Robert Silverberg - Thorns

He let her look upon him as he now was.

It was a test he prayed she would fail, but she did not fail it, for the full sight of him served only to stoke the furnace in her. He saw the flaring nostrils, the flushed skin. He was her captive, her victim.

She wins. But I will salvage something.

Turning to her, he seized her shoulders, forced her against the mattress, and covered her. This was her final triumph, woman-like, to lose in the moment of victory, to surrender at the last instant. Her thighs engulfed him. His too-smooth flesh embraced her silkiness. With a sudden great burst of demonic energy he mastered her and split her to the core.

Tom Nikolaides stepped into the room. The girl was awake now and looking out the window at the garden. He carried a small potted cactus, an ugly one, more gray than green and armed with vicious needles.

“Feeling better now, are you?”

“Yes,” Lona said. “Much. Am I supposed to go home?”

“Not yet. Do you know who I am?”

“Not really.”

“Tom Nikolaides. Call me Nick. I’m in public relations. A response engineer.”

She received the information blankly. He put the cactus on the table beside her bed.

“I know all about you, Lona. In a small way I was connected with the baby experiment last year. Probably you’ve forgotten, but I interviewed you. I work for Duncan Chalk. Do you know who he is, perhaps?”

“Should I?”

“One of the richest men in the world. One of the most powerful. He owns newstapes … vidstations… He owns the Arcade. He takes a great interest in you.”

“Why did you bring me that plant?”

“Later. I—”

“It’s very ugly.”

Nikolaides smiled. “Lona, how would you like to have a couple of those babies that were born from your seed? Say, two of them, to raise as your own.”

“I don’t think that’s a very funny joke.”

Nikolaides watched the color spread over her hollow cheeks and saw the hard flame of desire come into her eyes. He felt like an unutterable bastard.

He said, “Chalk can arrange it for you. You are their mother, you know. He could get you a boy and a girl.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Leaning forward, Nikolaides turned on the intense sincerity. “You’ve got to believe me, Lona. You’re an unhappy girl, I know. And I know why you’re unhappy. Those babies. A hundred children pulled out of your body, taken away from you. And then they threw you aside, forgot you. As though you were just a thing, a robot baby-maker.”

She was interested now. But still skeptical.

He picked up the little cactus again and fondled the shiny pot, slipping his finger in and out of the drainage opening at the bottom. “We can get you a couple of those babies,” he said to her open mouth, “but not easily. Chalk would have to pull a lot of strings. He’ll do it, but he wants you to do something for him in return.”

“If he’s that rich, what could I do for him?”

“You could help another unhappy human being. As a personal favor to Mr. Chalk. And then he’ll help you.”

Her face was blank again.

Nikolaides leaned to her. “There’s a man right here in this hospital. Maybe you’ve seen him. Maybe you’ve heard about him. He’s a starman. He went off to a strange planet and was captured by monsters, and they messed him up. They took him apart and put him back together again the wrong way.”

“They did that to me,” Lona said, “without even taking me apart first.”

“All right. He’s been walking in the garden. A big man. From a distance perhaps you can’t tell there’s anything wrong with him, unless you can see his face. He has eyes that open like this. Sideways. And a mouth—I can’t show you what the mouth does, but it isn’t human. Close up, he’s pretty scary. But he’s still human inside, and he’s a wonderful man, only naturally he’s very angry over what they did to him. Chalk wants to help him. The way he wants to help him is by having someone be kind to him. You. You know what suffering is, Lona. Meet this man. Be good to him. Show him that he’s still people, that someone can love him. Bring him back to himself. And if you do that, Chalk will see that you get your babies.”

“Am I supposed to sleep with him?”

“You’re supposed to be kind to him. I don’t expect to tell you what that means. Do whatever would make him happy. You’ll be the judge. Just take your own feelings, turn them around, inside out. You’ll know a little of what he’s going through.”

“Because he’s been made a freak. And I was made a freak, too.”

Nikolaides saw no tactful way of meeting that statement. He simply acknowledged it.

He said, “This man’s name is Minner Burris. His room is right across the hall from yours. He happens to be very much interested in cactus, God knows why. I thought you might send him this cactus as a get-well present. It’s a nice gesture. It could lead to bigger things. Yes?”

“What was the name?”

“Nikolaides.”

“Not yours. His.”

“Minner Burris. And look, you could send a note with it. Don’t minitype it, write it out yourself. I’ll dictate it, and you make any changes you like.” His mouth was dry. “Here. Here’s the stylus…”

With two of his closest aides off in the West performing a complex balletic pas de quatre with Burris and Lona, Duncan Chalk was forced to rely almost entirely on the services of Leontes d’Amore. D’Amore was capable, of course, or he’d never have come as far as he had. Yet he lacked Nikolaides’s stability of character and also lacked Aoudad’s consuming blend of ambition and insecurity. D’Amore was clever but shifty, a quicksand man.

Chalk was at home, in his lakeside palace. Tickers and newstapes chittered all about him, but he tuned them out with ease. D’Amore behind his left ear, Chalk patiently and speedily dealt with the towering stack of the daily business. The Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, so they said, had turned over a hundred and twenty pounds of documents a day and still had sufficient spare time to build the Great Wall. Of course, documents were written on bamboo slabs in those days, much heavier than minislips. But old Shih Huang Ti had to be admired. He was one of Chalk’s heroes.

He said, “What time did Aoudad phone in that report?”

“An hour before you awoke.”

“I should have been awakened. You know that. He knows that.”

D’Amore’s lips performed an elegant entrechat of distress. “Since there was no crisis, we felt—”

“You were wrong.” Chalk pivoted and nailed D’Amore with a quick glance. D’Amore’s discomfort fed Chalk’s needs to some extent, but not sufficiently. The petty writhings of underlings were no more nourishing than straw. He needed red meat. He said, “So Burris and the girl have been introduced.”

“Very successfully.”

“I wish I could have seen it. How did they take to each other?”

“They’re both edgy. But basically sympathetic. Aoudad thinks it’ll work out well.”

“Have you planned an itinerary for them yet?”

“It’s coming along. Luna Tivoli, Titan, the whole interplanetary circuit. Though we’ll start them in the Antarctic. Accommodations, details—everything’s under control.”

“Good. A cosmic honeymoon. Maybe even a small bundle of joy to brighten the tale. That would be something, if he turned out fertile! We know she is, by God!”

D’Amore said worriedly, “Concerning that: the Prolisse woman is undergoing tests even now.”

“So you’ve got her. Splendid, splendid! Did she resist?”

“She was given a valid cover story. She thinks she’s being checked for alien viruses. By the time she wakes up, we’ll have the semen analysis and our answer.”