“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the captain replied. He and Callene were sitting in Kaybecker’s luxurious quarters, every security device deactivated. “Frankly,” he admitted, “these techniques don’t always work well in others. It just depends.”
“On what?”
“Variables,” the man replied, a natural arrogance showing. Then he steered the subject elsewhere. “Callene assures me that you’ve been very helpful.”
“Always,” the lovesick man replied.
“And she’s been rewarding you, has she?”
For some reason, the captain needed reassurance.
“She lets me touch her,” Kaybecker confessed. Callene was sitting next to him on the leather sofa. He stared at her perfect face with every eye, and she stared at her captain. “When I do what she wants….”
“What I want,” the captain reminded him. “How do you hke that magical tit?”
Just thinking about it, he couldn’t help but shiver.
Glancing at Callene, the captain gave a smug little wink. “A taste of the sauce helps one remember the meal.”
What’s your sauce? Kaybecker wondered, in secret.
The captain’s team was ruled with an economy of potions and devotion: The half dozen women officers watched the arrogant man as if he were God, while each male was enthralled with a single woman. But didn’t that make sense? Bringing dozens of infiltrators to the earth, then orchestrating their climb into the same unit, would be impossible. Better to send one agent—perhaps the captain; perhaps someone else—and let that true believer find converts with his or her own magical sauce.
Kaybecker didn’t dare ask the godlike man about his origins or the mission.
But when their first meeting was finished, the captain left alone, giving Callene a wink, telling her that Kaybecker deserved his rewards. “For me,” he told her. “Would you?”
That’s when Kaybecker confessed his curiosity to Callene. He was suckling on the luscious nipple, talking around it and mouthfuls of freshly synthesized microchines, blood-warm narcotics. Her eyes were closed, as always. Surprise showed in the way she closed them even tighter, wincing for just an instant. Then with a sturdy, much-practiced pride, she announced, “I don’t know anything about Him. I don’t need to know. And don’t ask questions like that again. All right?”
“All right,” he promised. “I won’t.”
But there was a second Callene—the perfect woman who was the true object of his relentless, pathological love. As promised, Kaybecker could always see her. Awake or asleep, his lidless pineal eye fed him the same powerful image: Her naked, straddling his engorged penis, offering her breast to his grateful mouth, and, in return, demanding nothing. Nothing. That other Callene didn’t know about wars and political power. She wasn’t the one who ordered him to transfer her old unit down from Seattle. It didn’t matter to her if he gave away security codes or the schematics for their newest weapon, or the files about the geniuses who worked for him. And that other Callene never yanked him off her nipple, then told him, “We need everyone outdoors. When that new weapon is used for the first time, we should be somewhere near the beach.”
“Outdoors?” he had muttered, in reflex. “But you’re safer here. Underground.”
“Don’t ask me why,” the flesh-and-blood Callene growled, black eyes cutting through him. “That’s what the captain wants. Believe me.”
How could he do anything but believe her?
But that other Callene would answer his questions. She never tired, never went dry, never winced and yanked back her nipple, and she didn’t close her eyes so that she could see the perfect captain who inhabited her own secret eye….
What do the rebels want? Kaybecker asked that Callene.
She lent a voice to his intuition. At least one other unit had betrayed the earth, she explained, and those were the gunners who would fire at the moon. Which would be an easy trick, Kaybecker realized. The gun was invisible. It was a weapon that could be turned 180 degrees, and who would know until it was a nanosecond too late…?
But what about the nuclear bullets? he inquired. Why launch them at the moon?
The UN won’t arm them with the usual detonators, she replied. The bullets won’t need detonators. Which means that not only will the earth shoot itself, but it will also give away a fat portion of its munitions, for free….
And the geniuses?
Will be taken captive, she said. He sensed. She said, That’s why the captain wants them outside, darling. A rescue ship will use the blast and the chaos afterward to come and get us. And really, darling, if you think about it… that’s going to be the biggest victory of all. Think what those scientists will mean to the rebels…
Kaybecker smiled for a moment. Then with a shudder, asked, But what about me?
What about you?
Will I go with you? To the moon?
She regarded him for a long while, then admitted:
Darling, I can’t answer that.
Two days before the blast, Kaybecker overheard several of his physicists talking. It seemed that one of them had stumbled upon their new captain enjoying the company of a female officer. The couple were sandwiched inside a tiny closet. “Enjoying an elaborate embrace,” the witness claimed, illustrating the pose with his body and two hands, holding an imaginary head just so. Then he looked up, noticing the project manager standing nearby. And he suddenly laughed, with a malicious air, and Kaybecker knew just which officer had been sucking off that arrogant bastard.
Kaybecker fell into a wild panic.
Approaching the flesh-and-blood Callene, he asked if they would indeed remain together, always.
She didn’t hesitate.
“Of course,” she told him. “Wherever we go, you’ll be with me.” Then with a strange unconscious grin, she closed her glass eyes.
The captain was equally reassuring. “You’ve been an enormous help. We’re indebted to you. So of course we’re going to take care of you. Of course.”
Anyone else would have believed those comforting words.
But until lately, Kaybecker was utterly undistracted by love. More than anyone else in this insidious operation, he was possessed by the apparition in his secret eye. Closing his other eyes, he could see nothing but his only love, and, without warning, her expression changed, suddenly glaring at him.
What’s wrong? he whispered.
They won’t take you with them, she replied. And you know they won’t. You’ve known it from the beginning…
Kaybecker nodded grimly, admitting the caustic truth.
Then the captain suddenly appeared, swaggering up to them, wearing nothing, invading his mind’s eye without the slightest care; and suddenly Kaybecker’s ethereal Callene took hold of the captain’s long brown penis, lifting it to her mouth as she dismissed Kaybecker with a sneer, telling him:
You’re a monster.
Kaybecker screamed, in agony.
A monster, she repeated, and if I have the chance, I’ll kill you myself…
With powerful eyes, Callene watches Kaybecker and her captain. They talk for less than a minute, yet it feels like hours. “You’re crazy,” says her captain. “That’s fucking madness! I won’t!” But then Kaybecker says something else, motioning at the sky, and her captain starts shaking his head, turning now, looking at Callene for a half-instant before he tells several other officers, “Come here. And listen.”
Moments later, Callene is grabbed from behind. Then, disarmed.
In a blur of motion, she is led across the meadow. Seattle is a brilliant, ravaged glow, the plasma wall spreading south, bearing down on them. What’s happening? Part of her knows everything, and the rest denies it. The rest is what makes her close her eyes, stumbling moments later. Then a big hand takes her by the arm and lifts, guiding her along, Kaybecker’s smooth, elated voice telling her, “You saw how easily he did it. Selling you out like this. Without half a fight, even.”