Mira sometimes wondered about her utter contempt for programmed, mechanistically governed humans like the Warden. Perhaps, she allowed herself to think, it resulted from doubts about her own free will. Her relationship with her gods was perilously close to that of slave and master. They commanded her, just as the Warden's implanted imperatives and protocols governed him. But perhaps not so completely. She came to the gods freely. She worshipped them; if that was a weakness, it was surely a human one. And they didn't define the limits of her thoughts; she often contemplated leaving their employ, finding a new religion. Surely no Warden or sub-Turing AI ever doubted its mission.
But the nagging lack of childhood memories disturbed her; her mind now worried the gap like a tongue searching for a missing tooth. Perhaps she should ask the gods about it some day. Maybe they would simply tell her. She wondered why she never had.
At least she was real, human, flesh and blood. She was not the gods' construction, only their willing creature. And Darling's rough intrusions had threatened even that surety.
She was more than this Warden, more human by every measure. And now she had him.
Mira stood, pleasure-wrenched muscles complaining, and leered at the Warden. Now she noted a glimmer of panic in his eye. He must have tried to move and recognized his paralysis. But could a paralyzed face show panic? Perhaps Mira had imagined the expression. It might be simply the filmy look of eyes that cannot blink. Her weapons, even when non-lethally employed, were cruel in that regard. His vision would be dry-edged and blurring by now, until the prism of tears formed on his eyes.
Mira walked over to the Warden and straddled his frozen form, one knee to each side in the spacious chair. She looked down at her own body, crisscrossed with lines from Darling's meshed embrace, abrasions. She'd thought his strands had hurt worse than usual.
"You bastard. Every time it's something new," she said sweetly, looking over her shoulder at him.
Darling reclined there on the bed, strands still splayed, hard and huge and full of sin. "I made the surfaces of my sensory array complex, the better to dazzle the Warden's scanners."
"Like a cat's tongue."
"An apt simile."
She laughed, tipping the Warden's head down so that his immobilized eyes could see her abrasions. The eyes looked definitely filmy now. She slapped him three times, hard, and peered into them. Tears appeared, wetting their surfaces.
"I can see you in there, frightened little creature," she whispered. "I'm going to pull you out, play with you."
She pushed one finger down his throat. It reached the glottis, surely triggered the gag reflex. Of course, an autonomic reaction of that size would be paralyzed by her devices.
What would that feel like? she wondered. To feel the wrenching need to gag, the surging imperative to reject an intrusion into one's throat, and for the reaction to be thwarted by an invisible hand? The thought gave her a pleasant tickle deep in her stomach. It was a feeling she often had when her profession called on her to torture.
"I don't like you—understand? You're ugly, and you gave your soul away," she said. She used the intimate mode of Diplomatique, her voice pitched as if to a child.
She played with his glottis for a few more moments. Something was happening: the tears were flowing freely now.
A touch spread across her back, soft as a cool draft. Mira smiled. It was Darling, extending a few strands to monitor her pleasure. She felt them take up stations at her neck, her temples, along the pathway of her spine and at the expressive muscles around her eyes. Perhaps he was probing the Warden, too. Mira imagined tendrils creeping into the little man's unresisting orifices: anus, glans, perhaps piercing the skin to link raw to his nerves. And the poor dear, feeling it all, but unable to struggle, to whimper, even to breathe the deep breaths that carry one's mind away.
Surely she could break this murderous toy: this mockery of an assassin, so offensive in the inhumanity of its design.
She touched one of the eyes lightly. The slight film over the pupil was surprisingly soft, as if she had probed the surface tension of some child's hardy soap bubble adrift on the breeze. Again, how strange it must be for the Warden. To watch a fingertip grow, expand beyond all scale, without the interruption of a blink that should certainly have come.
Then, with her tender rear, she felt the hard mound in his trousers.
She laughed again.
"Dirty bugger. You were enjoying all that, weren't you? And here I thought you were a cold fish."
She lowered one foot to the floor and pulled the Warden's trousers free. He was red, erect, veins standing out an angry purple. The scope of her device's paralysis had encompassed whatever muscle or sphincter would let his penis return to flaccidity. The blood was trapped, the horrible little cock forcibly engorged like some morning's piss hard-on.
Mira looked into his eyes again.
"Yes, that's right, you poor bastard. I'm going to fuck you now. Because I don't think you'll be able to get it up. Stuck halfway, poor eunuch."
In that moment she felt she could see deep inside the man. The Warden's eyes shone through their veil of tears, illuminating the shadow-puppets of his many layers: the crazed beasts of reflex who fought the rictus of paralysis; the cold intelligence of his governors, still plotting how to escape and complete their mission; and deepest of all, the remaining shreds of humanity in their caged dance.
These last might be happy, in a way, she thought. For the first time in many years the little man's personhood must be on equal terms with the overlays of programming: all helpless together. But at least his humanity would feel some lust, enjoy a moment of pleasure, however hopeless and thwarted. She didn't desire revenge upon the unfeeling mechanisms that had tried to kill her lover; there was no pleasure there. It was the person part of him she wanted to torture, if only by making it remember for a moment what it had been.
It was more than an hour later that the glimmer faded completely from the Warden's eyes. Blood was everywhere (fucking had only amused her for so long), but the man was still alive.
She knew, however, that he was no longer a threat.
"Release him," she told her weapons.
The square object mounted on her wall shifted a little in color, and the Warden slumped with a whimper.
Mira turned to look for Darling. But he was gone.
"Oh, dear," she said to the empty room. (She'd been talking out loud to the Warden through the whole affair.) "I hope he understands."
Duke Zimivic tugged happily at the sleeves of his jacket. This view really was spectacular. The suite cost more than he usually spent on backwater rocks like Malvir, but it was well worth it.
And besides, now that that abomination Darling was out of the way, Zimivic was sure to make the acquisition of a lifetime. Without another bidder to contest for the prize, he could get it for a pittance. The idiot local who had discovered the piece would be all too happy to take a tenth of what it was worth. But sheer profit was a fraction of the deal's value; the discovery of a new sculpture would be the best thing for the price of his Vaddums since the Blast Event.
Zimivic allowed his reverie to be interrupted by an annoying thought, Where was that champagne? What was the value of room service's inflated prices if they didn't ensure immediate gratification. He considered going to the Tower Bar, but the fabulous view there was free, and he'd paid for the one here, damn it! And that pathetic piece of statuary might still be there, trying to stare the Warden into submission.
Zimivic glanced happily at his watch. (An ancient analog Har-ing: an absolute fortune.) Darling would be off-planet in three hours, if he hadn't already submitted to the hopelessness of his situation. Zimivic tugged the jacket sleeve over the watch again.