"Perhaps." Hakone was indifferent. He drained his glass and fielded another from a passing tray. "My idea of a gathering, after all, is a group of comrades, with something in common to share. Evidently we differ in that regard."
"If we had known," Marr pacified, "that you wished a group of fellow ex-soldiers to sit around and become comatose while sharing lies of your long-gone youth, we would have done so."
Hakone allowed a smile to crawl across his face. The writer was dressed entirely in black, close-fitting trousers and a flowing tunic. "As I said before, we differ. By the way—one man I would like to meet."
"There is someone we didn't introduce to you? Our failing."
"Him."
Hakone waved a hand toward Sten, who was recovering his sense of gravity with a full glass.
Marr flicked a glance at Senn. Puzzlement. Then took Hakone by the hand and led him over to Sten.
"Captain Sten?"
Sten, who was about to kiss Lisa again, turned, recognized his hosts and, thanks to his cram course in the palace files, the guest of honor.
"Sr. Hakone."
"This is a young man," Marr said, "who we believe will progress greatly. Captain Sten. And?"
"Lisa Haines." Like most good cops, Lisa didn't believe in unnecessarily letting anyone know what she was.
Hakone smiled at her, then effectively shut Lisa, Marr, and Senn out of the conversation. "You command the Emperor's bodyguard, isn't that correct?"
Sten nodded.
"It must be interesting work."
"It's... different," Sten said neutrally.
"Different? What were you doing previously?"
Sten's background, as a member of the Emperor's Mantis Section, was of course never to be admitted. For that period his record showed service on some far worlds, enough to justify a double row of medal ribbons that had been won for far stealthier and dirtier deeds.
"Guards. Mostly out in the pioneer sectors."
"Unusual," Hakone said, "for someone—and I mean no offense—as young as yourself to be picked for your current post."
"I guess they needed somebody who could climb up and down all those stairs in the palace without having heart failure."
"You have a mentor," Hakone pursued.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind. Captain, may I ask you something frankly?"
"Yes, sir."
"I note from your ribbons that you've seen combat. And now you're here. At the heart of the Empire. Do you like what you see?"
"I don't understand."
"You joined the service, I assume, like all of us. Expecting something. Expecting that you were serving a cause."
"I guess so." Sten knew damned well why he'd joined—to get the hell off the factory world known as Vulcan and to save his own life.
"When you look around"—and Hakone's expansive hand took in the bejeweled Court denizens that had flocked to the party—"does this match what you expected?"
Sten kept his face blank.
"Don't you find this all a little, perhaps decadent?"
Not a chance, Sten's answer should have been. Not when you come from a world where boys and girls go into slavery at three or four. But that wasn't the right thing to say. "Sorry to be so thick, Sr. Hakone," Sten said, "but on the world I come from, animals are normal sex partners."
Hakone's face flashed disgust, then he realized. "You joke, Captain."
"Not very well."
"Do you read?"
"When I have the leisure."
"Perhaps at another time we can discuss this further. In the meantime, I would like to send you some of my works. Will you receive them at the palace?"
Sten nodded. Hakone bowed formally and turned away. Sten looked after him. Question: Why would the guest of honor decide to look him up? And then stand there and play games? The evening was increasingly surprising.
The party was ending on a muted note. It had gone from a mass of egos forced together to a swirl of excuses for other appointments. Sten and Lisa, not being very experienced in Prime World high society, were among the last to add themselves to the swarm of beings making polite exit.
Marr grabbed them just before they hit the pneumotube to their sled. "Too soon, my loves," he cried. "Much too soon."
And he latched on to their hands and began pulling them back through the crowd. Sten tensed—soldiers, like cats, don't look back. He felt equal tension through Lisa's fingers. Somehow that made him feel more at ease and very close to her. It was a sharing of distrust. "Really, Marr," Sten said. "We gotta go. We both have duty tomorrow, and there really isn't time for—"
Marr broke in with a sniff. "As you might say, clot duty. And as for time—that's just something the science types use to keep everything from happening at once."
He pulled them forward, out of the crowd and into a long, pulsing yellow hallway. Sten hesitated once again, and then felt Lisa's fingers tense before tugging him on. They turned a corner and were instantly confronted with a tricolored split, tunnels leading in different directions. Marr urged them toward left—blue—and Sten realized from the tension in his calves that they were moving upward.
"Senn and I have had our eye on you," Marr said. "Through the whole party. Both of you are a bit out of place, aren't you?"
"I'm sorry," Sten apologized. "I'm not very used to—"
Marr waved him down. "Don't be foolish. Our gatherings are not about social niceties. In fact, people's general appreciation is that we provide just the opposite."
"Oh, my god," Lisa said. "I knew I'd foul this up." She glanced down and checked the gossamer that was her dress. "You can see through it, right? I knew I should have—"
Sten pulled her close to him, shutting her off.
"I think he's trying to tell us something else," he said.
Marr pulled them onward, seemingly ignoring their hesitations. They rushed past rooms gleaming in haunting colors or dimmed to impossible shades of blackness. They were near the top level—the gallery section—and although the two guests didn't realize it, each room represented a fortune in art works. Scents and sounds slipped out, taunting, urging, but Marr pressed on, babbling all the time.
"This is special," Sten realized Marr was saying, "Something only the two of you would understand. You'll see—see for yourselves—why Senn and I built our home here."
The hallway suddenly blossomed into the open and Sten felt a soft, perfumed breeze.
"See," Marr said. "See." He waved a small, furry arm around, taking in... everything.
They were standing on what could most easily be described as a roof-top garden. Strange and exotic plants shadowed in close to them, nestling their bodies, caressing... what? Lisa, a bit fearfully, tucked in closer to Sten.
"Through here," Marr said.
And they followed him along a winding, darkened path. It was like walking through a series of bubbles. Scent and perfumed light tugging... tugging... and then bursting through into another pleasure. Sound, perhaps, or a combination of sound and light and tingling feeling. Sten felt Lisa's body loosen in his arms.
Then the violin curve tensed and stopped. For a moment all Sten could feel and know was the swell of her hip. Marr was talking again, and as he talked, Sten found himself looking upward.
"It only happens three times a year," Marr was saying.
"A work of art that can only be seen, not purchased." He pointed to the shimmer of glaze that separated the roof garden from the real world.
Sten saw the huddle of mountains, picked out by moonlight, that pressed in toward the dome sky. He shifted his weight and felt his leg brush a flower. There was a slight hiss of perfume, and he felt Lisa's body ignite his skin everyplace it touched.
"Watch," Marr said.
And Sten and Lisa watched. The crag of cliff side just beneath the moon suddenly darkened. It became a deeper and deeper blackness until it formed into a knotted, pulsing ball.