1. The Chairman

Block bounced the key in his hand as he waited for the elevator to descend.

He glanced around at the multi-colored decor he could only describe as an ice cream palace on the shores of Nassau, the Bahamas.

It wasn't normal for The Chairman to hide away in such an obvious place, but on the other hand, what was out of the normal was probably not obvious.

Block was standing directly in front of the elevator door as it opened. The key fell to the rug as he was confronted with the most startling pair of yellow eyes he'd ever seen. They seemed to draw his body into them.

The eyes' owner didn't blink. He realized she was waiting for him to move out of her way. He moved his hand to his left ear reflexively, finding only a slight scar. He mumbled an apology, stopping to pick up the key, and moved out of her way. She walked past him to the multicolored lobby. He felt a little foolish.

He stepped into the elevator, shrugging off the feeling as the control the key gave him over the elevator took over.

He'd never seen eyes like that, not yellow, but perhaps yellow with a tint of green, moist, clear, with flecks of brown, hints of the imperfections that communicated the dizziness of freedom, of wildness, of pleasure that lay just below the surface tension of the interactions that held normal relationships together.

He felt the urge to run after her. He punched the button "P" below the basement "B," its location masking the penthouse command, and shut his eyes against the urge, only to find himself behind eyelids of yellow pain, the swirls of patterns making him squeeze his lids tight against the pain he knew was coming.

He was locked in a kneeling position, strapped to a stool in a position designed to expose his lower parts to any sort of ministrations his tormentor had the urge to apply.

He'd been that way seemingly for hours, his tormentor apparently having forgotten him, leaving the mechanical torment in place to once more wreak its havoc on his defenseless body.

He tried to force the images of breasts and buttocks, flat stomachs and arched backs out of his mind as the incessant mechanical rhythm forced the chemicals in his body to reconstruct pictures in his mind agreeing with the demands of the sensations the rhythm was creating.

He felt the pain as he began to harden and the fluid began to collect for its trip of uncontrollable agony. He remembered reading of experiments demonstrating men with severed spinal columns could reach climaxes without any communication between the brain and the locality. He tried to do the reverse, sever his brain from the excruciating pain he knew the climax would bring, and worse, the knowledge that after it subsided, the mechanical motion would uncontrollably begin to build him toward another.

He felt the fire begin to descend out of his stomach into his urinary tract, speeding towards the bundle of nerves at the end where it would explode his mind into individual, uncountable bits of agony.

As it hit, the penthouse chime went off and he stumbled out of the elevator, drenched, exhausted, dreading.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»«««««««««««««««

The Chairman watched Janette's perfect back disappear behind the mirrored door as it closed behind her, swinging the crystallized room and a satisfied image of himself into view in the process.

The room's robot, which together with the chandeliered effect of the room gave this most expensive of hotel rooms its notoriety, rolled over with a glass of white wine.

He took it and walked to the window. The splinters of sunlight populating the emerald waters off Cable Beach reminded him of Janette's eyes, with the points of light being the flecks of brown, the emerald, the disquieting yellow.

He'd long prided himself on his kissing ability, delighting in finding women who experienced orgasm from kissing alone. However, he'd never expected having the tables turned on him, finding a woman who could do it to him.

But it wasn't her kissing that did it, he'd concluded after his long session in the multi-flickering lights of the Crystal Room, it was her eyes.

Janette looked into him with a level gaze as they enjoyed each other's lips, and it was the level gaze that went into his body, stroked the mechanisms stirring his maleness and summoning forth an orgasm with a dizzying sensation of effortlessness.

He'd brought her to the penthouse of the Crystal Palace, with its vast array of mirrors, just to highlight those elusive flecks, alter the indefinable color, heighten his own pleasure.

He'd asked her if she achieved an organism, knowing he never did when he was with a women who orgasmed from kissing alone. She replied she received a feeling of sufficient quality to induce her to participate. What else did he want, she said, the statement being the response of her extremely practical, almost severe nature.

He sipped his wine and wondered how the eyes alone could do what he was finding it increasingly hard to do in any manner with each passing year.

He pushed a button and the robot moved a chair over to the window.

He was down to several times a day under normal circumstances, he sighed in his mind, sitting down and taking the pad on the arm tray.

He looked at the list and put at its top, Block on Perceptionism, Janette's eyes!!!

It was now above disappearing oil, the topic he'd asked Block down to discuss, and that subject was over a scrawled, Mutilations, and two question marks highlighting the question why? underneath.

He thought a few minutes and added D'Lazo's sister with another question mark.

It was a horrifying thought to think D'Lazo could still exist through someone with the same DNA, but the world was filled with horrifying thoughts. If there were a sister, Block would deal with her.

He was more concerned with the disappearing oil. It was vanishing into thin air. He sensed a door opening from the change in air pressure and looked at his watch. Exactly four in the afternoon. He swiveled to watch Block ease into the room. He looked awful.

The Chairman started to get up, but Block signaled him to stay seated. He looked around in amazement at the mirrors, the chandeliers, the multitude of windows all designed to break up light and make it feel like being in the middle of a giant diamond.

Before Block could locate the bar, The Chairman activated the robot and it slid over with a glass of scotch on a tray.

"You look simply awful," The Chairman commented. "Come over here and sit down."

Block complied.

"Torture isn't so much fun, eh? How did it happen?"

Block winched. It'd be useless to change doctors. The Chairman would just track down any new one. Better he'd gotten a catheter and drained himself.

"I bet you're bladder feels better," The Chairman continued. "Not being able to go was probably worse than the torture itself." He electronically instructed the robot to bring another chair over next to him.

"How did it happen?" he asked again. "What did they do to you?"

Block settled into the chair and sipped at the drink for a second.

"You know damn well what they did to me. You've been talking to my doctor."

"I don't like anything second hand. Tell me in your own words."

"Well, best as I can tell, they stuck an electric needle up my butt and zapped my prostate."

"Ouch."

"That wasn't so much ouch as the blockage it created. It caused my prostate to close off the urinary tube like twisting a plastic straw. There I was with a ton of water in me and no way to get it out."

"How did you get a ton of water in you?"

"They subjected me to water torture. They put a funnel down my throat and forced water into my stomach. It's supposed to force you into heart attack symptoms, but these diabolical fiends took it a step further with the electrical refinement, and the resulting blockage.

"I tell you there's nothing worse than not being able to go to the bathroom when you have to."

"So who were they?"

"Damn if I know. There were an awful lot of people hurt in that last operation. Billions and billions changed hands."

"But that was Lano D'Lazo."

"D'Lazo, D'Spazo. Who cares who it was? I'm the one who's going to get blamed. Who ever puts the blame where it belongs?"

"How did they get hold of you?"

"Must've slipped me a drug."

"How did you get away?"

Block laughed. "I'd like to say I floated away, but actually, after they thought I was as bad off as I could get, that I'd stay that way for a good long time, they got drunk, had a little orgy, and passed out. I was able to work myself free and get the hell out."

"Well, I'm certainly glad to hear it." The Chairman genuinely was. He was Block's godfather, Block's father being his best friend. His father and Block's grandfather had carried on the tradition a generation earlier.

"Along those lines," he added, crossing the last item off the list first, "D'Lazo apparently has a sister who's out to do you damage. Could she have been who's behind it?"

"I doubt it. I'm sure she'd have been a little bit more direct in making sure I was finished. Sister, eh. Interesting. I've a strong feeling that D'Lazo is still with us."

"How so?"

"Evil may destroy us, but we can't destroy evil."

"Do we even know what evil is?" The Chairman asked.

"I think we know what evil is. I think it's violating the golden rule."

"Sure. I think anybody can agree violating a basic principle calling for you to treat others in the same way you wished to be treated leads to no good. But the golden rule is just that, a concept of what should be, an ideal, a will-o'-the-wisp.

"How can an ideal destroy anything directly?"

"I think there's an actual structure made up of the same particles that make up matter that evolved to allow us to perceive the world around us. I think the particles, as formed in the universe, clump together to form the units of matter in the center of atoms.

"But matter in this form can't perceive itself. There'd be no sense for matter to exist if it couldn't configure itself to perceive itself.

"As a result, I believe the particles evolved into another structure, a structure containing the particles evenly spaced in some sort of an electrical stasis or equilibrium, what we know as the mind.

"Sensory input in the form of electrical signals, perhaps digital information, is fired into the mind and disbalances it. To the extent the mind is disbalanced, it allows us to form a picture of reality."

"That still doesn't explain how violating the golden rule results in its destruction. I guess a definition for evil is self-destruction, isn't it? How does the mind lead to self-destruction?"

"Because the mind's purpose is to reconstruct reality, it's in balance, in equilibrium, when it's reconstructing a reasonable facsimile of reality.

"Reality is the harmony of nature. When our actions don't accord with nature, we disbalance our minds. If we persist in actions not in accord with the harmony of nature, we keep our minds in constant disbalance.

"A disbalanced mind can't reconstruct a reasonable picture of nature. It's skewered to start with.

"We can only act on the basis of the reality we reconstruct. The more disbalanced our mind, the less it reflects reality. The less it reflects reality, the less our actions reflect nature. The less our actions reflect reality, the more disbalanced our mind becomes.

"It's a snowball effect, finally resulting in self-destruction."

"That's all very interesting, but I was more interested in perception with respect to what I've been experiencing."

Block took a long sip of his drink to wind down. The subject had temporarily animated him. He felt tired again from his ordeal.

"Been fooling around with the help again? I tell you, you got to stop that sort of thing. It's not healthy."

"You perceive Shandra as healthy?"

"Well, I didn't know she was help when I fooled around with her."

"This isn't help, strictly speaking. At least not formally. She's my psychological advisor."

"You're right. That's not help."

"Yes it is. She advises me on issues involving psychology."

"And other things as well, right?"

"I can get off just by looking into this woman's eyes. Why's that?"

"Just by looking?"

"Well, I'm kissing her while I'm looking."

"You're just idealizing. You're removing all the things you don't like about the picture your mind is reconstructing and leaving just the parts of the picture you like."

"I know what your definition of Perceptionism is. I know I'm limiting my focus on just her eyes and the sensations I get from kissing. I know I'm getting rid of what I don't want and keeping what I want.

"What I want to know is, how do I know what to get rid of and what to keep?"

"You want to know what beauty is!"

"I know what beauty is. Everybody does. I just want an explanation why it can get me off."

The Chairman reactivated the robot, which slid over with the bottle of wine, holding it out for a glass to be positioned in the right place. Block got up and refilled his own glass.

"If you can define beauty, you'll be able to buy the world and set it right. Beauty, as the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. But there clearly has to be an objective standard for beauty, otherwise there'd be no art, no music, no consensus on what kind of face it takes to sell cold cream.

"I've been trying to come up with a workable solution to the nature of beauty for some time. I call it cynosure."

"Cynosure?"

"It's hard to even lay out what I mean. Take a guy like Lano D'Lazo. There's no question he was repugnant. His flesh and blood have returned to the chemicals they formed from. I think his mind is still around."

"Think?"

"Sure. I think the mind stays cohesive. Hopefully, his is stuck in the concrete of the Plaza at the UN beneath the spot his swinging body expired until the planet cools, so he, it, whatever, has an eternity to contemplate his evil. His evil is sterile to anybody but himself, and hopefully he has nothing to do but contemplate it." Block paused a second over his drink. "At least I hope it's sterile. Evil exists regardless of its source. I hope we're moving forward from evil to beauty.

"Which gets back to the point, if there can be a consensus about evil and about D'Lazo's embodiment of evil, there can be a consensus about beauty and its embodiment in music, art, a jewel, a woman's form or features.

"How that consensus works, I don't know. But on your level, and your current cutie's level, it has to work through some sort of recall process, some sort of experience situation in which you've taken in incomplete information under pleasurable circumstances. What do you care so long as it works?"

"You know me. Enough is never enough. I always want it one more time, or to last a little longer."

"So how is Mary?" Block asked, laughing.

"There's such a thing as too much of a good thing."

Block flashed momentarily back to his bondage of the night before. "I agree," he said, mentally holding his two forefingers crossed in front of him to ward off the demons of the night, the thoughts splitting his mind and causing a physical reaction in his body. "So what's this latest problem all about?"

The Chairman consulted his pad. "I'm going to get back to you on this business about, what did you call it, cynosure." He added cynosure beside the name Janette. "If I catch your drift, I can find any girl, convince myself everybody would get off looking into her eyes, and then do it myself."

"Phrased that way, you're giving me something to think about." He took another sip and fell quiet, waiting for The Chairman to get to the point.

The Chairman took the bottle from the robot and refilled his own glass.

"Oil," he said, looking at the light crystallize the liquid in his glass. "It's disappearing."

"Of course it's disappearing. Oil is a finite resource."

"It is?"

"Sure it is. All the oil that'll ever form has been formed, and as we use it up, there'll be no more. It's disappearing by definition."

"What's oil?" The Chairman asked.

"It's the stuff that runs the world, for crying out loud," Block replied. "Oil is the basic hydrocarbon that fuels the globe."

"What's a hydrocarbon?"

"Well, oil is a hydrocarbon. It's an organic compound containing carbon and hydrogen."

"So oil is a hydrocarbon and a hydrocarbon is oil," The Chairman smiled. "Have I got that straight?"

"I see what you're saying. What causes gravity? Mass. What is mass? What produces gravity? Electricity is a moving charge and inductance is the result of a moving charge. What are magnets made up of? Molecular magnets and so forth. Senseless science answers questions in senseless circles."

"Precisely. Luber's law. If something isn't explainable, it isn't. And if it's not explainable without reference to the terms that it's designed to explain, it's no explanation at all."

"Therefore," Block reasoned facetiously, "oil isn't."

"And because oil obviously is, we basically don't have a fig of an idea what oil is." The Chairman paused. "So we don't know whether it's disappearing as a natural resource or not.

"However, it's still disappearing. A tanker will load up with Saudi light and head off for Japan. The Captain will be able to tell time by the linear rate the oil disappears. By the time the tanker gets to Japan, it'll be floating on top of the water, its tanks empty, its cargo of oil having vanished somewhere between Saudi Arabia and Japan."

"It evaporates?"

"The tanks are air tight. There's no way for it to evaporate. It doesn't evaporate. It disappears."

"Nothing just disappears. There must be a residue or something. An oil bug that ate it maybe."

"If there is, it disappears also."

"How about checking the tanks during the trip."

"Checking just confirms the tank level is steadily diminishing. It's like I sat here watching this glass of wine slowly disappear without drinking it. It's like it's just vanishing."

"Well, if oil isn't an exhaustible commodity, which I can't imagine it not being, the oil companies are in good shape. They can just replace the oil that disappears. The price of all oil will rise by the amount that disappears, but the price is volatile anyway, responding to almost any concern."

"It's not a question of whether oil is an exhaustible commodity, and it's not even a question of price, at least not directly. It's a question of an orderly market."

"An orderly market?"

"Because oil is the universal consumable, it was the first commodity that raised the need for an orderly marketplace in which to distribute consumer goods and services.

"A lot of people wrongly thought by combining refining facilities, the original oil marketers were attempting to obtain a monopoly on the distribution of oil they could use to drain the assets out of the economy for their private benefit.

"The idea was, if a group of people had a monopoly, there would be no constraint on the price of the product. To get the product, people would have to pay whatever was asked."

"But isn't that correct?" Block asked. "Isn't competition, where more than one person offers the product for sale tilting the market in the buyer's favor, the only way to keep prices down?"

"That's just another way of saying the marketplace sets the price through the law of supply and demand. Control supply and you control price.

"But oil broke all the rules. First, it's basic to the marketplace. If the price of oil goes too high, the very marketplace consuming the oil will no longer be able to afford it. The marketplace is the market for oil, and its ability to absorb it and still produce other products that can be absorbed by the same marketplace depends on limiting the price of oil.

"Anybody attempting to monopolize oil for private gain is going to be in for a rude awakening because its use is so extensive, a dollar on the price of a barrel has an exponential effect on the marketplace far in excess of the return the dollar brings."

"Too much cake will make you sick."

"Precisely. There's no way oil can be considered to have an unlimited price tag. The consumers produce the economy consuming it. If the consumers can't afford it, the economy consuming it disappears.

"The production of oil cannot tolerate a disappearing economy."

"A car company can stop making cars, an oil company can just stop pumping oil," Block observed

"That's just the problem, it can't. If it commits itself to the development of a certain area as a producing oil field, it has to continue to pump the oil out of that field in an orderly manner. If it doesn't, the Earth will reclaim the field and it's development will have to be written off, put back in reserves."

"So," Block observed, "oil companies, once they commit themselves to a level of production, have a vested interest in maintaining the economy, the distribution of goods to consumers at a rate insuring the use of production."

"Right. The oil industry has very little free will. It's caught somewhere between the cost of production and the price it can charge for the product that won't reduce the demand for the product, destroying the ability to produce.

"The marketplace should set the price for goods and services, but with the oil industry, even if a monopoly were achievable, it'd never result in runaway prices simply because runaway prices would destroy the industry. In fact, when Rockefeller took over the control of oil, the price dropped to a quarter of what it had been prior to control, and it has stayed that way in real dollars ever since.

"The industry, however, has to walk a tightrope, with one eye on the ground, the production, making sure production doesn't outstrip demand, and the other on the sky, making sure prices don't dampen demand, in order to achieve this balance."

"It must've been a hell of a problem achieving the balance in the first place."

"Historically, it was. Producers would pump so much oil, the price per barrel would drop to a point where it wouldn't be worth refining. The cost of the refined oil arriving in the marketplace would be less than the cost of the barrel of unrefined oil at the refinery."

"You can't make much money that way."

"No indeed, and in fact, many refineries periodically went out of business. As a result, consumers couldn't be assured of a steady supply of oil. The price varied to such a degree, it periodically wiped out refiner and producer alike.

"And there's not much sense in any activity involving the delivery of goods and services to consumers, a classification cutting across all classes of activities, unless it's done in an orderly fashion so the end product is stable in the marketplace.

"There wouldn't be much sense to a phone system if, when you picked up the receiver to make a call, there was a fifty-fifty chance it'd work. Or a television system so haphazard no one could put out a program guild. Or a transportation system without timetables because no one knew when what was running.

"Oil demonstrated that without an orderly marketplace, there would be no marketplace.

"To the extent the marketplace is disorderly, the cost of goods rises. To the extent the cost of goods rises, the total market shrinks. This is the opposite of an orderly market."

"How did the early producers and refiners overcome the problems of the disorderly marketplace inherent in the uncontrolled distribution of oil?" Block asked.

"By allowing equal access to the market on a partnership based on the ownership of the means of production, refinement, or distribution.

"Quite simply put, anyone with the ability will be provided an appropriate share of the market so long as the market remains orderly. Existing market share holders are willing to give up a share in the market to new entrants simply to avoid the damage that would result from a disorderly market."

"The damage to prices."

"And the resulting damage to unused production facilities. If you can't pump, you might as well abandon."

"So what you're saying is, it takes cooperation to achieve an orderly distribution of goods."

"It's no different than what is emerging in The Representative World Government. What is occurring is the creation of a worldwide partnership between democratic governments with each participating in the global distribution of goods and services in accordance with its abilities.

"Just as no one corporation or industry can control the marketplace, no one government can control the globe. The need for an orderly marketplace dictates what many private companies can and cannot do because no one else in the marketplace is going to tolerate one private group disorganizing it. The need for an orderly marketplace is just too great.

"In like manner, the group of responsible nations isn't going to tolerate any single nation upsetting the orderly establishment of a Representative World Government. The need for certainty in the development of humanity is simply too important to be sidetracked by individual egos."

"And with the level of technology being what it is, the ability for one of those egos to leverage itself to the detriment of humanity becomes as exponential as your dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil does to the detriment of the economy," Block observed.

"You're seeing the picture," The Chairman said, satisfied he was getting across to his young agent. "So, if a tanker sets out with a load of oil destined for a fabrication operation in Japan, or Korea, or Formosa, and it shows up empty, that fabrication operation needs to obtain the oil somewhere else or shut down.

"It can't shut down because it's under contract to fabricate for an assembly plant in Mexico or perhaps Kenya, or even Pakistan, and it has to deliver or the assembly plant will have to shut down and throw all its workers on the street."

"The fabricator therefore has to go into the marketplace to get the oil."

"Right you are. When the fabricator goes into the marketplace to get the oil, it's a bidder in the marketplace that wasn't there before. It bids up the price of the existing oil in the marketplace. The increased bid is felt not just in the fabricator's market, but throughout the entire market. The increase disrupts the market, endangering the orderly production and distribution of all goods.

"Of course, the loss of one tanker full of oil won't disrupt the market to any degree. Ships have been sinking and breaking up since mankind went to sea. It's one cost of doing business.

"But here we aren't dealing with random acts of God. Tankers are showing up bereft of their cargo of oil, they're doing so with an alarming frequency, and they're doing so by design.

"The design is the most disturbing of all because when the loss is by design, it can be the most effective in disrupting the marketplace."

"I guess I shouldn't ask whether they've tried sending two ships to fill the same order."

"We don't know which ships are going to experience the disappearance, but to answer your question, yes, we've manipulated shipping schedules so there's enough extra cargo floating to cover wherever deficits occurred. And the excess disappeared just as fast as the oil that caused the deficit.

"I tell you, Ronald, we have a problem here."

"I can understand how the oil disappearing would disrupt an otherwise stable market, but surely with the physical volume of oil moving to market, the loss of a load here or there isn't going to bring down the world economy."

"You have to look at the global economy as lightning bits of information passing through the main rivers between the capitals of the world and in lesser streams from those capitals outward.

"Those lightning bits of information represent the flow of funds, money. It's the lifeblood of the emerging Representative World Government. It represents the interchange of commerce and culture, the only two things that can knit the planet together and prevent its inhabitants from blowing it up and themselves with it.

"Sometimes a blockage in the flow occurs."

"A blockage?"

"Blockage. We're stuck with exchange rates, damns in the flow. If anything happens materially affecting the exchange rates, the movement in values temporarily creates a blockage to the movement of the bits of information representing the flow of funds.

"There's a pause during which the values have to be sorted out and the flows can begin again in accordance with the changed values.

"Blockages in the currency market are fairly frequent, and are capable of being dealt with. Military actions, the death of a world leader, an earthquake are all examples of events that can cause a blockage, and all of the blockages can be rapidly eliminated.

"Oil is like currency, only more so. It has both intrinsic and monetary value. It flows, not back and forth, but from source to use, because even though it mimics currency, it's a currency you have to burn to obtain its intrinsic value.

"It's not its similarity to a currency that's disturbing in our situation, it's the fact the value of currency is literally dependent on the flow of oil. As you pointed out, there's so much oil moving in the economy, a substantial amount of those information bits moving in the flows between capitals represent the flow, not only of the oil, but of oil dependent products such as automobiles and even plastics.

"A tanker load here and a tanker load there isn't going to affect the overall flow of the information bits, but it's the instability itself that can effect the flow.

"Orderly markets are absolutely necessary to the emergence of The Representative World Government. If a ship here and a ship there becomes two ships here and three there, and then four over there, there's not only uncertainty in the international flow of funds, there might come a point where there's an actual blockage in the flow of oil."

"How so?" Block asked.

"The random disappearances could become an event in and of itself, an event altering the value of oil and oil dependent products so fast it creates a blockage.

"We know how to handle monetary blockages because we've faced them before. We've little experience handling a commodity blockage.

"For one thing, a commodity blockage immediately creates a monetary blockage the dimensions of which I can only imagine. We'd have to attempt to deal with that before we could even try to remedy the commodity blockage."

He refilled his glass and looked at it in the declining afternoon sunlight.

"We're faced with the unknown and in this case, I can guarantee you, the unknown is all bad, all extremely bad."

Block, too, reflexively held his amber liquid up to the declining light.

"Where do I start?"

"I want you to go and talk to Georges Lansdowne. He's the Chief Chemist at the International Conservation Group. The president, Rudolph Lang, operates out of Miami, but Lansdowne is up at the end of the Gaspé peninsula in Canada.

"They're in the middle of working out parity agreements so there can be some funding for third world commodity consumption in an effort to jumpstart industry down there. Lansdowne, I understand, is working specifically on the containment of oil spills."

"Oil spill containment. What does that have to do with disappearing oil?"

"A person who wants to contain an oil spill wants most of all to see that oil disappear."

"The doctor must've drained my brain along with my bladder," Block said sheepishly. "I knew an awful lot of liquid came out."

He got up and refilled his glass. The Chairman activated the robot, which went over and turned a light on against the approaching darkness. Block walked over and turned it back off.

"Let it get dark. The stars are bright down here. One light off all these chandeliers against the darkness of the windows makes it look like we're in the center of the Milky Way rather than on its edge."

"There's something else," The Chairman said, as Block moved his chair directly facing the window and sat down.

"Which is?"

"I've been playing around with the output from my probability program."

"That's where all the computers have been tied together so they can spit out any occurrences whose probability of being accidental is astronomical. That's how you picked up D'Lazo's operations with respect to the money supply."

The Chairman looked at Block in the darkness. "If you say so. In any event, I can dictate what level of probability I want, and I'll get events over that level.

"I rarely get involved, or even notified, but it's a sort of hobby of mine. And a series of events turned up with just what we're dealing with, oil."

"How so?"

"In the past year, there's been a number of unexplained disappearances of men engaged in some manner in the oil industry, an oil rig worker, a tanker crewman, an exploration analyzer, even the driver of a truck supplying gas station outlets.

"This, of course, is nothing in and of itself. It's only about one a month or so. It's hard to tell.

"The problem is, some of these people are beginning to turn up dead.

"And not just dead, horribly dead. Their bodies, or what's left of them, contain extensive and systematic mutilation indicating their death was effected in a manner designed to cause the maximum possible pain."

"Torture is a problem," Block said to the darkness, "one hard to deal with because it's so difficult to confront. It's the prime example of the blindness opposing conflicts of self create. I can tell you from experience, there's no ideal to torture. It's nothing but blinding, mind screaming pain.

"But because there're so few people with direct experience with it, most people are like you, you've only read accounts of it, so there's no experience to call on when you're faced with someone giving you a description of specific tortures."

"It's why D'Lazo thrived," The Chairman observed.

"Right. We have to reconstruct reality in our mind in order to understand and deal with it. If we've been to the supermarket, we can understand someone's description of an event at the checkout counter because we can reconstruct the supermarket in our mind and place ourselves in the events being described.

"But if someone tells us about having an electric wire attached to his genitals, we've no way of reconstructing a reality that includes it because we've never been in a torture chamber and can't imagine ourselves on either end of the act being described.

"As a result, our minds become paralyzed. The electrical flows that would otherwise allow our systems to operate without our even noticing them are all of a sudden misdirected.

"Our physical subsystems are flooded with messages they don't know how to interpret. We have sinking sensations in our stomachs, we may break out in a sweat, our breathing may be altered.

"We don't know what's happening, whether we're excited, aroused, or revolted, but our response to the discomfort will depend on our view of ourselves.

"If we don't like the feelings, if for some reason the feelings make us feel guilty, or we're guilty simply because we have the feelings, we'll suppress them and refuse to accord torture its reality. We'll refuse to admit it exists and the torturers will continue on their merry way, crushing flesh and bones at their pleasure.

"For the few who like the feelings, that feel pleasure rather than discomfort, well, they become the torturers who the vast majority allow to operate. A minuscule minority terrorizes the vast majority simply because the vast majority refuses to confront torture's existence.

"The conflict blinds them to reality."

"We're ruled by the D'Lazo's because we refuse to confront reality," The Chairman said into the darkness. "It's got to be a perverted sense of pleasure that leads one human being to intentionally inflict pain on another. Nature creates so much pain, all of inhumanity couldn't duplicate it.

"There's got to be something else at work in the human mind. It's just not normal to cause pain to another person, at least in a systematic and purposeful way."

"My earlier point exactly," Block replied. "The pain we cause others somehow affects the way our mind is constructed so that, on an evolutionary basis, it'll become disbalanced and will eventually be destroyed by behavior that's not in accord with reality."

"Reality? What happened to the golden rule?"

"The golden rule deals with behavior, but behavior shapes our reality. Torture isn't in accord with reality . Our minds reconstruct, or at least attempt to reconstruct, the physical world we occupy, the real world outside us.

"If we violate golden rule behavior, if we torture others, then we've laid down tracks in reality that become our reality. Whether we know it or not, our picture of reality can never be in accord with reality because our actions, forever with us, have changed our reality."

"How does that reflect back on the mind?" The Chairman asked.

"We have to reconstruct a picture of reality in order to act positively in reality. However, if our acts have distorted our picture of reality, our acts can never reflect reality."

"So, a person who has started down the road as a torturer is reconstructing a world that reflects the unreality of torture and is driven to greater extremes to create an external world that's in accord with his own internal world, the world he's distorted by his acts in the real world," The Chairman summarized.

"Well," Block said thoughtfully, "if it's a he doing the torturing." He refocused his attention back on the present. "Altering internal reality by violating golden rule behavior would, what was the word you used, drive, yes, drive is exactly the word, drive someone to commit more atrocious, more vile acts, just to get surcease from the pain of not having an internal world that matched the external world.

"The drive comes from the mismatch of recall with reality, and because the mind is being permanently damaged, it can never recall reality as it exists, and the body can never find rest, driving the mind to grosser and grosser acts in an attempt to quell the pain the disagreement causes the body."

He stopped as the door on the far end swung open, the light from within breaking into a million facets and a million colors as it struck and bounced back and forth and through the thousands of individual prisms making up the chandeliers.

"Could I see you a second?" the silhouette in the door asked.

"Come on in. Have you met Ronald Block?"

The silhouette paused. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

Light flooded the room. The silhouette merged with the light and became identifiable as the women Block had seen in the elevator, the yellow eyes The Chairman had talked about, the color that'd sent him into the recent pain of his past.

Janette strode across the shagged rug purposely and took Block's hand full in her palm before Block had a chance to react other than stand and turn.

She looked at him direct, level. For some reason, he missed the effect of her eyes.

"I don't believe so," she replied, disengaging her hand.

Block felt the presence of her shake remain. Janette turned to The Chairman. "We've a problem."

"What's that?"

"Lof Lang's son has just been kidnapped."

"Really. What on earth for?" He turned to Block. "You remember, I mentioned Lang. President of the International Conservation Group." He turned back to Janette. "Son?"

"That's the message. You'd better get over to Miami and find out what's going on. The negotiations on third world parity are too important to leave alone."

"I've just been telling Block here about the probability program coming up with the bodies of oil related workers. My gosh, you don't think . . ."

"The probability program would list it? We can find out on the way over to the mainland. I've a chopper waiting out on the pool patio." She turned to Block and once again took his hand in her firm grip. "I'm sure you want to get on up to Gaspé. I suggest you get some sleep first. Take the suite till you've recovered from you're ordeal. I'll tell management."

She took the glass from The Chairman's hand and had him moving toward the door before he could properly say goodbye. "Don't forget to think about that little business for me," he was able to say before Janette closed the suite door behind him.

Block shook his head as he walked over to shut the door Janette had used to enter the room. He wanted to eliminate the blinding light it was allowing into the room. The Chairman knew what he liked and far be it for him to argue. The thought of an effortless orgasm did have a certain charm to it. In his condition, when even the thought of exercise in his tender areas made him wince, an effortless orgasm would really fill the bill.

He walked around the room turning switches on and off, learning what each controlled and what the effect of what each controlled was on the ambience of the room.

He finally settled for a dim light behind the bar, poured himself a refill, and walked back over to the window. The surf was dark, the slim whitecaps defining it as they appeared and vanished under the clear, starry sky above. He watched as the helicopter pulled into view followed by the muted noise of its muffled engine and then watched the red and green lights flicker on and off, eventually disappearing into the night.

Disappearing oil and mutilated oil workers. And a disappearing son. He wondered idly if someone hadn't known Rudolph Lang was a she and the son was taken as a surrogate because the person didn't like to torture women. That would make the torturer a women. Or would it?

In any event, it probably didn't have any connection to the disappearing oil.

He yawned, tired, the events of the last twenty-four hours catching up with him. He caught a brief glimpse in his mind of the bird-nosed woman who'd put him to such a disadvantage, but wiped it out of his mind before his mind could reconstruct her face, and thus her acts, completely. His mind backpedaled to the elevator and the yellow eyes he'd seen when the door opened.

Janette hadn't affected him in the room like she had in the elevator. A matter of hearing the woman over just seeing her? Still, the eyes . . .

He wandered around the circumference of the room closed by the window, a semi-circle of curved frame enclosed glass. The light on the robot blinked steadily, waiting for an order, a purpose for being.

He walked back and picked up the switch The Chairman had left, failing to make any sense out of the forty or so buttons feeding the robot its purpose.

He yawned again and his attention fell on the conversation arrangement, the large sofa confronted by small settees and stuffed chairs. He put the control down and walked over to the couch, sitting down, leaning back, sipping the scotch, putting his arm out, balancing the glass on the overstuffed chair, letting his chin fall to his chest.

He hadn't been asleep a second, or so it seemed, when he heard a rustle in front of him.

He opened his eyes. Janette had returned. She'd pulled a settee up and was sitting on it, leaning forward, looking at him intently, directly into his eyes as they opened.

He felt a thrill. The light from the bar reflected off the yellow, making the color seem to jump out of Janette's face, making the circles seem to expand as her level gaze approached him and surrounded him.

He started to lean forward but she put her hand out, softly touching him on the leg, restraining him with a delicate touch.

"I'm a virgin," she whispered, moving her hand off his leg and onto the back of his hand. "Come into me. I want you."

Block felt an effortless sensation, as though he'd been relieved of a burden. Her eyes beckoned, inviting him.

She altered the pressure on the back of his hand just enough to emphasize her physical presence. Her eyes, the yellow turning deeper, perhaps green, seemed to stream out and engulf him in sensation.

"Come into me," she whispered again. "Give me the experience I crave."

Block felt the touch of her hand become a grip that gently brought him up off the back of the sofa. She took his hand, his arm, and put it behind her neck, using her other hand to guide his arm around to the small of her back.

He felt the pull of her eyes stronger, as if they were taking him in, as if he was made of light and the light was moving rapidly toward her iris. He felt the soft wall of her iris rushing toward him, knowing he had nothing to fear, that it would engulf him, transform him from light into electricity, move him charged up the gentle path of her optic nerves into her, deep into her brain.

It was like passing silently into a deep pool of liquid gold. He effortlessly passed through the surface, exhilarated that he'd been right, that it'd be without fear, but with joy. He felt the golden glow recede behind him as he raced, not as light, but as bits of coded electricity, a conglomeration of particles, electrons perhaps, making up what he externally was in the physical world, but which somehow carried his awareness into the darkness.

Nor did he fear the darkness, because he wasn't alone, but a part of an endless string of images being fed into her mind beginning to take shape before him.

He watched, fascinated, a floating speck, as the stream of electronic information entered her mind. It was like heat lightning on a summer evening as the stream of information entered and disbalanced her mind.

The lightning wasn't just shapeless streaks on a darkened horizon. It formed a picture of the outside world.

He could make out his own face being formed over and over in front of him. The stream of electrons periodically stopped and the picture began to fade as her mind started to regain its equilibrium, only to be disbalanced again as the stream reappeared, causing his face to appear from a slightly different perspective.

He realized she was seeing him move toward her and as he moved, she was blinking so that when she reopened her eyes, the former perspective had dimmed, giving way to the new perspective as defined by the electrical information flowing up her optic nerves. To her, he realized, he was perceived as in continuous motion.

One blink became permanent, but as the picture of his face faded, a slightly altered picture, fuzzier, less defined, more pleasing, free of blemish, replaced it.

With his picture unrefreshed by input from her optic nerves, he looked around for the source of the input and became aware of the entire operation of her brain into which he'd somehow slipped, the brain anchoring her mind where input from reality and recall were being compared.

He could see the flow of recall leaving the storage bins of her brain. As he watched, he realized her mind was generating an electrical current matching the charge of the coded input, the pictures of reality, disbalancing her mind.

He realized while her disbalanced mind represented pictures of reality from the input of her optic nerves, as the mind regained its equilibrium, it generated memory units, like genes, memes really, encoding the pictures being formed as recall.

The newly formed recall exited her mind opposite the point her optic nerve input the pictures.

But her optic nerves weren't inputting any pictures because her eyes were closed.

The pictures were coming from her recall of reality, the recall encoded into memory units and stored in the wet works of her brain. By closing her eyes, she'd stopped comparing reality with recall and was now producing a picture of his face from recall alone.

He looked closer in the direction of her optic nerves. Just above where they'd been inputting pictures of reality into her mind, he spotted an identical structure inputting recall into her mind.

He couldn't see a connection between the recall leaving the back of her mind and the recall entering the front, but he immediately knew what was happening. The memory units leaving the back, recall of the pictures formed in her mind, were entering the vast caverns where her memories were stored. He realized in a flash, memories were stored with a unique electrical charge.

The electrical currents generated by her mind, continually being disbalanced and regaining balance, were unique to the recall being formed and stored, and coursed through her memory storehouses, picking up recall with identical or similar charges and bringing them back to be re-fired into her mind.

Thus, with reality closed off, Janette was generating electrical flows attempting to recall his face. These flows were picking up recall stored at similar charges to the recall of his face, the recall that was being formed and stored.

His picture was becoming less defined, less like reality, simply because her reconstruction of reality input from her eyes was less than perfect. The recall of his face was, as a result, also less than reality.

Her recall of reality, with her eyes closed, would steadily degrade to something less than real, to the ideal, or the . . .

Block realized her recall could take the form of idealization if it pleased her or scorn if it didn't please her.

What would happen then? The difference between love and hate was simply what she chose to see? Or ignore? And her actions were based on that slim margin?

He saw some activity beneath her mind and concentrated his attention on the base of her brain.

There was a giant input device with an uncountable number of flows moving in both directions, seeming free of contact with the part of her brain he was occupying. It was like a smoothly running computer with the information flowing into the lighted work center being processed and instructions sent back out on the same paths.

As he looked closer, he noticed there was a constant flow of information moving to and from a portion of the brain off to his left connected to this operation. He realized the work center must be where the information that kept all of her subsystems operating, her heart, her lungs, her temperature regulation, was being interchanged. He was trying to figure out what the branch off into the other part of her brain was when the electrical inputs into the workstation shorted and sent their massive flows directly into her mind, where the picture of his face was slowly becoming idealized into something recognizable only to Janette, something she clearing favored.

The unexpected flow provided a paralysis in her mind, froze its electrons in a temporary equilibrium, and the equilibrium in turn sent electrical signals into the caverns of her memory, bringing back reinforcing flows of equilibrium.

For an instant, the work center stopped returning information. All incoming electrical flows were flooding her mind.

He thought back to the last thing he'd seen before Janette's eyes closed and he realized their lips must've touched.

The paralysis lasted only a second because Block saw the function of the work center had slowed, waiting for a response to the information it had sent into her mind.

It came after an imperceptible pause, flooding the work center with messages that, when passed on, produced pleasurable sensations in the subsystems involved.

Block realized immediately the flows in her mind, which before had been independent of the work center controlling her subsystems and the flows to the other portion of her brain, had incorporated the flows in her subsystems. They'd plugged themselves into the information being passed back and forth between her subsystems so as her mind reconstructed reality and sent the resulting electrical signal into the halls of her memory, the signal was modified by the input from her subsystems.

If her subsystems were interpreting the information as pleasure, the pictures being reconstructed in her mind were pictures associated with pleasure and the electrical flows retrieved from her memory banks contained similar information that in turn reconstructed additional pictures associated with pleasure, the increased pleasure increasing the pleasure her subsystems, her nipples, her skin, the most sensitive parts of her body, were experiencing.

He realized Janette, once her mind plugged itself into the information from her subsystems, didn't have total control over the pictures she was reconstructing in her mind. The flows from her subsystems affected the extent of her mind's disbalance before she could reconstruct pictures from the halls of her memory.

In fact, the pictures were dependent on a mixture of the two. Block could see a point being reached where the input from her subsystems would take over the reconstruction process completely, with almost no flows going through the halls of her memory. He realized that was why, after conditions returned to normal, he wasn't able to recall anything but a memory of the pleasure that dominated his mind during lovemaking.

Block watched in fascination as her feelings became more intense. He could only imagine what parts of her body he was touching and what parts of his body she was touching, touches bringing about this explosion of unified activity within her mind.

Recall was still streaming in from the wet works of her brain but by the time it reached her mind, the massive inflows from her subsystems were overpowering it, dominating her mind.

The flows from her subsystems became so great, only random images were being formed from recall and only when those pictures agreed with, and therefore reinforced, the recall of herself performing.

And from those pictures, Block could tell Janette was going wild from the anticipation of, and perhaps even the reality of, pleasure.

He knew he must've penetrated her at least partially because the head of his penis was also roiling in anticipated pleasure. It was so anticipated, he ignored the remembered pain of his recent experience. He was overcome with the needle hot sensations of pain intermingling with his unstoppable pleasure.

"Shit!" he cried out, clenching his teeth and bringing both hands firmly down to his crotch.

They passed freely through Janette's expected body as he opened his eyes, puzzled, against the dawn. Focusing against the light, he saw Janette leaning against the back of one of the chairs, looking down at him through those piercing yellow eyes, a greenish hue appearing from apparent embarrassment.

"I didn't mean to wake you," she said, her cheeks glowing red above an off-shoulder green print dress with a full skirt.

Block felt sheepish, as he had outside the elevator. He felt surreptitiously with his cupped hand for any wetness in his crotch.

There was none.

A real non-experience, he thought, as he got up to face yet another firm handshake.

"I'm Lanette," she said, placing her fingers lightly, thrillingly, on Block's arm. "You must've been having quite a dream. I've only been here a second. I met you last night. By the elevator? You dropped your key? I would've said Hello if I'd known you but I didn't know you, I mean, I should've recognized you, I've seen your picture often enough, but you seemed so surprised to see me and I knew you didn't know me. So what were you dreaming?"

"Lanette? Not Janette? I thought your name was Janette."

"No. Janette's my older sister. Not much older, really, only a couple of minutes, but she's still older. Were you dreaming about her? She is beautiful, isn't she? So am I, don't you think?"

"I think I was dreaming your sister was a virgin."

Lanette laughed. The sound was the color of her eyes.

"A past life dream. Janette a virgin? Hardly. She went out and got rid of it the day she learned what it was. Janette's beautiful and determined. Not like me." She pushed away from the back of the chair and in a single movement twirled in front of the window, her skirt billowing out, showing perfect legs and a glimpse of her well shaped buttocks. "I'm just beautiful."

"And a virgin?" Block felt his excitement rise.

She laughed again, her eyes shading green. "Just in my mind." She spun again, faster, shrugging the top of the dress off her shoulders, revealing breasts startling in their perfection.

Block couldn't believe the rush he felt, the need to be in her. The thought of his recent pain vanished and he caught her, stopping her motion, her dress falling down to her ankles as she settled in facing him, moving close to him, touching him lightly with her lips.

He couldn't believe how badly he was trembling as he fumbled with his shirt, the zipper on his pants, literally tearing at his clothes, straining to get as much of his flesh touching hers as he could.

She helped him effortlessly, backing him up toward the couch in the process. Freed of his pants, he regained control and took her roughly by the shoulders, her slim body jolting his hands, her suppleness crying out for more contact. He moved her around and sat her down on the couch, stretching her out on her back.

She went back fluidly, effortlessly, one leg moving up to provide him the access he was so fervently trying to obtain. Foreplay was foolish. He had to be in her and he had to be in her immediately. He'd never felt such a compulsion.

He felt like a schoolboy as he attempted access once, and then twice, and a third time before he felt her hand helping him, and then, the incredible shock of entry.

The feeling in his brain was so intense he had to stop and get used to it. He moved forward a millimeter at a time, each time feeling a jolt, stopping to become used to the sharpness of the pleasure. He felt sweat rolling down his forehead as he strained against the temptation to shove on in, not knowing what would happen if he did, maybe death from exhilaration.

It seemed to him he took an hour to make the entire trip. His entire shaft felt like the end, bathed in ecstasy.

He paused a second, not knowing whether to rest or try the short trip back. He heard moans, cries, snorts. He started when he realized it was his moans, cries and snorts.

He made a small movement back, bathed in her flesh, and cried out in uncontrollable pleasure as the pressure shot him out of her like a cork from a bottle of Champaign.

The pleasure immediately returned to urgency as he attempted to get back in, this time fumbling so badly that it took both her hands to guide him in.

Once in, he started the slow trip back to total immersion. This time he knew it was an hour, every second a new sensation. When he'd gone as far as he could, he decided he'd better rest and get his bearings in this unexpected and welcome environment.

He remained motionless. But motionlessness made him aware of where he was. He could feel her on every surface as if her insides had been molded especially for his surfaces, incredible.

He paused, feeling her, and realized the motion hadn't stopped. He was motionless, but not beneath the flesh, which was going crazy with his very existence in her.

The sense of motionless and motion together seemed to last an eternity, shorter than he wanted it to last, but he couldn't stop the urgency forcing him to act. He decided to move a small amount, but the very thought caused him to explode in an uncontrollable orgasm, a climax he'd never known possible, one sending wave after wave of pleasure rolling through his mind, seemingly going on forever.

The first external sensation he felt was the wetness of his skin against hers.

He wouldn't ordinarily enjoy that sensation, but when he realized it was Lanette's skin, it became the feeling of satin.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be less than heavenly if it was part of Lanette. Even her sweat was sweet.

He lifted himself off her, shaking his head and still making small noises, trying to sort them out and make them into an intelligible comment.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" he finally asked.

"Was what?" Lanette asked.

"That. Whew. It seemed to go on forever."

"All of thirty seconds."

"Thirty seconds? You got to be kidding. I've never felt anything like it. It seemed to last forever."

"Well take my word, thirty seconds is probably slightly longer than it actually took you. And I never felt anything. It's always like that."

"You didn't feel anything?"

"Of course, compared to others, thirty seconds is pretty good. Most men don't even make it inside before they cream themselves. Gee, I was past twenty before I lost my physical virginity because all it took was a teensy bit of an inch in, and whoosh, there they went. Actually, those who make it in never make it in a second time like you did, so maybe you're pretty good."

"You didn't feel anything?" Block repeated. "Incredible. You must have a wire disconnected."

"A wire? What's a wire? I'm not wired, am I? You think I have a wire loose?"

"Maybe your problem is you're so sensuous. I've never heard of a woman so sensuous she can't lose her virginity because the man gets off before he can get in. On the other hand, after having you, I can believe it. Everybody in the world must want to make love to you."

"Everybody does."

"They do. I mean you do? You let them?"

"Wouldn't you? I mean, you hear about how all these women go into ecstasy, scream, moan, holler, cry out the names of strange gods, and you wouldn't want to try it out? Get serious. I always want to try out new things. You do too, I could tell."

"You must've tried sex toys," Block said.

"Vibrators, I had a G-spot vibrator that changed colors I used in a hot tub that changed colors and while synchronizing the thing with the tub colors tickled me, the vibrator didn't tickle anything. I've tried labia massagers, clitoral pumps, even a guy with a vibrating tongue ring who spent what seemed like endless hours. Nothing."

"I can figure out what a vibrating tongue ring is, but a clitoral pump, what the heck is that?" Block asked.

"It a little thing that pulls what everyone calls the magic button down into the mouth of a vibrator. I've tried everything at least once."

"I'll want to try it out with you as many times as I can," Block said, "and the first chance we get, I'll get you wired up so you can get off too."

"What's that like? Going to a plastic surgeon or something? I refuse to go to a plastic surgeon. I mean, just look at me. If you looked like me, would you go to a plastic surgeon?"

"You don't have to go to a plastic surgeon. It just takes some time, the right place, and some cooperation. And of course, I have to pick up some equipment."

"Equipment? It isn't like mountain climbing, is it? Or scuba diving. I've done those things. I do them very well. It hasn't made me moan or anything, though. What equipment are you talking about?"

"Just don't you worry. I'm going to keep you right by my side until we can take a break."

"A break? From what? Janette told me to stick with you, but she didn't say I should do it for sex. Why should I? We've already done it, and it didn't do it. Why should I stay with you?"

"Because I couldn't stand you being more than two feet away from me."

"That's very complimentary, but two feet? We can't always be that close. Why two feet? Why right next to me?"

"Because when I think about you, I want you, and when the want becomes too great to think, I want to have you with me so I can have you and think straight again."

"I make you think? Well, Janette said I had to stay with you, but I don't know about this sex thing. I mean, after all, I've had you and it didn't do anything for me. What's in it for me?"

"If nothing else, I'll get you wired up so you can get something out of me."

"Will I be able to go into ecstasy, scream, moan, holler and cry out the names of strange gods after you wire me up?"

"I guarantee it."

"Sounds like a plan. You want to do it again now?"

"No. I'm still exhausted from the first time. It may have been thirty seconds for you, but it was a lifetime for me."

"This might be fun. It does give me a tingle to know I can make you helpless in front of me. Everybody else just runs away after they come like they were embarrassed. No one has ever tried to screw me twice. What would you like for breakfast?"

Block was very hungry all of a sudden.

"Whatever they have on the menu. Here, I'll call up and have a little bit of everything delivered."

"Don't you dare!" Lanette cried, jumping over and taking the phone out of his hand, slamming it back on the receiver. "I want to cook. I went out especially to the west end of the Island and got some fresh eggs, some ham, some real good fruit, fresh coffee, not this stuff in a bag, fresh cream, good stuff. I like to cook. It gives me something to do with my hands. It's one thing Janette never learned to do. I do it well. What do you want?"

"Whatever you make. I'm going to the bathroom and clean up a little."

"Your razor's in the cabinet," she yelled after him.

He went through the door Janette came out the evening before. It was a relief to understand why Janette made him feel two ways, one at the elevator, another with The Chairman. Two different women, twins. Fancy that.

He thought fleetingly of making love to Janette and shied away from it. It must've been Lanette in the dream. They were so different. He couldn't imagine them as sisters, let alone as comparable lovers. Janette wouldn't twirl in a full skirt. She wouldn't even wear a full skirt. And she certainly wouldn't prattle on about wiring.

He could see Janette taking firm action if she ever found herself coming up on the wrong side of the pleasure equation. He couldn't understand why so many women did, when all it took was a little effort to connect the wires. If the person couldn't do it herself, all she needed was a little help, a little guidance. There was no reason why any women should have to go through life without experiencing orgasms. Unless, of course, that's the way she wanted it.

Satisfied, and a little more than relieved his own plumbing was back in working order, he brushed his teeth, shaved, showered, and toweled down briskly. His mind kept going back to the feeling he'd had while he was inside Lanette and, in light of his earlier ordeal, he continually forced himself to squash the thought. There was no sense summoning forth the desire when it wouldn't be until after breakfast that he'd be able to do something about it.

He shook his head in wonder, partly to dispel the thought and partly in wonderment at his luck in finding such a prize, such a gem, such a morsel, something so delicious it'd forever, fortunately, be etched in his mind.

Time and again, he hoped.

He walked into the bedroom and donned the fresh set of clothes she'd laid out for him. He looked around briefly. This side of the penthouse faced inland although it, too, was studded with windows. The inner portion of the windows were coated so he could see out while at the same time allowing the billions of reflected bits of light in the room to cast their spell.

He emerged just as Lanette was setting the plates out on the bar.

She came around and joined him, sitting on the stool next to him.

"So where are we off to, Gaspé? That's in Canada, right? I've already arranged for transportation. Are you going to be up to it? I know all about your ordeal, you know. It's not what you told The Chairman. Why did you do that? Lie to The Chairman. I don't think I could do that. But it must've been horrible nonetheless."

"You know what actually happened?"

"Well, not really. I mean, I know what happened. We recovered that apparatus from the hotel room, whatever it was. What did they do to you with it? It was all very obscure. It looked like a miniature milking machine. There were two cups, like it was made for a cow with two teats, I mean a small cow, or at least a cow with small teats. Maybe not a cow. Maybe a woman. Gee, do you think that was what it was for? But there was nothing like a cattle prod, or whatever you said to The Chairman. Why would you make up a story?"

"The Chairman doesn't have to know everything."

"He doesn't?" Lanette was momentarily at a loss. "But he knows what you told him wasn't true," she finished. "What did they do to you?" she continued.

"They tied me down and applied electric shock directly to my prostate. It closed off my urinary tract and I couldn't go to the bathroom."

"Or anything else."

"Or anything else."

"But that's what you told The Chairman, and that's not true. And The Chairman knows it's not true. And I know it's not true. Everybody knows it's not true. Why do you keep insisting it's true?"

Block finished his eggs and ham and played with the fruit, thinking.

"Lanette," he said slowly, "it's not what you believe, or what The Chairman believes, or for that matter what anybody else believes that's important.

"What's important is what I believe. I'm the one who has to live with the experience. If I don't like what happened, or how it happened, or anything about the happening for that matter, I'm going to choose to believe something other than what I don't like.

"I'm going to do that whether I make a conscious decision to do so or not. Events are going to arrange themselves in my memory in such a manner that I can live with what's happened to me without having it otherwise interfere with my functioning.

"I just choose to consciously create my own scenario rather than have it chosen for me by whatever chance jumble of experience and interactions happen to intermingle."

He held out his cup. "How about some of that terrific smelling coffee?" he asked.

"You mean this tea? Sure."

She poured him a cup of the coffee.

"I see you get my point," he said.

"I'm not stupid. Although some may think so. I'm really pretty sharp, in fact I'm probably as smart as I am beautiful. I think I'm beautiful, don't you? I think I'm better looking than Janette. She's beautiful, but so severe, don't you think? But tea is so much better for you than coffee, it has the caffeine, but not the, ah, ugh, you know, the stuff from the soil, whatever lifted a leg on the plant while it was growing." She stopped a moment, thinking, "Wait," she said brightly, "I could make you some Kopi Luwak."

She turned to rummage in the cabinet.

"What's that?" Block asked.

"The Luwak is an Indonesian marsupial of sorts. They grow the coffee beans, then the Luwaks eat them, then pass them through their systems where they're picked out of their stools. It costs a fortune."

Block quit drinking his coffee.

"No Kopi? Just as well, I've ordered a helicopter for eleven. What are we going to do at Gaspé? What's Gaspé like? I've never been there."

Block was lulled by the soothing sound of her voice, the feeling of her in his mind. He was jarred by the silence when she stopped talking.

"Gaspé? I don't know. This guy Lansdowne, a scientist, has his laboratory there."

"He's looking into how to make oil disappear?"

"He's trying to find a way to eliminate oil spills once they've occurred, yes."

"So he might know something about how the oil is disappearing out of the tankers while they're at sea."

"Something like that. Now that you mention it, he would know anyone anywhere who's been working on the problem."

"Do you think something eats oil? That it might really be alive or recently dead enough to provide a meal for some sort of bacteria. You don't think pumping it out of the ground kills it, do you?"

Block laughed. "According to theory, oil is the product of life long dead."

"That's according to theory. Theory is only as good as its assumptions."

"Well, the assumption is, because oil is a hydrocarbon, it was alive at one time. And it can't be alive if it's underground."

"Why not?"

"There's not any oxygen down there?"

"So?"

"So life is based on oxygen."

"Oil isn't a hydrocarbon?"

"Well, I didn't say that."

"So why couldn't oil simply be a form of carbon based life that doesn't need oxygen to live?"

Block looked closely at her. "You know, The Chairman was telling me something about his pet project, his probability programming and the fact it was turning up something called Realitists. You and your sister didn't turn up in that program did you?"

"I don't know about Janette, but I'm as real as you get."

"I said realitist. The Chairman defined it as the perfect average, a person who didn't excel or grade low on any type of aptitude test. No matter what was being tested for, I.Q., psychological balance, spatial ability, they always came out exactly at the mean. Are you one of those? Do you know Shandra Cottel?"

"Sure I know Shandra. Doesn't everybody? I mean, if you want to find out what Attila the Hun fed his army, you have to get at her records at Bay State, although Bay State is still a salt field. How can you keep records in a salt field?" She got up and cleaned off the dishes. "We can find out more about the oil in Gaspé. I'm sure this guy Lansdowne will be able to tell us all about it. Do you want to have another go at me?"

Just the mention convinced Block he definitely did.

"Maybe you never got any results out of sex because no one was ever able to stay with you long enough to show you what it was all about. Maybe we should engage in a little foreplay."

Lanette's laughter bounced off the chandeliers. "No chance."

"No chance? Why?"

"Because no man can touch me with out wanting to get in me. One touch and all thoughts of foreplay go out the window. You touched me and look what happened with you."

"My thought is, perhaps that's why you never felt anything. You never had a chance."

"Maybe after you've had me a thousand times, you'll be so used to it, you won't go crazy. I don't know. No one has ever had me twice." She brightened. "Hey. This'll be twice for you. This is exciting. Come on." She reached across the bar. "Come on, let's see if you can make forty-five seconds. I can use a stopwatch. We can time each one, see if they're getting longer. This is going to be fun."

"How about Janette and The Chairman. He just looks into her eyes and gets off. Does she get off from that?"

Lanette made her way around the bar, moving close but not touching him.

"I don't know. She says she likes to do it. If I'd known I was giving so much pleasure, I could get to like it too. Giving pleasure can be a pleasure in and of itself, I bet. All the guys I've done it with, they never even said they enjoyed it. They just made a lot of noise and then disappeared as fast as they could. How could I ask Janette if she felt something if I never felt something. How do you describe the taste of apple pie in a world with no apples?"

She stared at him, eyes bright yellow, no shade of embarrassment darkening them toward the green side of the spectrum, no tint of blush on her cheeks.

"Perhaps it's the power," she whispered.

"The Chairman's power?"

"The power to give pleasure. The power to give is the power to withhold. You don't actually have to withhold the pleasure, it seems. Just thinking about doing it is enough. It feels delicious."

"I feel delicious," Block replied, almost losing it. "I wonder if I can get off just looking into your eyes."

"Do you really want to do it that way?"

"No."

"Then why try?"

"I have to try sometime. And I don't think it'll work." He got off the stool and moved in front of her, his back to the window so the light from the window reflected off her eyes. "I can always be with you if it doesn't work, can't I? You're not leaving me are you?"

He looked directly into her eyes, unblinking. "You're game, aren't you?"

"I will do anything you want to do. Just tell me. Anything."

Block restrained himself against the force driving him to be in her, demanding he stop this silliness and be as much a part of her body as possible.

He restrained himself, could feel the tension rising in his body, could see the yellow sparkle in the clearness of her gaze, could almost lose himself as the sparkle seemed to splinter into a million pieces, the millions of barely perceptible bits of light exploding out from the center like light from the sun.

The vision was replaced with a picture of the room spinning around as he went sprawling head over heels, his arms and legs momentarily entangled in hers until she was able to move with lightening speed into a crouching position facing the splintering windows.

He struggled to turn around as the drone of muffled motors increased to an uncomfortable shriek.

"No one from this crew is going to get in effectively," she yelled, surveying the distance between the chopper that just passed and the one coming up. "We've four more trailing on ropes coming in, about forty-five seconds. Another four at the same time interval. We've got to get them all by the fourth run or we're going to lose our position."

She had, while she was yelling at Block, moved behind the bar, emerging with several automatics. Block was shaken awake by his reflexes as she threw him one. The picture in front of him was just getting though to his mind.

As best he could tell, four men had hit the window at the same time. One hit a window brace and just slid down, leaving a trail of blood on either side. A second bounced off the window, failing to break it. He was just disappearing from view, free falling the sixteen stories to the concrete below. A third made it through, but only part way. He was slumped over jagged edges of glass, literally pumping his blood out in spurts. A fourth made it all the way through, losing a good portion of his scalp, apparently knocked silly in the process.

"The second chopper hasn't been able to adjust its course yet," Lanette yelled over the roar. "It's going to lose at least two out of the four. The other chopper is already moving south about a foot and a half. Get rid of that guy at your feet."

Block looked down at the figure dressed all in black. With part of his scalp gone, he looked like a little boy. Block looked closer. He was a little boy, perhaps nine or ten.

"He's just a . . ."

He saw the head disappear in a splash as Lanette directed a stream of fire at it.

"Damn it, get ready. The second wave is on us. You're going to get a whole one through the hole the first one made."

Block focused on the incoming chopper. He could see the four faces as they got ready to hit the windows. In the background, above the second chopper, the first was flying backward, four figures sliding down the ropes. He refocused on the four faces just about to hit the window and saw they too were young, not more than ten at the outside.

Two didn't get through the impact. One, like the first, was destroyed by an upright. The other got tangled up in the body hanging in the window.

The third came through in a splinter of glass where the window hadn't broken, rolled and stood upright directly into Lanette's fire. A hole appeared where his chest had been.

The fourth, with a clean entrance, came in upright, his weapon in position, his young face scarcely two feet in front of Block.

"Move, move, move, fire, son of a bitch, kill the fuck!" Lanette screamed.

"They're just fucking kids," Block shouted.

"These fucking kids have real fucking guns with real fucking bullets and if you don't get off your real fucking ass, we're both going to be real fucking dead. Move, goddammit, move!"

Before Block could move, he saw the neck on the kid dissolve and the head start to roll off his shoulder.

Lanette was on him, shoving him over to the window.

"Three of the next four are going to get in here. If we don't get them and get in position to knock the next four off before they can get through the window, we're going to lose our position and we're going to be up to our ass in killer kids. Look."

Block saw the four bodies hanging from ropes hurtling directly toward them. Lanette stepped back to the far side of the window.

"The second one toward me is going to be cut in half by the open window. You get the other one, I'll get these two. See the second chopper. It's already dropping four more."

The row hit.

Lanette had been right on target, Block noted as he ducked a flying arm and brought up his piece directly in the face of an even younger boy, perhaps seven, and pulled the trigger. The boy was in mid-air and couldn't arrest his motion. Block felt sick as his face disappeared. At the same time, Block saw two dead bodies fly past Lanette, each skewered by short, expertly placed blasts from her automatic. He turned back to the window.

"They're about twenty seconds away. If we can pick them off before they get here, their operation is over."

She moved toward the side of the window, Block taking up a corresponding position on his side.

The choppers were performing in formation like the chairs of a Ferris wheel, with the last one dropping its load swinging up and backing away to prepare for another run, figures emerging to climb down the ropes dangling from its door. The furthest chopper had just swung into a position level with the window to begin its attack. The closest one was coming in to deposit its load.

Both Block and Lanette raised their guns and strafed the entire line, four targets each.

The bodies dropped off the ropes.

"Look."

She pointed at the chopper that'd just passed and was arcing back in its Ferris wheel-like course to prepare to drop four more bodies. The bodies were climbing back into the cabin. "There're giving up the fight, but . . ." pointing at the incoming chopper, "these are going to be sacrificed. Let's make sure. Go!"

The two repeated their act, the four bodies dropping off the ropes, the chopper disappearing over the top of the crystal roof above them.

"For crying out loud, we could at least have saved one or two of them."

"We had to demonstrate the futility of further attack," Lanette replied. "And besides, they may have had . . ." she paused as four closely spaced explosions rose from the patio below, "bombs." She turned to Block. "How the hell have you lived so long?"

He shrugged. "Just lucky, I guess. Everybody is always after me. I think they fall over each other in their attempts, and I luck out."

"Well, these people weren't after you." She surveyed the bloody mess of the windows and the room. "They had to be after The Chairman."

"That's insane. No one would try to take out The Chairman. There isn't a place in the universe they could hide."

"Heads up," Lanette shouted as a helicopter rose above the window and momentarily hung there, a small dark haired figure in the door jumping up and down in a seeming frenzy. Lanette immediately swung her gun into position, but even as she fired, the helicopter was swiftly pulling up and away.

"Still and all, if he hadn't been called away, he would be here and you wouldn't," she continued, turning back toward Block. "Good heavens, you're white as a sheet. What's the matter?"

"That," Block said quietly, "was the woman who did the job on my prostate night before last. Where in the world do you think those choppers came from? Anybody sophisticated enough to set up an operation like this would know it'd be picked up by the security net before it could get started. Any movement for a hundred miles around The Chairman is plotted and any that's not accounted for is destroyed. If they were after The Chairman, they must've come out of a hole in the beach."

"Can you find out where they went?" Lanette asked. "Maybe that would tell us something."

Block took out his computer and punched in his location, code, and request for object location. The hundred-mile square feed showed several blips, aircraft moving in a normal fashion and many boats, but nothing that resembled four helicopters moving in an orderly fashion.

"Maybe they did come out of a hole in the beach because they seemed to have disappeared into one," he said, pointing at a blip settling in right on top of them.

"Transportation," Lanette said. "Let's get going to Gaspé."

She walked back into the living quarters. Block surveyed the room with distaste. He'd never killed a child before and here there were seven or eight strewn around, with more than that strewn around outside. What, he wondered, was going on? He had to agree with Lanette, age wasn't a consideration when they were coming at you with guns blazing, yet he couldn't help but speculate at the monstrous hideousness of a mentality that would train children to do what grown men should find unnatural and shrink from, and then throw them at their targets with such apparent disregard for life.

History proved over and over life was cheap, but even in the worst of times, consideration was given to children. Even the nationalistic creed of murdering everybody but those bound accidentally by the same geographical situation recognized the need for innocence in their children.

The corruption of children, like torture, was so foreign to his thought process, it caused him discomfort to even try to reconstruct a picture of it in his mind.

Attempting to plumb the mind of an adult doing it was more repulsive than he could bring himself to contemplate.

The Chairman had mentioned D'Lazo might have a sister. He wondered if the women in the helicopter could be D'Lazo's sister. Even if she weren't a blood sister, she was a sister in raw evil, the evil that had to be eliminated before an age of peace could come about.

That evil had to be blocked, eliminated, before that age could occur and with it the realization of the emerging Representative World Government.

He shrugged off the reality in front of him, blocked out the carnage and followed Lanette into the living quarters.

She was just emerging from the bathroom, slipping a pair of pants over her perfect buttocks. She sensed him, looking up, her eyes flashing momentarily green at being caught unexpectedly with her pants down.

The reality went directly into his brain, by-passed it, and shot into his body. He had trouble keeping from bending double from the force of his desire.

"Do you think we have enough time to . . ."

"Time?"

Her laughter was the color of her eyes, which hadn't returned to their normal yellow.

"You don't need much time."