Tweed was beginning to get impatient. Vaffa said he was talking about a deadline; if they had not managed to charter a ship in another two weeks, he was going to have them buy one. By that time, they would already have lost a month, and he was unwilling to let any more time go by before getting his bid down.
Lilo was not happy about it. She didn't care about the lost time, but thought that if they bought a ship they would still be faced with the same problem: hiring a pilot. There were plenty of them around but Lilo was sure it would be hard to hire one. And for the same reasons they were having trouble chartering a ship. Vaffa scared the hunters away.
Holehunters were as quirky a group of people as the human race had ever produced. In many ways, they were almost as different as a human paired with a symb. It takes a special temperament to seal oneself into a single-seat ship for a trip that would last from twenty to forty years. Most of the ships had about fifty cubic meters of living space; some had less. The endpoint of a voyage could be as much as half a light-year from the sun. The people who survived such loneliness for such a time tended to be different.
"Most of them didn't really like people much before they went out," Cathay said. "When they come back, they haven't seen anyone for at least twenty years. A lot of them decide they didn't miss all that much."
They were back at Cathay's home after another day of haunting the pleasure palaces around the spaceport. Tonight Cathay had done as Lilo suggested, lowering the air temperature so it would be cozy to huddle around the fireplace which concealed the electric heater. They had all applied a mild hallucinodisiac cream onto their genitals, then inhaled a muscle-relaxant powder. They had coated their bodies with lucent oils: Lilo was lavender, Cathay was pearl, and Vaffa crimson. The result had been a stretched hour of slow-motion slithering, low-key and undemanding. Now they were lying face down, Lilo in the middle.
She felt good. It was like the peace that could be achieved when you had regained your breath after a ten-kilometer run, but without the pain and exhaustion that would have preceded it. She had wanted Vaffa in a good mood for what she was about to propose, and it looked as though she had succeeded. Vaffa was inclined to be perfunctory about copping; Lilo assumed that the woman had never attracted anyone to love her and had decided, like so many, that sex was overrated. Tonight might well have been the first time she had experienced copping as a sensual delight, not merely the pursuit of orgasm.
"Well, I certainly can't understand them," Vaffa said.
"That's because you've never run into anyone who dislikes people as much as you do," Lilo said. She hoped it would go over well, not be taken as an insult. Vaffa had never pretended to like people.
"Maybe you're right," Vaffa said. She seemed about to smile, but her lips did not quite know how to manage it. Lilo sat up on one elbow and faced the faintly glowing apparition. Her head felt a little thick now that she'd raised it; there had been entirely too many things to drink and smoke and sniff during the course of the day. Tiny red tongues of flame were dancing over the hairless woman's back. Lilo pursued them with her fingertips, pressing firmly into yielding muscle. Vaffa arched herself sensuously, with a contented moan.
"They're very sensitive, holehunters," Lilo said. "Am I right?"
"Very," Cathay mumbled. He shook his head to wake up, and sparks flew from his hair. Lilo was delighted.
"I think they're reacting to you," Lilo said.
"In what way?" Vaffa lifted her head, managing to look very like her pet python.
"I'm not sure. But they get almost telepathic. They don't see people for twenty years. When they get back they're sensitive, very touchy."
"Very perceptive," Cathay said. "The hunters, not you."
"Thanks. But they seem to feel when someone's dangerous. And I think they're feeling that from you."
Vaffa considered it, then let her head fall back. "You could be right." Lilo used both hands on Vaffa's neck and shoulders.
"I think I am. You're a killer; we both know it, so there's no need to mince words."
"No need at all."
"I happen to think there's more to you than that. Maybe you never got a chance to express it. Anyway, the hunters may not know that you've killed, but they sense the menace."
"I think you're right."
"Which leaves us the question of what to do about it. How can we charter a ship, and save the Boss a lot of money?" Lilo could have gone on, but it sounded like the place to stop. It would be better if Vaffa came up with the idea herself.
Cathay smiled at Lilo, then carefully turned away before Vaffa could see. The room was quiet for half an hour. Finally Vaffa rolled onto her side and rested her head on her arm. Her voice was sleepy when she spoke.
"Then you'll just have to go out alone."
16
Saint Peter's Casino was on fire, just as it had been the last time Lilo visited. Flames licked upward from the bottom edges of hanging tapestries, crackled through blistered oak paneling. The row of pews in the nave was an inferno, a whirling fire storm that reached to the ceiling. Smashed furniture had been heaped around the Pietà and set to the torch; the white marble was now coated with soot. Lilo took a sandwich and a drink from the snack bar that had been set up on the altar. She had been standing around the crap table all night and her feet hurt. St. Pete's bored her. But it was almost closing time. Soon Jesus would be there.
She went back into the Sistine Pit and worked her way over to the tables as one of the walls of the building crumbled. The smoke that had been trapped in the upper reaches of the chapel cleared enough for her to see Michelangelo's ceiling, by now considerably the worse for wear. There were cracks where holes had been drilled to anchor the crystal chandeliers which hung over every table. Beyond the vanished wall an angry Vesuvius could be seen belching fire and brimstone. Someone had a better sense of the dramatic than of historical geography, Lilo thought.
"Twenty on fifteen," she said, taking a seat to the left of the man she had been watching all night. He had lost heavily on the dice, and had shifted to roulette in a desperate effort to change his luck. The croupier in her black-and-white habit spun the wheel and the ball clattered into number eight. Lilo watched her chips being raked away along with the man's.
"Pardon me," said someone at Lilo's left. "Are you available?" She glanced at him. His eyes were glassy and his breath was sweet with the smell of Zongo, a powerful aphrodisiac. It was obviously not all he had ingested, and Lilo wondered what he saw when he looked at her. But she laughed when she looked down at him. His genitals had been radically modified according to the dictates of some new fad.
"Get out of here," she scoffed. "What good would that thing be to me?"
"It's okay," he slurred, nearly falling against her. "I've got an adapter." He brandished something pink and soft that seemed to be breathing. Lilo pushed him, and he staggered into the arms of a bouncer.
"Hey! You brought me luck!" the man next to her cried. The croupier was pushing a tall stack of chips in his direction.
"What'd I do?"
"You hit my elbow. I was going for twenty-six, you hit me, and it went to twenty-eight. I left it there. I mean, what the hell? I couldn't do worse than I've been doing, huh?"
If the aggressive little man had still been in sight, Lilo would have kissed him. The holehunter had ignored every conversational advance Lilo had made all night as he sank deeper into a black mood.
"Are you going to quit while you're ahead?" she asked.