Raven heard a sharp zing and felt O’Donnell shudder, but the giant of a man lumbered through the door and staggered out into the brightness.
The light hurt Raven’s eyes. She squeezed them shut as Quincy carried her in a staggering trot along the habitat’s long, curving passageway. She could hear him puffing, panting, feel his hairy chest heaving while his big meaty hands held her naked body close to his.
Raven didn’t know if anyone else was in the passageway. She kept her eyes shut tight against the painful overhead lights. She heard no voices, no footsteps, sensed the presence of no one except Quincy’s massive body lumbering along the passageway.
She felt his chest rising and falling as he puffed along, felt the warmth of his body, the sheen of his sweat.
Where are you taking me? she asked silently, too exhausted and drained to speak aloud.
At last she sensed him slowing down. She cracked her eyelids open enough to see the double-doored entrance of the habitat’s hospital. Quincy banged a bare foot against one of the doors and it swung open.
Raven closed her eyes again but she heard voices, male and female:
“Who the hell—”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What’s wrong?”
She gave up her fragile grip on consciousness and let herself slide into oblivion.
CONFRONTATION
Quincy O’Donnell watched the medics take Raven’s naked form from his arms and wheel past him, into the hospital’s main corridor.
Suddenly he realized with a shock that he was standing in the hospital lobby totally naked. The medical personnel and waiting patients were staring at him. He didn’t know what to do, where to go.
One of the nurses—a short, dark-skinned Asian—came to him, bearing a full-length hospital gown.
“It’s disposable,” she said in a near whisper to Quincy as she stood on tiptoes to spread it over his broad shoulders. “Just flush it down a waste chute when you’re finished with it.”
Red-faced with embarrassment, Quincy muttered his thanks as he struggled into the gown. It barely reached his mid-thighs and he worried that it would rip down the back, but he felt unutterably grateful for it.
He marched himself, barefoot, back through the passageways toward his quarters. People passed by him, staring, some grinning, but one look at the grim expression on his face kept them from saying anything.
He reached his apartment finally and sat heavily on his unmade bed. Waxman, he thought. He did this to Raven. Promised me she and I would be together, and when I got there she was naked and shivering while Waxman and all those other men looked down and pawed at her.
He saw again Waxman’s sadistic, gloating face in his mind’s eye. His fists clenching automatically, Quincy told himself, “I’ll have to see him.”
He lay back on his unmade bed and tried to sleep. But the visions of Raven in that cold room, naked, helpless, while Waxman gloated over her, filled his mind whenever he tried to close his eyes.
Quincy was surprised when he awoke. Turning on the bed, he saw that it was a few minutes past 6:00 A.M. Very deliberately, he got to his feet, showered, shaved, dressed in a work uniform, threw the hospital gown down the disposal chute, and headed for Waxman’s office. He passed two different cafeterias on his way there, but didn’t have the faintest urge to eat anything.
Waxman’s office was locked when he reached it. Quincy decided to wait out in the passageway. He stood there like a Praetorian guard until Alicia Polanyi showed up, blinked with surprise, then let him into the outer office.
“You want to see Mr. Waxman?” she asked, curiosity knitting her lean face. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” said Quincy as he settled himself in one of the chairs along the office’s wall. “I’ll wait for him.”
“Shouldn’t you be out with your construction team?”
“They’re robots. They’re already programmed. I need to see Mr. Waxman.”
At that moment the door to the passageway outside slid open and Waxman stepped in. He stiffened with surprise as Quincy rose from his chair like a looming thundercloud.
“O’Donnell,” Waxman said stiffly. “I should have expected this.” Without even a glance at Alicia, Waxman strode to the door to his private office, which slid open automatically as he told Quincy, “Come on in.”
Quincy followed Waxman through the doorway and firmly shut the door as Waxman slid into his desk chair.
“So what do you want?” Waxman asked, looking up at Quincy. “Disappointed that you didn’t get your chance with her? That can be—”
Quincy planted his massive fists on Waxman’s desk and leaned over until he was nose-to-nose with the man.
“You leave her alone,” he rumbled.
“Raven? She’s a whore, for god’s sake. You can’t—”
Grasping the front of Waxman’s shirt and lifting him up from his chair, Quincy repeated, “Leave her alone.”
Waxman grasped Quincy’s fist in both his hands, but couldn’t budge them from his shirt front.
“You try to touch her again,” Quincy told him, “and I’ll kill you. I’ll break your face and crush your ribs and dance on your dead bones. Understand me?”
Waxman sputtered, swallowed hard, and finally managed to squeak, “I understand you.”
Quincy released him. Waxman collapsed back into his sumptuous dark chair.
“Good,” said Quincy. Then he turned and left the office.
A moment later Alicia Polanyi appeared at the doorway, distressed. “Are you all right?”
Waxman was breathing heavily, his eyes on the doorway that Quincy had gone through.
After a few moments, he nodded shakily. “Yes. All right. No damage done.” He sat up more erectly, drummed his fingers on his desktop, then said, “Get the chief of the robotics department on the phone for me.”
“Yes, sir.” Polanyi went back to the outer office, sliding the door shut behind her.
Threaten me, will he? Waxman seethed inwardly. The big Irish idiot. We’ll see who lives and who dies.
AWAKENING
Far, far in the distance she heard voices. Women, for the most part, talking about—her, Raven felt sure, but she couldn’t quite make out the words they were using. Too soft, too hushed, too guarded.
She sank back into the oblivion of unconsciousness, all sensation gone, all memories nothing more than a faint, distant picture of Vesuvius hulking against the blue Neapolitan sky. After a while the volcano shifted, transformed into the hulking form of Quincy O’Donnell, grim and silent.
Time lost all meaning. Raven floated on nothingness as Quincy’s bulky form dissipated, dissolved into blank nothingness.
“Can you hear me?”
The voice sounded familiar, somehow.
“Raven, please open your eyes. It’s time for you to wake up.”
Alicia? Raven wondered.
It took an effort of will as she tried to force her eyelids open.
Alicia Polanyi was bending over her, her cold blue eyes staring at Raven, her cadaverous face grave, utterly serious.
“Wake up, Raven,” she said softly, almost begging. “Please wake up.”
Raven blinked twice, three times.
“I’m awake,” she croaked. Her throat felt sandy dry, scratchy.
Alicia’s gaunt face broke into a thin smile. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God.”
Raven realized she was lying in a hospital bed. The ceiling, the walls were soft white. The room was narrow, cramped; she thought she could almost touch both walls without moving from the bed by stretching out her arms. Machines somewhere were chugging and beeping. She felt weak, fragile.