Eros Ascending: Book 1 of Tales of the Velvet Comet Read online

  “Soon,” he grunted, returning his attention to the screen.

  “That's what you said an hour ago.”

  “It's taking a little longer than I thought.”

  “Harry, it's five o'clock in the morning,” she persisted.

  He looked at her and smiled. “I thought we didn't have days and nights up here.” He paused. “By the way, have I told you how much I admire your outfit?”

  “Then come into the bedroom and admire it close up,” she said.

  “In a few minutes.”

  She disappeared into the apartment, then emerged a moment later wrapped in a white satin robe trimmed with brilliant white plumes from one of the wild polar birds of Selica II.

  “I thought you were going to bed,” remarked Redwine.

  “I thought you were,” she replied, walking over and standing in front of him. “Harry, if I find out that you've been playing chess with the computer...”

  He chuckled. “Store and hold in my priority file,” he ordered the computer. Then he reached out, gently grabbed her arm, and pulled her down on his lap.

  “Sorry,” he said, kissing her lightly on her lips. “I got carried away.”

  “What was so important that it couldn't wait until morning?” she asked, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him back.

  “Nothing,” he answered, holding her tightly.

  “Really,” she continued. “I want to know.”

  He sighed. “No, you don't.”

  “Why not?”

  “We'll just fight.”

  She straightened up and pulled back from him.

  “Does this have something to do with Suma?” she demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought we settled that at dinner, Harry.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “Harry, she's no more of a threat than anyone else on board the Comet,” said the Madonna irritably. “They all want my job.”

  “Yeah, but they're not all convinced they're going to have your job in the immediate future. She is.”

  “We've been all through this half a dozen times, Harry,” she said, getting up from his lap and walking to the bar, where she began mixing herself a Blue Polaris.

  “There's nothing wrong with being ambitious. I was.”

  “I know,” he said. “But you didn't talk with DeWitt; I did.”

  “Five minutes after Gamble gets out of line he'll be off the ship.”

  “A lot can happen in five minutes,” replied Redwine ominously.

  “Don't be melodramatic, Harry. You spend five minutes with a girl who has delusions of grandeur and ten minutes with a dissatisfied athlete and suddenly you see conspiracies everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere,” he said patiently. “And what I've been doing for the past couple of hours is making sure that it's a coup and not a conspiracy.”

  “It's a fantasy,” scoffed the Madonna.

  “I hope so,” he said. “But in my line of work, you learn to listen to your instincts.”

  “Accountants listen to their instincts?” she said skeptically.

  “No,” he answered seriously. “But saboteurs do. And my instincts say that you're taking her too lightly.”

  “We've gone over this all before,” she said, pouring her drink and walking over to sit down on the sofa next him. “She's just another hungry prostitute who thinks she could do a better job of running the show than I can.”

  “She's too sure of herself,” said Redwine.

  “She's very young,” replied the Madonna. “So far she's gotten everything she's ever wanted. Why shouldn't she be sure of herself?” She paused. “Harry, I control every facet of the Resort, including Security. What the hell can she do?”

  “That's what I've been trying to find out.”

  “And?”

  “Her dossier's not complete yet.”

  “Cut the crap, Harry. Have you found a single thing that substantiates your suspicions?”

  “I don't know,” he admitted.

  “What do you mean, you don't know?” she persisted. “Either you've discovered something or you haven't.”

  “I'm not through yet.”

  She sighed deeply. “All right, Harry. I can see we're not going to get much sleep until this is over with.” She took another sip of her drink and stared at him. “What have you got?”

  “Not much.”

  “You've been talking to the computer for almost three hours,” she pointed out. “Shouldn't that imply something?”

  “Nine-tenths of the trick is knowing which questions to ask it,” he responded. “I began by seeing how much time she's spent with DeWitt in the past month.”

  He turned to the computer, activated it, and called up his priority file.

  “Eighty-five hours, spread out over twenty-three days.”

  “That much?” she asked, mildly surprised.

  He nodded.

  “Still,” she continued, “it doesn't mean anything, except that I can schedule her more heavily.”

  “The computer says that it was all done on her free time,” noted Redwine.

  “Then the computer's wrong,” said the Madonna.

  “When she goes to bed with Gamble, she's working as a tutor—and when she's working, I decide where she works.”

  “I agree,” said Redwine. “So I asked the computer how many times she's been to bed with him.”

  “And?”

  “Fourteen times, totalling about twenty hours.”

  “Then what does she do the rest of the time?” asked the Madonna. “I mean, no one can spend sixty hours talking to him.”

  “Sure they can,” said Redwine. “If they talk about a subject he knows.”

  “The only thing he knows is fighting.”

  “Computer,” ordered Redwine, “bring up a list of all the tapes and disks Suma has called up from your library banks in the past month.”

  The screen displayed two biographies of DeWitt, both written while he was still champion, plus some fifty-seven news items, all concerning his career.

  “All this means is that she's got some silly notion of using him as a bodyguard,” said the Madonna firmly.

  “Or an enforcer.”

  “Or an enforcer,” she agreed. “I told you at dinnertime that I'd put a stop to it.” She paused. “Is that the sum total of what you've got?” she asked sardonically.

  “No,” said Redwine. “The next thing I did was check and see if she'd been sleeping with anyone from the casino.”

  “The casino? Why?”

  “Because what you said before wasn't exactly true. You control all facets of the Resort except the casino. That's why you were so suspicious of me when I first came aboard: you thought the Duke had somehow convinced the Syndicate to send me here so he could prove that the casino was more lucrative than the brothel and that he should be in charge.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You never had to,” he replied with a smile. “I'm good at my job, remember? And part of that job is listening to what people say and figuring out what they mean.”

  “All right,” she said with a shrug. “I was wrong.”

  “Half-wrong, anyway,” said Redwine. “The Duke has been hinting that he should be in charge for years—but nobody in Entertainment and Leisure pays any attention to him. After all, they've got bigger gambling operations on half a dozen worlds; the brothel is what brings people to the Comet, except for an occasional oddball like the Lady Toshimatu.” He paused.

  “Still, it made sense to check and see if there was any connection between Suma and the Duke—a pooling of dissatisfactions, so to speak.”

  “And was there?”

  He shook his head. “No. She hasn't spent two minutes alone with anyone from the casino—but while I was checking it out, I made an interesting discovery.”

  “Oh?”

  “She's been sleeping pretty regularly—once a week or so—with a member of the Security team.”

  “Who?”


  “A woman named Lena Boatswain.”

  “Lena's a lesbian?” asked the Madonna, surprised.

  “You're missing the point,” said Redwine. “The fact that Lena is a lesbian isn't important. The fact that she's in Security is.” He paused. “Suma is a very shrewd little girl, and I have a feeling that she doesn't give anything away for free. But just to make sure, I called up her contract, and I found out that it's got a bonus clause in it.”

  “That's standard in all our contracts,” noted the Madonna.

  “I know,” said Redwine. “But since I haven't noticed a lack of patrons where Suma is concerned, I had to ask myself why she would go to bed for free with a member of Security when she could get paid for doing the same thing in the Resort?”

  “And what's your answer?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know.”

  “You're being paranoid, Harry,” said the Madonna.

  “Maybe.”

  “What else do you have?”

  “That's it so far,” he admitted. “I've been spending the last hour trying to figure out why she needs a friend in Security.”

  “Maybe she enjoys going to bed with her,” suggested the Madonna dryly.

  “I thought she enjoyed going to bed with everyone. Why should she sleep with Lena on a regular basis?”

  “Maybe she's formed an emotional attachment to Lena.”

  He shook his head. “Up until the time she hooked up with DeWitt three weeks ago, she had an awful lot of free time on her hands. If they were emotionally attached, why were they only together for an hour or two per week?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Because that was the minimum amount of time and effort required to keep Lena on the hook.”

  “For what?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Harry, this is ridiculous!” snapped the Madonna.

  “I don't think so,” he replied. “This girl is a threat to you, even if you won't admit it, and I'm not going to stop until I've figured out exactly what she's doing.”

  “If I were you, I'd be more worried about Victor Bonhomme.”

  “I can handle Victor,” said Redwine.

  “Well, I can handle Suma.”

  He shook his head. “I can handle Victor because I know how his mind works, and I know everything he can and can't do. Until you know what Suma's got planned, she's going to remain a problem.”

  “And you're actually going to stay glued to this computer until you solve this mythical conspiracy?” she demanded.

  “Yes.”

  She sighed deeply. “Well, let's get on with it.”

  "'Let's'?” he repeated.

  “I probably shouldn't admit this to you, but I don't enjoy sleeping alone since I've met you. And I'm certainly not going to seduce your body if I know your mind is still working away on this paranoid fantasy.” She paused. “So the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can go back to behaving like normal adult human beings.”

  “Thank you,” he said, placing his hand on her leg and squeezing it gently. “I get lonely out here, too.”

  “That's hardly my fault,” she said, moving her leg away. “Now keep your mind on business, and let's get to work.”

  He nodded, activated the computer, and fed in his priority code.

  “But if you're not through by eight o'clock, you'll have to finish up in the auxiliary office,” added the Madonna. “That's when I'm on call again, and I can't let you keep the room sealed off.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. Then he turned to the screen. “Computer, please bring up a list of Lena Boatswain's duties.”

  “Pretty standard rotation,” commented the Madonna as the list appeared. “One week on observation, one week in the airlock, one week in the Resort.”

  “Computer, what is Lena Boatswain's security clearance?”

  A number flashed across the screen.

  “Nothing special,” muttered Redwine.

  He stared at the screen for a few minutes, absolutely motionless.

  “Aren't you going to ask it anything else?” asked the Madonna at last.

  “I'm thinking,” he said.

  “Well?”

  “Nothing's coming.”

  “Have you called up her personal dossier and job history?”

  “Of course,” replied Redwine. “Absolutely ordinary.”

  “What did you expect?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know.”

  “Then why persist with her?”

  “Because there's got to be a reason.”

  “There is,” said the Madonna. “Suma likes her.”

  “Suma doesn't like anyone but Suma,” he said firmly. “There's something else here, if I can just get a handle on it.”

  “How long has this been going on?” asked the Madonna.

  “An hour or so,” he said grimly.

  “No. I mean between Suma and Lena.”

  “Close to a year,” he said, calling up the data and staring at it. “Well, forty-five weeks, anyway.”

  “Then it can't be connected to Gamble,” she pointed out. “He hasn't been with us that long.”

  Redwine called up DeWitt's record. “Thirty weeks,” he read. “You're right.”

  “Well, that was simple,” she laughed. “Now that I've shown you there's no connection, are you willing to call it a night?”

  “No. She still had to have some reason for seeing Lena.”

  “Since there can't be any connection between Lena and Gamble, are you at least willing to admit you were wrong about him?” persisted the Madonna.

  “Maybe,” said Redwine. “But first let me check back and see if she was thinking about another enforcer before Gamble arrived.”

  He called up Suma's file again.

  “Nothing,” he said, frustrated. “Except for Lena and DeWitt she hasn't had a single liaison in the Home in more than a year.” He muttered a curse. “There's got to be a connection! I'm missing a bet somewhere, and I can't spot it!”

  He got up, walked over to the bar, and poured himself a whiskey. He downed it, poured another, returned to the couch, and stared at the screen as if the computer itself was an antagonist.

  “Harry, try to relax,” said the Madonna soothingly. “You look like you're about to have a stroke.”

  “What the hell can she need her for?” he repeated.

  “She's been keeping this damned thing going for almost a year; she's got to have a reason!” Suddenly he straightened up. “Wait a minute!” he said excitedly.

  “What is it?”

  “There's another way to approach this thing! It's got to be the timing!”

  “I don't follow you.”

  “Forty-six weeks ago she didn't need a friend in Security, and one week later she did. Why? What happened during that week?”

  “I give up—what?”

  “Let's find out,” he said, instructing the computer to bring up a list of Suma's daily activities during the week in question.

  “What's going on here?” he demanded a minute later. “She wasn't on the ship.”

  “Even prostitutes get vacations, Harry,” said the Madonna.

  “Where did she go for it?”

  “Deluros VIII, I think,” replied the Madonna. “Ask the computer.”

  The computer confirmed her answer.

  “Computer, give me a list of all locations Suma visited and all people she met during her trip to Deluros.”

  An INFORMATION UNAVAILABLE message appeared.

  “I could have told you that,” commented the Madonna.

  “After all, why should our computer know what she did on her vacation?”

  Redwine ignored her answer. “Tie in to the Vainmill computer on Deluros VIII, feed in my priority code, and obtain the data.”

  “Why would Vainmill know?” asked the Madonna.

  “She's an employee,” he replied. “She had to register at customs, so maybe they kept tabs on her.”

  “And if not?”

  He
shrugged. “Then we'll have the Vainmill computer start checking around and talking to other computers until one of them finally tells us what we want to know.”

  He had another drink while waiting for the computer to send out a subspace tightbeam. It beeped twice to confirm that it had tapped into the Vainmill computer, then flashed a red CLASSIFIED light.

  “Classified, not unavailable?” asked Redwine.

  The machine answered in the affirmative.

  “What security clearance is required to read the information?”

  The computer flashed a figure on the screen.

  “Shit!” muttered Redwine, a worried expression on his face. “All right, break the connection with Deluros.”

  “What does all this mean, Harry?” asked the Madonna.

  “It means trouble,” he said, downing his drink.

  “Computer, bring up a list of all Vainmill employees who visited the Velvet Comet and slept with Suma during the period six months prior to her most recent vacation.”

  A list of more than fifty names appeared.

  “Which of them has the following security clearance?”

  He rattled off the figure the Vainmill computer had supplied.

  Three names remained.

  “What are the positions within Vainmill of these three people?”

  The computer flashed the information on the screen.

  “Well,” said Redwine to the Madonna. “Take a good look: one of them is my employer.”

  “You're sure?” she said dubiously.

  He nodded. “Eric Nogara, Director of Natural Resources and Manufacturing; Belinda Watson, Director of Finance; and Padani Makumbwa, Director of Acquisitions. They've all slept with Suma, they've all got a shot at the Chairmanship, and they've all got a high enough security clearance to keep the details of her trip to Deluros a secret from me.”

  The Madonna looked skeptical. “Just how rare is this security clearance, Harry? How many people can keep you from reading that file?”

  “With my skeleton card? The Chairwoman, the five division heads, and that's it.”

  “How about Victor?” she asked.

  “Not a chance. His card can't hide anything that mine can't find.”

  “And what's Suma's connection to all this? Are you trying to tell me she's the plant you've been looking for?”

  “Right. Except plant is a pretty inadequate word. I thought Victor had a spy on the ship; she's playing so high above him she probably doesn't know he exists. She most likely reports straight to my boss, and he passes stuff on to Victor.” He paused. “I don't know what kind of deal she cut, or why she needs a friend in Security, but she's so goddamned certain that she's going to become the madam that your job has got to be the payoff for whatever she's doing.”