"All I said was--"
"You're angry, I can tell." He sighed at the unfairness of it all and produced a second knife-Gaby's-in his left hand. "If you think about it, you have yourself to blame. What do you think I'm made of? You women. Do your mothers tell you to be selfish? Is that it?'#
Cirocco tried to think of a safe answer, but he apparently didn't want one. He moved over her and put the tip of a knife under her chin. She flinched; the tip bit into the soft flesh. It was colder than his eyes.
"I don't understand why you're doing this."
He hesitated. The second knife had been moving in the direction of her belly; now he stopped with it just out of her sight. She licked her lips and wished she could see it again.
"That's a fair question. I've always thought about it-what man doesn't?" He searched her eyes for understanding, looked forlorn when he did not find it.
"Ah, what's the use? You're a girls "
"Try." The knife was moving again. She felt it press flat against the inside of her thigh. Sweat broke out on her forehead. "You don't have to do it this way. Put the knife down, and I'll give you anything you want."
"Ah-ah." There was the knife again, waggling back and forth like a mother's admonishing finger. "I'm not a stupid man. I know how you women work."
"I swear. It doesn't have to be this way."
"It does. I've killed Gaby, and you won't forgive that. It never was fair, you know. You tantalize us all the time. We're always horny, and you're always saying no." He was sneering, but the expression quickly vanished to be replaced once again by calm- ness. She had liked the sneer better.
"I'm just evening things out. Back when you people left me alone in the dark I decided I'd do what I please. I made friends in Rhea. You're not going to like them much. I'm the Captain from now on, like I should have been in the first place. You'll do what I say. Now don't do anything stupid."
She gasped as the sharp point of the knife tore her pants. She thought she knew what he was about to use the knife for, and wondered if she'd rather be stupid and dead than alive and mutilated. But once the pants were gone he cut no further. Her attention returned to the knife under her chin.
He entered her. She turned her face away and the knife point followed. It hurt like hell, but that was not important. What mattered was the twitch in Gaby's cheek, the trail her hand had made through the dust while moving closer to the hatchet, her half-open eye and the gleam in it.
Cirocco looked up at Gene and had no trouble putting fear into her voice.
"Don't! Oh, please, don't, I'm not ready. You'll kill me!"
"You're ready when I say you are." He lowered his head and Cirocco risked a glance at Gaby, who seemed to understand. Her eye closed.
It all happened far away. She had no body, that was someone else who was hurting so badly. Only the knife point at her chin had meaning, until he began to tire.
What would the price of his failure be? she wondered. Right.
Then he can't fall. A moment would come when his attention would waver, but she had to insure that moment arrived. She began to move under him. It was the most disgusting thing she had ever done.
"Now we see the truth," he said, with a dreamy smile.
"Don't talk, Gene."
"You got it. See how much better it is when you don't fight?" Was it her imagination, or was her skin not quite so taut under the knife? Had it pulled back? She tasted the thought, careful not to fool herself, and decided it was true. She had acquired an exquisite sensitivity. The slight easing of pressure was like the lifting of a great weight. ,
He would have to close his eyes. Didn't they always close their eyes?
He closed them and. she almost moved, but he opened them again, quickly. Testing her, damn it. But he saw no deception. Normally she was a lousy actress, but the knife had inspired her.
His back arched. His eyes closed. The knife pressure was gone. Nothing went right.
She slapped his arm one way, turned her head the other; the knife cut the side of her cheek. She punched at his throat, meaning to crush it, but he moved just enough. She twisted, kicked, felt the knife slash her shoulder blade. Then she was up- but not running. Her feet did not touch the ground for agonizing seconds while she waited for the knife to bite.
It did not, and she got enough of a toehold to bound into the air again and start away from him. She glanced over her shoulder while in the air and realized her kick had been stronger than she imagined. It had lifted him from the ground and he was only now touching again. Gaby was still in the air. Adrenalin was causing Earth muscles to behave madly in the low gravity.
The chase took forever to get going, but picked up speed rapidly.
She didn't think he knew Gaby was behind him. He would never have pursued Cirocco so single-mindedly if he had seen Gaby's face.
They had camped in the castle's central plaza, a level area the builders had never subdivided. The fire was twenty meters from the first gallery of rooms. Cirocco was still accelerating when she hit the first wall. She never broke stride, smashing a dozen of them before reaching up to grab one of the girders. She swung through a ninety-degree turn and rose, tumbling, through three ceilings before stopping in the air. She heard crashes as Gene blundered on, not understanding her maneuvere.
She put her feet on a girder and pushed up again. She rose, a cloud of glass shards ascending with her, twisting and turning in dreamy slow motion. She leaped to the side and went through three walls before stopping. She broke through to her left, went up another floor, then over and down through two more.
She stopped, crouching on a girder, and listened.
There was the far-off tinkle of breaking glass. It was dark. She was in the middle of a chambered maze that stretched to infinity in all directions: up, down, and sideways. She didn't know where she was, but neither did he, and that was the way she wanted it.
The crashing grew louder and she saw Gene sail up through the room to her left. She dived right and down, catching a girder two floors below and diverting her momentum to the right again. She came to rest, her bare feet on another girder. Around her, broken glass settled slowly.
She would not have known he was so close if the shower of glass had not preceded him. He had been walking along the girders, but the weight of part of his foot was too much for an un- broken pane that already supported debris from Cirocco's passage. it shattered, and the glass came down like snowflakes. She swung around the girder and pushed downward with her feet.
She hit hard, and turned, dazed, to see him land on his feet, as she would have done if she had any damn sense and counted floors. She remembered thinking that as he stood over her, then she saw the hatchet hit his head, and she passed out.
She came to her senses suddenly, screaming, which was some- thing she had never done before. She did not know where she was, but she had been back in the belly of the beast, and not alone. Gene was there, explaining calmly why he intended to rape her...ad raped her. She stopped screaming.
She was not in the glass castle. There was a rope around her waist. The ground sloped down in front of her. Far below was the dark silver sea of Rhea.
Gaby was beside her, but she was quite busy. She had two ropes around her waist. One went up the slope to the same tree Cirocco was attached to. The other hung taut over darkness. Tears had washed a channel through the dried blood on her face. She was using a knife to saw through one of the ropes.
"Is that Gene's pack there, Gaby? "
"Yeah. He won't be needing it. How are you feeling?" "I've been better. Bring him up, Gaby."
She looked up, her mouth hanging open. "I don't want to lose the rope."
His face was a bloody wreck. One eye was swollen shut, the other merely a slit. His nose was broken and three of his front teeth were gone.
"Quite a fall he took," Cirocco observed. "Nothing to what I had in mind."
"Open his pack and bandage that ear. He's still losing blood." Gaby was building toward an explosion, but Cirocco cut her off with an unwavering stare.
"I'm not going to kill him, so don't suggest it."
His ear had been severed by Gaby's hatchet throw. That had been unintentional on her part; she had meant to plant it in the side of his head, but it had turned in the air and hit him a glancing blow powerful enough to knock him out. He moaned while Gaby bandaged him.