The sword came swinging in again towards his neck and head. Brachis swayed forward, under the swing, and reached out and around with his left arm. He grasped the back of the narrow neck and pulled the body forward against his face. He closed his eyes and made a total, reflexive effort. Vertebrae snapped under his twisting fingers. The dropped sword passed over his back and slid harmlessly past his legs.
Still entwined, Brachis and his assailant tumbled together to the floor of the chamber. He landed underneath, gasping at the impact.
He opened his eyes, and gasped again. His first, incredulous impression had been correct. He was staring into the lifeless face of the Margrave of Fujitsu.
Even though Luther Brachis had done his best to persuade her, Godiva Lomberd refused to sit in the room where the Adestis attack would take place. She had listened quietly, smiled, shook her gorgeous blond head, and said: “Luther, my sweet, Nature designed some people for one thing, and some for others. Your life is Security — sabotage, weapons, skirmishes, and violence. Mine is Art. Music, dancing and poetry. I’m not saying my life is better than yours. But I am saying I won t come and watch while Dougal MacDougal satisfies his blood lust trying to kill some poor harmless animal that is only doing what its nature programmed it to do. I don’t have to be there, even if you do.” She placed her fingertips on his lips. “No argument, Luther. I’m not coming — not even into the spectators’ gallery.”
In the end she had relented far enough to accompany Brachis to the main Adestis facility. She allowed him to settle her in the neighboring lounge and order refreshments for her while she waited. She seemed delighted when Esro Mondrian arrived at the same lounge a few minutes later.
“What brings you here, Commander? I can’t believe that you like Adestis.”
“1 don’t.” Mondrian had with him a tiny, dark-haired woman. She was already staring curiously at Godiva. “We came because Luther is here, and we need to talk to him.”
“You can’t do it now. He’s involved in this safari, and they must be right in the middle of it.”
’That’s all right. We’ll wait.” Mondrian turned to the woman with him. “Lotos, this is Godiva Lomberd. Godiva, Lotos Sheldrake. If you two don’t mind I’m going to leave you here for a few minutes. If Luther comes out, don’t let him get away. He has to wait until I come back.”
Godiva nodded. “Where’s Tatty?”
“Down on Earth again.” Mondrian hesitated. Godiva was still looking at him expectantly. “She’s helping me.
I needed images and recordings of a few places. She ought to be back here in a week or two.”
Godiva nodded. She seemed faintly puzzled, but she said nothing more as Mondrian left and Lotos settled down to sit opposite her. There was an awkward silence.
“Are you involved with Adestis?” said Lotos at last.
The other woman smiled and shook her head. “Just heard about it, enough to convince me I don’t want anything to do with it. How about you?”
“Once, and never again.” Lotos related the details of her experience at the termite nest. She underplayed the danger, but emphasized her own terror and discomfort. She did her best to be humorous and self-deprecating — and she watched closely for Godiva’s every reaction.
Since hearing of the contract with Luther Brachis, Lotos had put her own information service to work. Their efforts had been pathetically unproductive. Godiva Lomberd had popped into view a few years ago on Earth, officially as an ‘artistic performer’. The peerless Godiva Bird, Model, Consort, and Exotic Dancer, said the publicity. In fact, she was a rich man’s courtesan.
All the digging since then had turned up nothing more specific. Godiva was simply a woman, background and age uncertain, whom men found irresistible. She exploited that fact for money.
Looking at her now, Lotos could see why Godiva had been so successful. She moved like a dancer, every gesture natural, easy, and flowing. She had the clear eyes and skin of perfect health. She laughed easily, throwing her head back open-mouthed to reveal perfect teeth and a pink, fleshy tongue. Most of all, she listened to Lotos with total, focused attention, as though what the other woman was saying was the most interesting thing in the solar system.
And still Lotos was uneasy. Godiva had never formed more than a temporary and commercial relationship with any man — until she met Luther Brachis. And then she had formed a permanent contract with him.
True love? That was not in Lotos Sheldrake’s vocabulary of the possible. Her intuition told her that something strange was going on between Godiva Lomberd and Luther Brachis. She lacked Mondrian’s previous acquaintance with Godiva, but she trusted his instincts, too. “She is changed,” he had said, as they whipped through the Ceres transportation system on their way to the Adestis Headquarters. “Different. She wasn’t like that when she was on Earth.”
“Changed how?”
Mondrian had looked angry — with himself. Lotos knew how much he valued his ability to read out the motivations and secret desires of others. “She’s … focused,” he said at last. “You would have to have met the old Godiva to understand what I mean. It used to be that Godiva always paid close attention to the man who was buying her time, and she certainly gave him his money’s-worth. But at the same time she was aware of other men, and somehow she made them aware of her. It was like a magnetic field around her, one that said, ‘I’m busy right now. But I won’t always be busy. Sometime in the future, I could be yours.’ Of course, in practice there were conditions. Everyone wanted her, but not everyone could pay the price. But there was always that possibility, if a man were lucky enough to get rich. Now … now she pays attention to Luther. Only to Luther. The other men around her are hardly there. That’s what I mean by different.”
“Maybe it’s love,” suggested Lotos. She gave Mondrian a quick sideways look from her dark eyes.
He had not bothered to reply. Mondrian’s opinion of true love as the agent for a profound change of personality was perhaps even more cynical than Lotos Sheldrake’s.
Lotos watched now, as other men and women wandered through the lounge. Mondrian had been exactly right. Godiva would look up, as though to check that each arrival was not Luther Brachis. Then at once she returned her attention to Lotos. There was no eye contact, no trace of coquetry. Godiva flirted no more than Lotos herself did.
So. Lotos leaned back and puzzled over the evidence before her eyes. Earth’s most famous and expensive courtesan ought to be much more aware of men. Even if she no longer thought of them as prospective customers, surely the habit of speculative evaluation and subliminal come-ons would by now be built in?
Lotos had paid well for this meeting with Godiva. And it was producing more questions than answers.
Mondrian had promised Lotos a clear half-hour with Godiva. She was getting that and more, because on the way back to the lounge he stopped at the spectators’ lounge for a look at the battle area.
He stayed longer than he had originally intended. Luther Brachis and Dougal MacDougal were both in the control room, wearing their Monitor sets. Or was it more accurate to say that they were really down on the battlefield, where each of them controlled the body of a simulacrum?
The field of encounter was a small hemispherical chamber about ten feet across. A camera set into the domed roof revealed all the action to any interested observers. The usual audience would be mostly prospective players, following the whole procedure with huge interest.