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"Tight," Naomi pleaded,
“make them hurt.” I cinched the silk knots around her
ankles until they pinched her.
"That’s better,” she
gasped. "Thank you, Tamala."
Her wrists were
handcuffed behind her back. Black hair fell in disarray
across her almond-shaped eyes. Her breasts jounced lightly
as I rolled her over on her back.
"Did you believe you
could run away from us, Naomi? That we in Moscow wouldn’t
bother to track down our best null-space pathfinder?"
"Hurt me," she said.
Her nipples were hard as nails, her face pale and scared.
“I haven’t been in null-space for three weeks, Tamala. I’m
dying.”
I slipped a silk gag
between her teeth. She moaned deep in her throat.
"Do you like this
feeling of helplessness? Just like you do in null-space?"
I brushed the hair away from her eyes.
She nodded, her face
flushed with excitement.
I patted her cheek.
"I'll be back, and then we'll play."
Her eyes followed me as
I opened the sliding glass doors of the hotel room and
stepped onto the balcony. The sea breeze ruffled my hair.
Behind me, Naomi Taira,
possibly the one person in the world who could give us the
stars, lay hog-tied on the double bed. The contrast between
her golden skin and the white bed sheet made my blood race.
I sat on a patio
recliner and mixed a strong drink from the Jamaican rum and
half-melted ice in a bucket on the glass table. I waited
ten minutes, letting my emotions cool, and listened to the
roar of the surf before making the scrambled call to Moscow
Central.
A square, heavy face
appeared on the thumb-sized screen of my 3V phone. "Denzhov,
speaking."
"Tamala. I’ve found our
missing null-space pathfinder."
"Good work,” he
rumbled. “Where was she hiding?"
A slight noise made me
glance back. Naomi had turned on her side, offering me the
full flank of her thigh and curve of her hip. She watched
me through her tousled hair, silently pleading with me to
attend her needs.
"I'm at Gulf Shores
State Park in Alabama.”
The locals called it the
Redneck Riviera, and, brother, they weren’t far from wrong.
It wasn’t packed with overpriced hotels and neon-splattered
nightclubs like the trendy beaches in nearby Florida, but
was mostly deserted shoreline, quiet and tranquil, with a
couple of state-run hotels. I had tracked Naomi here
easily. She’d left an obvious credit trail.
“She wanted to be
found,“ I told Denzhov. “She hasn’t been in null-space for
three weeks. She’s exhibiting classic withdrawal symptoms.”
“You'll have to see her
past that, Tamala,” he replied. "Can you get her home
without too much trouble?"
A seagull wheeled
overhead, its shadow racing over the flat, sandy beach.
Too much trouble.
Right. I gathered from his tone what he wanted to know was
if there had been a security breach regarding our null-space
program, and how to limit the damage.
I didn’t blame him. The
general public knew nothing of the role our pathfinders
played. Oh, there were whispered rumors and half-baked
speculation, but we could handle the blowback from those.
The truth, however, would be more difficult to justify.
“Tamala? Can you get
her out alive?” Denzhov, waiting for my answer, and he
wasn't known to be a patient man.
"I think so, sir. It's
late fall; the summer tourists have left.” I swept my 3V in
an arc so he could see for himself. “This place is
deserted, except for the hotel staff, and Naomi hasn't
talked to anyone else I’m aware of."
Naturally, the Americans
had their own deep space research program. Their security
operatives might be in the area, shadowing Naomi. If so, I
would have a devil of a time getting our pathfinder home
without them attempting a snatch, or a simple liquidation
program so they’d have the upper hand in their own
research. Then again, that kind of actionable procedure is
what I was paid by Moscow to prevent, among other services.
At the moment, however, I was reasonably certain this area
was safe and clear; I had taken the usual tradecraft
precautions when I drove to this hotel and found Naomi’s
room.
"Did she say why she
left our employ?" Denzhov asked.
Naomi struggled to sit
up. She couldn't find her balance and fell backward onto
the bed. It was endearing.
"She’s frightened by
what she saw in null-space. To be more specific, by what
she saw within herself, if you follow my meaning, sir."
Denzhov frowned. "But
you don't believe her?"
I grimaced. "Not
entirely, no. Naomi's a professional. She wouldn't get the
jitters at this late date. No, there’s something else going
on.” I kept my face still. Denzhov was a master at reading
the underlying currents of human emotion reflected in a
person’s eyes. I had a good idea why Naomi had rabbited,
and if Denzhov even remotely suspected the truth he would
order Naomi’s immediate liquidation ...and maybe mine.
"Tamala, the tramlines
between the stars must be mapped for deep space exploration
to be successful. Only a human intelligence can survey
null-space, while surviving the inherent madness that
permeates that region. Traveling through null-space is the
only way future starships can circumvent the speed-of-light
restriction. Naomi must be returned to us so she can resume
her work as a pathfinder."
I didn't want a history
lesson, but Denzhov was my boss, and there was a hierarchy I
had to adhere to. Even, I suppose, people like Denzhov. So
I made appropriate noises and made sympathetic facial
expressions to let him know I was listening.
"What's your
professional opinion of Naomi’s current state, Tamala"
It was nice of him to
ask. I’d once had a medical practice before joining his
obscure scientific agency. In this line of work, we're
expected to be so many things, adopt so many personas, that
for Denzhov to recall anything personal made me feel all
warm and fuzzy inside.
Go ahead and laugh. But
with the necessary brutality of this job, I take what tokens
of love I can get, whenever I can get them.
"My diagnosis is pilot
fatigue, sir, plain and simple.” It used to be a big
problem before human pilots were replaced by enslaved AIs.
“Considering what Naomi endures when she's mapping
null-space, I shouldn’t wonder she’s lasted this long...."
Another slight noise
from inside the room made me turn around. Naomi was calling
me, her words muffled by the gag.
"I'd better go now, sir,
and attend to her. We'll book a
sub-orbital back to
Moscow first chance we get."
"Very well, Tamala,"
Denzhov said. "I'll leave the operational details to you.
Good luck."
I signed off, wiping the
log of our conversation from the 3V
buffer. I swallowed the
last of my drink and went back inside, locking the sliding
glass doors and drawing the heavy curtains.
Sunlight filtered
through the gaps, casting bars of light filled with
swirling dust motes. The atmosphere in the room was quiet,
expectant. Naomi lay still, waiting for me.
I went into a
white-tiled alcove that had aspirations of someday becoming
a full-sized bathroom, and undressed. I glanced at my
reflection in the vanity mirror: not bad for a bitten-eared
spy in her mid-forties, I thought.
No, not a spy. And no
longer a flight surgeon, either, despite my earlier training
in Star City. Nothing overtly medical about my new job. I
was a widdershin. One who administered punishment a
pathfinder needed to maintain sanity between the grueling
mapping sessions endured in null-space. My medical training
came in handy, allowing me to target specific areas of the
body and crack fragile egos without causing permanent
physical or psychological damage, but that’s about as far as
it went.
In a way, a twisted and
skewed way, I was being faithful to my Hippocratic Oath. I
kept the Russian Union’s five null-space pathfinders happy
and healthy with these sessions, despite the contrary and
abnormal nature of the exercise. Hence the codename I’d
been tagged with: Widdershin.
I carried my black gym
bag to a table in the center of the room.
"We’re extremely unhappy
with your behavior,” I told Naomi. I unzipped the bag and
removed a thin black riding crop fashioned
from lacquered bamboo.
Even in this modern era of enslaved global AIs, Lunar
colonization by China, and the human race girding itself for
interstellar exploration, old standbys like a riding crop
had their use.
I slapped the tip of the
riding crop against my leg. Naomi flinched. She knew what
was coming. I pointed to the floor. "Come here."
She rolled off the bed
and inched across a grey carpet reeking of sand and rancid
suntan oil. She pressed her face against my feet.
"You shouldn't have run
away, Naomi. Everyone who maps the tramlines becomes
frightened. It's why we hired you in the first place. Your
peculiar penchant for sexually-induced pain made you a
natural for this job. No normally adjusted human being can
withstand it.” I gave her a tap with the bamboo. “Only
mentally malformed freaks like yourself can call that hell
home."
Her eyes welled with
tears. The degrading process is as important as the physical
administration of sexual pain, we had found. It kept the
pathfinders safely grounded in a recognizable world view.
I don’t pretend to
understand the overwhelming physics and dense mathematics
that describes null-space. Simply put, our engineers
believed once the tramlines were mapped from Earth (hence
the pathfinders) we could use shielded spacecraft to
colonize star systems hundreds, even thousands of light
years distant. The ships would open a gate into null-space,
follow the tramline to the star system in question, then
open a second gate and emerge back into what was
colloquially termed black-space, or normal space.
One little scared
pathfinder wasn't about to wreck those grandiose dreams, no
matter how nightmarish and incomprehensible she found
null-space from her cartographic-injection chamber in
Moscow.
Without warning, I twice
laid the riding crop across Naomi's
narrow back, leaving
long red welts. The third whipped across her bottom with a
cracking sound. Not high on the flesh where there are more
pain receptors, but lower, where her buttocks molded into
her legs and the majority of nerve endings conducted sexual
pleasure.
She writhed in ecstasy.
She had gone weeks without enduring the overwhelming sexual
pain inherent in that fantastic region sandwiched between
relativistic physics and the fabric of a living, conscious
universe that had given rise to beings like ourselves so it
could contemplate its own existence. At least, that’s what
the physicists said, and who was I to question those
eggheads?
Agony is like a narcotic
for the pathfinders. After being subjected to the intense
physical pain overlaid with acute sensual pleasure in
null-space, no earth-bound BDSM session can satisfy their
needs. This was merely a stopgap measure until I returned
her to Moscow where we could inject her consciousness into
null-space and have her continue mapping the first usuable
tramline to Epsilon Eridani.
I gave Naomi little taps
with the tip of the riding crop now and then to let her know
I hadn’t forgotten her.
"Feeling better?" I
asked.
She nodded. The red,
burning welts on her body looked lovely on her golden skin,
but the aesthetic value was less important than the
psychological need they satisfied. I untied her gag. Naomi
spit out the chewed end, gasping for breath.
"Thank you, Tamala," she
said, slowly catching her breath.
"We're not finished."
She ducked her head. "I
know." She looked up with adoring eyes. “You’re
beautiful. I love your red hair and your pale, freckled
skin. It’s so different from mine. I think of you often
when I’m in null-space looking for a safe path between
gravitational gradients. I always think about you.”
I squatted on my
haunches. "Approach me, pathfinder.”
Naomi, her hands and
ankles bound, rolled onto her back. Her mouth was slavish.
I clutched the table edge with white knuckles. The orgasm
crested through my body like an ocean wave and lapped the
shoreline of my soul.
I rolled her over. Her
pubic hair was dark and fine, like down. Her belly
fluttered as she deliberately ground her hips onto the
handle of the riding crop. Small tremors rattled through
her body.
I grabbed a fistful of
her hair and pulled her away. I left her trembling and went
back to my black bag of tricks.
"I'm sorry I ran away,
Tamala," she said. "I won't ever do it again. I promise."
"I know you won't,
Naomi." I drew the knotted cords of a cat-o'-nine-tails
alongside her face and neck before I lifted her chin with
the handle. "We won't stand for it. The future of the
human race is at stake. Touching the stars has been an
ambition ever since we stood on an African savannah, staring
up at the heavens. We won't allow anyone, for any reason,
to deny us that dream."
She nodded dumbly.
I unpacked a plastic
tray of silver, gleaming instruments and carefully laid each
one carefully on a folded beach towel. "We won't have
mankind’s destiny put at risk by the silly notions of an
insignificant pathfinder."
"Yes, Ma'am," she wept.
I put a new gag in her
mouth. A ball-gag, if it matters. It wouldn't do for any
neighbors we might have had to hear what she was going
through. I knew from past experience an ordinary silk tie
across the mouth wouldn’t stifle hard screams.
However, nothing I did
could equal what she experienced in null-space -- mapping
gravitational gradients between stars so the human race
could one day colonize them -- but I gave it my level best.
At one point, I was concerned she might break an arm or leg
bone. She was straining way too much. Slim bone can't
withstand the constant knotted strength of muscles in sexual
agony. But, eventually, she reached the plateau she
desperately needed, and shuddered with a long, cleansing
orgasm that left her limp and pliable.
I removed the
instruments from her body and cut her loose. She crawled
into bed. I slipped in beside her, holding her warm body
close to mine. She huddled against me, whimpering with
relief like a child.
"I love you, Tamala,"
she said. “Thank you.”
"Try and get some
sleep. You have to be back on the job and finish that path
to Epsilon Eridani." The first Russian starship in history,
Peter the Great, was scheduled to leave in two years. We’d
beat the Americans by six months, if everything went
well. "Naomi?"
"Yes, Tamala?"
"Why did you run away?
It's just us now. No one else need know."
She murmured sleepily
against my arm, "I don't want it to be over."
A beat. “What do you
mean?”
She remained silent a
long while, perhaps gathering her thoughts. "I don't want
to be cast aside once we're done. I want you and I to be
together, afterwards. I love you, Tamala. It’s true, I'd
always rather be in that intangible dimension where my body
is torn apart with sexual pain, but when I'm here, in this
more mundane world, living this reality, I want you more
than anyone else I know."
I kissed her again.
This was the part I liked best, the downside of our
sessions. When we could enjoy the simplicity of our bodies
without having the weight of the future hanging over our
heads.
"Come here, you," I
said, pulling her toward me.
Afterward, I grabbed my
3V phone from the night stand and made reservations for the
next sub-orbital out of Birmingham.
I looked down at the
mentally and physically exhausted woman beside me. Naomi's
face was drowned in sleep. The soft, distant roar of the
surf served as a muted counterpoint to her rhythmic
breathing.
I disentangled myself
from her arms and legs, and sweaty, twisted bed sheets.
After quietly dressing, I took my 3V out to the balcony and
called Denzhov, after taking a deep breath for courage. He
had to be told, sooner or later.
I would have preferred
much, much later.
"Hello. I'm reporting
in again." I gave him a brief
synopsis. Then: "We
have a slight problem, I'm afraid."
His heavy features
frowned on the 3V screen. "Go on."
"Naomi ran away because
she wants to be my personal lover."
"That's impossible,” he
snapped. “The relationship between widdershin and
pathfinder can never be compromised. At no time must she
believe there is another human being on this side of the
null-space barrier who can be her equal. She must not think
that or she will literally die the next time she enters
null-space. It will recognize her independence and
dismantle her atom by atom. You remember the first attempts
we made to inject a consciousness into null-space, how
failed so disastrously. Naomi belongs to the cosmos, not to
us.”
"Yes, sir, I know. But
she's a silly young girl who is in love. I understand the
problem, but it’s a natural and human reaction."
"Tamala," Denzhov
growled, "get down on your knees."
My stomach fluttered.
The breeze whipped off the ocean, curling my hair around my
face and neck. The concrete hurt my knees. I put the 3V on
wide-screen mode so he could see me submit.
"Come home, Tamala, and
bring our pathfinder," he said.
His harsh tone excited
me, even coming as it did from theother side of the world.
"When you return," he
continued, "we'll discuss this propensity of yours to
question my orders."
I swallowed. "Yes,
sir."
I went into the bedroom
and started packing Naomi's things. When I finished, I sat
and waited for her to awake, thinking of all the delicious
ways Denzhov had to make me submit and serve his iron will.
Like I said, there's a
hierarchy, and everybody follows it without question. It’s
a sum zero problem. If we fail, humanity doesn’t get to
travel to the stars. In the long run, any sacrifice we make
is worth that destiny.
I got Naomi out of Gulf
Shores, but the Americans tried for a snatch at the
sub-orbital port in Birmingham. I left three dead in my
wake and we had to take a cigarette boat out of Miami and
get picked up by a moonplane Denzhov dispatched from the
Bahamas.
Our organization, and
the lifestyle we believe in, is a hierarchy. I just hope I
never meet the person Denzhov answers to.
Frankly, I'm not that
brave.
--The End– |
