“I was…”
Alicia placed a finger gently on Raven’s lips. “Don’t try to talk. Rest. Sleep. You’re all right now.”
But Raven tried to push herself up to a sitting position. And failed. She had no strength. She lay back on the hospital pillow and stared at Alicia.
“What happened?” she mumbled. “How did I get here?”
Alicia’s thin lips almost smiled again. “Quincy O’Donnell brought you here. With a tranquilizer dart embedded in his back, he carried you in his arms from Evan’s little playroom to the hospital.”
“Playroom?” Raven asked.
“You’re all right now,” Alicia said. “The Rust has been flushed out of your system. The medics got to you in time, thanks to your big boyfriend.”
“Quincy’s not…” Raven couldn’t finish the sentence. She knew whichever way she said it would be wrong.
“You sleep now,” Alicia Polanyi said gently, getting to her feet. “The medical staff will take care of you.”
A sudden alarm made Raven’s body tense. “Evan! He did this to me.”
With a nod, Alicia agreed, “Just as he did to me, more than a year ago. But I didn’t have a giant of a man to save me.”
“Quincy.”
“He pulled you out of Evan’s little playroom and brought you here. He saved your life.”
“Quincy,” Raven repeated, more softly as sleep closed her eyes.
When she awoke again the Reverend Kyle Umber was standing beside her bed, in his customary chaste white suit, staring down at her with sorrowful eyes.
“Good morning,” he said softly.
For the first time, Raven noticed there was a view screen on the wall of her room. It showed an image of Uranus: blue-gray, serene, bland.
Surprised, Raven mumbled, “Reverend Umber.”
“How do you feel?” Umber asked.
Raven realized that she felt strong, sound. As she pulled herself up to a sitting position she saw that she was wearing a disposable hospital gown, as pure white as Umber’s suit. The bed rose behind her, almost noiselessly.
“I’m all right… I think.”
“You had a close call. The percentage of Rust in your blood was very high.”
“Evan did that to me,” she snapped.
Umber shook his head. “When I heard that you were here in the hospital I immediately asked Evan what he knew about it. He told me he’d been in an all-night meeting with the maintenance staff. There’s been an accident on the construction of Haven II—”
“He was gang-banging me!” Raven cried.
Umber shook his head sadly. “Seven members of the maintenance division affirmed that they were in conference with Evan all that night.”
“They’re lying!”
With a helpless shrug, Umber said, “How can we prove that? It’s your word against theirs.”
The word of a whore against the manager of this entire habitat, Raven thought.
COST
“He’s evil,” Raven whispered. “Evan’s a monster.”
Reverend Umber nodded sadly. “He’s drunk with power. I’ve tried to change him, bring him to God’s grace, but…” He shook his head. “I’ve had no success with him. Not yet.”
“I’ll kill him,” she hissed.
Umber’s face went white with alarm. “No!” he barked. “Evil is not the answer.”
“It wouldn’t be evil,” Raven insisted. “It would be justice. God’s justice.”
For a long silent moment Umber looked down upon Raven sadly. “Don’t try to assume the powers of God. That way lies death and damnation.”
Raven started to reply, but held her tongue. The reverend doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how truly evil Evan is. In her mind she saw again Waxman’s cold smile as the men pawed and penetrated her.
At last she said, “I know you’re right, Reverend. But it’s hard to forgive.”
“Christ forgave those who crucified him. From the Cross, bleeding and dying, he forgave them all.”
Raven nodded, but inwardly she thought, I’m not Jesus Christ. I’m not God.
After a few more attempts to comfort her, Umber left her room, head bowed unhappily. A nurse came in with a luncheon tray. And an announcement. “Good news, Ms. Marchesi. You passed all the diagnostic tests. You’ll be free to leave this afternoon, after your physician sees you and signs off on your case.”
And go where? Raven asked herself.
She was finishing the last morsel of soyburger on her tray when Evan Waxman stepped through the doorway of her narrow room.
Smiling brightly at her, Waxman said, “They tell me you’ll be able to return to work tomorrow.”
Raven glared at him.
Stepping to the side of her bed, Waxman lowered his voice and continued, “Don’t be sullen. You tried to go around me and paid the penalty for that. Let’s allow bygones to be bygones.”
“Bygones?” Raven shouted. “You call what you did to me ‘bygones’?”
Waxman shook his head sadly. “Raven, my dear, nothing happened to you. You weren’t raped. You weren’t even molested.”
“The hell I wasn’t!”
His smile only slightly thinner, Waxman explained, “That’s the beauty of Rust, my dear. That’s why it’s in such demand. It affects the mind, not the body. It builds elaborate fantasies inside your brain.”
Raven glared at him, unbelieving.
Waxman sat himself on the edge of her bed. “Think, Raven. You’ve been thoroughly examined by this hospital’s very meticulous machinery. And probed by the medical staff. They haven’t found you injured in any way; no scars, not even any bruises. Perfectly sound of limb and body.”
“I was gang-raped,” Raven snarled. “While you watched. And smiled. And laughed.”
“All in your imagination, my dear. All in your mind. The Rust produced a fantasy for you.”
“For you, Evan.”
His smile thinning somewhat, Waxman admitted, “Well, yes, I produced the scenario for your dramatics. But it all happened in your mind, not your body.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Spreading his hands innocently, Waxman said, “Raven, I wouldn’t hurt you. Not really. I’m rather fond of you, actually.”
“You’re a monster.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted carelessly. “But the only scars you’re carrying as a result of our little endeavor are in your mind, not your body.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true. I promise you. The hospital staff, the diagnostic systems that examined you from top to toe, they all show that you are physically unharmed.”
“Physically,” Raven echoed.
Getting to his feet once more, Waxman said, “The brain, Raven. That’s the most important sexual organ of all. And thanks to Rust, we can manipulate it virtually any way we like.”
Glowering at him, Raven muttered, “You’re a monster, Evan.”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “But if you want to survive here, you’ll do as I tell you.”
Raven said nothing, although she was telling herself, Silence means assent. Let him think that. Do what he wants. For now.
Waxman went as far as the door before turning and telling Raven, “Oh, yes, that lumbering oaf O’Donnell. He was killed two days ago. An accident on the job he was supervising outside on Haven II’s construction. Damned fool misprogrammed one of the robots he was managing and it tore his head off, helmet and all.”
ALLIANCE
Raven sat on the bed, stunned. Quincy is dead? The question reverberated in her mind. Dead? Killed? Because he helped me. It’s my fault. I killed him.