“Interesting,” Kyle said. Then he shook his head. “To tell you the truth, you’ve totally lost me, but forget it. I’m not going to question it. I’ll simply applaud and ask to see more.” He smiled, standing up. “Unless there’s anything else …?”
“Go ahead.” Finney opened the door and stood aside as Kyle left.
#
The starship’s departure was uneventful, as was the first several days en route. Kyle kept his cabin door open so he could see if Debbie left her stateroom. When she did, he would always follow, standing in the background as she and her friends lived it up. Since the ship had a controlled gravity environment, Debbie wasn’t able to perform her magic involving levitation. She was able to show off her skill at spontaneous combustion, by chanting incantations and setting people’s drinks ablaze. Kyle couldn’t help laughing when she inadvertently set off the fire alarm. She flashed him a cold look for this, but it only lasted a second, then she actually smiled and laughed herself.
Several hours later, after Debbie had retired to her cabin, Kyle was working out with his gyro stick in front of his open door.
He moved slowly, carefully, working up a good sweat. He didn’t notice when Debbie’s door opened a crack. She watched him for several minutes before she opened the door the rest of the way.
When Kyle saw her he froze for a moment, losing his rhythm. He looked her up and down, his face betraying surprise. Then he went back to his workout without saying a word.
“You can come in and do that in here,” she said. “There’s a lot more room.”
“Thank you, but I’m fine here.” Now he wasn’t looking at her at all.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“No.”
“Does it bother you that I’m naked?”
“No. I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“Why do you … move … like that?”
“The gyro stick is intuitive. You can feel where you’re weak and work it.”
“Work it?”
“It provides constant resistance, so you have to use constant force to move it. Where ever it is that’s harder to move, you move that part more, using more force, building up your weak areas.”
Debbie imitated his movements, gyrating her body. He couldn’t tell if she were mocking him or trying to seduce him. People were approaching from down the hall, so he pushed her into her cabin and shut the door behind them. “Here,” he said, “you try it.” He put the gyro into her hands, then stepped back.
She held it awkwardly, a puzzled look on her face. “I can’t move it. It’s stuck.”
He helped her until she began to get the hang of it. Debbie worked with it on her own for a few minutes, then frowned. “This is boring. It was more interesting watching you do it.” She pushed it toward him. “Take it.”
Kyle took it from her.
“Well,” she said. “Do it.”
“I’m finished for now.”
“Then do me.” She slid up against him, pressing herself close, and tilted her head back for a kiss.
Kyle’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t ‘do’ my employers.”
She smiled. “It’s a condition of your employment.”
He pushed her away. “No it is not.”
“It is if I say it is!”
“I’m here to guard your safety. That’s all I agreed to do. If I’m not the type of professional you were looking for, then hire someone else.”
“Why? Do you think I’m ugly or something?”
“Not physically. But inside you’ve got a lot of problems, and I’m not going to get tangled up in them.”
She laughed. “I don’t have any problems. What makes you think I have problems? You’re the one with problems. I can make so many problems for you, you’d think the entire universe has turned against you. It will turn against you. You. I will make it turn against you. You you you YOU.”
Kyle shook his head. “You’re soul sick.”
“… I’m what?” Her eyes were narrowed and her mouth was open.
He leaned his head close to hers, looking right into her eyes.
“When I look at you, I see a little girl who didn’t get the attention she needed, and who’s very angry, and who has never known the true value of anything because she’s never had to go wanting.
Mixed in with all that, some ugly things you never want to speak about has happened to you, and you blame yourself for it, but you’re angry at everyone else because of it.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I can see it. It’s right in front of me. I knew you two seconds after I first met you.”
“You see an illusion. You see a stereotype I created myself, a fiction, a phantasm. I’m far more ugly than you think. I’m pure evil. I can suck your soul in, chew it up, and spit it back out. I eat men like you like candy.”
Kyle sighed. “You’re right, I have to admit it. I mis-judged you. I thought you were just troubled, but you’re beyond that.
You’re psycho.”
“Yes. I am.”
“I’m still not going to do it with you.” He smiled. “Good night.” Gyro stick in one hand, he turned to leave.
“You hate me, don’t you? You want to kill me, just like Bruce did.”
“No, not at all.” He opened the door, and stood in the doorway. “I never would have accepted the job if I thought you could affect me that way. You can’t.”
“Then you love me.”
Kyle grimaced. “No.”
“You hate me!”
Kyle sighed again and left, closing the door softly behind him. Even before he’d made it across the corridor to his cabin, he could feel a tingling in his scalp and the back of his shoulders.
Debbie was casting a spell, he could feel it. Kyle dropped his gyro stick, kneeled down, and put his fists to his face. He concentrated furiously, throwing up a mental block. It worked — it killed the spell before it could take effect. He heard the exclamation of surprise and anger, muffled by Debbie’s closed door. The door opened, and she stared at him, and then just as suddenly it slammed shut. His gyro stick sat smoldering right where he’d dropped it, like it had been on the verge of bursting into flame. The scent of hot plastic was all he could smell.
Feeling a sense of wonder, Kyle sat on his tiny bunk and tried to figure what had just happened, and how he’d known what to do.
This had never happened to him before. All night he was unable to sleep, running it over and over again in his head.
The next morning, Debbie had breakfast by herself in her stateroom. Hours later, she had lunch sent in. Kyle looked the food over before it was served. There were lots of chocolate junk food.
“You should eat better!” he called out to her as it was being taken into her room. She didn’t respond, not even with a retort.
Figuring that Debbie would remain reclusive for a while, Kyle took a stroll down to the observation deck. People sat quietly at little tables, sipping expensive liquors and watching the psychedelic light show of hyperspace through the large, thick windows. Beside the windows was an exposure warning, and a reminder to take anti-radiation medications if you spent more than a few minutes there. The medication was available at a little bar, along with the drinks. Kyle took some, downed it, and chased it with a tumbler of Scotch. He had the tumbler refilled and took it to one of the tables and sat down.
There was something to the experience. He felt a sort of odd, subconscious connection as he stared out into hyperspace. The longer he stared, the tenser he felt. He hadn’t realized he’d drained his tumbler until he tried to take a sip and found nothing there.
“Can I get you a refill?”
Kyle looked up to see the pear-shaped woman with the shock-white hair, the one who’d given him a bad feeling when he’d first boarded the starship. “No thank you,” he said. “I don’t really drink, and I’ve already had too much.”
She sat in the chair across from him, and leaned far over the tiny table. “How much is the little Hitler bitch paying you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I can double it. I can triple it.” Her eyes didn’t blink, her face showing only disgust. “Name your price.”
“For what?”
“Your services.” Still the eyes didn’t blink. They were shiny and deep blue, but they didn’t seem wet. “I want your services, and I’ll give you anything you want to get them. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll make the arrangements. Right here, right now.”
Kyle stared into the eyes, leaning closer. “Who’s in there?”
he said. “You’re a damn machine! Who’s in control?” He grabbed the lady’s ears and shook her head. “Don’t send a machine to me. I don’t talk to machines!”