Spartan Planet - A. Bertram Chandler [30]
"Sir!" There was the tinkling laughter, amused but not unkind. "Sir! That's a giveaway, fellow. You don't belong here, do you?"
"Why, sir, no."
The Arcadian sighed. "Such a handsome brute—and I have to chase you off. But it's getting on for the time when our learned lovers join us for . . . er . . . aquatic relaxation in the pool. And if they find you wandering around where you shouldn't be . . ." She drew the edge of her hand across her throat in an expressive gesture. "It's happened before—and, after all, who misses a helot? But where did you come from? Oh, yes, I see. You could be a refrigeration mechanic . . . My advice to you is to get back into your hole and to pull it shut after you." Then she said, as Brasidus started to turn to retreat to the tunnel, "No so fast, buster. Not so fast." A slim hand, with red-painted nails, caught his right shoulder to swing him so that he faced her; the other hand came up to rest upon his left shoulder. Her face was very close to his, the lips parted.
As though it were the most natural thing in the world, Brasidus kissed her. Unnatural, said a voice in his mind, flatly and coldly. Unnatural, to mate with a monster from another world, even to contemplate such a sterile coupling. Unnatural. Unnatural.
But his own arms were about her and he was returning her kiss—hotly, avidly, clumsily. That censor in his mind was, at the moment, talking only to itself. He felt the mounds of flesh on her chest pressing against him, was keenly aware of the softness of her thighs against his own.
Suddenly, somehow, her hands were between their upper bodies, pushing him away. With a twist of her head she disengaged her mouth. "Go, you fool!" she whispered urgently. "Go! If they find you, they'll kill you. Go. Don't worry—I'll say nothing. And if you have any sense, you'll not say anything either."
"But . . ."
"Go!"
Reluctantly, Brasidus went. Just as he closed the door he heard footsteps approaching along the alleyway.
But there was no alarm raised; his intrusion had been undetected.
Back in the deep-freeze chamber, Alessis looked at him curiously. "Have you been in a fight? Your mouth . . . there's blood."
Brasidus examined the back of his investigatory hand. "No," he said. "It's not blood. I don't know what it is."
"But what happened?"
"I don't know," replied Brasidus truthfully. Still he was not feeling the shame, the revulsion that should have been swamping him. "I don't know. In any case, I have to make my reports only to Captain Diomedes."
Chapter 14
"SO IT WAS NOT the same one that you saw before?" asked Diomedes.
"No, Captain. At least, I don't think so. Her voice was different."
"H'm. There must be an absolute nest of Arcadians in that bloody crèche . . . And all . . . she did was to talk to you and warn you to make yourself scarce before any of the doctors came on the scene?"
"That was all, Captain."
"You're lying, Brasidus."
"All right." Brasidus' voice was sullenly defiant. "I kissed him, her, it. And it—or she—kissed me back."
"You what?"
"You heard me, sir. Your very vague instructions to me were that I should find out all that I could. And that was one way of doing it."
"Indeed? And what did you find out?"
"That these Arcadians, as you have said, exercise a sort of hypnotic power, especially when there is physical contact."
"Hypnotic power? So the touch of mouth to mouth almost put you to sleep?"
"That wasn't the way I meant it, sir. But I did feel that, if I weren't very careful, I should be doing just what she wanted."
"And what did she want?"
"Do I have to spell it out for you, sir? Oh, I know that intercourse with an alien being must be wrong—but that was what she wanted."
"And you?"
"All right. I wanted it, too."
"Brasidus, Brasidus . . . You know that what you have just told me could get you busted down to helot. Or worse. But in our job, as you are learning, we often have to break the law in order to enforce it."
"As a policeman, sir, I am reasonably familiar with the law. I cannot recall that it forbids intercourse with aliens."
"Not yet, Brasidus.