The Iron Maiden

by Piers Anthony

  “I am cautious about love.”

  “And if you loved me, and our circumstances changed so that our relationship was no longer feasible, I would leave, as she did. I wish I could deny that.” She did not need to clarify who the “she” was; it was his former love.

  “It is that simple?”

  “No! It is that complicated. My brother roomed with a woman as an enlisted soldier, and when he became an officer and she did not, he had to leave her. They had agreed that love was not part of their relationship, but they both hurt, and I know that if they were not in love, they approached it. I think I can not afford to love you, or you me, but I think it will happen anyway, at least for me, if we associate. Such is my desire for your company that I am prepared to find myself in love with you, without expecting reciprocity, for such a period as we associate. This is not a wise course for me, but neither is it wise to deceive myself. Viewed objectively, it is a paltry offering I make to you. I would have made the association even if I disliked you, and perhaps that would have been better. As it is, it is a treacherous course for us both.”

  “A treacherous course,” he agreed. “Yet why do you believe I would not love you in return?”

  “Your love is already taken, and when it passes, you will be reluctant to give it elsewhere. You will not give it for a body, or for return love. Only for a woman who is worthy and willing to commit completely. I am neither.”

  “The limit on commitment I understand; it is the Navy way. But the unworthiness I do not understand.”

  “I am in essence a pirate lass, and before that a non-Saxon refugee. These are not your worlds.”

  “Yet you may be more woman than any I have met before.”

  “No. I do what I do for reason, and that includes the sexual aspect. I am not a feminine creature, though I will emulate one if you wish.”

  “That is not what I said. The girls of the Tail are highly sexual, and can be feminine. They lack intelligence, discipline, and integrity.”

  “Those are masculine traits.”

  He laughed. “Perhaps with your background you would think so.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will make you this compromise: in public, with or without me, be the smart, hard woman you are. In private, be the soft, loving woman you also are.”

  “The emulation,” she agreed.

  “If you think it is that.”

  “I do think it is that.” But he had shaken her. She kissed him again, and realized that her face was wet. “I suppose I could be mistaken.”

  “I will keep company with you,” he said. “This will require us to register as a sexual couple, to abate the need for the Tail. We shall have to arrange to meet for that at least once a week. No larger commitment is implied.”

  “No larger commitment,” she agreed.

  “But neither is it denied.”

  “Thank you.” She was not being ironic; he was opening the portal to the deeper relationship she desired.

  “We shall give it time to jell,” he said. “This is the sensible course.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I must say that I find myself as intrigued with the idea of you as you are with the idea of me. I never anticipated such an approach by such a person, but it occurs to me now that I may have been too restricted in my notions of women. There can be diamonds amidst the refuse.”

  It was a nice analogy, for her background could fairly be considered refuse. Spirit doubted that she was in any sense a diamond, but she liked the notion of being separate from her situation. Gerald was accepting her as she was. “Thank you,” she said again.

  “Now perhaps we should register, and be seen together.”

  “Gladly.”

  “However, there may be a complication.”

  “They are harassing you in little ways,” she said.

  “Yes. They are trying to encourage me to leave the service. It is never too obvious, but they may discover a pretext to interfere.”

  “I will handle it.”

  He shrugged. “As you wish.”

  They cleaned up, dressed in their uniforms, and went to the nearest personnel office. “Lieutenant Commander Phist registering as a sexual correspondent to this woman, Ensign Spirit Hubris,” he said.

  The clerk took their names and verified their prints. Then he looked directly at Spirit, who had arranged to look severe in the military fashion, and had not covered up her facial scars. He kept his eyes on her but spoke to Gerald. “This is irregular, sir,” he said.

  Gerald frowned. “How so?”

  “This woman is obviously not a sexual creature. That suggests a commitment in name only.”

  “I can not choose which woman I want?”

  “Sir, it is known that you want only one woman. The navy does not support tokenism.”

  “Tokenism!” Gerald was evidently too surprised to see what Spirit saw: this was an aspect of his harassment, part of a continuing campaign to drive him out of the Navy. Spirit’s research had established its existence, and she recognized the pattern. They wanted to force him to do what he disliked, using the common Tail.

  She stepped into the fray. “Summon your superior,” she said to the clerk.

  “That is not required.” Then, after a significant pause, he added “Sir.”

  Spirit’s knife was in her hand, its point touching the man’s nose. “Are you refusing to obey an order by an officer?”

  The clerk was not so dull as not to realize he was in over his head. “Nosir!” No break between words this time. he touched a button on his desk.

  Spirit put away her blade, removed her military shirt, and let down her hair. She faced the officer’s aperture as she efficiently applied spot makeup by touch. Gerald faced away, tacitly disengaging from the proceedings. Possibly he had a notion what was in the offing.

  The aperture opened and a lieutenant senior grade appeared. He had not yet gotten his mouth open for an imperious query before he spied Spirit, standing straight and proud in her well-filled military bra, her gaze smoky from beneath aggressively tangled locks of hair, her facial scars gone, her mouth accented by bright lipstick.

  She gave him no time to catch his mental balance. “Sir, this rectal martinet claims my liaison with this fine officer is tokenism, a commitment in name only, because I am obviously not a sexual creature. I challenge this assessment.”

  The lieutenant of course knew that his clerk was honoring the Navy’s private policy of harassment against a whistle-blowing officer, but at this moment this was clearly unfeasible. It wasn’t just that Spirit was outstandingly female, but that she was so clearly eager to fight. No small office wanted the kind of public scene this threatened to be.

  That was one reason Spirit had come prepared. Had she dressed civilian she might have been challenged as an opportunist or prostitute.

  “I think he meant that an officer of your qualities does not normally associate with one of the Commander’s qualities,” the lieutenant said somewhat lamely. Beautiful women generally avoided career-dead men.

  “I am a red-blooded woman who can have any man she chooses,” Spirit said, shaking her hair artfully across her face. “I choose the most decent, honest, and courageous officer in the Jupiter Navy. Do you have a problem with that, Sir? Show me your power.”

  And what a scene that would make, if the news-media got hold of it, for Commander Phist was a hero among civilians. The lieutenant backed off, literally. “Approved,” he muttered to the clerk. He retreated through his aperture, and it closed behind him.

  Spirit quickly put her shirt back on and jammed her hair in a wad under her cap. Gerald turned to face her, keeping his face straight.

  The clerk made on entry, then touched a button. Spirit recognized it as the mute, cutting off the recording of this interview. “Sir, may I speak off the record?” he asked.

  “Speak,” Spirit snapped.

  “Damn good show. Well played. Congratulations.”

  “So it’s not your personal blackball
?”

  “No sir. The commander’s reputation is excellent among enlistees.”

  She smiled graciously. “Thank you.”

  “Maybe he is finally getting some of what he deserves. You popped my eyeballs, sir.” His hand hovered near the mute button; obviously it could not remain tuned out long, lest the gap in the record arouse suspicion.

  “Thank you,” she repeated.

  He touched the button. They were back on the record. “Your liaison with the commander has been approved, sir,” he said formally. “There may be another time.” The implication was that the office would make further difficulties if it could.

  “If so, you may regret it,” Spirit said coldly. Her threat was obviously directed at the clerk, so that no one would suspect the nature of their private dialogue.

  Then she took Gerald’s arm, and they departed.

  Back at the apartment, Gerald finally allowed his military bearing to relax. “May I kiss you, Spirit?”

  “Any time!”

  He did so. Then he held her slightly away from him and looked at her as if reappraising her qualities. “May I fondle you?”

  “How far do you intend to go?” she asked, smiling.

  “As far as you allow.”

  “I thought we had already done that. There is no requirement for twice in a week, let alone in a day.” She was teasing him as she undressed.

  “This time it is of my volition rather than yours.”

  “Gerald, if you want it ten times an hour, you are welcome. But I am curious: is it merely physical?” She sat on his lap.

  “No.” He accepted her proffered bare breast.

  “A reaction of the moment stemming from a small victory in the field?”

  “In part.”

  “A suggestion that there is a greater potential in our relationship?” She repressed her desire to take over the sexual process; this time it had to be his initiative, not hers.

  “Yes.” He kissed her breast.

  “Do I need to say how happy that makes me?”

  “No.”

  She followed his lead, and soon they were on the bed again, and in the throes of a more extended and lingering act of lovemaking. She tried to school herself not to expect too much, for potential was not actuality, but the prospect of winning his love thrilled her. She had taken a calculated risk at the personnel office, knowing that she could surely win her point, but might alienate Gerald in the process. Now he had a better notion of what she was capable of, and it seemed he had reacted positively. That was a great relief.

  When the sex was accomplished, he surprised her again. “May I continue to kiss you?” he asked.

  That was what she had asked him before. “You may, but I am bemused. Normally men go to sleep.”

  “So I have done, elsewhere.”

  “Your kisses imply developing commitment.”

  “You desire candor?”

  And they had completed the inversion. “Always,” she agreed.

  He kissed her, and indeed it was not a sexual gesture despite their situation. Then he got serious. “I have some questions you may find awkward.”

  “I fear the answers may be awkward, but you shall have them.”

  “Is your brother like you?”

  “No, not really. We are both Hispanic refugee orphans who have seen truly ugly things, and we love and understand each other, but our strengths and weaknesses differ. We complement each other.”

  “How so?”

  “Hope is idealistic, and he thinks a lot, trying to understand everything philosophically, and often succeeding.

  I try merely to understand the situation of the moment, so that I can control it. He writes down his experiences periodically; I do not. He is like a fine actor who can play a scene brilliantly, improvising when he has to, but normally others will write the script.”

  “You did not say that he is ambitious.”

  “That is because he isn’t.”

  “Then why does he want an ideal unit?”

  “That is the dream of Lieutenant Repro. The man is an addict, and his career is stultified, but he has conceived the perfect unit, and believes my brother can implement it. You are the first step in that implementation.”

  “Yet no ambition there?”

  “His ambition is to extirpate piracy from the Jupiter Ecliptic, perhaps from the entire Solar System. This unit offers an avenue.”

  “There must be something you have not yet told me about him. Please amplify. Why do you support him so completely that you will put your entire life and future on the line for his whim?”

  Spirit considered, not certain how much of an answer was feasible. “I would prefer to avoid that discussion.”

  “If I am to associate, I need to know why. I have had bad experience in the past.”

  Indeed he had! “Then I must answer. My brother has two, maybe three special qualities. One is his ability to read people, as I mentioned. He knows whether they tell the truth and what their nature is, so he can’t be deceived except by one he loves; then his talent is nulled by his own emotion.”

  “Can you deceive him?”

  She hated this. “Yes.”

  “No shame there.”

  “His second quality is perhaps a result of the first: his effect on others, as I also mentioned. He compels deep respect in men, and love in women. Any woman who associates with him more than in passing would gladly do whatever he wishes of her.”

  “Including sex?”

  “Especially sex,” she said shortly.

  “Would you?”

  So that was what he was after. She refused to lie about it. “I did, one time.”

  “I do not wish to misunderstand. What did you do?”

  “I committed incest with him, when there was no other woman.”

  He paused a moment. “When?”

  “When I was twelve, and he fifteen.”

  “I think then that your guilt is limited. You were too young to understand.”

  “No. I understood. I desired it.”

  “The fact that a thing is consensual does not necessary mean it is understood. The ramifications–”

  “I understood,” she repeated.

  “But you did not do it again.”

  “There was no opportunity.”

  “I think I am coming to understand the depth of your commitment. Is there anything else?”

  “You wish to know the worst?”

  “Yes.”

  “My brother has sieges of madness. He can see visions, he can do things he does not know about.”

  “Such as having sex with his sister.”

  “Yes. But normally he is completely rational. I—I try to protect him from stress that can madden him.”

  “And helping him to fulfill his dream protects him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think your brother is dangerous.”

  “Oh, no, he would never do deliberate evil! His intentions are the best.”

  “That is the most dangerous kind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I pray you never do. Spirit, you do share his traits to a degree. You are intelligent and motivated, capable of what some would call madness, and you can influence people when you try, even against their will. I saw that today at the personnel office, and here in my apartment.”

  “I am rational, with the discipline to do what has to be done. That is not the same.”

  “Yet it is similar. I feel it myself, and I am not readily influenced.”

  “I offer you sex and passion and the hope of an improved career. Your rational decision is to take what is offered.”

  “Had I been rational in that manner, I would never have blown my whistle.”

  That set her back. He was right. “I concede the point.”

  “But you do have some power, for I have been moved to cater to you since you first approached me. I have tried to resist it, but I must now concede that I see in you the capacity to replace my lost love. This is
why I have questioned you in uncomfortable detail; I do not wish to be hurt again.”

  “I can not promise not to hurt you.”

  “But you can promise never to do it by your choice.”

  “I do so promise.”