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trousers when it struck him that she might discover the rhodo weapon in his
pocket.
Terror jarred him.
"The wine!" He swayed away from her. "I'm afraid we're drunk."
"Afraid?" She straightened, laughing at him. "Forgive me, darling. I keep
forgetting how much you have to learn. You needn't ever fear anything again.
Neither all society nor any human being. Neither want nor pain. Not since "
Her gay smile mocked him.
"I'd wanted us to forget the humanoids, but I suppose we've time enough." She
nodded toward the huge windows, toward that black shadow-blot on Malili's
dull-red mystery. "I know you don't yet understand them, but you will. I hope
to make it easier for you."
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Her arms slid around him. Her hard nipples brushed bis bare chest, and her
heady scent enveloped him.
"You'll find them forgiving." Her warm breath caressed him, scented like the
spicy wine. "And I do know, darling, that you'll need their forgiveness.
Because you haven't been quite candid with me."
He knew she felt his shudder.
"What " His hoarse whisper caught. "I don't know what you mean."
"You can trust me, dear." She laughed at him softly, her breasts vibrant
against him. "You'll have to trust me now. Because you weren't quite so clever
as you thought. Not when you tried to hide all you know about the monopole."
"But I don't-don't know anything."
"I know what you know." Her strong arms slid down his back to pull him even
closer. "You see, dear, I was in the Vorn museum today, looking at the
artifacts somebody had brought back from the dead levels under Greenpeak "
"Was there a monopole?"
"You silly dear, you know there wasn't!" Her chuckle throbbed against his
chest. "The most puzzling thing in the find was a modern holocam, lying there
in mud and dust centuries old. I recognized it. The one I gave you, darling,
on your eleventh birthday."
Stunned, he couldn't breathe.
"So I know you were in that vault," she murmured. "I know you found the
monopole there. I know you took it to Cyra and your father. I know they used
it to make the rhodomagnetic device they showed Bridgeman Greel "
"Sorry!" he gasped. "I must go-"
"Darling!" She clung fast. "You really can't go anywhere. You must make your
peace with the humanoids. You'll find them wonderfully forgiving, but they'll
want to know what you've done with that other forbidden device you were trying
to show the Bridgeman today "
"No!" He shuddered. "There was no device-"
"You're a poor liar, darling." Lightly, she kissed his frozen lips. "I talked
to Greel this morning. You had just left his office. You had the device in a
bag a battered old mutox-hide spacebag your father used to use "
"Chel-Chel!" He felt trapped in a mad nightmare. "I'm terrified of the
humanoids and I don't know what to do. I've got got to get away!"
"Not yet, dear." Her arms hardened around him. "If you want forgiveness from
the humanoids, you'll have to help them now. You'll have to tell them how you
disposed of that wicked device, and help them hunt your father down."
He thrust at her arms, but they held on with an unexpected strength.
"Darling, please!" she breathed. "You mustn't be afraid, but there are other
things they'll want to know. About your trip to Malili, because they've never
been there. About what Bosun Brong is up to, out there in the Lifecrew office.
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About how my poor, misguided uncle has come to let the Crew deceive him so.
Most urgently, they'll want to know what became of the two kilograms of
palladium he let you bring back to your father."
She shook her head in gentle reproof, her bright hair rip-pling.
"Really, Keth, with so much to explain, it's silly for you to think of running
away. You can't escape the humanoids nobody can. But you'll find them
understanding, if you make a full confession. You know I love you, dear. I'll
do my best to help, if you'll only let me."
"Oh, Chel!" He shivered in her unrelenting arms. "You know I always loved
you "
"But not enough."
"You always asked asked too much." His voice was hoarse and broken. "I want to
trust you now. But don't you see don't you see why I can't?"
"You must."
"I've listened to you, Chel." He tried and failed to push her back, tried
desperately to read whatever lay behind her warmly smiling mask. "I've heard
the Navarch and the Commodore. You're all too-too different. Too happy and too
glib and too certain. I don't know what the humanoids have done to you, but
you aren't aren't yourselves!"
"Keth, please!" She looked bewildered and hurt. "You're insane!"
"I don't know what I am, or what you are!" With both cold and shaking hands,
he shoved at her white shoulders. "But you've got to let me go. Before before
I crack up. I'll find my own way out."
"Darl-"
Suddenly silent, she quivered and stood still. Her strangely stiffened arms
slipped away from his waist. Her vivid features had frozen. Her narrowed,
staring eyes didn't even follow as he stumbled away.
"Stop!" He was half across the room before she spoke behind him. "Stop where
you are."
Pitched high and musically sweet, the voice was no longer hers, no longer even
human.
"You aren't going anywhere."
Dazed, he looked back.
She stood where he had left her, nude beside the great round bed, the scarlet
wrapper on the rug at her feet. Utterly motionless, she might have been carved
out of marble, or ice. Her bare beauty stabbed through him, keener than his
fear.
"Chel-"
His hoarse voice froze, because he had seen a fine black line that began at
the center of her high forehead and ran down across her nose and her stiffened
upper lip, down around her stubborn chin, down between her dark-nippled
breasts and on through her navel to her black-haired pubes.
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The line widened. Her face and her breasts fell apart, revealing something
sleek and hard and black beneath. Alive again, she caught her long black hair
with both her hands to peel her scalp and face away.
She, it, tugged and shrugged to rip the white flesh from arms and shoulders,
to strip it off a narrow torso, which shone with its own dark luster and
glinted with a bright yellow nameplate:
HUMANOID SERIAL NO. KM-42-XZ-51,746,893
"TO SERVE AND OBEY, AND GUARD MEN FROM HARM"
"At your service, Shipman Kyrone," its new voice crooned.
Stricken, he stood watching it discard the grotesque garment that had been
Chelni's body. It ungloved its own deft black hands, used them to strip the
lean dark legs and dancing feet, turned at last to toss the shapeless,
bloodless, grisly thing toward the white-furred bed.
"Shipman, are you ill?"
Gliding with more than a human dancer's grace, it came toward him soundlessly.
Soft hues of bronze and blue shone across its sleek and sexless blackness. It
was beautiful and monstrous. Recoiling, numbed with terror of it, he found no
word to say. Stiffly, himself mechanical, he shook his head.
"You need not speak until you wish." It paused close to him, blind-seeming,
steel-colored eyes fixed on his face. Its high clear voice was eerily sweet.
"We are here, as we will always be. We exist to serve you. Ask for what you
need."
"Stand back!" He fought for breath and voice. "Just let me go."
"That, sir, will be impossible." Except for the quick, black lips, it was
absolutely motionless. "Since you have used rhodo-magnetic devices in an
unfortunate attempt to delay our establishment here, you will require our most
attentive service for the rest of your life."
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