On Mercury, Carmen San Filieu—the younger bodily aspect belonging to her LAP, that is—curled languidly among silken sheets and waited for the arrival of her lover. She ran her hands over her fine body, rubbing in the unguent she had spread over her breasts, and playfully examining the gleam of oil upon her tanned and muscled arm. She was twenty-two, inhabiting the youngest of her aspects. This was a cloned body, the physical equivalent of her older form in New Catalonia, but fifty years younger. She had been quite a beauty in her youth, and now she was again. She allowed the youthful hormones full sway within this aspect. The tremble of anticipation, the thrill of being possessed by a man, taken care of, made love to. This was something she could not allow herself in New Catalonia, but here on Mercury, they were traits that were called for.
And—oh, yes—a streak of sadism, of course. Her lover came into the bedroom flush and excited.
“I have beaten Haysay to within an inch of his life,” said Amés. “It was . . . exquisite.”
“I can smell it on you,” Carmen said. This was, of course, untrue, but she could feel his power, the electric nature of his presence, that she always felt, and somehow could sense that a portion of that power had been discharged.
Amés gazed at her and she stretched herself out on the bed. He reached down and ran his hand through her long black hair, then pulled it tight.
Carmen gasped. Amés grasped her leg with his other hand and, still pulling her hair, rolled her over on her stomach. Standing, she was a good seven inches taller than he was, but lying down now, he seemed to loom over her, like an ominous shadow. She heard him drop his pants. And then he pulled her legs apart and was inside her. He was short enough to remain standing up while he took her as she lay on the bed.
As always, she thought of his power. Life and death belonged to him. In Carmen’s mind, he was, simply, her king—and she was his subject. It was a relationship of total submission.
When he was done, he pulled out as quickly as he had gone in. Amés pulled up his pants and went to sit at the piano that Carmen kept in her quarters just so he might play it if he willed. She, herself, was not musical. He ran through some scales lightly while she gathered a robe about her and went to sit in the chair beside the piano. She called up fresh strawberries from the grist and sucked their juice for moisture. She knew she looked very alluring, in the height of her beauty. She fingered the choker of diamonds set in beaten platinum that Amés had given her, and wondered how soon she could get him back into bed again.
“The planets move about their orbits with stately indifference,” Amés said. He leaned an elbow on the piano and only played with his left hand. “But I will have them. It won’t be a metaphor. Up in the heavens, there I will be. All the wanderers, the roaming stars, will have my name upon them. I will look to the sky, behold that it is mine, and smile.”
Amés struck a low bass minor chord.
“What do you think?” he said. “That is the book to an opera I’m working on.”
“The phrase ‘It won’t be a metaphor’ is a bit of a dead note, don’t you think?” Carmen answered.
“I need it to fit the timing of a bridge,” he said. “But perhaps you are right. One thing about opera: You must always keep a firm grasp of the obvious, then state it and restate it.”
“Yes,” she said, then deliberately dropped a strawberry into her robe and reached to retrieve it, wiping the juice along the curve of her breast as she did so.
Amés looked on, distracted. “Speaking of opera, how does it go in your little backwater province out—where is it? Around Mars? New Caledonia.”
“Very amusing,” said Carmen. “And it was an ill day. I lost a plaything.”
“So I heard,” said Amés. “Young Busquets is to be married.”
He had done it again!
How could the man know about the inner workings of New Catalonian society so intimately—and everything else, as well? She felt once again the overwhelming sensation that she was merely a character in his life, a bit player in his production—and Amés owned the theater as well! As a child, she had often wondered if she were the only truly living person, and everyone else really robots who turned themselves off when she was not present. Strange to find that you, yourself, were one of the robots and that someone else is the real person whom you are designed to serve and obey.
“Why you persist in those Catalán games when you have already taken the pot is beyond me, Carmen,” he said.
“I enjoy rubbing it in,” she said. She came and stood beside him, letting her robe fall open. “Screwing them over.”
He reached under the fold of the robe and cupped her rear in his hand. She stood trembling, feeling his finger play about on her skin.
“How goes Neptune?” he said in a low voice.
“Progressing. The rip tether is deployed. We’ll have them on their knees soon,” she said, and gasped, as he pinched her. “Sir.”
Amés stood up, still keeping his hand to her, and guided her back to the bed. She let the robe fall from her shoulders and showed him her sun-darkened, muscled back. This body was perfect in every way. She had seen to it that it would be. Sometimes it seemed unfair that she had been born with wealth and beauty and brains. But, for the most part, she realized that this was what made her better than others. What had attracted the Director to her, and made her mistress to the king.
“On your knees,” Amés said. She turned and faced him and immediately knelt before him. He looked into her eyes and it was as if he were gazing into her innermost self. Very shortly he would be, literally. “Carmen, you must never forget that you are, in the end, a piece of ass to me.”
She bowed her head. “I know it, sir.”
“Good, good,” he said. He undressed himself, and she remained before him in contrition for her selfish thoughts. She must always consider him, and only him, and remember her place, just as she expected those below her to remember theirs.
He tilted her head up, made her meet his gaze again. “But you are a very pretty piece of ass, my dear,” he said. She lowered herself to the floor and lay prostrate before him, kissing his feet. After a moment, she felt his hand once again in her hair. He pulled her up roughly, twisting her hair and hurting her, and threw her hard onto the bed. “That was for the ship you lost,” he said, then he whispered in her ear. “My dear. It is time for me to have you. All of you.”
She gave in. What else was there to do but to give him what he asked?
She met his grist pellicle with her own. She caressed his. She whispered to Amés, through grist, the key to her secret heart. He took it, opened her up, and swarmed inside. Within seconds, she was his entirely. Amés spread out through her, through all of her various personas, and she gave them to him, made their thoughts and wills his. He felt her chagrin in New Catalonia Bolsa, participated in her exquisite shame of the morning when Busquets had left her high and dry. He felt the accumulated tradition that had shaped her being, the proud heritage. He entered into her mind and examined her tactics, sifting through her thought processors and intuitions. Her longing to please him, her true lord and master, the king she served. The god.