Eros Ascending: Book 1 of Tales of the Velvet Comet Page 11

  Then he remembered that the Madonna didn't play games that she couldn't win, and he decided that he'd have to let her see him losing a few games so she would know she could beat him, and then he remembered that she wasn't even talking to him, and he sighed and activated the computer.

  He worked for about two hours, then picked up the box, shut down the office, and took the tram back to the Resort. He went straight to his room, poured himself a whiskey, and tried to figure out how to get the chess set to her. He didn't know how much it had cost, but he knew it was too valuable to ask one of the prostitutes to deliver it for him. The only person he felt he could trust to act as a messenger was Rasputin, but it was Rasputin who was responsible for the fact that he needed a messenger in the first place, and he stubbornly refused to ask the Security chief for a favor.

  He found himself wondering if the Madonna had heard what he said to her last night. Even if she hadn't been watching at the time, she should have been curious enough to review the video disks that had automatically been activated when he unjammed the room.

  His little tryst with Suma shouldn't have upset her; after all, she had been with literally thousands of men and he had made his adjustment to it easily enough.

  But if she had heard him, had seen how sincere and troubled he was, why didn't she acknowledge it?

  His unhappy conclusion was that she hadn't yet reviewed the discs, that no one except maybe Rasputin knew of his feelings for her, that she probably hadn't even thought about him since ordering Suma to visit him. Except that he couldn't believe the last part of it: she had made him feel so complete that it was inconceivable to him that she had felt nothing at all.

  Love and empathy were not exactly his greatest areas of personal experience, but he was absolutely certain that no one who was able to banish his emptiness after all these years could not be similarly affected.

  At least, he thought he was absolutely certain, but in the back of his mind was a tiny germ of fear, an unacknowledged suspicion that maybe emptiness was the natural state of things, and that far from being unique before, he was unique now. It was too painful a thought to bear, and he pushed it back into the bottomless abyss of fears and anxieties from which it had come.

  Finally he decided to try the ship's intercom once more. This time, instead of her activating her end of it, seeing who was calling, and breaking the connection, there was no response at all, and he decided that she must be in one of the public rooms, ironing out one of the dozens of problems and misunderstandings that occurred on a daily basis. He toyed with going out in search of her, but decided against it; it was not that he didn't want to see her, but that he was afraid he would make a fool of himself in front of everyone, employees and guests alike. He could picture the Madonna, years from now, visiting another patron or auditor, and telling the story of how a middle-aged accountant chased her all over the Velvet Comet, begging her not to whip him but to accept his gift. Redwine shuddered at the thought.

  And then a more devastating mental picture flashed across his mind. Years from now he was sitting at home, alone and miserable, and wondering why the hell he hadn't chased her all over the ship. If she wasn't worth a little embarrassment, why did he feel so empty in the first place?

  His mind made up, he got to his feet and walked over to the chess set. He leaned down to pick it up, then straightened up again, empty-handed. If she refused it, it might be difficult to offer it to her again.

  Better to talk to her first, smooth over their differences, convince her that he truly cared for her. Her table had been without pieces for seven years; another few days wouldn't hurt.

  He stared at the door for a long minute, trying to summon the courage to walk out of his suite in search of her, when suddenly he heard a pounding on the other side of it. He frowned; why the hell did Rasputin have to come now, now that he had decided not to enlist him as a John Alden after all?

  He adjusted his security card, faced the door, and muttered “Open!”—and an instant later the door slid back to reveal the Leather Madonna.

  “I was just coming to look for you,” said Redwine, furious with himself for not being able to come up with a more eloquent greeting.

  She stepped into the room.

  “Lock the door and jam the security system,” she said. “We've got a lot to talk about, and I don't want anyone listening in.”

  Redwine did as she told him. “Did you see the disk from last night?” he asked, trying futilely to remember what he may have said to Suma while in bed.

  She ignored his question and began pacing back and forth.

  “Please sit down,” said Redwine, wondering if she had stopped watching when Suma left.

  “I'd rather stand.”

  “I love you!” he blurted out, and suddenly felt like a foolish schoolboy.

  “Harry, you son of a bitch, you don't love anyone or anything!” she snapped. “You're a goddamned, double-dealing back-stabbing bastard!”

  He stared at her, unable to come up with a reply.

  “I'm so mad I could nail you to a wall and vivisect you!” she continued. “You're the most despicable form of slime I've ever met! And the worst part of it is I really liked you!”

  “Look. If it's what I did with Suma...” he began lamely, but he knew that it wasn't.

  “It's what you did with me, damn you! It's what you're still doing to me!”

  “Rasputin,” he said dully.

  “Don't blame Rasputin, Harry. He isn't trying to destroy everything I've built!”

  She walked to the wet bar and poured herself a glass of whiskey, then took a large swallow and turned to him.

  “He showed me your original dossier. We couldn't see anything wrong with it, but he decided to check with all the Vainmill subsidiaries you had worked for.

  I thought you were probably just hiding some black mark on your record that wouldn't matter to anyone else, and I wanted so badly to trust you that I told him to go ahead.” She paused for breath. “Do you know what he found?”

  “You tell me,” said Redwine grimly.

  “Nothing. And do you know why he found nothing?”

  She glared at him. “Because every company you audited was out of business within six months!”

  She hurled her half-full glass against a wall. “You're a goddamned Typhoid Mary! Everywhere you go, things die!”

  “Not quite everywhere,” he said.

  “Oh, you were clever, I'll give you that. What you did was well-hidden. Even after Rasputin had all the facts, it took him almost two days to put them together in the right order.” She paused. “And now you're here, trying to kill my ship. Why?”

  “It's what I get paid to do.”

  “To betray someone you say you love?” she demanded.

  “That wasn't part of the bargain,” he admitted.

  “Damn you, Harry!” she said, fighting back tears of anger. “Don't you think I ever get lonely too? Everyone on this ship is either a patron or an underling. You were one of the few people I could meet on equal footing, you and your clumsy schoolboy earnestness. I was lonely and I was fond of you—and you took advantage of it!”

  He shook his head. “I took fulfillment from it.”

  “Don't hand me that shit, Harry! You were using me!”

  “I wasn't then, and I'm not now. I love you.”

  “You've got a hell of a way of showing it!” she snapped. Suddenly she saw the wooden box. “What's that—more espionage gear?”

  “No,” he answered her. “It's a present.”

  “For who?”

  “For you.”

  “I may be a whore, but I'm sure as hell not a cheap whore! Go buy someone else with it!”

  “I don't want anyone else,” he replied.

  “I've heard that before!”

  He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Sit down,” he said at last.

  “I told you—I don't want to!”

  “Do it anyway!” he said harshly. She stared at him for a mom
ent, then walked over to the loveseat.

  Redwine sat down a few feet away from her.

  “We've got a lot to talk about,” he said.

  “I'm through talking to you, Harry,” she said. “Now I'm going to stop you.”

  He sighed, feeling a thousand years old. “You already have.”

  “How?”

  “I've already told you.”

  “Told me what?” she demanded. “That you love me? You don't even know me!”

  “I know that I've been unhappy for forty-three years, and that I'm happy when I'm with you.” He stared at her. “That's the truth.”

  “You wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and spat in your eye!”

  “The truth is that all I want to do right this instant is take two steps over to you and put my arms around you,” he said in strained tones. “But what I'm going to do instead is tell you the truth that you want to hear.”

  “That you're a goddamned saboteur?”

  He nodded. “That I'm a goddamned saboteur.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it's the only thing I do well,” he answered her. “Because when I'm through with a job, I can see that I made a difference. Maybe it's not a very positive difference, but I caused something to happen. I'm not just a clerk counting up other people's money—if I recall your description correctly.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Vainmill.”

  “But that's crazy! Why does the Vainmill Syndicate want to sabotage its own companies?”

  “Why does one politician try to discredit a colleague when theoretically they both want what's best for the people?” he replied. “Vainmill has assets of more than one hundred trillion credits, and the Chairwoman is due to retire in a year or two. That's going to put a mighty big prize up for grabs.”

  “You mean that all this is interoffice politics, that your boss is trying to destroy the Velvet Comet just to get a jump on his rivals?”

  He nodded. “Or her rivals.”

  “You're working for a woman?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “I don't know.”

  “You don't even know who you're working for?” she demanded incredulously.

  “That's right.”

  “All I can think is that I must look awfully dumb to you, Harry. How can you not know who's ordering you to destroy all these businesses? And, more to the point, after the way you've lied to me and tried to destroy me, why should I believe anything at all that you tell me?”

  “Because before you leave here, I'm going to call up the financial data banks I've been working on and show you exactly what I've done and how I've done it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you, and I'm all through hurting you.”

  She stared at him long and hard. “Oh God, Harry, you're such a damned good liar, how am I ever going to know when you're telling the truth?”

  “You'll know,” he said. “I'm going to give you enough details to lock me away for a long, long time.”

  “I may just use them,” she said ominously.

  “You won't,” he replied. “I'm not your enemy, not any more. But that doesn't mean you don't have an enemy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There's a plant on board the ship.”

  “You mean a spy?” she asked, trying to absorb what he was telling her.

  He nodded. “I don't know who my ultimate employer is, but I get my assignments from a man named Victor Bonhomme.”

  “I've never heard of him.”

  “Nobody on this ship should have heard of him. His name wasn't in my dossier, and he doesn't work for the Entertainment and Leisure Division.”

  “So?”

  “So Rasputin knew that I was somehow connected with him.”

  “Maybe someone mentioned it when he was following up on your dossier,” suggested the Madonna.

  He shook his head. “He knew it the day after I arrived.”

  “Could he be the plant?”

  “I doubt it. I can't imagine why he'd have mentioned Bonhomme if he was.” Redwine paused. “But it means that I can't just walk away from the Comet. The plant will know I didn't finish my job, and they'll simply send in someone else.”

  “So what are you going to do, Harry?” she asked cautiously, wanting to believe him but still not quite sure that she could.

  “I'm not sure,” he replied seriously. “But we've got some decisions to make.”

  “We?”

  “We,” he repeated.

  “What kind of decisions?” she asked suspiciously.

  “First I've got to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “I've spent the better part of three days telling myself I couldn't care for you this much if you didn't care for me, too. I've repeated it and repeated it and repeated it —” a worried, uneasy smile flashed across his face “— but I still don't know if it's true.” He hesitated awkwardly. “I know it sounds ridiculous on the surface of it. People, mature people, just don't fall in love on such short notice, at least not with total strangers—and certainly a woman like you couldn't feel anything for an overweight, middle-aged accountant who's starting to lose his hair...”

  “You're not overweight,” she said quietly.

  “But, damn it, I've got to know!”

  She was silent for a long time, staring at her intertwined fingers. Finally she looked up at him. “Oh, shit, Harry—of course I care for you. I just don't know if I can trust you. You hurt me very deeply.”

  “I know.”

  “I don't think you do know,” she replied. “This is a business of very fleeting, ephemeral relationships. For someone in my position to find a person she can feel comfortable with, whose company she can enjoy—well, it doesn't happen very often.” She paused.

  “There have been an awful lot of men who have paid tens of thousands of credits to spend a night or a weekend with me, who truly thought they were attracted to me when we were in bed, and who never thought of me again once they left. You've got to be so careful before you let your guard down, before you let yourself start to care.”

  “It's not limited to your business,” he interjected softly. “That's why I always keep to myself on a job. You can't let yourself care about the people you're doing this to.” He smiled wanly. “Only I broke my own rule.”

  “So did I,” she replied. “Now I just hope you can convince me I was right to.” She sat erect, suddenly more businesslike. “All right,” she said. “What kind of decisions are we talking about?”

  “I think we have only two alternatives. The first of them is the easy one.”

  “Go public right now?” she asked.

  “Nobody would believe me. Don't forget—I haven't done anything to go public about.”

  “Then what's the easy alternative?”

  “You've got a lot of money socked away. So do I. I could do what they're paying me to do, and we can both pack it in when I'm through—just quit our jobs and get the hell out of here. To Pollux IV, maybe, or anywhere else you want to go.”

  She shook her head slowly. “This ship has been my life for ten years, Harry. I made it what it is, and I'm not going to stand by and let some nameless executive destroy all the work I've put into it, just so he can make five billion credits a years instead of four.”

  “I had a feeling that would be your answer,” he said grimly.

  “What's the other alternative?”

  “It's a little trickier. As long as we know there's a plant on board, I've got to keep doctoring the books.”

  “That doesn't sound a hell of a lot different,” she said.

  “This is the difference,” he answered, withdrawing the skeleton card and holding it up. “I can rig the computer to remember the original entries and put them back in whenever we tell it to.”

  “That little card can make the computer do that?” she asked skeptically.

  He nodded.

  “All right,” she said, still looking
for loopholes.

  “So you can tell it to put the books back the way they were. So what? Like you said, they'll just send in another saboteur.”

  “They won't know what I've done until it's too late. We'll activate it two or three months before the Board elects the new Chairman, and I'll make the records available to all of them. Once they get their hands on the data and Victor's name, a couple of them have got to figure out who my employer is and blow him right out of the race.”

  “If you're telling the truth, these people are playing for awfully high stakes. What makes you think they won't just kill you first?”

  “Because when the plant checks the books after I've finished, he'll see that the Comet has been hiding some enormous losses. By the time we change back to the original entries, he won't have time to do anything about it.”

  “You're playing with fire, Harry,” she said dubiously. “Somebody's going to be awfully eager to show you what happens to double-crossers.”

  “Somebody is going to be much too busy protecting his own ass to worry about it,” he replied with more confidence than he felt. “Besides, whoever benefits from this ought to be willing to offer the Comet whatever protection it needs in exchange for our giving him the goods on his chief rival.”

  “Do you know how many patrons come up here every day?” she asked him. “Hundreds! How can you spot one assassin?”

  “I told you: this is the one job I'm good at. Nobody is going to know I'm responsible for it.”

  “Who else could they blame?”

  “The plant. One of the ship's accountants. Someone in Security. They won't know, and they're sure as hell not going to kill them all.”

  “They'll blame you,” she said adamantly.

  He shook his head. “I'm the guy with everything to lose if the books aren't rigged. I'll have bet on the wrong horse.”

  “How will you release the real data? Surely they'll be able to trace it.”

  “Even they can't trace some of the things I can do with this,” he said, indicating the skeleton card.

  She looked at him and frowned. “I just wish I knew that this wasn't simply one more lie.”