Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

'Look. Let's go to bed after dinner, and see what takes your fancy. If there's something you really want, I'll just hive myself off. Give me the power to come back by myself and I can come and go as convenient.'

Michael lied. 'I can't do that.'

'Have you tried?'

Michael lied. 'Yeah, a couple of times.'

Nick seemed to find it funny. He chuckled. 'Like hell you did.'

There was some kind of issue about power. Michael now knew that.

In bed, Nick insinuated himself next to Michael. 'Now, let's see. Who shall we have then, eh?' He mentioned a boyish, not-so-young film star beloved of young girls. Nick nuzzled up against Michael. Michael didn't fancy the little squit.

'I'd like to piss on him,' said Nick, with a sudden surge of aggression that made Michael go still.

'I wouldn't want to do anything to him at all.'

'He is a bit wimpish. Maybe you'd like something a bit more butch.' He mentioned a boxing champion, low of brow, high of aggression, who was currently in prison for pummelling a waiter in a restaurant. 'That could be a bit more of a challenge. I hear he's hung like a horse. Talk about biting off more than you can chew, eh?'

'Oh, all right,' sighed Michael.

The brute arrived in an Italian suit, with a neck that was wider than his head.

'Imagine that on top of you. You wouldn't need the Viagra with him, he wouldn't care if you were hard or not.' Nick's merry little eyes said: you didn't know I knew about the Viagra, did you? He nudged him. 'Look at the size of it. That would cure your haemorrhoids.'

Michael felt something move in the air that was also a tickle inside his head. He felt it move and clench and try to hold.

'Go on,' said Nick, to the boxer. 'Drop 'em.'

Michael extended himself into the air. He felt himself grapple with something. Michael pushed it back down, and saw a tremor in the muscles around Nick's mouth. Nick had tried to make the boxer lower his trousers.

'I call the shots,' said Michael.

Nick chuckled.

Nick had tried to take control of the miracle.

With a single swipe, Michael pushed the boxer back to where he had come from. He felt his eyes blaze.

Nick looked surprised. 'All right, you didn't like him.'

Michael was angry but could find no words.

That was not Nick's problem. 'I was just trying to find something you might like. Or do you only want me?' His eyes, made of blue ice, simply could not do melting warmth.

'I may not want you at all,' warned Michael.

'Aw baby.' Was he being sarcastic or affectionate? Michael couldn't tell; both explanations fitted his behaviour, his tone of voice. He stroked Michael's arm. 'Let's just go to sleep.' Nick turned off the light and swung his best feature towards Michael. Michael felt his penis creep out of its shell. In the dark, Nick's body was as warm and as comforting as a lover's.

Nick was loyal. Nick never left him. Nick never gave up thinking of things to do for him.

'I thought I'd finally tackle the old studio today,' Nick said at breakfast. He meant the place where Picasso used to work. It was still crowded with stuff the artist had thought he might use: bicycle wheels, a single fur-lined glove, masses of magazines stained with paint, sheets and towels crusty with dried colour.

'Don't do that. Let me call Luis and see what he wants from it first.' Michael looked at the flat, with the newly polished wooden floors and clean kitchen counter tops. He thought of Luis and knew: Luis would demand he keep it for him.

'No. On second thoughts, just chuck it for me.'

Nick passed him a packed lunch. Michael ate it alone at his desk: chicken sandwiches, an apple, sticks of celery. He got back from work and Nick said, 'You got the Internet, right? Do you think I could use it?' The throw rugs were out on the roof garden, drying.

'What for? No downloading whole videos.'

'No, no, just a few images. You're a mean bugger, ain't ya?'

'Yes, I am. How many images?'

'Look, I'll be careful, all right.'

Each night, dinner was direct from cookbooks: boeuf en croute; curries with raisins and homemade chapatti. Every day a different part of the flat would have been scrubbed and polished.

Michael would come home to be presented with Internet images of twelve-year-olds in loincloths; students in a wrestling school in India, pubescent under folds of cloth. 'Doesn't that look sweet? Go on, admit it, they're lovely.'

Nick moved the computer into the bedroom. He downloaded images of a man who had cut off his penis and was now hammering nails through his testicles. The man had posted it himself, with an e-mail address for responses. Nick giggled. 'More like an e-nail. I mean that one would let you do anything to him, anything at all.' Nick's eyes burned with a tiny pin-prick light and his high greasy forehead gleamed like an icefloe.

Michael would be reading a book in bed and Nick would call, 'Here, you got to see this.' Michael looked up wearily. 'Look at this fat old whore. She loves being made fat. Look, she's got a progress chart here, she's fattening herself up like a goose. She says she wants someone to keep her in a dungeon, and force-feed her and then cook her and eat her!' This struck Nick as being wildly funny. 'I mean she actually wants to be cooked!'

Michael looked at the woman's face. She was smiling, bright and intelligent. She looked like someone who might work for him. He felt sick. 'I want that stuff off my hard disk. I want you to go and empty the cache and make sure it stays empty.'

Nick laughed at him. 'Oh-ho-ho man, you don't know the half of it. You really don't.'

'And I don't need to. That stuff is illegal and it's criminal.'

'No, it's not, they do it to themselves.'

'They do it to themselves because… because their imaginations have been corrupted.'

'Oh-ho man, listen to you. You sound like someone's maiden auntie.'

'People just do not naturally cut off their cocks. They do it because it has a social meaning. That's why they want people to send them e-mail. That means there has to be a social system for it to have meaning in the first place. And people like you are creating it.'

Nick was still roaring. 'Ah-ha-all right. I'll get the stuff off your bleeding hard disk. I'll bring it in on video instead!' This struck him as particularly funny.

And sure enough, Michael came home the next day to find a video from Russia playing on his television. A soldier was being lifted up and lowered onto a waiting cock. He winced from pain. He glanced directly at the camera, hoping for it to stop. Then he threw his head back in pain. The two men who bounced him up and down glanced nervously at each other. Was this right?

Michael punched off the power. 'What would have happened if I'd brought a colleague home with me?'

'You'd have changed channels.' Nick giggled.

'I would have turned you off.'

'That's what I meant.' Nick's laughter subsided. 'You really wouldn't have the right to do that, you know.'

Nick stood up to face Michael. He was smiling with some kind of catlike satisfaction. His voice started out silky, but roughened as he spoke. 'Whatever I am, Michael, I am a living, thinking, feeling being. You have no more right to switch me off or send me back than a mother has a right to throttle her own child. You got that? You think about it, Michael. While you're being so high and bloody moral about everything.'

Michael had no answer.

'I'm not one of your bleeding little chickens. You called me up. Now you're responsible for me. What am I supposed to do, eh? Run around and pick up your shit-stained underwear and wash it just so you'll let me stay alive? Am I supposed to go back to my trade? Which incidentally I was doing very well at. Don't you think people might notice, Michael, if two Nick Dodders showed up in the same business in the same town? I'm here because of you, mate, and you're stuck with me.'