Copyright 1994, 1996 - All rights Reserved
Published by Serendipity Systems of Big Sur, California
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For a long moment, Michael Durgov could not take his eyes away from Lisa. Her panties and bra were no more than gestures toward covering or containing. Plain before him were every curve, every cleft, every swell and hollow that once upon a time had made him forget everything except the creature that had panted within his adolescent skull and even now threatened to draw him away from all that sanity preferred. Certainly he had no thought for the murder of his meat.
A floral scent so strong it choked his sinuses finally made him look away. He saw two bowing men confronting them, distinguishable only by the tops of their heads, one thatched with black, one brown and balding. He blinked and stared and wrinkled his nose, struggling to orient himself after the sudden transition. Where was he? Where had Lisa taken him? But then the figures before them straightened to reveal thin limbs and hollowed cheeks that suggested nothing more than prolonged starvation and exhaustion. The skin sagged beneath their eyes. The cords in their necks and wrists were strung as tight as wire. Their sunken eyes gleamed with... Michael could not decide what emotions were present in their expressions, though he caught himself thinking of worship and desire, fear and hatred, hope and despair. Then they looked at him, and was there just a hint of pity in the mix?
His next impression was of pink: pink carpet underfoot, pink cherubs painted on the walls, pink marble busts on pedestals beside the archway that framed the view, pink, nacre-buttoned livery on the gaunt figures who still stood as if they had been expecting their arrival. Through the archway, he could see a broad expanse of glass and through that a formal garden of crushed stone walkways, velvety lawn, glossy foliage, and pink flowering crabs, pink glads and roses, peonies of rose and cream, and more. Beyond the flowers sparkled the waters of a broad swimming pool rimmed with pink tile. Beyond that loomed a tower whose walls were pierced with slot-like windows.
Michael did not at all know what to make of it all, to think or feel or say. Certainly he had never dreamed of seeing Lisa again. Then there she was, introduced like a new contestant on a game show, and she was fighting over him. Fighting with a past wife he had never thought to see again. And then she had magicked him away to... He swung his gaze back and forth. His brain felt muffled. He was buried in pink cotton candy, smothered in powder puffs. He was stuck in a women's magazine, a figure in an ad or a "house beautiful" illustration.
"You like pink," he said.
Lisa laughed and hugged his arm. "Do you like it? I had some nice places before. There was one in Stamford, and one in Palm Springs. But never anything this nice. Never!" Despite all his years, he blushed at the feel of skin along his arm, the pressure of her breasts, the glimpse of leg and thigh and... Was that wispy pretence of a bra actually thinner than it had been a moment before?
He nodded. He had visited houses much like this when he was younger and in his meat. They had belonged to executives and politicians and actors, people impressed by their own wealth and eager to impress others, people who would have given their first- born--or perhaps just their second--to have so many flowers of different seasons blooming all at once. He himself had almost always lived in apartments, and though they had been luxurious enough, especially in his later years, they had never been this showy. He had asserted his ego in other ways.
He looked once more at the pair who had greeted them. He thought of ancient photos of death-camp inmates and famine victims, but when he held one hand in their direction and opened his mouth to speak, Lisa tugged him toward the archway. She hardly seemed to see the others.
Michael surprised himself when he resisted her pull. He was not that ardent a democrat, but something in the situation made him say, "Aren't you going to introduce us?"
"They're ~servants,~ dear." As if they had been created to be ignored. Possessions only, nothing more than environment and background.
But then she sighed theatrically. "Anton," she said, and the man on the left nodded at them, his eyes glowing with pleasure for the dollop of attention she was giving him. "Ling- ko."
Now that he had a name, Michael could see the signs of Asia in the latter's eyes. His other features were too distorted by his suffering to be clear, and his skin was no yellower than his fellow's.
"They lost all their money," said Lisa. "They would have died, but I felt sorry for them. I took them in and gave them jobs. Oh, Michael, there have been times when I would have been so grateful for such a benefactor! Would you believe that once I was this far from being a bag lady?" She held two fingers half an inch apart. "I was! Things hadn't been going well, and a man--more than one, really!--took almost everything I had. I was destitute! So I had to take them off the street, didn't I?"
A remarkably complex array of emotions played across the servants' faces, but gratitude did not seem to be among them.
"Now come, dear." Once more she tugged him toward the archway, and this time he let himself be led. "I want to get dressed. If you're a good boy, I'll let you watch. Anton! Bring the drug tray! Ling-ko, coffee."
The bedroom's thick carpet was as pink as the entry's, but three walls were palest blue. The fourth, all gauze-draped glass, faced on the pool and the tower, whose top Michael still could not make out. The bed was as large as any he had ever seen. A pale blue jumpsuit lay upon its flowered spread. Lisa hurled the jumpsuit toward a mirrored closet door. Michael watched, bemused, as it seemed to pass part way through the glass, as if it had been on the way to hang itself away when its mistress had stopped impelling it with her will. When he looked back at Lisa, she had already peeled the bed's covers back to reveal pink silk sheets. Now she sat down, lay back, and sank into the mattress. "So much nicer," she sighed. "Than pine needles. Or even grass."
When the strap of her bra parted with a "snap," he looked away, at carpet, walls, pool... The ceiling was mostly covered with a grey rectangle. "What's that?" he asked.
"A TV screen." The tip of her tongue appeared between her teeth as she grinned. Then she pointed, and it came to life, flickering snow, jagged lines, images that Michael quickly recognized as Lisa, in bed with... He told himself that what he knew from long ago, and what he had learned more recently, was quite enough to keep him from being surprised by anything she might do. Not that he hadn't seen as much before in other women's bedrooms, or taken part himself a time or two.
Anton appeared in the bedroom doorway, a silver tray in his hands. He did not seem to react to his nearly naked mistress, nor to the image of himself on the ceiling. "The drugs," he said.
Behind him stood Ling-ko, holding a second tray with coffee pot, two china cups, cream, and sugar.
Ignoring them both, Lisa pointed toward two small hatches beside the overhead screen. They opened, and a pair of metallic tentacles emerged. Each one carried embedded in its tip a lens. Red "ready" lights came on, and the image on the screen split to be replaced by two views of Lisa in real time, lying on the bed, stretching, staring at herself from two different angles.
She patted the sheet beside her hip. "Sit down, Michael." Then, to the servants, she said, "Set the trays down, there." As she spoke, a table appeared beside the bed, and Michael found it in him to wonder why she bothered with servants. In the virtual world, she could imagine anything she wanted, the coffee and the drugs, trays and all, as easily as the table. Indeed, why did
Anton and Ling-ko have to go elsewhere in this luxurious house to find and fetch what she had ordered? If Lisa thought it beneath her dignity to soil her mind with practicalities as the rich of other ages had refused to soil their hands with anything that resembled labor, then couldn't the servants simply have imagined what they needed?
Anton had retreated to stand beside the room's entrance. Ling-ko was coaxing Lisa's jumpsuit out of the substance of the mirrored closet door, hanging up the garment, easing shut the door, and finally joining his fellow servant. Michael wished he could ask them, but there was no answer in their stiff backs or sullen glares. He shook his head and took his seat obediently.
When she said, "You can pour. No cream. Just a pinch of sugar," he obliged and then watched in fascination as she set the cup on air an inch above her right breast and a thin stream of black coffee arced toward her mouth. Even as she swallowed a ghostly hand lifted a spoon from the drug tray and stirred snow-white powder into her cup.
He sipped at his own undoctored coffee in the conventional way until she asked, "What else do we have for dope?"
He looked at that tray. Once he had been no stranger to social snorting and puffing, but it had been a long time since he had last indulged. His physician had taken him off much more than alcohol.
He held up a paper cylinder filled with reddish leaf. "It's the wrong color for marijuana."
"Cojuana," she said. "They don't even have it in the meat world."
He recognized a squeeze bottle half full of cloudy liquid as eyedrops. There were pills, crystals, and balls of resin, pipes and needles, vials of colored powders. There was even a pair of wires attached to a small crackle-finished box; the last time he had seen such a rig, the wires had been inserted in the brain of a corpse in a Coleridge office. The company physician later told him the device stimulated the pleasure center, and some people would rather starve to death than turn it off. "You've got everything, haven't you?"
"I try." For just a second, her expression was as coy as that of a little girl who has been complimented on her doll collection. It changed, grew sharper, when she glanced toward the servants. "Anton. Light us up."
Anton obediently came forward, produced a disposable lighter, chose a cojuana joint, puffed it into life, and passed it to his mistress. He seemed to stay as far as possible from Michael.
Lisa waved Anton away, toked, and passed the joint to Michael. The drug hit him with a rush of preternatural delight, of clarity and relaxation. "That's something new," he said. She giggled. "~Real~ designer drugs," she said.
"We've got people here who can make a drug do anything you like. And no burnouts or hangovers or heart attacks." She toked again.
"No regrets."
"Why do you need the drugs? Can't you just wish for the effect?"
"Tradition," she said, and when she rested one hand on his thigh, he did not protest. Nor did he protest when Lisa's now- empty cup slid away from the bed and she tugged one of his hands toward her breast. She did not seem to care that Anton and Ling- ko had still not left the room. Obediently, accepting her attitude that the servants were no more mindful of what they did than furniture, he circled her erect nipple with a fingertip.
"Do you remember?" she said. "How we met? You and Rose were so thick, and then you couldn't take your eyes off me." She covered his hand with her own and pressed it tightly against her flesh. She giggled. "Just like now. Did the two of you ever get it on?"
"No." He exhaled noisily. The drug had permeated his system, stretching his time sense, sharpening his senses, focusing his concentration on the scent of her body, the warmth and softness of her skin, the heavy swell of his own eagerness.
"You came along just a little bit too soon." At the time, at their level of society, it had not been at all unusual for kids their age to go to bed together. Parents might not approve, but they knew that it was normal, that there was no stopping it, that indeed it was inevitable. His father had taught him how to use a condom the year before.
Yet kids of his time and class had rarely leaped into bed the very first chance they got. He and Rose had been tentative, aware of the commitments that were involved, perhaps a little scared. He supposed that must always have been the pattern, that the generations renowned for instant sex, like that of the 1960s, were rare, that affection, even love, was far more the norm. Certainly that had been what was building between him and Rose. It was not at all the sparky thing that had erupted so quickly between him and Lisa, that blazed anew so quickly now, that in fact he suspected she had spent all her life learning how to ignite at will. Yet that suspicion was no protection. He could feel his vulnerability in the way he licked his lips and his breath grew short and his heart accelerated. Not to mention...
She giggled. "Soon," she said. One hand fell against his groin as if by accident, but it was no accident at all when she squeezed him. "Dear man, don't get impatient."
He licked his lips as her panties melted away. "It's been a long, long time."
"And you're just as eager as you were then."
"You're an exciting woman."
Her cheeks glowed at the words. "But you're no virgin. How many wives?"
He didn't say. "You were the first."
"~Almost~ the first." Neither said that the reason they had never erased that "almost" was quite simply that she had spurned him. As soon as he and Rose had been beyond all reconciliation, she had left.
"You're no virgin either."
"But I could be one, just for you. Do you want to hurt me? Make me bleed?" When he said nothing, she handed him the remnants of the cojuana joint and squirmed away from his hand. He sucked in the last tendrils of smoke. She faced him now, spread her legs, and used her fingers to draw the lips of her vulva apart.
"Watch."
He obeyed, and a ring of hymeneal flesh formed, extended, nearly blocked the deeper opening.
"Perfect control," Lisa said. "And that's only the beginning of it." She winked. "Reality is what you make it."
#
Later, she lay curled against his side, half asleep, in her throat a murmur that was almost a purr. One breast was soft against his ribs, one leg lay over his still sticky groin.
Michael looked toward the door. Anton and Ling-ko were still there, standing stiffly erect, their eyes dark and hot.
Had he really thought they did not care what he and Lisa did? He looked away, unable to bear what he thought he could see of despair and hatred and jealousy, what he now imagined he himself must feel if he were in their situation. For the merest instant, he remembered the pity he had glimpsed before, but then Lisa stirred and the memory vanished.
Really, he told himself, it had been all his fault, hadn't it? He hadn't told Rose it was over when he started dating Lisa. He had thought of it, but--he had to face the past--he hadn't had the nerve. He had imagined that she would be hurt, outraged. Perhaps she would scream. Or she and Lisa would fight. So he had said nothing.
And then she had found them. And she had been hurt and outraged anyway.
He'd had it coming, hadn't he? Everything that happened? Losing Rose? Even losing his chance with Lisa? But now, after so long, so many years, he had that back again.
He sighed, and Lisa murmured. "Remembering," he said. "What we missed when we were kids."
She giggled throatily.
"It's a miracle," he said. "That we ever met again. That we can be young again. A second chance."
"Not quite," she murmured. "Look..." He did, and he saw her figure grow slimmer, more girlish, her breasts smaller, higher, her face less stamped by years of living though her eyes were still... "I'm a virgin again," she said. "Do you want to..."
He could not resist her invitation, though he knew that her virginity was only pretense, myth, even that she probably-- surely!--had not been a virgin when he first met her. Yet that did not seem to matter. It had never been his obsession to deflower virgins, though he knew that many men did think untouched maidens the most desirable of conquests. She was offering him that dream, again and again. He was responding to it, and to her. And he was the conquered one.
When he could think again, he told himself that this time was different indeed. Rose had someone else. So did he, in Ingrid, but they had broken up long ago. He ~had~ told her it was over. This time, he was not in the wrong, at least not in quite the same way.
"Michael, dear?"
"Mmm?" He buried his face in her hair and inhaled perfume, musk, sweat.
"Do you like my house?"
"Anyplace," he murmured. "If you were in it, anywhere would heaven be."
"Oh!" She pushed his mouth away from her ear. "Really. Do you?"
He nodded.
"So do I." Her voice pitched toward a little-girl treble.
"It's all I ever wanted, you know. But it's expensive."
"I thought they didn't use money here."
"Data energy," Lisa said. "Computer memory and processing time. I use a lot. It's a complicated simulation."
"You must have a job," he said, but her expression turned so chilly at his words that he knew that he had trespassed, that whatever she did for her living was none of his business. He paused while his mind retreated from any chance that he might give offense and lose his rediscovered love. "Maybe I could help?" he offered at last.
She shook her head, but her smile was tender once more, sweet and loving and rewarding. He knew he had said the right thing. "You forget," she said. "You're not rich any more. And you don't have a job yet."
"I must have something."
"Walking-around money. It's not very much. Just enough to last you while you learn the ropes and find a job so you can earn some more."
"That shouldn't take very long." He didn't think it could. His skills had never failed to bring him a more than ample income, and he had never been unemployed in his life, at least before his retirement.
"It doesn't usually. And then there's your basic subsidy, if you don't want to work and you're content with what the computer maintains for everyone to share."
"Surely I can spare a little."
"Well, maybe. But not too much! I don't want you to wind up like Anton and Ling-ko there." The two servants, still standing beside the door, closed their eyes as if her reminder of their past follies pained them, or as if they did not dare to run the risk that she might see a hint of warning.
"How do I transfer the funds?"
She patted his hip. "Dear boy. You'll learn all that soon enough. For now, just leave it to me."