“We’re going to a hotel,” answered Alex without stopping. “You need to sleep.”
“Yes, I do,” agreed the girl. She seemed drunk or drugged. And in some sense, she was—her body had already begun to release endorphins into her bloodstream. “It’s so uncomfortable out here.”
Alex knew all too well what she meant. The chrysalis stage was the most dangerous time in a spesh’s life. As its onset approached, a person suffered intense agoraphobia. To remain out in the open was not just uncomfortable, but insanely frightening.
“We’ll walk really fast,” Alex told her. “We’ll get to the Hilton and get a tiny, cozy room, nice and quiet. I’ll put you to bed, cover you up with a blanket, turn off the light, and you’ll get some sleep. When you wake up, everything will be fine.”
“All right,” said Kim. “Let’s walk really fast.”
She let out a light, faltering giggle, familiar to any man whose girlfriend had ever had too many drinks. A second later, the tone of her voice changed completely.
“You won’t harm me? Will you?”
The girl put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. She was not quite tall enough to hug a grown man, but Alex fully realized that even these slender fingers, now barely touching his neck, were capable of breaking his spine in an instant.
Suspiciousness, at times completely unreasonable, was also a sign of approaching pupation. And the two of them were, after all, practically strangers.
“I won’t harm you,” replied Alex. “Let’s hurry up. It’s cold.”
“All right.”
The boulevard was deserted. There were few people on Quicksilver Pit who enjoyed walking at night, so it was empty and completely dark. Walking fast along the street, Alex felt the girl’s hand tremble a little on his shoulder. It trembled, getting dryer and more and more feverish.
Damn! What was he doing?
The waiter had not lied. The Hilton really was close. Alex knew that a long, long time ago, before the space era, the hotel chain had been considered posh and expensive. But at the beginning of the galactic expansion, its owners made a bet on cheap mass lodgings. As it turned out, their bet paid off.
The outside of the hotel, a squat three-story structure, did look rather decent. Its walls, covered by plastic-crumb panels, retained their juicy orange color for decades, and the laser ad hovering in the air above it was as truthful as it could be. It promised “maximum comfort at minimal price.”
With Kim hanging onto him, barely able to shuffle along, Alex pushed his way into the hotel lobby.
The night clerk, a natural of about forty, threw an appraising glance at them. Gave a friendly smile. To him, of course, it all looked very simple—a spesh out for a good time had picked up a young natural for the night. Alex had no intention of arguing with him.
“A room with minimal parameters… for three hours,” said Alex, catching a glimpse of the price list. That completely cleaned out his account.
“Second floor, number twenty-six,” said the clerk, reaching out with his cash scanner. Alex took out his credit card, approved the transaction. “Hey, you’re with him, kiddo?”
“Yes,” said Kim, almost inaudibly. “I’ll get to bed, get a blanket, and we’ll turn off the light.” At this, the clerk discretely winked at Alex.
“Let’s go.” Alex had a feeling that the girl might collapse any second now. “Let’s go where it’s dark and quiet…”
This seemed to have the desired effect. Hanging on to him, Kim moved towards the elevator.
Alex had kept his promise about the silence. The Hilton management knew how irritating noise could be to the customers of their hotels, be it street noise or the sounds coming from the adjacent rooms. It wasn’t sound-suppressors they had installed, of course—the thin walls had been filled with cheap vacuum foam.
The lights in the tiny room came on mercilessly bright, showing its squalid interior—a double but rather narrow bed with unimaginably bright-colored bedding of synthetic fibers, two plastic chairs, a plastic table, a cheap screen on the wall, and a half-open bathroom door with a sticker above the knob, proudly proclaiming that it was “Sterile.”
Kim whimpered feebly, covering her eyes with her right hand. Her left was still clutching Alex.
“Dim the lights!” ordered Alex, forgetting for a second where he was. Cursed. Touching his finger to the sensor, he lowered the brightness of the lights. The ceiling lamps dimmed, turned a pallid blue for a second, and began flickering in a happy disco mode. After a few more attempts, he managed to achieve a dimmer pinkish tone—cloying, but easy on the eyes.
“It hurts,” complained Kim weakly. Her receptors surely had a higher pain threshold, and now she was also in a state of pre-metamorphosis self-anesthetization. But pain was still breaking through all the barriers.
“Hang in there, give me a second,” said Alex, scooping her up into his arms. “You do understand what is happening to you, right? You’ve entered your chrysalis stage.”
She said nothing, giving only a limp nod. Alex put her on the bed, started unbuttoning her coat.
“But you promised… not to hurt me…” said Kim.
“Don’t worry. I only want to help.”
He peeled off her coat, her jeans, and her sweater. All she had on now were thin panties, freshly soaked with blood. She must have felt herself bleeding—she made a weak attempt to cover herself with her hand.
“You’ve got your period?” asked Alex.
“No… Too early.”
“I see.”
Hesitating no longer, Alex took off her soiled underwear, flipped the blanket open, and arranged her body more comfortably on the bed. Kim did not help him in any way, but offered no resistance, either. All better now. She must have postponed the metamorphosis as long as she could. Not consciously—the mind had no control over the process—but just by realizing how vulnerable she had been. Alex’s presence had broken the delicate balance between the genetic program and the pupation-inhibiting hormones. The girl put her trust in him, and the tightly wound spring had started to unravel.
“Does the light bother you?” he asked.
“No…”
Her voice was changing. The larynx was being transformed.
“Kim, try to understand what I am saying. It’s very important, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You are entering a transformational trance. Soon you’ll start seeing things… all kinds of things. Your body will be changing according to the prescribed program. Everything will be fine, I’m sure. But it will hurt a little. You think you can handle it?”
The girl nodded weakly. A few drops of blood slid down from her nostrils.
“Thirsty?”
“No… Not yet.”
Alex sighed. What he knew of the chrysalis stage was no more than any other spesh with a basic education and personal experience of the process. The main thing was that the transformation should take place under a specialist’s care. And in case of a disrupted metamorphosis—in the hospital.
Damn it…
His pockets were empty.
And he knew nobody here.
A strange planet, a strange town, and a strange girl, entering the chrysalis stage…
He slid his hands under her little, trembling body, lifted her up.
Eighty-five, maybe eighty-six pounds. Unforgivably little for a metamorphosis. And… there was something else alarming, irregular. A body-mass imbalance uncharacteristic of humans.
“Kim!”
The girl opened her eyes.
“Are you cyborged?”
“No…”
“No artificial organs? Pacemakers, transplants, built-in weapons?”
“No.”
“Is your body biologically clean? Completely? No foreign objects?” He could be mistaken. His sense of balance was enhanced for the rare occasions when a master-pilot had to use a really tiny craft, such as a glider or even a rocket pack.