New Title 2, page 8
Helena rose mutely, her face composed. Hers was not an emotive face, and might lead one to think it had been artificially engineered as well, though it was fully her own. She was chiefly of African descent, but this diluted over countless generations to the extent that her skin tone was very light, the effect being of a pale powder covering a somewhat darker tint beneath. She wore her glossy hair sleeked back close to her finely rounded skull, and braided thickly behind like a black cocoon. Her wide-spaced eyes seemed almost to wrap around her face, they were so cat-like and striking. She struck a regal figure, and despite the teasing of some of the prosties had always inspired an automatic sort of respect from most.
She had come to the Solon at fifteen, having been spotted by one of their talent scouts for her exceptional natural beauty. A runaway, Helena had been working in an unlicensed slum factory making black market handguns for barely enough money to rent a bunk in the factory’s barrack. Being underage, she was not allowed to become a hostess until the following year, but she was housed and educated for that vocation. And her personnel officer, Margaret Gebhard, had convinced her that she would be wise to allow some artistic embellishment of the type which distinguished the prostitutes of the Solon, and brought wealthy customers with a taste for novel delights. Helena and Gebhard had consulted with the design team, and Helena had become excited at the prospect of having fairy wings added to her body. This had been done to several other women and one homosexual prostitute in previous years, and she met with these individuals so as to examine their wings before she went through with it.
Yes, she had been proud of her wings then. Proud to be a Solon girl. It was an honor, like being a model. Some Solon women did model, and a few had gone on to become holofilm actresses. At sixteen, Helena had worn her dark hair in a tangled thick mane of curls, and with her slender limbs and delicate breasts, resembled some Maxfield Parrish painting come to life.
Fifteen years had passed. The lovely cat-like eyes now held a puffiness beneath. It made them sexy in a more mature way, but there was also a weariness implicit in them. And her figure had become more lush, voluptuous over the years, her hips fuller and once flat belly now more rounded. She looked less likely to take flight. There were those who would have preferred her now to the girl she had been. These signs of maturity could surely be forgiven and even commended.
But the wings. Her wings were arthritic. They were becoming crippled. Once a kind of symbol of poetic freedom to her, they had become a hindrance. As delicate as their membranes were, they increasingly felt like a painful burden.
The secretary opened the door to Gebhard’s office, then withdrew. The personnel officer smiled up from her desk, invited Helena to have a seat. After finishing up with some business at her monitor, she turned to give Helena her attention. “What can I do for you today, dear?”
Helena’s voice was soft and dusky, a night breeze of a voice. “I’ve been going through a period of…contemplation for several months.”
“Yes?” Leaning forward with false interest and a big grin the design team might have grafted on.
Helena’s eyes floated to a holopainting on the wall. It was of a forest, the ferns of its floor mottled with golden light which broke through the leafy dome. The light patches shifted subtly, the ferns gently moved; she could almost hear the ceiling of leaves rustle. Helena had never been to the woods of this world or any other. She had been on yearly group vacations with other employees. Ocean resorts. Even Earth, one year. But never to a forest. She wanted to get up, walk past Gebhard’s desk without a word and on into that holographic image. Walk in and keep walking. Its shadowed depths called for her to enter them. It was where a fairy belonged.
“I’m not happy here anymore, Margaret.”
“Ohh…Helena. Why do you say that? Please…if you have a problem you know you can always come to me and talk.”
“There is no special problem.”
“Is it because you’re hurt that your price was decreased? You can be honest in here…”
“That isn’t it. Not really. It’s just that I’m…I’m getting older.”
“You’re what, thirty?”
“Thirty-one.”
“My God, honey, you’re just a child! Orchid is fifty now, and look how lovely she is. And Barbara Cruz is almost sixty…”
“I’ve never been married. I’ve never had children.” She thought she saw a rabbit for a moment in the ferns as they shifted in the cool forest breeze, tiny shining eyes gazing out at her.
“Helena, really. After so many, many years, you know that women no longer need to define their existence by having children, or even getting m—”
“I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
A slight sigh escaped the personnel officer. “Helena, frankly, I was married and divorced. It wasn’t something to envy. Look; you’ve never had a boyfriend. But how many men have idolized you, over the years? Worshiped you, as a unique and beautiful creature?”
Helena said nothing. It was as though she had successfully entered that forest, and was only daydreaming this conversation.
Gebhard paused, then in a somewhat darker shade of voice asked, “Is someone influencing you, Helena? Is someone coaxing you to leave us?”
“You mean, a syndy or something?” she replied from far away. “Like the Teeb Family? No, it isn’t that at all. I don’t want to be a prosty any more. For anyone.”
“Then is it that man? Your client, Mr. Vetter?”
Suddenly Helena was back in the office. Bright, sterile. She turned her face toward the personnel officer. “Why do you say that?”
Gebhard sat back a bit in her chair as if satisfied. “It’s just that it’s been mentioned he seems to take a greater interest in you than seems…of a purely commercial kind.”
“He’s a friend.”
“A boyfriend?”
Helena did not respond. Her right wing, cramped and itching to spread open, was throbbing more sharply now.
“Helena, I’m sure you’re aware that you have five more years before your contract comes up for renewal again.”
“But in my contract it states that I can leave at any time if I pay you the averaged sum of the profit for the years remaining in my contract.”
“Do you know how much money that would be, Helena?”
“I haven’t touched my savings account in a year. And I have two thousand munits in my checking account. And there is my profit sharing, as well.” She swallowed a cue ball of saliva. “In total, I have seventy-two thousand munits.”
“Well, how about we calculate this. You make an average of three hundred munits a customer, and you entertain…how many? Five, six customers a day, average? We’ll just say five. Five times three hundred is fifteen hundred munits a day. Times five Terran years would make for a sum of…” Gebhard tapped at her comp panel. “You would generate a sum of two million, seven hundred thirty seven thousand, five hundred munits. Minus your share of approximately, what?, forty thousand. Subtracting monthly rent of one thousand over five years would be sixty thousand from two hundred thousand, which leaves one hundred forty thousand munits you will earn clear over the next five years. Where else could you make that money if you leave, Helena?”
Helena only gaped slightly at the woman. In all these years she had never really calculated the money she made for the Solon, and was shocked at the sum. Even now, with her price tag decreased. More than that, she had never really calculated the amount of money she made for herself. The Solon workers were allowed to use drugs. Encouraged, was more truthful. Drugs were made available at all times. Oh, the drugs available were carefully chosen so as not to destroy the workers’ bodies, but they were addictive, and expensive. The drugs made sure the hostesses and hosts never really saved enough money for much of anything else. It had been the most difficult part of saving, for Helena. Avoiding the drugs. Clearing the perfumed fog from her mind.
“So, subtracting your salary over the next five years, you would have to compensate us for two million, five hundred and ninety-seven thousand, five hundred munits in order to fulfill and eradicate your contract with us, Helena.”
Helena felt foolish. Foolish, stupid, and naive. She rose from her chair, turned to leave the office.
Gebhard said, “Helena, wait. Where are you going?”
Helena knew the woman thought she was running away. She smiled bitterly but did not turn back to face her. She didn’t want the other woman to see the anger expressed in her lovely eyes, or the start of tears that made the anger shimmer. “I have to start work in a half hour,” she said softly, and closed the door behind her.
««—»»
There was an outdoor café in one of the streets near the Solon, in this wealthy, well-policed sector of Paxton, and though it was raw and had been sprinkling on and off, Helena sat at one of the tables with a cup of coffee that steamed into the chill air. The chill made the cup of coffee a small, focused object of comfort, one she could hold in her hands.
Over the tops of intervening buildings she could see the Solon. Ringing its circular roof stood a dozen female angels with stylized figures and wings, their mock alabaster breasts without nipples and their arms raised to the sky of wet slate. Against that sky, they seemed by contrast to glow like ethereal giants, but their wings were stone and fused to their backs.
She had once found the statues awe-inspiring, romantic. Now they were ostentatious, revolting.
A woman sat down in the chair opposite her, and Helena looked to see that she was white, with blond-dyed hair protected from the rain by an expensive hat. She was attractive in a metallic sort of way.
“You’re Helena,” she stated. “You are remarkable, aren’t you?”
“Do I know you?”
“My name is Hedda Vetter.”
Helena said nothing for a moment. And then only: “Yes?”
“My husband comes to see you. Am I correct?” There were only those indeed remarkable eyes staring in response. “Do you believe that my husband is in love with you?”
Helena had been told that, while in David Vetter’s arms and even before and after sex. And how she had wanted to believe it. So desperately, that she had forced herself to believe it. There were doubts, insecurities, fears. Terrible fears. Yet now, to hear his wife raise the question herself seemed to make the possibility real for the first time.
Hedda Vetter smiled a smile like the raw air. “I know he tells you he does. I’ve had your last few meetings bugged, I’m afraid. I hired a detective who was able to get a transmitter into David’s clothing and past the Solon’s security scan. My poor dear…believe me, he doesn’t love you. David doesn’t love me, either.” A terrible spasm of a grin flickered across the woman’s face. “David is as incapable of love as those angels up there on your fancy whorehouse.” She motioned with her chin.
Helena still didn’t reply. The aromatic steam of her coffee was no longer a comfort…dispersed in the air.
“But for some reason, he does plan on leaving me for another woman. Oh…don’t get your hopes up. A respectable woman, not a lovely freak whore like yourself. I had their latest trysts bugged, as well. Do you want to hear?” Mrs. Vetter reached into her coat.
Helena raised a hand as if to ward off a killing gun. “No.”
The wife just ignored her lame protest, from inside her coat withdrew a tiny device which she rested on the table between them. She touched a key, and a familiar voice wafted into the damp air, as if they had summoned it in a séance, the recorder a pointing planchette.
“Oh…oh, you’re so beautiful,” that voice moaned in mounting rapture. “So beautiful…”
It was David’s voice, there was no question. But who was he speaking to, Helena or this alleged lover?
His wife touched another key, forwarding the recording until she found the spot she wanted.
His voice was back, and this time it was obvious who he was talking to: Helena. Because he had spoken these words to her numerous times…
“I want to take you away somewhere, sweetheart. I want to keep you someplace where only I can see you—touch you. I want to treasure you.” The small wet sound of a tender kiss. “I can’t bear not being with you all the time…”
Helena felt a secret triumph that Mrs. Vetter had to listen to these professions of ardor. Yes, Helena believed them more now than she ever had. And despite the wife’s avowals that David didn’t mean them, she too must believe that they were true, because the misery was naked on her blanched face and tight lips.
David whispered, “I just want to get you out of this stupid little hole.”
A second voice replied, “I want to get out of here, too.”
It was not Helena’s voice.
She stared at the tiny device. Stared as if her eyes would pierce it, see the faces from which the voices issued.
“I’ll take you out of this meaningless little existence, believe me,” David vowed.
“When?” asked the unfamiliar voice. Another little kiss. Helena flinched. She thought her eyes might melt that evil little machine with burning black rays. “When?” the voice repeated.
Hedda Vetter silenced both voices with a stab of her finger. “She’s a little customer service nothing in his company. That’s what he tells you, isn’t it? He promises to rescue you, doesn’t he?” Again, that awful tremulous grin. “It makes him feel like a hero. Makes him feel like a savior.”
“I think I should leave now,” Helena managed huskily, starting to rise. She found it difficult to rise with her body drained of all blood.
“Wait. Wait, Helena. Sit. I have a proposition for you. That’s better. This could be what you’re waiting for. I can give you what David has no intention of giving you.”
Helena gazed off at the swish of passing hovercars with the feigned composure of a seasoned actress, who was, however, more accustomed to feigning passion. “Which is?”
“Your freedom. I’ve listened to your…couplings, remember? Your sad, sad confessions of unhappiness. Your dreams of escaping your gilded cage…”
“Tell me what you want, now that you know what I want.”
“If David leaves me for that other lover of his, she will become quite wealthy. I prefer to remain the wealthier one of us two. But I would also like to be rid of this uncaring husband of mine.” Hedda Vetter’s hands shook as she struggled to pluck an herbal cigarette from its pack. “You see my dilemma? I want to be rid of him, but I don’t want her to have him.”
“Don’t ask me what you’re thinking to ask me.”
“I tried to pay my detective to kill him, Helena, but he refused. And I certainly can’t do it though God knows I’d love to. What do you need to make your dreams come true, Helena? Whatever it is, it will be worth the loss in order to keep all the rest. Believe me…he’ll never take you out of that place. But I can.”
Helena had turned her face away in disgust, tears capping the lenses of her eyes to make the sidewalk look even wetter. Curled under one of the unused tables was a homeless mutant with sparse white hair and great lidless eyes that he couldn’t blink or shut, even in sleep. He looked dead.
“Why would a man trick a prosty into thinking he loved her?”
“So you’d love him. Being loved gives you a power over the one who loves you. David loves to be loved, hon. And he loves power.” She lit her cigarette. “How much would you want, Helena?”
“More than you’d be willing to give.”
“David is worth forty-five million munits, my dear. You attract a high grade of clientele at the Solon, as you know.”“I would need two million, six hundred thousand munits,” Helena said in a low, dead voice.
“Oh, well, that is indeed ridiculous, as you say.”
“It’s what I need. If I don’t pay it to them, I stay. If I try to escape, they’ll have me jailed for breach of contract or they’ll make a bad accident happen to me. A drug overdose. Or I’ll fall in front of a hovertrain.”
“I appreciate your dilemma, but…”
“Well, you wanted me to solve your dilemma. If you can’t solve mine, then you can either kill Dav…kill him yourself, or let his girlfriend have most of that forty-five million munits.”
Hedda Vetter sighed, clicked her nails on the metal tabletop, and said, “Look, you know that’s just absurd. I can give you ten thousand munits. It’s enough to put a lot of distance between you and your vengeful employers. Enough to rent an apartment somewhere, get a start. Ten thousand munits for a moment’s work. You’ve never been that well paid, my dear, prime cut or no.”
The prostitute’s eyes returned inevitably to the Solon. The angels seemed to be watching her, spies, lest she stray too far from the building’s orbit. She croaked a small sound.
“What?” Mrs. Vetter asked, leaning closer.
“I said twenty thousand,” Helena repeated, not looking at her.
Hedda Vetter sat back again. “That’s better…much more realistic. That’s easily enough for you to take flight from your bosses, isn’t it?”
Take flight, Helena thought. Was that meant as a joke?
“But if you fail, or betray me, I swear to God that I’ll find someone who for just a few hundred munits will be happy to push a freak prosty in front of a hovertrain. Do we have an understanding?”
“So pay a few hundred to have some addict kill your husband, why don’t you?”
“Because I want him to die in a special manner.” She swallowed so hard that Helena heard the click. Her reserved voice even sounded as though it were struggling not to crack into pieces.
“How do you want him to die?”
“I want you to excite him, bring him almost to climax…almost, I stress…and then I want you to inject him with a paralyzing drug which I will give you right now. And while he is paralyzed, I want you to emasculate him and let him watch you do it. I want you to show him what you cut off him. I want you to hold it right before his face. I want one of his lovers to do this to him. I want him to feel…betrayed.”
Yes, Helena thought. Betrayed.
“And then I want you to kill him. At that point, you can shoot him, stab him, whatever is best for you. Just leave his body there in your room for your bosses to find. I can’t collect my inheritance without a body, and you can’t collect yours unless I hear proof that he’s dead. Twenty thousand is more than enough to compensate you for playing the role of a whore who just went crazy and killed her customer.”
