitude of the danger? So she spoke cautiously. “Complicated matters are afoot.”

  Mona smiled. “Yes, Bunky has advised me. I will avoid contact with the alien, lest he read my mind. I will be safe with you.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Elasa said fervently.

  “We’ll play cards.” Mona departed.

  Cards? This was becoming unreal.

  Elasa set up for the party next day. She called Pauling to make sure. “I understand you will be otherwise occupied tonight.”

  “Yes, Adela has invited me to party with her friends, giving you the evening off. That is fine.”

  “Is it? I am concerned. There could be awkwardness.” If not outright world-imperiling danger. Were the Awares planning to kill the Maggot agent? That would be foolhardy in the extreme.

  Then it was Kop’s voice. “Elasa, we’re Awares.”

  “Oh.” And Awares knew what they were doing, pretty much by definition. Evidently Kop and the Awares had some understanding, and all parties knew it was all right. If they weren’t making some mistake similar to the one Kop had made before he knew there was an alien in his head. “All right, then. I’m not an Aware. I didn’t know.”

  “Are you jealous?” he asked teasingly. “I was never jealous of your husband.”

  She had to laugh. “Maybe that’s it.” But what was going on?

  Mona and Brian arrived for the party. Brian too knew Venus from of old. “You wouldn’t tempt an old friend, would you?” he asked.

  Bunky and the animals came to stand close around Elasa, and with their telepathic ambiance she was able to see what Brian saw. The solitary green stem became a breathtakingly lovely young woman, nude. “Do you wish to be tempted?” she asked.

  Brian glanced at Mona. “He wouldn’t dare,” Mona said, forcing a frown. Then both laughed, and Venus laughed with them.

  Oh, yes, Venus had matured in the interim. She was no longer the virginal creature Elasa had harvested on Jones. Now she was showing her image to all of them, male and female, and teasing Brian without really trying to seduce him. Her seduction, of course, was deadly. She had no mind of her own; that was borrowed from the human company. But even so, she had personality.

  Yet how could a telepathic vampire plant affect the outcome of the struggle to save Earth from the Maggots? Venus’s mode of predation was to lure a man into sex with her, the sexy woman illusion buttressed by pheromones concealing the fact that the penis was actually entering the cone of the blood-sucking leaf and in effect ejaculating blood rather than semen. As far as she knew, Maggots did not have sex; they grew and fissioned. So the vampire could not drain their blood that way, assuming she could make a tempting projection, and in any event it would require millions of flytraps to make a dent in the alien horde. Mona had spoken of the sheep’s vision of a giant flytrap closing on the planet Earth, but the threat was actually the Maggots; the flytrap seemed irrelevant.

  Bunky nuzzled her. She focused on what the Companions were telling her, again appreciating the manner they lent her a fleeting semblance of telepathy. RELEVANT. VENUS IS THE KEY. Not exactly those words, but the essence.

  Her doubt was overruled. The Lamb’s precognition was sure. Not that the plan would work, but that this was the path that would do it if it was destined to succeed. With precognition, the certainty was impossible to refute. She believed.

  Elasa hugged them all. “Thank you, friends,” she murmured. Then Vulture and Python retreated to the garden, where they felt more comfortable, and Bela went along. Banner sat down beside Elasa. He had known throughout that complicated things were afoot, but never inquired. That had spared Elasa the need to lie to him.

  “Play for us, Brian,” Mona said.

  Brian brought out his merliton. Elasa remembered it from her visit to the Colony. He played a light classical piece that was transcendentally beautiful. Elasa was charmed, as she had been before.

  Then he played a song. Now Mona sang along with him. Elasa, remembering also, joined in. “He who is noble, pure and simple-hearted, needs not a weapon, needs no man to guard him; virtue defends him.”

  “Oh, I love this,” Elasa said as they finished. “Just relaxing with friends, as if we don’t face the worst crisis the world has known.”

  “Let’s see how Kop is doing,” Brian said.

  “Coming up,” Banner agreed. He turned on the wall phone. The life-sized picture looked like a window to an adjacent room.

  There was Pauling/Kop in the embrace of Adela and another pretty female Aware. All three were naked, and he was sandwiched between the two girls, who were kissing him front and back as he clasped their bodies. It looked like a porn movie. They had evidently had sex at least once, and were working up to another bout. The male Awares were munching on crackers, like spectators at a show.

  Elasa was surprised. “How can Awares be caught off-guard like this?”

  “Nobody’s off-guard,” Banner said. “They all know we’re the only ones peeking, and that we won’t tell. They’re just having fun.”

  “Methinks there’s an element of exhibitionism in them,” Mona said.

  “And of voyeurism in us,” Elasa said.

  “Awares seldom get to show off,” Banner said. “It must get wearing, being always invisible.”

  “But how can Kop be part of this?” Elasa asked. “Do the Maggots allow it?”

  “What, moralistic Maggots?” Banner asked. “They don’t care, as long as he does his job. He’ll be dead in six months. They have probably learned that their minions need a little leeway on occasion if they are to perform well.”

  “You two males are enjoying this too much,” Mona said. “Turn it off.”

  Banner made a show of reluctance, and turned it off. “And of course it distracts Kop from anything we might be doing here, which is the point.”

  “Singing a song?” Elasa asked.

  “Not exactly. We’re establishing the rules of engagement.”

  “I must be missing something,” Elasa said.

  “Now we shall play cards,” Mona said brightly. She turned on the monitor and touched the buttons to put the cards on display. “This is the ancient standby, Klondike. You know the rules?”

  “Sure,” Brian said. “Never saw it on the screen before. Back where I came from, we have physical decks of cards.”

  “You’re not where you come from, dear,” she said, kissing him. Indeed, on his home planet he would be in his own body, while Mona would occupy the body of an appealing elf woman. Here he was in a borrowed body, while Mona was in her own superlatively endowed one, to his evident constant amorous delight. That was the nature of exchange romance.

  Meanwhile Elasa downloaded the rules for the game. It was straightforward: seven rows of cards were dealt with one to seven cards in a row, the bottom card of each pile face up. 28 cards in all, with the remainder of the deck of 52 in a separate stack. There were places for four aces, which were supposed t
o be built up in suits to kings, to win. Cards could be placed on the next higher number, the colors alternating. This particular deal had the ace and two of spades turned up; they went immediately to the first stack, exposing a black seven and black six.

  “Play, Elasa,” Mona said.

  “But this is solitaire, limited to a single player. I assumed we would play an interactive game, like Rummy or Bridge.” Though the problem there was that Elasa would play flawlessly, giving her an unfair advantage. This whole business seemed largely pointless.

  “We’ll watch you play.”

  And the Lamb sent her a go-ahead thought.

  Elasa shrugged and moved a red six to the seven and a red five to the six. There was nothing else to do, so she turned over the first card of the talon, as it was called. This was a black seven, unplayable. The next was a red five, also unplayable. The third was a black two, unplayable. Eventually playable cards turned up, but in the end the game was lost with only five cards built on the foundations. It was not much of a game, because there was very little actual skill involved; the chances for victory depended overwhelmingly on the random deal of the cards.

  “Did you notice the Game Solver indication?” Mona asked.

  “It indicated the obvious: that the game was questionable from the beginning, and in the end could not be won.”

  “Now try Free Cell,” Mona said. “The cards are all laid out face up, and every game there can be won.”

  “But just try to do it,” Brian said. “The route can be obscure as hell.”

  “The solver helps,” Mona said. “Because it informs you the moment you go wrong. It’s the ‘analyste,’ the program that constantly analyzes the potential moves. It doesn’t tell you how to win, just when you go wrong. Then you back off a move and try another. Eventually you will get there.”

  Elasa played the game, and it was so. “But I do that anyway,” she said. “I’ll always win.”

  “In cards,” Mona agreed. “But the game we are in to save Earth is beyond your computing capacity.”

  “Yes, of course,” Elasa agreed, nettled. She was not comfortable with things that were not answerable to her logic.

  “Now the relevance,” Mona said. “According to Bunky and the Awares, you are the Player. The Awares are the Analyste. The Maggots are the cards. You must deal with them without ever going wrong, lest Earth be lost. The Awares can’t tell you how to play or even give you a strategy; all they can do is warn you when you leave the correct path. Sometimes even they will be uncertain, so it will be your judgment.”

  “My judgment? I’m a machine!”

  “You’re a woman deriving from a machine. There’s a difference, as you know.”

  Indeed she did. Mona had been her friend throughout, helping her to be the woman she longed to be.

  Elasa thought of something else. “Meanwhile Kop is cavorting with the Awares. Are they telling him how to play?”

  “Yes, in their fashion. He has to thread the deviously narrow course between his necessary duties as an enemy agent and his private desire to please you and somehow get back at the Maggots for destroying his world.”

  “Getting him to love me—that’s part of the plan?”

  “Yes. You are central, throughout.”

  “He’s a decent guy, for an alien agent bent on destroying our planet.”

  “So the Companions and Awares informed me,” Mona agreed.

  “But he knows they are his enemy.”

  “They are the Maggots’ enemy. There too is a difference, as you also know.”

  “But if the Maggots know whatever he knows--”

  “They’re not paying attention. That’s the arrogance of power.”

  So it might be. As an Aware Kop should know what he could get away with. Or was he simply gambling, since he did not have very much longer to live anyway? “How is it that you got roped into this awful business? I thought to spare you.”

  “Bunky loves me, as I love him,” Mona said. “He couldn’t keep it from me, so the Awares made the best of it. After all, I’m the one who brought the news of the big threat to Earth that started all this, with the sheep’s image of the giant flytrap. I’m okay as long as I don’t know the details of the path.”

  “Let’s hope that none of us ever have to learn the full details.”

  “Let’s hope,” Mona agreed.

  But still Elasa wondered: how did Venus relate, and what was the point of calculating the odds of success, whether in cards or life? What they needed was an effective course of action.

  Chapter 8:

  Cutoff

  Adela appeared. “Tomorrow, for your regular date, take the Plant to each of the key personnel we visited before.”

  “That’s impractical,” Elasa said. “That was a tour Pauling made. He couldn’t justify making the same trip again.”

  “Kop will arrange it.”

  “In violation of his duty to the Maggots? That will attract their attention. We can’t afford that yet.”

  “It is time.”

  Bunky nudged her, sending a mental impulse. Yes, it was time. “Tomorrow,” she agreed. “Will you be along?”

  “Yes. To be sure the timing is right. The Plant is primed, but it will be better if I guide it.”

  “Better,” Elasa agreed, relieved. At least the Aware would have some notion what was happening.

  Elasa made desperate love to Banner that night. “Tomorrow it starts,” she whispered.

  “I love you.” Which was all the answer she needed. She had first encountered him as a sex object, but had become much more in the course of her association with him, and she remained forever grateful.

  In the morning she took Bunky, packed the heavy pot in the car, and drove to the hotel for the regular rendezvous. She toted it up the stairs to the suite. No one seemed to notice, maybe because Adela was along and subtly guiding her.

  Kop welcomed her, as usual, with a hug and kiss and a feel. “What is that?”

  Elasa hesitated, but then she saw Adela standing there with Bunky, nodding affirmatively. She could tell the truth. “This is Venus Flytrap, a vampire plant I tamed on Colony Planet Jones and had shipped to Earth.”

  He gazed at Venus. “She’s telepathic!”

  “Yes. She feeds by luring men into having sex with her, and sucking blood from their penises. She uses pheromones and projective illusion.”

  “So I see. She has assumed the form of the world’s most sexy woman, present company excluded. Even though you and Adela have given me marvelous good times, Venus is even more alluring. She resembles my sibling lover Kess. Were I not an Aware, I would likely succumb despite knowing her nature.” He leaned toward the Plant, intrigued. “Since I do know her nature, I will not try to have sex with her. She does not have power over me. Yet she was surely brought here for a reason. I would like to fathom that reason.”

  “So would I,” Elasa said.

  Adela and the Lamb came close.

  Kop looked up, startled. “What just happened?”

  “We just freed you,” Adela said.

  “I have lost my connection to my home base!”

  “Yes,” Adela agreed. “But it will be a week before the Maggots know. We waited until just after your regular report. We have much to do in that time.”

  “I must report!” Kop said, agitated. “I don’t wait on routine when something significant occurs.”

  “Report,” Adela agreed.

  “But I can’t reach the base! There’s no connection!”

  “I’m confused,” Elasa said. “What did happen?”

  “Venus projected an illusion that scrambles the access code in Kop’s mind,” Adela said. “He can no longer dial out, as it were, or receive incoming calls. The system remains in place undisturbed, but his memory is flawed. In effect he has forgotten his password.”

  “But if I don’t report on schedule, they will assume I have been corrupted and cut me off from my body,” Kop said. “Then my identity will slowly fade aw
ay.”

  “You will die,” Adela agreed. “In the course of perhaps six months. Then there will only be Pauling in this host. But look at it this way: you would have died about that time anyway, as your mission on Earth was completed; they will dump your body into the grinder regardless. We have not actually shortened your life, but we have freed the last part of it.”

  Kop assessed the situation, using his Awareness. “The Plant is the key. It was not on Earth before, and without it Earth is lost, so the Maggots were assured of victory. Had I picked up on Venus’s arrival on Earth, I would have had to destroy her immediately. But I was not paying attention. I never thought to run a routine telepathic or precog check. I was distracted. By you.”

  “It was some party,” Adela agreed. “We made sure you thought of nothing beyond the moment. I must confess, it was fun for us too. You are some lover.”

  Suddenly Elasa understood. While she and her Companions were welcoming Venus, Adela and the Awares were distracting Kop. Lonely for his own kind, as the Awares were in spirit, he had enthusiastically participated. And never caught on to the new presence of the key element in the game. He had later made his routine report, lulling his alien masters. Now the Awares had struck, using Venus. The battle for Earth was on. Timing, as the Awares had stressed, was everything.

  “Congratulations,” Kop said. “That was well played.”

  “Thank you,” Adela said.

  “I did not know of this,” Elasa said. “Only that I should bring Venus to you, and that she was in some manner the key to our campaign. It is as if we are playing a game of cards, and Venus is my tool for progress. I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing.”

  “You are innocent,” he agreed. “That is not a fault.”

  “I have a question. Are you now a captive enemy agent, or are you with us?”

  Kop laughed. “I am both. I have hated the Maggots from the outset, but was powerless to oppose their will. Now perhaps I have a chance to make them pay, to some slight degree, for the grief they have inflicted on me. I will make you this deal: be my lovers, the two of you, and I will do everything in my considerable power to facilitate your mission. Working closely together we just may succeed in saving your planet.”