“And eyes. Actually, anything can be almost anything. That is the beauty of it.”
In a few. more minutes Ching was physically complete. I could see the shadowy form of the psych punching in and controlling and mixing small recording modules. The last step—the mental buildup. Finally she was detached from die machine and all its connectors and left there in what looked like normal sleep. The lights came up, and I saw her stir.
“Now, you remember her,” Fallon said, “and you saw it all. Now observe her as she awakens there.”
It didn’t take long. The woman I’d known as Ching stirred, smiled, then opened her eyes, smiled wider, sat up, stretched, and looked wonderingly around the psych lab as if she’d never seen it before and had no idea what it was, which was. probably the case.
Fallon flipped an intercom switch. “Girl?”
She looked up in happy anticipation. “Yes, mistress?”
“What are you called, girl?”
“I am called Cheer, mistress. Please let me serve you.”
“Go through the rear door. There you will find a wardrobe. Pick out whatever clothing you feel is proper for you, use whatever cosmetics and jewelry you like, and brush your hair. Then go through die next door and stand and wait there until I come.”
“As you command, mistress. I live to serve.” And, with that, smile still on her face, she jumped down and walked out of the psych chamber and into the other room.
Fallon turned to me. “Well? What do you think?”
“Very impressive, but if this is to soften me up to spill all or something, it won’t work. I’m not that impressed.”
“You should be. She was, I understand, quite a fighter under the psych probes. We got very little information out of her on her life with or without you. However, she couldn’t avoid giving us information and impressions on you, since you were the reason for her resistance. Come. Let’s go into the other room.”
We walked down the corridor to a rather bare office that didn’t seem as if it were being used for much of anything, and waited. All I wanted now was to get this over with and get down to my ultimate fate. All this was leading somewhere, I knew. I wanted to know where.
In short order Ching appeared and then smiled and bowed low. “How do I please you, mistress?”
Fallen looked her over. She was a truly tiny and curvaceous beauty now, that was for sure; her moves were sexy and provocative. Her voice had a throaty tone that seemed at once sensuous and childish. Hell, I’d once been a thirteen-year-old boy myself.
She had chosen some small golden earrings, a matching necklace, and a silvery clinging slit dress, and she had expertly and discreetly applied some lip rouge and eye makeup, and painted her newly created long fingernails to match the lips.
Fallon turned to me with a slight grin. “Well? How does she please you?”
“She looks … stunning,” I managed.
“Want to see her do tricks?”
“No, I—”
“Cheer—get down on all fours and lick the man’s feet.”
I started to protest, but “Cheer” joyfully and immediately complied. The exercise was disgusting, somehow unclean, and I stood there only because I had to.
“That’s enough, girl. Get back up.”
“Yes, mistress.” In a moment she was back up and looking expectantly at Fallon.
“Now, go out this door. There you will meet a man dressed like me. He will be your master and will tell you what else to. do. Now—go.”
“At once, mistress.” She was gone.
“Definitely a giveaway,” Fallon commented, mostly to herself. “The kind who provides company for visiting dignitaries and the like and does dances on tables.” She looked over at me. “Useful to others, though. She’s frozen, just like that, for just about her whole life. No external aging, no physical changes that aren’t internal adjustments to climate or weather conditions, no attitudinal changes. If she got lost or separated down there, she’d plead with people to return her to her master. She’ll give pleasure, and only in serving her master will she find pleasure. Now, isn’t that better than the mines or death or a permanent job as a janitor someplace?”
“I’m not convinced,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced.”
“Probably not,” Fallen agreed cheerfully, “but it’s the way of the world. Come—we have one more interim stop.”
Again we walked out into the corridor and went down to yet another office, this one obviously used and cluttered with all sorts of stuff. Fallon rooted through a desk drawer and finally came up with what looked like, and was, an artist’s sketch pad. She flipped over a few sheets, and I could see that there were, indeed, drawings in pencil and ink on them. Finally she found the one she wanted, held it up, and handed the pad to me. I looked at the image.
“What do you think?” she asked.
The drawing, a very good drawing by a very skilled artist, was of a stunningly beautiful woman, perhaps the most stunning vision of womanhood I’d ever, seen. Rendered in colored pencils, the drawing showed a dark-skinned beauty with long mixed blond and light brown hair, two very large and sexy dark green eyes, set in perhaps the most sensual face I could imagine. The body was large, lean, sexy, and sleek, but the sexual organs were very exaggerated. The artist had drawn multiple views, including one of the figure crouching, animal-like, like some perfect primal savage, wearing some sort of spotted animal skin. It was an incredible vision, a bestial sex machine. Even though it was only a cartoon in colored pencils, I felt the intent in the artist’s skilled strokes and could only whistle.
Fallon nodded. “I’m glad you approve. This has been the First Minister’s special project for some time, although he’s been waiting for just the right time to translate it into reality.”
“Ypsir drew these? He’s quite talented, no pun intended.”
“Yes, he is—in quite a” number of ways. And, yes, he drew that, in addition to working with our best artist psych for better than half a year to create the mental and emotional sets. The hormonal is obvious. The primal savage, the perfect and uncorrupted natural woman, he calls her. I wish sometimes I’d been built like that.”
“You’d have a terrible backache,” I noted.
She shrugged. “She’s far more than a mere Goodtime Girl. He calls her Ass, by the way. His strong male libido is as firm as your own, I might note. She’ll be his constant companion, his mark of perfection, you might say. He owns many great works of art stolen from the finest museums in the Confederacy, but he intends her as his prize possession. Everyone will drool with envy, but she will be totally and absolutely committed to and devoted to him. A tamed wild animal, you might say, totally passive, yet with the wild streak that will make her all the more exotic, and with a bit of a twist. Like a good devoted tamed thing of the wild, she will do whatever is necessary to protect him. Here is a multipurpose, totally sensuous creature that is also a work of art.”
I nodded. I understood Ypsir pretty well after this; he was certainly the most slimy soul I could ever remember coming across. “I see,” I said.
“I don’t think you do,” Fallon responded. “I think you don’t fully appreciate the First Minister’s sense of justice. Not just anyone would do for Ass, of course. He likes to be reminded constantly that he is in total, control, so she is to be a symbol of his superior position, his superior system, and his basic invulnerability to’ the Confederacy and its schemes. Ass, you see, is not for her ample posterior, but rather short for assassin.”
“No!” I screamed, and tried to lunge at her. The monitor behind just put me out with a single brief and localized shot.
I was strapped to the psych machine, feeling pure fear for the first time in my life. Not anxiety, not concern, but real fear. I did not fear death—never had—but this was something else. I always feared going under a psych for a total wipe; there was always the chance that something of me might yet remain, might know, and that was the ultimate horror to me.