Kiru and James disentangled themselves and drew apart, gazing up at their uninvited visitors.
“Two you?” sighed the voices. “Four limbs, no eight?”
“Yeah,” said James. “Two of us. Humans. Two arms, two legs. Each.”
The newcomers were no more than vague shapes, without depth or outline. There was nothing to focus on, and at first Kiru couldn’t even work out how many of them there were.
Four guns were aimed at her and James, from four different sides. So there might have been four of the wraiths.
“Half space pirate you,” breathed the quartet.
“Half?” said Kiru.
“They mean one of us,” said James.
“Not me,” said Kiru.
“And not me,” said James.
“Two criminal. One criminal. All criminal. All capture. Hideaway safe. Hurrah!”
“Who are they?” asked Kiru.
“A security squad, I think,” said James. “Those pirates, they must all have been caught.”
“Good,” said Kiru, narrowing her eyes as she tried to focus on one of the intruders.
They were almost transparent, but they made the room seem even smaller.
“You space pirate half,” came the soft accusations. “You space pirate all.”
“I want to make a statement,” said James.
“Number,” said the phantoms. “Twelve to one.”
“What?”
This was Hideaway. A world of risk, of gambling, of random chance, and so Kiru said, “Seven.”
“Lose.”
“I want to protest,” protested James.
“Number.”
Kiru said, “Nine.”
“Lose.”
“I demand to see my lawyer,” demanded James.
“Number.”
“Six,” said James, a moment before Kiru could speak.
“Win. Who lawyer you?”
“Er…”
“Who lawyer you? No? Lose. Prisoners you. All leave. Now.”
Kiru and James looked at each other.
“We’re under arrest,” he said.
“Seems like it,” she said.
“They think I’m a pirate. But I’m not.”
“Tell them, not me.”
“It’s all a misunderstanding,” he told them. “I’m a police officer, I’m in GalactiCop.”
“All cop. All criminal. All go.”
“Can I have my clothes?” asked James.
“Yes.”
“Can I have my gun?” asked Kiru.
“Yes. No. No gun. No clothes. No thing. Yes. One thing.”
The black metal box floated up toward James, lifted by an invisible hand or tendril or mandible.
“No leave Hideaway no thing,” sighed their ghostly captors. “Everyone winner Hideaway.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“You aren’t smiling now,” said Kiru.
“What’s there to smile about?” asked Norton.
“They haven’t killed us.”
That was something he hadn’t thought about.
“Yeah,” he said, and he gave a smile.
“Yet,” added Kiru.
Norton surrendered his smile.
He had grown used to rooms without doors, without windows, but this one didn’t even have walls. It was spherical, so small they had to curl up to fit within its contours. They lay side by side, facing one another, hip to hip, knee to shoulder.
It seemed hours since their ghostly captors had brought them here. The room was as bare as they were. There was only one other object within the sphere: the spiked box that Princess Janesmith had sent.
Every now and then, the casket would rock and sway. The worms inside must have been trying to ooze free.
Norton glanced away from the metallic box, toward Kiru, then studied their circular cell, which didn’t take long, before looking at the girl again.
“This is for real, isn’t it?” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.” Norton shrugged. “Is this an illusion?”
Kiru looked at him, touched his chest, slid her fingers against the curve of the wall, then said, “How should I know?”
“I mean everything. Not just an imaginary cell. Are you a simulation?”
“Sometimes I wish I was. Are you?”
“Who knows?” Norton examined his right hand, with its three fingers. “But I think I’m real, and so are you. I think.”
“I’m glad to know it.”
“So this is actually happening, here, right now, to us. You agree?”
“I never doubted it.”
Wayne Norton had come to Hideaway to work. Even if he didn’t know what that work was. But then Kiru had arrived and it seemed he was being forced to enjoy himself, whether he liked it or not.
Which he did. Very much. Very, very much.
Because she was his dream girl, specifically designed for him.
Back in Las Vegas, if the casinos wanted to smooth over a problem with a high-roller, he would be given a free room—and a girl to go with it. Hideaway must have run a similar system, and Norton qualified as a VIP. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened when he’d been with Janesmith. Not that anything could have happened. Of course it hadn’t.
But maybe because Janesmith hadn’t treated him the way she should have done, the management had provided compensation in the form of a naked redhead.
Or perhaps they had discovered he was in GalactiCop. It was always good policy to keep in with the police, which could also be why they gave him a fantasy girl who pretended she was in danger and had come to him for help.
When Norton realised Kiru was a computerised simulation, he’d felt cheated. For a moment. By then it was too late to bother, and so he’d continued enjoying what was offered. Which was why he had been smiling. Until he’d been arrested as a space pirate.
“Do you ever doubt the evidence of your own senses?” Norton asked.
“If I can see it,” said Kiru, looking at him, “that’s good enough for me. And if I can touch it, that’s even better.” She leaned harder against him.
Norton used to believe that, but not anymore. There was no such thing as objective information. It all became twisted to fit the false perspective. Everything was subjective.
He had no way of telling what was going on.
Perhaps he was the victim of a drug-induced hallucination. Spiked by Janesmith’s spiked teeth.
Perhaps he was dreaming, still deep in his three-century sleep.
Perhaps he was unconscious, stunned by Mr. Ash’s treacherous blow.
Or perhaps he was in a spherical cell.
If he could choose, this was his choice: He hoped he was in a cell with a beautiful nude redhead because that meant all they had done together had been real.
As a fantasy, it had been great.
But as reality, it was Wayne Norton who had been great.
“You’re smiling again, James.”
Out of habit, he’d given a false name. James Bogart sounded a lot better than Humphrey Cagney.
“Am I?” he asked, as he kept smiling.
“What have you got to be so happy about? Anyone would think you liked being here.”
“I like being with you, Kiru, although I’d prefer to be somewhere else with you. This is obviously a mistake, and once I’ve been questioned they’ll let me out, and then I’ll be able to help you.”
“You mean that?”
“Yeah,” he said, and he did.
“It’s a pity no one’s going to question you,” said Kiru. “For both our sakes.”
“Of course I’ll be questioned. That’s standard procedure everywhere.”
The authorities had every right to be suspicious of him. Norton had attempted to enter Hideaway with a hidden weapon, which didn’t look so good, and they had discovered him with Kiru, which must have appeared even worse.
But he was confident that everything would be cleared up. Only the guilty had anything to fear, and Wayne Norton was completely innocent.