It had been a long time, as she had said, but after the initial fumbling there was the old, sweet familiarity, the fitting of part to part, the teasing caress of hands on skin, of lips on lips and then, from her, the sharp yet melodious cries as he drove deeper and deeper and his own groans as her arms and legs imprisoned his body, her heels pummeling his buttocks.
They did not—they were out of practice with each other—reach climax together but her orgasm preceded his by only a few seconds.
They would rather have remained in the rumpled bed, to talk lazily for a while and then, after not too long an interval, to resume their love-making but, after all, they were guests and, furthermore, guests in the palace of a planetary ruler. Such people, no matter how humble their, origins (or, perhaps, especially if their origins were humble) do not care to be kept waiting. So they showered together—but did not make an erotic game of it—and resumed their clothing. Maggie, who, by this time, was well acquainted with the layout of the palace, led Grimes to the small, private dining room where they were to eat with the Archon. They arrived there just before Brasidus.
The meal was a simple one, served by two very homely maidservants. There was a sort of casserole of some meat that might have been lamb, very heavily spiced. There was a rough red wine that went surprisingly well with the main course. For a sweet there was not too bad baclava, accompanied by thick, syrupy coffee. "We do not grow our own yet," said Brasidus, "but we hope to be doing so by next year. Soon, John, there will be no need for your Sister Sue to bring us cargoes of such luxuries from Earth." He laughed. "And what will you do then to make an honest living? Return to a career of piracy or find another governor's job?" There was brandy, in warmed inhalers, a quite good Metaxa.
The serving wenches cleared away the debris of the meal.
Having asked the permission of their host Grimes lit his pipe and Maggie a cigarillo. They were expecting, both of them, to settle down to an evening of reminiscent conversation over the brandy bottle but Brasidus surprised them.
"Help yourselves to more drinks, if you wish," he told them. "I am going to change. I shall not keep you long."
"To change, Brasidus?" asked Grimes.
"Yes. I have heard much of that new show at the Arena—you, Maggie, told me of it. I have not seen it yet. Ellena does not approve of such entertainment. I thought that this evening would be an ideal opportunity for me to witness the . . . the goings on."
"You're the boss," said Grimes.
When he was gone Maggie said, "He likes doing the Haroun al-Raschid thing now and again. Strolling among his citizens incognito, keeping his finger on the pulse and all the rest of it. Ellena doesn't altogether approve, but when the cat's away . . . ."
"And we're among the mice this evening, I suppose."
"I'm afraid so. But you should enjoy the show at the Arena. As I recall you, you have a thing about the weirder variations of the female face and form divine. That cat woman on Morrowvia with whom you had a roll in the hay. That peculiar clone or whatever she was from whom the Survey Service had to rescue you when you were trying to get Bronson Star back to where she had been skyjacked from. There have been others, no doubt."
"Mphm," grunted Grimes through a cloud of acrid tobacco smoke. He refilled the brandy inhalers. "Mphm."
"I will have one too," said Brasidus.
Grimes stared at him. Had it not been for the man's voice he would never have recognized the Archon. Yet the disguise was simple enough, just a spray-on dye applied to hair and beard, converting what had been light brown hair with the occasional silver thread to a not unnatural looking black.
The Archon drained his glass, then led the way out of the small dining room.
They made their way to what Grimes thought of as the tradesmen's entrance.
Two men were waiting for them there, dressed, as was Grimes, in one-piece gray suits in a somewhat outmoded Terran style. Unlike Grimes, who liked a touch of garish color in his neckwear, they had on cravats that almost exactly matched the color and texture of the rest of their clothing. Their side pockets bulged, as did Grimes'. Were they, he wondered, also pipe smokers? The Archon himself was dressed in the clothing appropriate to a lower middle class citizen on a night out—knee-length blue tunic with touches of golden embroidery, rather elaborate sandals with, it seemed, more brass (not very well polished) than leather. Maggie had on the modified Greek female dress that had been introduced from Earth—a short, white, rather flimsy tunic, sleeveless and with one of her shoulders left completely bare.
Brasidus introduced his two bodyguards—or so Grimes thought they must be; they looked the part—as Jason and Paulus. They could have been twins—although, he found later, they were not even related. They were tallish rather than tall, stoutish rather than stout and wore identical sullen expressions on their utterly undistinguished faces.
Jason brought a rather battered four-passenger hovercar round to the portico. It looked like something bought, cheaply, from Army Surplus. But there was nothing at all wrong with its engine and Grimes noticed various bulges in its exterior paneling mat probably concealed weapons of some kind.
Jason was a good driver.
Soon the vehicle was whining through the narrow streets of the city which, mainly, were illumined by deliberately archaic gas flares, avoiding near collisions with contemptuous ease, finally gliding into the garish neon glare of the Street of the Haetaeri. Parking was found very close to the entrance of Aristotle's Arena. The three men and the woman got out and walked the short distance to the ticket booth. Brasidus pulled a clinking coin purse from the pouch at his belt and paid admission for the party.
"It's a good show, citizen," said the ticket vendor, a woman who was disguised as a Japanese geisha but whose face, despite the thickly applied cosmetics, was more Caucasian than Asian. "You're just in time to see the cat girls doing their thing."
Maggie, who had been to this place before, led the way down a flight of stone stairs. At the bottom of these they emerged from dim lighting into what was almost complete darkness. An usherette dressed in what looked like an imitation of an Amazon guard's uniform—but the tip of her short spear functioned as a torch—led them to their seats, which were four rows back from the circular, sand-covered arena. She sold them doughnut-shaped pneumatic cushions—the seating was on stone benches—which they had to inflate themselves. As they settled down in an approximation to comfort the show started.
There was music of some kind over the public address system. Grimes didn't recognize the tune. Maggie whispered, "But you should, John. Apparently it's a song that was popular on Earth—oh, centuries ago. Somebody must have done his homework. It's called, 'What's new, Pussycat?' "
Brasidus muttered sourly, "Some Earth imports we could do without."
A spotlight came on, illuminating the thing that emerged from the tunnel that gave entrance to the arena. It was . . . Surely not! thought Grimes. But it was. It was a giant mouse. A robot mouse, its movements almost lifelike. There were no real mice on New Sparta, of course, although immigrants from Earth knew about them and there were now plenty of illustrated books on Terran zoology. And cats, real cats, had been introduced by the Terran immigrants.
The mouse made an unsteady circuit of the arena.
Two more spotlights came on, shining directly onto the naked bodies of the two Morrowvian dancers. Their makeup accentuated their feline appearance, striped body paint making them look like humanoid tigresses. Spiky, artificial whiskers decorated their cheeks and vicious fangs protruded from their mouths.
They did not make the mistake of dropping to all fours but they moved with catlike grace, in time to the wailing music. They stalked the mouse from opposite directions and whoever was at the remote controls of the robot managed to convey a quite convincing impression of animal panic, even to a thin, high, terrified squeaking. Every now and again one of the girls would catch it, but do no more than stoop gracefully to bat the robot off its feet with a swipe of a pawlike hand. Each time it recovered and made another dash, and then the other girl would deal with it as her companion had done.
Finally the audience was tiring of the cat and mouse game. There were shouts of, "Finish it! Finish it!"
The taller of the two girls pounced. She dropped to her knees and brought her mouth, with those vicious fangs, down to the neck of the giant mouse. There was a final, ear-piercing squeak. There must have been bladders full of some red fluid under the robot's synthetic skin; a jet of what looked like blood spurted out over the cat woman's face, dripped on to the sand. She made her exit then, still on all fours, the carcass hanging from her mouth. Either the robot was very light or those false teeth were very securely anchored.
Her companion trailed after her, also on her hands and knees, caterwauling jealously.
The applause could have been more enthusiastic but, even so, the audience wasn't sitting on its collective hands.
"Quite good," admitted Brasidus. Then, "You have been to Morrowvia, John and Maggie. Do the people there really hunt like that?"
"They are fond of hunting," Maggie told him. "But they hunt much larger animals than mice, and they use spears and bows and arrows. And their teeth, after all the engineered genetic alterations, are like yours and mine. And they don't have whiskers. And their skins aren't striped, although their hair, on the head and elsewhere, often is . . . ."
"Please leave me some illusions," laughed Brasidus.
But Grimes was not listening to them.
He was looking across the arena to where a tangle of audio and video recording equipment had been set up. In the middle of this, like a malignant female spider in her web, was a woman.
Even over a distance Grimes recognized her, and thereafter, while the lights were still on, tried to keep his face turned away from her. Eating one of the hot, spiced sausages that Brasidus had bought from a passing attendant helped.