Thorns Read online

  You are Helen, he thought.

  “—beautiful.”

  “Beautiful? I am beautiful?”

  Chalk had said it, Duncan the Corpulent. I daresay a lot of women would fling themselves at your feet…grotesqueness has its appeal.

  “Please, Elise, cover yourself.”

  Now there was fury in the soft, warm eyes. “You are not sick! You are strong enough!”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But you refuse me?” She pointed at his waist. “These monsters—they did not destroy you. You are still a…man.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Then—”

  “I’ve been through so much, Elise.”

  “And I have not?”

  “You’ve lost your husband. That’s as old as time. What’s happened to me is brand-new. I don’t want—”

  “You are afraid?”

  “No.”

  “Then show me your body. Take away the robe. There is the bed!”

  He hesitated. Surely she knew his guilty secret; he had coveted her for years. But one does not trifle with the wives of friends, and she was Marco’s. Now Marco was dead. Elise glared at him, half melting with desire, half frigid with anger. Helen. She is Helen.

  She flung herself against him.

  The fleshy mounds quivering in intimate contact, the firm belly pressing close, the hands clutching at his shoulders. She was a tall woman. He saw the flash of her teeth. Then she was kissing him, devouring his mouth despite its rigidity.

  Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!

  His hands were on the satiny smoothness of her back. His nails indented the flesh. The little tentacles crawled in constricted circles. She forced him backward, toward the bed, the mantis-wife seizing her mate. Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

  They toppled down together. Her black hair was pasted to her cheeks by sweat. Her breasts heaved wildly; her eyes had the gloss of jade. She clawed at his robe.

  There are women who seek hunchbacks, women who seek amputees, women who seek the palsied, the lame, the decaying. Elise sought him. The hot tide of sensuality swept over him. His robe parted, and then he was bare to her.

  He let her look upon him as he now was.

  It was a test he prayed she would fail, but she did not fail it, for the full sight of him served only to stoke the furnace in her. He saw the flaring nostrils, the flushed skin. He was her captive, her victim.

  She wins. But I will salvage something.

  Turning to her, he seized her shoulders, forced her against the mattress, and covered her. This was her final triumph, woman-like, to lose in the moment of victory, to surrender at the last instant. Her thighs engulfed him. His too-smooth flesh embraced her silkiness. With a sudden great burst of demonic energy he mastered her and split her to the core.

  THIRTEEN

  ROSY-FINGERED DAWN

  ■

  ■ Tom Nikolaides stepped into the room. The girl was awake now and looking out the window at the garden. He carried a small potted cactus, an ugly one, more gray than green and armed with vicious needles.

  “Feeling better now, are you?”

  “Yes,” Lona said. “Much. Am I supposed to go home?”

  “Not yet. Do you know who I am?”

  “Not really.”

  “Tom Nikolaides. Call me Nick. I’m in public relations. A response engineer.”

  She received the information blankly. He put the cactus on the table beside her bed.

  “I know all about you, Lona. In a small way I was connected with the baby experiment last year. Probably you’ve forgotten, but I interviewed you. I work for Duncan Chalk, Do you know who he is, perhaps?”

  “Should I?”

  “One of the richest men in the world. One of the most powerful. He owns newstapes…vidstations…He owns the Arcade. He takes a great interest in you.”

  “Why did you bring me that plant?”

  “Later. I—”

  “It’s very ugly.”

  Nikolaides smiled. “Lona, how would you like to have a couple of those babies that were born from your seed? Say, two of them, to raise as your own.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very funny joke.”

  Nikolaides watched the color spread over her hollow cheeks and saw the hard flame of desire come into her eyes. He felt like an unutterable bastard.

  He said, “Chalk can arrange it for you. You are their mother, you know. He could get you a boy and a girl.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Leaning forward, Nikolaides turned on the intense sincerity. “You’ve got to believe me, Lona. You’re an unhappy girl, I know. And I know why you’re unhappy. Those babies. A hundred children pulled out of your body, taken away from you. And then they threw you aside, forgot you. As though you were just a thing, a robot baby-maker,”

  She was interested now. But still skeptical.

  He picked up the little cactus again and fondled the shiny pot, slipping his finger in and out of the drainage opening at the bottom. “We can get you a couple of those babies,” he said to her open mouth, “but not easily. Chalk would have to pull a lot of strings. He’ll do it, but he wants you to do something for him in return.”

  “If he’s that rich, what could I do for him?”

  “You could help another unhappy human being. As a personal favor to Mr. Chalk. And then he’ll help you.”

  Her face was blank again.

  Nikolaides leaned to her. “There’s a man right here in this hospital. Maybe you’ve seen him. Maybe you’ve heard about him. He’s a starman. He went off to a strange planet and was captured by monsters, and they messed him up. They took him apart and put him back together again the wrong way.”

  “They did that to me,” Lona said, “without even taking me apart first.”

  “All right. He’s been walking in the garden. A big man. From a distance perhaps you can’t tell there’s anything wrong with him, unless you can see his face. He has eyes that open like this. Sideways. And a mouth—I can’t show you what the mouth does, but it isn’t human. Close up, he’s pretty scary. But he’s still human inside, and he’s a wonderful man, only naturally he’s very angry over what they did to him. Chalk wants to help him. The way he wants to help him is by having someone be kind to him. You. You know what suffering is, Lona. Meet this man. Be good to him. Show him that he’s still people, that someone can love him. Bring him back to himself. And if you do that, Chalk will see that you get your babies.”

  “Am I supposed to sleep with him?”

  “You’re supposed to be kind to him. I don’t expect to tell you what that means. Do whatever would make him happy. You’ll be the judge. Just take your own feelings, turn them around, inside out. You’ll know a little of what he’s going through.”

  “Because he’s been made a freak. And I was made a freak, too.”

  Nikolaides saw no tactful way of meeting that statement. He simply acknowledged it.

  He said, “This man’s name is Minner Burris. His room is right across the hall from yours. He happens to be very much interested in cactus, God knows why. I thought you might send him this cactus as a get-well present. It’s a nice gesture. It could lead to bigger things. Yes?”

  “What was the name?”

  “Nikolaides.”

  “Not yours. His.”

  “Minner Burris. And look, you could send a note with it. Don’t minitype it, write it out yourself. I’ll dictate it, and you make any changes you like.” His mouth was dry. “Here. Here’s the stylus…”

  FOURTEEN

  HAPPILY EVER AFTER

  ■

  ■ With two of his closest aides off in the West performing a complex balletic pas de quatre with Burris and Lona, Duncan Chalk was forced to rely almost entirely on the services of Leontes d’Amore. D’Amore was capable, of course, or he’d never have come as far as he had. Yet he lacked Nikolaides’s stability of character and also lacked Aoudad’s consuming blend of ambition and insecurity. D
’Amore was clever but shifty, a quicksand man.

  Chalk was at home, in his lakeside palace. Tickers and newstapes chittered all about him, but he tuned them out with ease. D’Amore behind his left ear, Chalk patiently and speedily dealt with the towering stack of the daily business. The Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, so they said, had turned over a hundred and twenty pounds of documents a day and still had sufficient spare time to build the Great Wall. Of course, documents were written on bamboo slabs in those days, much heavier than minislips. But old Shih Huang Ti had to be admired. He was one of Chalk’s heroes.

  He said, “What time did Aoudad phone in that report?”

  “An hour before you awoke.”

  “I should have been awakened. You know that. He knows that.”

  D’Amore’s lips performed an elegant entrechat of distress. “Since there was no crisis, we felt—”

  “You were wrong.” Chalk pivoted and nailed D’Amore with a quick glance. D’Amore’s discomfort fed Chalk’s needs to some extent, but not sufficiently. The petty writhings of underlings were no more nourishing than straw. He needed red meat. He said, “So Burris and the girl have been introduced.”

  “Very successfully.”

  “I wish I could have seen it. How did they take to each other?”

  “They’re both edgy. But basically sympathetic. Aoudad thinks it’ll work out well.”

  “Have you planned an itinerary for them yet?”

  “It’s coming along. Luna Tivoli, Titan, the whole interplanetary circuit. Though we’ll start them in the Antarctic. Accommodations, details—everything’s under control.”

  “Good. A cosmic honeymoon. Maybe even a small bundle of joy to brighten the tale. That would be something, if he turned out fertile! We know she is, by God!”

  D’Amore said worriedly, “Concerning that: the Prolisse woman is undergoing tests even now.”

  “So you’ve got her. Splendid, splendid! Did she resist?”

  “She was given a valid cover story. She thinks she’s being checked for alien viruses. By the time she wakes up, we’ll have the semen analysis and our answer.”

  Chalk nodded brusquely. D’Amore left him, and the large man scooped the tape of Elise’s visit to Burris from its socket and fitted it into the viewer for another scanning. Chalk had been against the idea of letting her see him, at first, despite Aoudad’s strong recommendation. But in short order Chalk had come to understand some advantages of it. Burris had not had a woman since his return to Earth. Signora Prolisse, according to Aoudad (who was in a position to know!) had a peppery hunger for the distorted body of her late husband’s shipmate. Let them get together, then; see Burris’s response. A prize bull should not be nudged into a highly publicized mating without some preliminary tests.

  The tape was graphic and explicit. Three hidden cameras, only a few molecules in lens diameter, had recorded everything. Chalk had viewed the sequence three times, but there were always new subtleties to derive. Watching unsuspecting couples in the act of love gave him no particular thrill; he obtained his pleasures in more refined manners, and the sight of the beast with two backs was interesting only to adolescents. But it was useful to know something of Burris’s performance.

  He sped the tape past the preliminary conversation. How bored she seems while he tells of his adventures! How frightened he seems when she exposes her body! What terrifies him? He is no stranger to women. Of course, that was in his old life. Perhaps he fears that she will find his new body hideous and turn away from him at the crucial instant. The moment of truth. Chalk pondered it. The cameras could not reveal Burris’s thoughts, nor even his emotional constellation, and Chalk himself had not taken steps to detect his inner feelings. So all had to be by inference.

  Certainly Burris was reluctant. Certainly the lady was determined. Chalk studied the naked tigress as she staked out her claim. It seemed for a while as though Burris would spurn her—not interested in sex, or in any event not interested in Elise. Too noble to top his friend’s widow? Or still afraid to open himself to her, even in the face of her unquestioned yearning? Well, he was naked now. Elise still undeterred. The doctors who had examined Burris upon his return said that he was still capable of the act—so far as they could tell—and now it was quite clear that they had been right.

  Elise’s arms and legs waved aloft. Chalk tugged at his dewlaps as the tiny figures on the screen acted out the rite. Yes, Burris could make love even now. Chalk lost interest as the coupling ran to its climax. The tape petered out after a final shot of limp, depleted figures side by side on the rumpled bed. He could make love, but what about babies? Chalk’s men had intercepted Elise soon after she had left Burris’s room. A few hours ago the lusty wench had lain unconscious on a doctor’s table, the heavy legs apart. But Chalk sensed that this time he was bound to be disappointed. Many things were within his control; not all.

  D’Amore was back. “The report’s in.”

  “And?”

  “No fertile sperm. They can’t quite figure out what they’ve got, but they swear it won’t reproduce. The aliens must have done a switch there, too.”

  “Too bad,” Chalk sighed. “That’s one line of approach we’ll have to scratch. The future Mrs. Burris won’t have any children by him.”

  D’Amore laughed. “She’s got enough babies already, hasn’t she?”

  FIFTEEN

  THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS

  ■

  ■ To Burris, the girl had little sensual appeal coming along as she did in the wake of Elise Prolisse. But he liked her. She was a kindly, pathetic, fragile child. She meant well. The potted cactus touched him. It seemed too humble a gesture to be anything but friendliness.

  And she was unappalled by his appearance. Moved, yes. A bit queasy, yes. But she looked him right in the eye, concealing any dismay she might feel.

  He said, “Are you from around here?”

  “No. I’m from back East. Please sit down. Don’t stand up on my account.”

  “It’s all right. I’m really quite strong, you know.”

  “Are they going to do anything for you here in the hospital?”

  “Just tests. They have an idea they can take me out of this body and put me into a normal human one.”

  “How wonderful!”

  “Don’t tell anyone, but I suspect it isn’t going to work. The whole thing’s a million miles up right now, and before they bring it down to Earth—” He spun the cactus on the bedside table. “But why are you in the hospital, Lona?”

  “They had to fix my lungs some. Also my nose and throat.”

  “Hayfever?” he asked.

  “I put my head in a disposal sac,” she said simply.

  A crater yawned briefly beneath Burris’s feet He clung to his equilibrium. What rocked him, as much as what she had said, was the toneless way she had said it. As though it were nothing at all to let acid eat your bronchi.

  “You tried to kill yourself?” he blurted.

  “Yes. They found me fast, though.”

  “But—why? At your age!” Patronizingly, hating himself for the tone. “You have everything to live for!”

  The eyes grew big. Yet they lacked depth; he could not help contrasting them with the smoldering coals in Elise’s sockets. “You don’t know about me?” she asked, voice still small.

  Burris grinned. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Lona Kelvin. Maybe you didn’t catch the name. Or maybe you forgot. I know. You were still out in space when it all happened.”

  “You’ve lost me two turns back.”

  “I was in an experiment. Multiple-embryo ova-transplantation, they called it. They took a few hundred eggs out of me and fertilized them and grew them. Some in the bodies of other women, some in incubator things. About a hundred of the babies were born. It took six months. They experimented on me last year just about this time.”

  The last ledge of false assumptions crumbled beneath him. Burris had seen a high-school girl, polite, empty-headed, c
oncerned to some mild extent about the strange creature in the room across the hall, but mainly involved with the tastes and fashions, whatever they were, of her chronological peer group. Perhaps she was here to have her appendix dissolved, or for a nose bob. Who could tell? But suddenly the ground had shifted and he started to view her in a more cosmic light. A victim of the universe.

  “A hundred babies? I never heard a thing about it, Lona!”

  “You must have been away. They made a big fuss.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen now.”

  “You didn’t bear any of the babies yourself, then?”

  “No. No. That’s the whole thing. They took the eggs away from me, and that was where it all stopped, for me. Of course, I got a lot of publicity. Too much.” She peered at him shyly. “I’m boring you, all this talk about myself.”

  “But I want to know.”

  “It isn’t very interesting. I was on the vid a lot. And in the tapes. They wouldn’t leave me alone. I had nothing much to say, because I hadn’t done anything, you know. Just a donor. But when my name got out, they came around to me. Reporters all the time. Never alone, and yet always alone, do you know? So I couldn’t take it any more. All I wanted—a couple of babies out of my own body, not a hundred babies out of machines. So I tried to kill myself.”

  “By putting your head in a disposal sac.”

  “No, that was the second time. The first, I jumped under a truck.”

  “When was that?” Burris asked.

  “Last summer. They brought me here and fixed me up. Then they sent me back East again. I lived in a room. I was afraid of everything. It got too scary, and I found myself going down the hall to the dissolver room and opening the disposal sac and—well…I didn’t make it again. I’m still alive.”

  “Do you still want to die so badly, Lona?”

  “I don’t know.” The thin hands made clutching motions in mid-air. “If I only had something to hang onto…But look, I’m not supposed to be talking about me. I just wanted you to know a little of why I was here. You’re the one who—”

  “Not supposed to be talking about yourself? Who says?”