6. Block

Block walked through the doors of the Citadel into the early morning coolness. He proceeded down the steps and across the gravel driveway to the east side of the building.

The set up for the raid had been extended for two hours, so Dareze, together with Ireless and Claret, were taking their time preparing for the day.

Block saw a grouping of lawn furniture in a low grove of trees and, checking the grass to determine how wet it was, made his way over to it. He dragged a chair away from the grouping so he'd have a view of the mountains, the dark shapes filling the eastern horizon over which the sun would eventually rise.

For now, the only sunlight was from the dots of the thousands of tiny little suns twinkling through the thin atmosphere.

In the early morning darkness, seated away from the Citadel, facing the mountains beneath a silent sky, he imagined himself a part of the universe, made of the same substance as the starlight.

He could perceive himself, he could perceive the universe, and he could perceive himself perceiving the universe.

He was aware he existed, he was conscious of himself and his surroundings, he could ask the question, how is it he could be a part of the universe while at the same time perceiving the universe.

In short, he could probe his awareness.

Awareness was what allowed him to sit under the stars and contemplate not only what the stars were, but what he was, and what his relationship to the stars was.

If he shut his eyes and allowed himself to drift off, he could conjure up reality in the form of a dream.

His dream wouldn't be an accurate reflection of reality. It might let him visualize reality while imagining he was floating in it. He might change reality, making inanimate objects animate, small ob-jects central, large, an embodiment of experience.

He could understand that process.

His discussion with Marise back at the crumbling, rat-infested fortress at Mahmudabad reinforced his concept of the mind over Lansdowne's. Lansdowne pictured the structure as an amorphous cloud of electrons, electrical energy.

Block felt it was a specifically defined structure with evenly spaced electrons held into a web of stable equilibrium by the op-posing forces of attraction and their normal state of being in motion traveling at the speed of light.

Block felt this secondary state of matter could develop as a natural result of the chemical processes of life.

Block knew there wasn't a physical basis for sleep. However, the continuous disbalance of his concept of the mind, the distortion of its equilibrium as it went about forming pictures of reality, would require a period to regain its stability.

The massive records of the extensive torture practiced by the defunct Soviet Empire provided detailed information about the ef-fects of sleep deprivation. The mind became so unbalanced, it could no longer form accurate pictures of reality. After long sessions of sleep deprivation combined with the application of periodic pain, a person's reality became whatever his interrogator wanted.

Sleep as a period of returning the mind to stability, capable of forming accurate pictures of reality, made sense. And it made sense out of dreams, which were random pictures created by the mind as it randomly regained stability.

So Block knew if he shut his eyes and let himself drift off to sleep, he'd be exiting reality and thinking random thoughts. The dreams would come and go, float with no apparent direction or pur-pose, providing pleasure or fear depending on the level of electric-ity driving his recall. His dreams also became a product of chance recall.

And, Block thought, that should give him some sort of clue about where he'd been during the hours he was physically engaging in what must've been extraordinarily pleasurable activity with Claret. Ireless, too, but the thought of Dareze swelled him.

When he'd been in Attila's marriage bed, he might as well have been in Attila's grave, locked away, unaware of himself. And if he'd been unaware of himself then, for all intents and purposes, he'd simply ceased to exist, which was pretty much where he was when he slept but didn't dream. In that type of sleep, nothing was recalled, no Block in existence. Thus, on Attila's marriage bed, the girls basically put him in a trance, one with a fixed picture of him-self encased in pleasure, with Ireless and Claret the enjoyment of her nubs combined with their incredible breasts, in Dareze's case well, whatever it was that sent him on a rocket to oblivion.

"You're not hiding, you know," Ireless said behind him, breaking his reverie.

"How'd you know I was over here?" he asked, surprised.

"Are you kidding?" she said, laughing. "Monitors track every-thing. It was, after all, the local Soviet for the glorious Useful Em-pire. That was the first thing The Chairman had me do when he bought it, check out the bugs. The equipment wasn't worth a darn, but the whole place had hidden places for cameras, so I just mod-ernized. And to answer your unasked question, The Chairman is personally interested in the outcome of this raid."

"Oh?"

"He told me to ask you to hightail it down to The Amazon as soon as the raid's over because there's something going on there, too, and he wants you to ensure Marise's safety."

"What's going down?" Block asked, stepping into the Stratodart after Claret.

"I don't know, but it's big. I've never been involved in anything that merited this much personal attention on the part of The Chair-man.

"What do we know?"

"Mesne Marsdy was late meeting us in Trieste because he was down in Chioagi conferring with The Chairman," Dareze said.

"He was?" Ireless asked, surprised. "What exactly is this pro-ject, Ronnie?"

"The Chairman believes somebody's tampering with the minds of the Millennial generation, attempting to destroy the inherent char-acteristics they will bring to the consolidation of The Representa-tive World Government as they move into positions of authority. He asked me to recover information at PE International dealing with the possible development of a symbolic processor."

"Symbolic processor?" Dareze said. "What's a symbolic proc-essor?"

"A processor that processes electronic symbols rather than recognizing and processing electronic states," Block replied.

"It's Greek to me," Claret said, moving to secure the door. "Are we ready?" Receiving no response, she signaled the pilot.

"The Chairman may well have some broader intentions," Block continued, "but I still have to find out what process might be af-fecting the Millennials. Sounds to me like whatever it is might also provide the basis for some sort of new way to process information. You've been briefed, haven't you, Ireless, about the tapes PE Inter-national is sending to BioLife Systems in Trieste for analysis?"

"I'm on it," Ireless replied.

"Good. That's what you'll go after. Claret, this is your terri-tory, so you'll go after rounding up information on the personnel. Dareze, can you stay with me? We're going to have to run down the books and records and see who's involved with PE International. Who's got our ETA?"

"Less than five," Claret replied.

They could already feel the Stratodart begin its descent, the tall peaks of the Carpathians now behind them.

"Have they been notified we're coming?" Block asked.

"Yes," Claret replied. "They're expecting us."

"Are they going to give us any trouble?"

"No. They're going to remain in place until everything is se-cured."

"How about shifts," Block continued his grilling, "are any off or is the place fully staffed?"

"How about a drink?" Claret asked in turn. "Or better, quit wor-rying. Everything's in place."

Block looked out the window. The sun was just starting to rise over the horizon. However, at their altitude, it was a false horizon. Once the Stratodart dropped, the horizon would produce a setting sun from the east.

It wouldn't be the last sunset Block would see today.

The Stratodart descended into the early morning darkness, the relatively undeveloped countryside disappearing. After leveling off, the pilot started to turn in an arc toward the base of the mountain. Block saw a large flat area that'd been converted into a Stratodart holding field, with at least twenty of the versatile craft carrying the distinctive CORWOG markings lined up in a double semi-circle with highly intense spotlights pointing toward an oblong building disappearing into the side of a mountain.

Groups of men and women could be seen climbing out of the Stratodarts and assembling into orderly groups for the occupation of PE International's operating facility.

The pilot landed behind the mid-point of the semi-circle.

Claret was first out, making her way rapidly between the parked craft and, spotting the group in charge of deployment, took control. Block and Dareze held back with Ireless until they entered and established security so they could move freely within it.

Block turned to Ireless as the groups of personnel began to move on the facility. "Did The Chairman give up any more information on what was happening in the Amazon?"

"Just that there's a simultaneous operation to secure Jarrezo-nia, Jeremy Jarred's private facility. It seems he might have overstepped himself and converted what's an ultra public project to his own benefit."

"Nothing concrete about Marise, just ensure her safety?" Block asked. "She was supposed to go over there and check the place out. She said she was going to get back in time to pick me up yesterday evening, but, as you know, I got sidetracked. She must've been the one to call in CORWOG. It worries me a little. She looked pretty new."

"If The Chairman sent her to do something, you can be sure she's qualified to do it, and if she isn't, she'll get qualified soon enough. There," she said, pointing at the figures disappearing into the mouth of the building, "they're in, let's go."

The three followed Claret's path between the Stratodarts and caught up behind the last of the security forces. The four people setting up security at the entrance greeted them with an informal salute, waving them in as they set up their positions.

Block looked over his shoulder just before he entered. Yet an-other Stratodart, this one without markings, settled next to the one Block came in. Their very anonymity, sitting side-by-side, marked the raid as one of The Chairman's far-flung operations. Block won-dered who else was involved in what was becoming a puzzlingly complex operation.

Inside, the doors to both the corridor and the computer facility on the other side of the corridor were open with armed guards posted beside each.

"Crays," Block said, poking his head though the door of the com-puter room. He ventured in and onto the elevated ramp separating the mounds of humming machines, squat and circular, spaced on either side of the ramp.

Ireless walked up behind him, making way for Dareze who was beelining it down the ramp to the other end of the room. "What in the world are they doing with these? They're the first types made," she said. "Kid's toys have more computing power than these do. I can only conclude they're here for show."

"Well, they're clanking away, so they must be doing something," Block observed.

They proceeded down the raised walkway.

"Computations of some sort, I would imagine," Ireless said.

"You're as dumb as one," Dareze cried, looking over the shoul-der of a man playing hangman on a Mac.

The man laughed along with her. "Oh," he exclaimed, "it's a T."

He punched in T and bells went off, the screen flashing "Rocket Scientist" as the correct answer.

"Did you find out what all this stuff is doing here?" Block asked Dareze, who was patting the computer operator on the back.

"Sure did," she answered, "they're computing Pi."

"Computing Pi?. Block said, puzzled. "The name of the place is PE. What's that got to do with Pi? I thought Pi was incapable of be-ing carried out without rounding."

"It's part of the worldwide effort to determine what the nature of the universe is," Dareze said, trying to keep a straight face.

"The only way to understand the universe is the brain, the mind, and the concepts that provide understanding, and here we have a bunch of outdated computers trying to carry Pi out without round-ing it off. It's a sham."

"Yes and no," Ireless interjected. "With the advent of incredibly powerful personal computers, it seems carrying out Pi has become the be and end all of scientific research. The person who success-fully does it will get his name in the history books."

"But it can't be done," Block scoffed. "There's nothing here for us. How about through there." He indicated a door beyond the com-puter operator, who was wiping out the completed hangman game on the Mac and resetting it for another game.

"That's where they're carrying out the research on the units," Dareze said.

"That must be where the information sent to Trieste is gener-ated," Block commented, making his way past security at each door and waiting at the entrance to the vast cavern for Ireless, and then Dareze, to catch up. "What do you think they're up to?"

"Beats me," Ireless said.

"Whatever it is, they seem pretty intense." Block's eyes dwelled on the animals occupying tables staffed by four workers. "You know," he mused, "when I was in Mahmudabad, we were hav-ing a problem with these rats which wanted to attack everything in sight. Marise diddled with a computer, mixing some frequencies and broadcasted them into the pack of rats. I was able to quiet them down. These people look like they're doing something similar, only the animals are quiet to start with."

"Maybe," Dareze said, "they're trying to find a frequency that'll stimulate them the way the rats in Mahmudabad were being stimulated before Marise interfered with it."

"Or maybe they're trying to find out what frequencies produce what reactions," Ireless speculated. "If a frequency, or combina-tion of frequencies, gets a reaction, they can try it on another sac-rifice. If they don't get a reaction, then . . .let's see."

"They could inject brain matter from the animal they get a re-action out of into the brain of a sacrifice they don't get a reaction out of and . . ."

"Right, Ronnie," Dareze said, pursuing their speculations, "if they get a reaction out of the sacrifice, it's not the frequency that's affecting the brain, but something in the brain that's being affected which in turns results in the physical reaction in the ani-mal."

"That must be what all these people are looking for," Block con-cluded, "a match between an animal and a frequency."

"More like a unit of some sort of experience," Ireless said, "and a frequency the unit is stored at. Fascinating."

"That means . . ." Dareze began, but Block started to say some-thing at the same time.

They both stopped and hesitated.

"That means they must already have discovered at least one memory unit," Dareze said into the silence.

"That's right," Block and Ireless said in unison, turning to look at Dareze who had been examining the room.

"And," Dareze continued, "I'll bet that memory unit is one that causes someone to become extremely unpleasant."

"Why do you say that?" Ireless asked.

"Because of the effect on the Millennial generation," Block an-swered for her.

"So this is what I'm looking for," Ireless concluded.

"And partially what I'm looking for," he mused, "I haven't got a clear picture of how it works, but I'm going to find out who's behind it and put a stop to it. I don't think this operation is going to be of any use to you, either, Ireless. It's just the normal scientific meth-odology, mindless trial and error until they hit on something that works.

"If they already have a memory unit in their possession, and they're able to duplicate it, then I think that's what we want to get our hands on."

He moved around the edge of the room to the door on the far left wall. "We might as well see everything there is to see," he said, waiting for the two to catch up with him.

Block and Dareze moved on, but Ireless stopped to confer with security.

"This is labeled the Philbrook Suite," she said, catching up with them. "We know there's a Philbrook Effect and that's probably the basis for the initials PE. We've yet to find out whether Philbrook discovered the effect, is the effect, or both."

"Here's where we find out," Block said.

They stopped in front of a window where a elderly man was vig-orously playing multi-set jacks.

"Should we ask?" Dareze asked.

"Why not?"

Dareze opened the door and stuck her head in. Ireless and Block craned their necks behind her, trying to pick up a response. They needn't have bothered.

"That bastard. It's mine." The jacks made a ticking sound as they bounced off the observation window. "He stole it and then stole what he gave me for it. I've been robbed," he screamed.

"Who stole it?" Block asked over Dareze's shoulder.

"That bastard Jeremy Jarred," Philbrook sputtered. "Jarred stole it, and now he's living high on the hog with the proceeds of my labor. I worked all of my life to discover it, and now he's taken it away from me."

He slammed the rubber ball petulantly on the table, causing it to bounce off the far wall, angle onto the floor, and take another glancing bounce before it hit Dareze on the leg. Her foot gave an involuntary kick, bouncing the ball back into the room, and she backed up, moving Ireless and Block out of the way as she shut the door in front of her.

"That's obviously the source of whatever is affecting the Mil-lennials," she said.

"Do you think they've got him in there growing the units in his mind? How would that work?" Ireless asked.

"Well, you know jacks," Dareze replied.

"Not really."

"You didn't play jacks as a little girl? I thought everyone did. Maybe you just don't remember. In any event, in jacks, you bounce the ball, then pick up a jack, then two, three and so on. If you get through one set, you add a set to make it more difficult. Then you vary the number of bounces to lengthen the routine and make it more difficult."

"So," Ireless responded, puzzled.

"Well, don't you see, you have to lose sometime. You can't win if you keep making the end of the game one move past your last successful move. Sooner or later, the next move is going to be a mix."

"So eventually Philbrook loses," Block said.

"And what happens when he loses?" Dareze continued. "He gets enraged."

Understanding broke across Ireless' face. "And each time he gets enraged, he generates new memory units that can in turn be extracted and injected into others. But we all get enraged. What makes Philbrook getting enraged so special?"

"They know the frequency, or combinations of frequencies, that activate his rage," Block suggested.

"Darn," Ireless exclaimed, "exactly. That has to be the answer. Somehow, someone discovered a frequency that sent Philbrook into a rage, found a way to extract it from his brain, and are getting it into the Millennials, then duplicating the frequency that sets it off. When the Millennial's brain is subjected to the radio transmissions duplicating the frequency, the units are recalled and the Millennials are thrown into a rage."

"What if it's put into someone other than a Millennial?" Block asked.

"My guess, you'd get the same result," Dareze said "but the bigger question is, how are they getting it into the Millennials. It doesn't matter that it isn't Millennial specific so long as all the Millennials are getting it."

"Or at least have the potential to get it," Ireless added.

"If Jarred's behind this, as I suspect he is," Block said, re-centering the discussion, "then I think I know how he's getting it in. He's Mr. Ostrich, isn't he?"

"He sure is," Ireless said. "You think he's feeding it to the Mil-lennials in ostrich meat?"

"You want to stay here and talk to Philbrook a little bit?" Block asked her.

"I think I'd better," she agreed. "You go on. Is there anything else you need?"

"Just you're confirmation."

Block stepped back and let Dareze ahead of him, getting an unex-pected thrill as she brushed him in passing. How many hours had it been since he'd been in her. No, how few, and not in her, but her in him. The thought took physical form as she brushed past. She hesi-tated as if she sensed his thought, turning slightly in profile, breathlessly pausing, expectantly, the profile quelling the momen-tary effect the thought created.

"Excuse me," he said, pivoting to let her by.

"Not at all," Dareze replied with a mischievous grin. "You're being shy again. How can you be shy after all we've done?"

"I don't know," Block said sheepishly. "Silly, isn't it?"

She not only caught him being shy, he was embarrassed. He'd sexed himself up uselessly on the trip to Trieste, turning buttocks into breasts, not even making a move on Marise who, while not particularly a beacon in the night, was a women and therefore had to be interesting sexually as well as personally. And then, getting himself all worked up over breasts, he had the opportunity to bury himself in them with both Claret or Ireless, at times together, and he'd paid no more attention to their breasts than he had before he'd worked himself up over them. Then he had a unique sexual experi-ence with Dareze, who was unusually flat but certainly functional, exciting, an experience his body told him he wanted to repeat, and he here was continuing his letch for breasts.

And to make it worse, he apparently didn't have any conscious memory of the unique sexual experience with her, his mind totally blacked out. Yet his body must remember, because he was beginning to notice he was in a constant state of low-level sexual arousal in her presence. He apparently had to satisfy his mind as well as his body to avoid having the natural need for sex intruding on his mind during the daily course of his activities, whisping in sexual images around the actual images of reality, turning reality into unfocused desire when in actuality it was only a mild belch.

The Chairman wanted him in the Amazon as soon as possible, so he didn't have time to do what he wanted to do, which was to take Dareze into a room somewhere and roil his streaming needs over her pliant flesh.

" . . . silly," he heard Dareze say.

"What? I'm silly." Block said reflexively.

"No, silly. I said sex is never silly. It can't be and still be sex."

Block thought about not being in the Amazon in a timely fashion. The picture of being in front of a bombed out Jarrezonia was un-thinkable. He thought about not being in Dareze in a timely fashion. Some future session, with her lying invitingly below him, all the time in the world to make up for lost opportunities, was definitely thinkable.

"Is this it?" he asked, coming to the offices on the entrance cor-ridor.

"I think so. I could fly you to Jarrezonia," Dareze suggested.

Block visibly brightened, his sexual tension heightening and set-tling down at the same time.

"Good idea," he replied, not caring that he sounded eager. "Let's get through this as soon as possible." He stepped into the room at the same time, running into a firm body standing in the precise place he wasn't looking. "Hello," he said abruptly.

"Hello," the woman replied, turning her head.

Her thick copper hair blurred Block's vision as she turned.

"Excuse me." He stepped back to see who said hello and found himself face to face with Shandra.

"You must be Dareze," Shandra was saying over Block's shoul-der. "The Chairman said you'd be here. He wants you to work with me on sorting out these finances."

"Really?" Dareze said brightly. "This wouldn't involve briefing him in person, would it?"

"I would imagine so," Shandra replied.

"Oh, boy." She turned to Block. "There goes me flying you to the Amazon."

Block's expectations dropped out of sight on either side of him, leaving his sexual tensions exposed, a peak.

"Shandra," he said, taking her waiting hand and shaking it vigor-ously. "How long has it been?"

"A while. San Francisco, I believe," she replied.

Shandra pointed to the rows of tables filling the room which, to-gether with a desk, were covered with stacks of paper.

"I had some of the tables brought in from the rat room to pile the work on. Gleetch here has been an exceedingly big help, haven't you?"

Shandra dragged a nervous man from behind her and pushed him to the forefront.

"This is Gleetch, Jeremy Jarred's trusted advisor," she said.

Block could see Gleetch grow whiter under Shandra's words.

"Say something, Gleetch," Shandra instructed.

"What do you want to know? I'll tell you anything, anything, just name it."

Shandra turned to Block. "It seems our friend Gleetch was stealing from his employer, PE International. He made away with a goodly sum, which didn't make much difference to PE because PE isn't an enterprise."

"In what way?" Block asked. "They certainly have enough em-ployees."

"It doesn't have any income, and it has no prospects for any. I would classify it a Research and Development outfit, but none of its research is worth discussing, the silliness of attempting to find meaning in computation, or allowing computations to substitute for reason, being obvious. There's no development and with no income, I can't classify it a manufacturing operation even though it's pro-ducing fixed cycle transmitters. It's basically organized to destroy an entire generation of individuals. As it doesn't have a creed or a formal place of worship, I'm inclined to classify the operation po-litical, because the generation they seek to eliminate is composed of voters."

"So this is a political operation?" Block asked.

"For purposes of classifying Gleetch's misappropriation, we have to find out what he's stealing from. Unfortunately, stealing from a political organization is no crime, and in some quarters con-sidered a virtue. That leaves Gleetch here in the clear but for one fatal fact."

"What's that?" Dareze asked.

"It seems PE International just set up a Korean Trust to fund the production of these transmitters, which by the way were patterned after frequencies accidentally discovered by Philbrook, frequencies that sends him into a rage, what's becoming known as the Philbrook Effect. The transmitters are being assembled in mainland China for shipment to Jarred Industries. It's the funding of the Korean Trust that interests us. It seems funds are being diverted from the pro-ject to internationalize the Amazonian through the Korean trust to finance the fabrication of the transmitters."

Block was stunned. "Are you sure?"

"The agreements were barely in the filing cabinet when elec-tronic transfers were made of the entire budget to digitize the Amazonian terrain."

Block turned away, his mind racing. This was incredible, beyond comprehension. The project to internationalize the Amazonian was not only directly supervised by the Council of Representative World Governments, CORWOG, it was considered the most important co-operative project ever undertaken. Many developing nations were hesitant to join CORWOG because their national interests would eventually be molded to the interests of a stable community of na-tions.

The rain forests and natural habitats making up the extensive Amazon Basin had long been identified as an area that should be pre-served from development and maintained in its natural condition for the benefit of the planet as a whole. The countries involved, Brazil and Ecuador, and to a lesser extent Peru and Columbia, hadn't been too happy about giving up real estate for what had traditionally been a thankless donee, the world's interest, which perforce in-cluded a great deal of the unborn. To help them overcome their reti-cence, CORWOG put together a gigantic pot of development aid from developed countries all over the globe to compensate for their per-ceived national losses.

The project was a template, a beacon for future environmental projects. Its success was of the utmost importance to the future of the planet, and the planet's occupants. As such, its operation was considered to be inviolate. There could be no give and take in dealing with the Amazonian Authority. Any transactions between private individuals and the authority had to produce a clear case of give on the part of the private individuals and take on the part of the authority.

There could be absolutely no hint of graft or greed.

And here Block was facing, not graft, not greed, but outright theft of substantial assets set aside to internationalize the Amazon, theft by the entity whose responsibility was to prevent private inurement from it.

Turning back to Gleetch, Block felt the urge to take the man's neck in his hands and squeeze until his whitened face turned blue.

"I didn't know." Gleetch protested. "It was all set up by Jarred."

"He knew," Shandra said. "He was right here when it was set up."

"I did know," Gleetch protested. "I just didn't know everybody would get so upset about it."

"I've outlined Gleetch's potential liabilities to him, including the obligation to pay back ten times the amount in question," Shandra said.

"Jarred would be liable too," Gleetch cried.

Shandra continued to talk directly to Block. "As you know, each participant in an act resulting in private benefit of project funds is liable for up to the ten times penalty, and none can have the penalty reduced because of payment by another party liable."

"Sure. Two parties, twenty times, three thirty, and so forth. Where's Gleetch been that he didn't know that?" Block asked. "It must be the most publicized penalty provision in the world."

"Gleetch, of course, probably has more assets than Jarred. If he doesn't have any money stuck under his bed, I make out he's got assets hugging the bottom of six figures."

"I thought Jarred was worth billions," Block said, puzzled. "He's always in the papers. He's listed among the richest men in the world. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons he was cho-sen to head up the Amazonian Project simply was he had no reason to steal from it. This is just too much. He only has a hundred thou-sand dollars?"

"Considerably less," Shandra replied. "My tentative findings, and I've only been working on it a short time, is he's billions in the hole."

"But he's listed as having assets all over the place," Block said. "Doesn't he control the ostrich industry?"

"You might own the title to the part of an iceberg that sticks out of the water, but it doesn't do you much good if somebody else owns the part that's underwater," Shandra said. "Holding the title to a seventy story building is impressive, but if its foundation is debt, then the debt holder owns the building."

"So Jarred might have five billion in assets, and ten in debt. Did The Chairman have anything to do with the Amazonian project?"

"He put together the finances for it, but Jarred was chosen by a majority vote of CORWOG. When he got the job, he didn't have the debt."

"What the heck happened?" Block asked. "How could he go ten billion dollars in debt in the course of a year or two?"

"I imagine when you have a couple of billion dollars, it isn't hard to borrow a hundred million here and a hundred million there. As the saying goes, pretty soon it gets to be serious money. I would imag-ine people were breaking down his door to lend him money, thinking it was the safest thing in the world to do."

"But why would he take it?" Block said, shaking his head. "If he had money, why would he have to borrow? That doesn't make sense. Why does a person with all the money in the world need more money? Why would he gamble on losing what he has? It makes no sense."

Shandra looked at him peculiarly. "Power," she said simply.

"Power? You'd think that five billion dollars and the stewardship of the most important project in the world was power enough."

"For people addicted to power, there can never be enough. There's no such thing as absolute power. There'll always be an area beyond one's domain. It becomes an easy process, identifying power, and then acquiring it. I suspect it's the same as gambling. It's being in the process of obtaining power that provides the rush rather than the exercise of the power once it's obtained, although that might be fun to. Apparently Jarred got addicted to the acquisi-tion of power."

"So what're you going to do about him?" Block asked.

"Me? About Jarred? Nothing. I don't have anything to do with Jarred. I'm just here to acquire the rights to the Philbrook Effect and give you any help I can."

"Here it is," Dareze said from the middle of the paper-covered tables.

"What's that?" Block asked.

"The organizational documents. Jarred's in charge of the whole shebang."

Block weaved his way between the tables to look at the docu-ments Dareze was holding. "When was Jarred last here?" he asked Gleetch, staying close to Dareze.

"Night before last," Gleetch replied.

Block kept staring at him.

"Late," he added. "Or early. We operate twenty-four hours a day, so time doesn't mean much to us."

Block calculated unless he'd gone somewhere else, he could've been back in the Amazon a full day. Marise would've reached the Amazon sometime the morning before. If she'd stumbled over what Jarred was up to, she'd be responsible for calling in CORWOG secu-rity forces, which would mean Jarred was either at Jarrezonia, in which case he'd be neutralized, or he wouldn't be at Jarrezonia, in which case, he'd have his work cut out for him.

"Do we know where Jarred is now?" he asked no one in general.

"As I said," Shandra said, "my interest is in acquiring the Phil-brook Effect. Gleetch, it turns out, has signature authority over the sale of PE International's assets, as well as being its stock transfer agent. The money from the Amazonian project will be considered to have moved directly into the Korean trust, so PE International isn't at this point tainted."

"He flew to Bucharest, and took a StratoLiner from there to New York," Gleetch said.

Block used his computer to find out whether Jarred left New York by StratoLiner.

He hadn't.

"No record. He's either still there, or he left by Stratodart. I'm going to assume that he's in Jarrezonia, or he's heard about the raid and he's hightailing it back there. In either case, Marise will need help in directing the security forces and in figuring out what to do with him."

"Look at this pussycat," Ireless entered the room, Philbrook at her side. "They had the room he was playing jacks in flooded with just enough of the appropriate transmissions to keep him in a low state of agitation."

Shandra came over and held out her hand. "I'm Shandra."

"Hi," Ireless said, "I've been looking forward to meeting you. You pretty much did away with mass/gravity with that space sta-tion thing of yours, didn't you?"

Shandra had come up with the explanation for sunspots degrad-ing the orbits of satellites, including the space station, using the new paradigm that gravity was the result of what the matter was doing, cooling, rather than being a simple property like color or hardness. The sunspots were increasing the temperature of the Earth, the increased temperature raised its gravity momentarily, affecting satellites.

"What's going on?"

"We're going through PE's records to see who controls PE. Maybe we can have some fun later."

"Me too," Dareze added, "I have to stay and work with Shandra on this."

"Oh," Ireless exclaimed, "Dareze's staying. Great. I've got this delicious guy lined up who . . ."

In their conversation, they'd ignored Gleetch, but now it became impossible. He'd been twitching uncontrollably since the mention of Shandra's work on the space station. Ireless calmed him, helping him put his arms around his shoulders to stabilize himself, stop his shaking.

"That's a good boy," she said, turning back to Shandra. "I don't know what the effect of your existing fields have on the transmit-ters. Apparently, Philbrook here responds to a specific frequency. The frequencies are produced by electromagnetic means, which is to say artificially, as opposed to the cycling effects resulting from your cooling process where cooling oscillates within a heating cycle to produce a frequency similar to that produced by, what shall we call them, Philbrook oscillators?"

"That's as good as any," Block said. "The strength of any at-tractive force associated with an expanding electromagnetic field produced by an oscillator remains as yet untested."

At the mention of the words "attractive force." Gleetch began to shake out of his own grasp and stutter "Ma . . . Ma . . . Ma . . ." his teeth uncontrollably clacking together.

"We all exist in emission fields," Shandra said, "with the Earth's field primary, the Sun's secondary, the Moon's definitely having an effect, and those fields affect the level of electrical en-ergy at which the mind operates" She turned to Gleetch. "What in the world is going on with you, Gleetch?"

Gleetch had become manic, bouncing up and down in his own arms, kicking first one foot out, then the other in a sort of Russian Kazaska with an inadequate squat. "Jarred, Jarred, Jarred." he intoned in rhythm with his bouncing. "Jarred said, Jarred said, he said, said, said that nationalism would preserve mass. Jarred, Jarred, Jarred, preserve nationalism and preserve mass. Mass must be preserved at all costs because it can never be created nor destroyed, my mother told me so, so, so if I destroy the Millenni-als, destroy, destroy, destroy, then I'll preserve nationalism, na-tionalism, nationalism, and save mass, mass, mass, I'll save mass, mass, mass."

Ireless moved to help Shandra quiet him, but he spun out of their grasp, unbuckled his pants, letting them drop to the motion of his bobbing, and began massaging his genitals to the rhythm of "Mass, mass, mass."

"He's a mass preservationist," Dareze said, clapping her hands in delight. "People that worship . . ."

"Don't say it . . ." Ireless and Shandra yelled in unison.

"Mass/gravity . . ." Dareze tried to choke it off, the warning too late, loud enough to reach Gleetch's ears.

"Hallelujah," Gleetch screamed, jumping impossibly high into the air, grasping his penis, spinning around in a full circle, and literally dancing away from the spot he would have landed on if he'd come straight down. "Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah," he screamed, waving his handful to and fro, letting it lead him where it would, bumping back and forth between the rows of tables. "I've seen the light. The truth is here. Mass/gravity, mass/gravity, mass/gravity." It became a chant as he retreated to a corner, stroking himself in time with the rhythm.

"Incredible," Block commented. "Words seemed to have accom-plished the same results with him that electromagnetic emissions accomplish with Philbrook."

Shandra disagreed. "It's a normal reaction when a person's un-reasoned assumptions are questioned, especially when those as-sumptions provide answers forming the foundation of pure faith. The less support there is for a particular belief and the more obvi-ous the fact the belief supports, the more fanatical the belief has to be maintained. Otherwise, the facade of reality the belief is de-signed to cover will crumble and the believer will be left without answers to their questions, whether they be about existence, or why a rock falls."

That comment ran through Block's mind as he poured himself an-other drink in the Stratodart's cockpit watching the full moon hanging in the sky above.

Shandra said if she'd known Gleetch was leading a double life, going along with Jarred to accomplish his own objectives, she'd have had him isolated, especially if she'd known his objectives were religiously motivated. Now she'd have to spend an inordinate amount of time bringing him back to his senses so he could sign the necessary papers to transfer the Philbrook effect to ISPM.

"ISPM?" Block asked.

"International Symbolic Processing Machines." She replied.

A soft chime sounded, informing Block the Stratodart had breached the line separating the coast of West Africa with the At-lantic Ocean.

He hoped Shandra could bring Gleetch back enough to get what she wanted out of him. Then he realized with Shandra, you didn't have to hope. She always got what she was after.

He looked up as the moon began to disappear in the dawn. It took a minute to orient himself, to realize he'd caught up with the sun. To someone sitting in a boat below, the sun would be setting to the west. Because he was traveling toward the west, he'd caught up with the sun. He oriented himself with respect to the surface of the planet. He was getting very close to the eastern coast of South America and began his descent, forsaking the theatrics of a rapid drop for the peaceful sipping of his drink.

He'd never been to Jarrezonia and wondered what it looked like. He'd heard about the R girls. The absence of Dareze left a space in his stomach he tried to fill contemplating the availability of a num-ber of beautiful women needing relocation. He hoped Marise secured the place so he'd have a little time to engage in a dalliance or two. Beautiful girls, palatial surroundings, the lure of the Amazon, all worked to construct a hazy picture of potential. He visualized him-self jumping into a giant Jacuzzi with all the nude lovelies.

Block put the Stratodart on automatic, refilled his glass, and looked out over the area below. He figured there were about fifteen minutes of daylight to go. The mouth of the Amazon was extremely wide. He would be at a loss without Jarrezonia's coordinates pro-grammed into the Stratodart's computer. He noted on the screen Jarrezonia was due east of his position. He reset the controls so he'd arrive just as the sun set, flipped on his security ID so he'd be recognized and turned his attention to the scenery below.

It appeared to be sunrise because the greenery, some five hun-dred feet below, rose out of mists he usually associated with early morning. The mists were actually clouds hugging the treeline, al-lowing groups and bunches to appear here and there. As the sun sank in the west, the mists took on a yellowish color, almost sul-fur, and Block momentarily glimpsed fire and brimstone as the greenery disappeared in the sunset.

He let his mind flow, allowed the changing picture swirling be-low to recall whatever image it wished, much as a dream moved randomly. He lost himself in the gentle movement until his reverie was interrupted by an artificial presence directly in front of the Stratodart, outlined in the rays of the sun as it finally sunk beneath the horizon.

He surveyed the building, spying a circular one hanging over the water flowing adjacent to a larger, more majestic mansion with a broad lawn stretching down to the water hosting six Stratodarts with distinctive CORWOG insignia.

He'd expected, but didn't see, the distinctively unmarked Stra-todart that Marise was using. He let the Stratodart land itself on the lawn behind the security craft and, as the door opened, was hit by the heaviness of the air as he walked slowly down the stairs. He felt small on the lawn surrounded by the Stratodarts. He made his way between the craft, up the lawn to the front of the house. Sur-veying it as he went, he did think Jarred had gone overboard. Even if he started out with billions of his own, there was little sense in this aggrandizement. It was insane to do it with public money.

Block couldn't comprehend it. Maybe that was his point, to live like a god on someone else's estate. He reached the entrance and climbed the steps to the waiting security guards. He could see both, dressed in shorts and carrying automatics, recognized him.

He greeted them, asking if Marise was in charge, and if so, where he could find her.

The woman stepped aside, opening the door at the same time. "She had to go to the interior. Our actions have caused quite a stir and she wanted to meet with the survey teams to personally update them on what was happening."

"What about Jarred?" Block asked.

"He's under restraint by the local guards. She deemed two reli-able. She sealed the place."

"Really," Block said, surprised. That put CORWOG in charge of the perimeter only, with no control over the people in the complex. They could do as they wished. They just couldn't come and go as they wished. "Who's in charge in her absence?"

"Delusia Dillon is looking after Jarred's business interests and Jarred's chief of staff, Risa, is looking after the household. They're expecting you. You, of course, are in charge until Marise returns."

"Ummm," Block thought, an R girl. All was not lost, and with the place sealed and Marise off in the hinterlands, dalliance was defi-nitely a possibility. "Thank you," he said, walking into the entrance hall. He immediately met a stunning women dressed in a blue pants suit. His attention went immediately to her tantalizing Mona Lisa-like smile. He was about to comment on it when another motion brought his mind to a halt. Across the room, behind the perfect fig-ure in blue, from a double door, a figure in a green evening gown emerged, a women so startlingly perfect Block's eyes immediately altered their point of focus and then stuck, motionless.

Marise, as Risa, enjoyed the pause, feeling Block's level gaze with pleasure, pleasure in attracting it, capturing it, imprisoning it. Always the ugly girl in a pair the few times there'd been a pair, she was now the beautiful one, with stunning Delusia now the ugly one in comparison.

When she first mentioned that Ronald Block would be coming, Delusia was vague about his identity.

"He's the man that's going to initiate me," Marise said.

"Into what?" Delusia asked.

"Sex."

"You're kidding," Delusia said, amazed.

"No. Block is very desirable," Marise said.

"I mean about initiating you," Delusia contradicted. "How could you be a virgin? You must've had guys lined up trying to take a poke at you."

"Let's just say I've had poor body image. If you think you're ugly, other people find you ugly, too."

"There's ugly, and there's ugly. You'd have to walk around in a tent to keep men from seeing that figure."

"I guess that's basically what I did," Marise said, laughing. "But now I intend to make the best of what I have."

"Isn't Block the guy who's always getting his name in the papers for breaking up some plot or other." She looked around, blinking. "Oh, I see. CORWOG. He works for CORWOG. He's coming here to take charge."

"Well, no, not really, though that's a good idea. We'll let him," Marise replied.

"We'll let him?"

"He won't recognize me, at least I don't think he will."

"You mean you think he'll have your bad body image . . ." She paused. "You were made over, weren't you? He must have seen you before the makeover. Who did it and when?"

"Jarred's girls made me over. Believe me, I didn't look anything like this when I was with Block. I couldn't have. He didn't pay any attention to me."

"So you haven't had much experience with sex," Delusia said, still amazed.

"Oh, I have plenty of experience, with myself."

"That's what I mean. When you fantasize sex, you tend to ideal-ize it. I was going to give it up in a bed covered with a canopy, the sides hung in diaphanous fluff, floating on a cloud of bliss while my lover lifted me to unbearable heights of bliss. As it turned out, it was little better than what Jarred did to me, except Jarred knew what the heck he was doing every second he was doing it, the bas-tard."

"Well, I've thought about it," Marise said, "but I haven't really fantasized about it. I mean, what else can he do, kiss me a little, feel me up, stick it in."

"With me, the guy tried to find my gag point, mauled my nipples with his fortunately bitten off fingernails, then tried to stick it in the front without even waiting me to get into an accommodating position."

"Block won't have problems in that department" Marise said. "That's why I picked him. He's been linked with some of the most interesting women alive. It's even said he was romantically in-volved with the untouchable Danette Lansdowne."

She paused.

"I guess I'd better not build him up. He might like you better than me."

"Believe you me," Delusia said, not without hostility, "it'll be a long time before I have sex with a man again. I can justify other things, especially if I think of Jarred, and it's not sex, at least I don't think it is. I'm going to experiment with woman, especially with all these R girls around here. Don't forget, you're one, at least in form."

She smoothed the blue dress around her figure.

"Which reminds me, you were going to show me where you're keeping him."

Marise carefully finished restoring the dark line Ralisse said was indispensable to draw attention from her too round eyes, put a touch of blush on to hollow out her cheeks, and carefully replas-tered a stray strand of hair on her forehead.

"Sort of like putting a computer back together," she commented. "Once you know where everything goes, and why, it's a piece of cake."

Delusia brought over the green evening gown they'd settled on earlier and helped Marise get it on. "I can't pop any more stitches on the front or you'll pop out yourself. The way they fixed your hair . . ."

She moved behind Marise to see if she could leave the zipper in back partially open.

"Yes. Your hair will cover it. Now," she moved back around to the front, "good, that ought to make Ronnie pop his pants."

"I want him to see you first," Marise said.

"I said I'm not going to have anything to do with him or any other man."

"I still want to give him the opportunity to choose," Marise re-plied. "I want him to want me."

"Maybe I'd better dress down," Delusia said.

"No, I want you to dress just the way you are, stunning." She took one last look at herself in the mirror. "Would you really have used the knife on Jarred. I mean, could you have cut him?"

"No different than killing a rogue ostrich, except an ostrich will only hurt you if it's threatened. Speaking of Jarred . . ."

"Okay, I'm ready, let's go."

Marise formed a picture of the relationship of the fish room, as Delusia called the room with the aquarium, and the suite where they'd freshened up, bringing to mind the Jarrezonian floor plan she memorized in the hanger. She pictured the route between the room where she'd been imprisoned, now Jarred's permanent home, and her suite.

She walked out the door, Delusia close behind, and bypassed the entrance hall by taking a back hallway next to the kitchen. If her memory was correct or they hadn't changed the layout, she should come up on the side of a little guardroom, the entrance opposite the room leading to Jarred's library/study/fish room complex.

"It should be just behind this door," she said softly, Delusia close behind her.

She quietly pushed the door open.

The lighting in the small room was subdued. A small desk and chair were placed next to a sink and coffee server, the grouping occupying the space to the left of a large, complicated door directly across from the door they were entering. A kaki back was to the right of the door.

Marise hesitated a moment and Delusia stopped just behind her, looking at the scene over Marise's shoulder. The guard, Marise fig-ured it was Ronbodlt, was wearing earphones, standing on her toes so she could see through an oblong window separating the guard-room from Jarred's room. The buttons of her kakis were open and her kakis had slipped several inches down her back to reveal a startlingly strip of pink, the shiny color of the silk totally out of place between the mottled kaki material. The woman's right arm snaked down in front of her, lodged between her body and the wall. Her other hand, palm open, pressed firmly against the wall to give her support as she ground her hips back and forth over her hand.

Marise wondered if she should quietly withdraw and wait for her to finish with herself, wait quietly, playing the voyeur until she finished, or interrupt her before she finished, a thought that made her cringe. The indecision produced a slight backward motion, causing her to bump into Delusia who, not yet seeing what was go-ing on, let out a small exclamation. Ronbodlt smoothly extracted her hand, removed her earphones and hitched up her pants as she turned to see who was there.

The confirmation that it was Ronbodlt flashed Marise's mind back to the first time she met her and Rogay. Jarred left her with them in his not-so-secret study, They came over and gently es-corted her to the door they'd entered.

"I'm Ronbodlt, and this is Rogay, we'll try to make things as pleasant as we can for you. Follow me."

Marise followed, with Rogay behind. The light was off in the room, but as she passed through the doorway, she felt a bolt on the back of her neck and started falling forward.

Ronbodlt turned to catch her, Rogay turned on the light, and to-gether, the two locked Marise into the devilish contraption Jarred had devised to satisfy his own twisted pleasures.

"Hmmm," Marise moaned, regaining consciousness, "that wasn't so gentle."

"We're sorry, Honey, but we're doing what we have to do."

"What do you mean?"

"If we don't do what Jarred tells us to do, we'll end up in that sling again," Rogay said.

"And no one but the R girls wants to end up in that sling," Ron-bodlt added. "You're an R girl, at least you're going to be, so while it'll be excruciatingly painful for the first several weeks, you'll come to enjoy it immensely. Us, the matrons, only get a taste of it as punishment when we don't do exactly as we're told."

"What does he make you do?" Marise asked.

"Anything and everything," Rogay responded.

"Although, with the two of us, not everything," Ronbodlt added. "We draw the line at torture and murder. When we came here, we thought we were getting high paying jobs, but it turned out we were captives. The only way anyone leaves here is the way Jarred wants them to leave. More often than not, it's with a wreaked body, mercilessly tortured to death by the other matrons who have been taught their skills by example in this very room. They're then left to rot on the banks of the Amazon, where they're eaten and their bones washed out into the Atlantic.

"Both Rogay and I, we have some management skills, so when we found Jarred had erased our existence to the outside world, we made a deal we'd manage the matrons if we didn't have to partici-pate in any of their crimes. He agreed."

"If we had our way," Rogay said, "it'd be him, not you, in that sling, but our fate is sealed."

"What's he planning to do to me?"

"Oh, you don't want to know," Ronbodlt said, "just know that you'll get through it physically unharmed, although mentally bro-ken. Now we've other things to do. I'm going to give you a little sedative so you can get some rest before Jarred gets here."

"Hi, Risa," Ronbodlt said, startling Marise out of her recollec-tions. "I was just exercising my prerogatives to catch a little of the show. Jarred's girls are experimenting with giving him what they think is pleasure. They're a little tentative, but he was a good teacher."

Marise reversed her course, letting Delusia regain her balance, and they walked over to Ronbodlt, who gave them both a smart sa-lute while giving her buckle a final yank.

"Delusia is in charge," Marise said.

Ronbodlt walked over to the basin, washed her hands, then shook Delusia's hand. "Glad to meet you, boss," she said respectively

"Jarred's girls are experimenting with him?" Delusia asked hesitantly. "What kind of experimenting would . . . ah . . .make . . . ah . . . give . . ."

"Put me in the mood for a little self-pleasure," Ronbodlt finished for her. "I'll show you."

She walked over to the door and touched a button.

Sections of the metal casing turned clear, providing a view of the room through the impenetrable glass.

"Oh," Delusia said quietly, the sound being broken off as her chest muscles captured the breath in her lungs. Her hand went re-flexively to her stomach.

Marise's hand also moved to her stomach, but her breath stopped without a sound.

Sound made no difference because Jarred, head thrown back, presenting a face contorted in pain, was clearly making noise, noise that wasn't coming through the sound proof glass of the door. Ma-rise understood now why Ronbodlt had been standing on her toes looking through the window. The contraption into which Jarred was strapped spread lengthwise between the room's two doors was at a level that prevented them from seeing what was going on at the far end. She could see bits and pieces of Ralisse and Renell between Jarred's legs, which were elevated by the stirrups so his stomach blocked the view. Reanne and Reline were on either side of his legs and she could see Reanne off to the side testing various pinchers on her finger to see what marks they left.

"Phew," Delusia uttered as she was finally able to relax the muscles locking her lungs. "What was that? I've never felt anything like it before. Did you feel it, too?" she asked Marise.

"Yes, it's the feeling you get when you hear or read about some-body being tortured," Marise said.

"Is that what they're doing to him?" There was a touch of jeal-ousy in Delusia's voice.

"That bevy of bottoms," Ronbodlt said, laughing, "they wouldn't torture an ant. They're basically a bunch of depressives. Jarred's tortures zone them out, send them into another dimension, and when they come out, they're happy." She turned to Marise. "Pretty clever of you to convince them Jarred was permanently depressed, what did you say, the black dog had taken up residence in his mind and he needed to be made happy. They're sure taking their time learning how to, shall we say, make him happy. Got to admit, they're doing a good job of it."

"But what was the feeling?" Delusia asked Ronbodlt. "You were masturbating yourself. Is it sexual? It felt irresistible, just like sex is after a certain point, but there's a physical act that'll end the sexual feeling. Sex doesn't seem to be an appropriate response to the sensation. More like revulsion, or at least that's what reason tells me, I shouldn't get pleasure out of watching pain."

"If you don't think you can get pleasure out of watching it," Ronbodlt said, "wait till you try it. You just might. Jarred sure does."

"What would ever drive somebody to cause pain?" Marise asked. "Especially to get pleasure out of it."

"Ha," Ronbodlt snorted. "Look at the world. The impulse to cause pain is universal, and the pleasure obtained from doing so is funda-mental. Hasn't anyone ever hurt one of you so badly all you could think about was getting your revenge? You don't have to be physi-cally injured, in fact being physically injured is a mere trifle to the overwhelming injury that can be inflicted on the mental level, an injury that occurs every time you think of the humiliation it caused you."

The three watched, fascinated, as the five R girls worked on Jarred

"You can't tell me you haven't formed a picture of yourself re-living the injury in your mind," Ronbodlt continued, "forming a painful picture of being humiliated, resulting in ceaseless pain, sending waves of torment into the very fibers of your systems, the core of your being. What's your response? Are you going to just sit there and let the anger and frustration quietly tear you apart, dis-rupt your breathing, juggle your heart beat, exercise your sweat glands, cobble your breathing or are you going to do something about it?"

Delusia, more than the others, was transfixed as she watched one of the girls carefully wrap a wire around the huge cock he'd tortured her with, one of the girls carefully stretching it up to full length.

"Don't bother answering," Ronbodlt said, answering her own question. "You're going to do something about it. What? Your going to create a picture of the person who caused you the damage and start to do some damage to them. You're going to start off beating them up over and over, time and time again, each time feeling the exultation that comes from using thoughts of inflicting pain to re-lieve the pain your inflicting on yourself. Each blow to the image you have of them in torment is a temporary release from the tor-ment you're raining on yourself thinking about the injustice. Soon just pummeling them with blows isn't enough. You want to take your time, savor the release you're getting from your own pain for a longer interval."

Delusia watched as they finished their careful wrapping and then went over to some sort of box and started to confer, one of the girls picking up a bundle of what looked like probes.

"You alter your picture of them," Ronbodlt continued, "tie them up, restrain them so you can inflict the blows with greater leisure. When you have them tied up, you find, to your delight, you don't have to inflict the blows yourself, you can make up ways to cause indescribable pain, pain you've never felt but pain you know will be excruciating. You conjure up a belt to flay flesh, red-hot pinchers to pick it away ounce-by-ounce, pins to bedevil nails, knives to slice off appendages piece by piece. Pretty soon you pass the re-lease from pain and fall into the pleasure of the pain you're causing. Your mouth becomes dry, your thighs wet, your will strong, your legs weak. Your focus becomes so intense, you all of a sudden wake up, nails dug into your own blood flecked palms, shaking, trying to orient yourself."

"And people wonder why humans are the only creature that tortures and murders its own kind," Delusia said quietly, unable to take her eyes off one of the girls who'd separated one of the probes from the others.

"It's a by-product of the ability to construct a picture of real-ity, and then alter that reality," Marise said, "not a very promis-ing one, either, if we're what the universe developed to perceive itself."

"What's the connection to sex?" Delusia asked Ronbodlt, watch-ing as they tested the knobs on the box. "You were responding to it sexually."

"I don't know. I always have. When I was young, I went to leather bars where they acted out dominant and submissive plays. I used to tend bar just to be there. They'd march some guy out and tie him up to posts. I'd just stand there, stunned, watching, every motion burning itself into my memory. Then, whack, with the first sound of leather on flesh, I'd go into a frenzy. When I came out of it, I'd be somewhere, anywhere, with my sweater up or my pants open, my hands all over myself. It was incredible. Of course, I was younger, then. I'm a little more controlled now and, to tell the truth, I'd never do anything like it in reality."

"But what about your earlier experiences with sex?" Marise asked.

Delusia was silent as one of the girls touched the probe to one of Jarred's nipples. Her stomach jumped higher then he could arch his back from the pain.

"Experiences with sex?" Ronbodlt snorted. "It's not sex."

"What was it, then?"

"Pain," she said. "Pain pure and simple." Ronbodlt spit. "From the time of three, maybe earlier, I don't know, but I remember three because that was the number of candles on my birthday cake the first time I remembering it happening, one of my father's drinking buddies got me in a bedroom and started beating me until I took my clothes off. It wasn't the beating that was bad, my father had been doing that to me for as long as I could remember, it was being forced to take my clothes off. I didn't understand that, and the more he insisted, the more I cried and the more he beat me. Finally, he tied my hand to the end of the bed and tore them off.

"I was praying for my father to come back with the beer to stop him, but he didn't, and he threw me over the bed, took his own pants off, and started to shove his fingers and other things into me until I was passing in and out of consciousness. I woke up to hear my father say, holy shit. I was on the guy's lap and I thought I was splitting apart, he had his thing shoved way up inside me. I was so happy my father was home, I started to reach out to him."

Ronbodlt's words were registering with Delusia, but they did so through the thrill she felt as another of the girls took a probe and put it on Jarred's other nipple, causing him to twist and contort in pain.

"He shoved my hands away, and looked down where I was stuck on the guy.

"''Damn,' he said, 'I never knew you could get it in someone so small. Here, let me have a go at her.'

"'Just a damn minute,'" the guy said, then did something real fast and gave me to my father who did the same thing.

"And it was just the beginning of forever. There was nothing I could do, no one to help me, just my mind to cope with the rage and agony. I've heard other girls have been able to create defenses, create separate personalities to cope with reality, personalities that'd disappear when daily activities returned to normal, a nor-mality that makes the reality of what was happening seem impossi-ble, but I was apparently too strong."

Delusia watched as one of the girls held up her hand to stop, then put her finger to her head like she was telling the others she had an idea. One of the girls turned the electricity off and the one with the idea took Jarred's shrunken cock in her hand and gently unwound the wire. She then took another lead, this one wider, hooked it to the apparatus and, taking Jarred gently in hand, stretching as far as possible, inserted it into the opening at the end.

"I remember every single incident," Ronbodlt said through grinding teeth. "Even though they were so similar, I probably really don't, I'm just kidding myself to feed my own frustration and anger at never having been able to do anything about it."

"Why not?" Marise asked, watching Jarred raise his head, shaking it in protest.

"He died when I was thirteen. He's gone, lying peacefully in a grave somewhere. All the pleasure he coaxed out the end of his prick at the expense of my pain is spinning through the universe unchallenged. If I could dig up his grave, I'd grind his bones to dust and then pour acid on the dust."

"That still doesn't tell me what the feeling has to do with sex," Delusia said, knowing that it did as her pants moistened when the girls turned the electricity on and started exploring other parts of Jarred's body, this time each with a probe.

Ronbodlt shrugged. "It's the only sex I've ever had. From the time I was three, I went to sleep creating a picture of my father shackled, helpless, totally under my control, impossibly exposed to my every torment. The thoughts energized my body, made me for-get my rage, allowed me to become lost in the certainty of control-ling the outcome. I was totally at my father's mercy whenever he wanted me, or wanted to bring some of his drinking buddies over so he could watch them do me. When I lay in bed, turned the lights out, and created the picture of my father the way I wanted him, I con-trolled my destiny."

Delusia's eyes grew wide as Jarred limpness disappeared when the probe disappeared below, apparently into his ass.

"During the day, I always kept my eyes open for new cruelties I could inflict on him. One day I was climbing up the angled leg of a swing set and saw one of the swings had been removed. I stopped and imagined him hanging on the empty loops that normally held the chains. Grasping on to the smooth pipe, my weight trying to drag me down, I became aware the effort was causing a peculiar sensa-tion between my legs, a sensation I'd never had when they were doing things to me. I hung there as long as I could, letting the sen-sation build, imagining my father hanging from his wrists, his an-kles, his ears, his thumbs, savoring the sensation building between my legs."

Delusia watched as the girls jumped in glee at the apparent pleasure they were giving Jarred, stroking the result lovingly.

"Finally, my muscles wouldn't hold me any longer and I let go and slid back down, being careful to press the area of the sensa-tions against the smooth pole as I did. I remember that as the long-est day in my life. I couldn't wait to get home and go to bed. I no sooner created a picture of my father strapped up on the wall than I snaked my hand down between my legs and felt myself. It was like living in a black and white world and seeing color for the first time. Every time I sliced into my father's body, it was like a jolt of electrical pleasure in mine."

The girls discovered something new, Delusia noted, still listen-ing to what Ronbodlt was describing. They discovered that more wires could be attached to the terminal the prick probe was work-ing on. They looked over the wall for something they seemed famil-iar with and found it, a metallic butt plug with a wire attachment, apparently releasing the probe for other pleasures.

"I worked at the image all night," Ronbodlt continued, "doing things to it I'd never known possible, exhausting myself so badly I couldn't get up to go to school the next day. The discovery the pleasure was centered at the site of my endless pain and shame confused me to say the least. But the connection the two, the source of the pain I received providing the object of my pleasure by causing it pain in my imagination, was unavoidable. It started to dawn on me the same thing was occurring with the men who were abusing me. My pain fed their pleasure. The problem was, my pain was real and theirs was nonexistent, it being in my mind, and therefore more pain for me."

Delusia had to restrain her hand as the probe, released from its anal duty, sought out the mucus membranes in Jarred's mouth.

"And my feelings of powerlessness increased. I was a small lit-tle creature to be used at will by creatures larger than myself. They could fill my body with pain until my mind burst like a fourth of July rocket, and I could only imagine doing things to them, only think of hurting them, never hurt them."

"What did you do?" Delusia asked, incapable of taking her eyes off the girls as each used their probes wherever they could get a reaction from Jarred, delighting in the pleasure they were giving him. Jarred was beyond reason, his contortions, even restrained, qualifying him for a circus award.

"Size was paramount," Ronbodlt answered, "so I started to eat, get fatter. Getting fatter didn't let me hurt them. They were stronger, but it made it harder to throw me around, to use me, to hurt me. My weight resulted in less and less pain. They really had to be drunk to pester me, which of course made it worse, but less often is better than constantly."

"And this is how you grew up," Delusia said incredulously, "until your father died?"

"When my father died, I was thirteen, and I figured I could lose some weight, and be like other children. However, as soon as my body started to emerge from the blubber, the guys at school were on me like pimples. The bastards were all the same, so I bulked up again and decided if they could get away with hurting girls, I could get away with hurting them. I got one in the woods one day when he was coming home and after hitting him with a log, stripped him and tied him up so he couldn't move. I then went looking around his body pinching and squeezing things to see what would hurt him the most. It wasn't long before I had to shove his underpants into his throat to keep him from raising the dead with his cries and screams. All the time, I was trying to feel the pleasure I got from my imagination, but I was barren, I got nothing, no feeling except perhaps revul-sion."

That certainly wasn't the way Delusia felt as she watched one of the girls jump up and down, clapping her hands in glee. She mo-tioned to the other, who came over to the box. Apparently, she'd just discovered she could vary the current level with one of the knobs. The other four went back to work with their probes while she experimented with the control, sending Jarred into even greater muscular spasms than he'd displayed before.

"I let him go" she heard Ronbodlt say through her pleasurable wetness, "and the cops were at my door before I could get my hands between my legs for my imagined pleasure. They dragged me out of bed and took me downtown, charging me with aggravated as-sault and battery. That made me wonder. I mean, here my father, and any of his friends who happened to drop by for a beer, could cause me indescribable pain, I go out and try it once, and end up in detention. It just didn't seem right."

Delusia almost climaxed when she saw one of the girls take a vice off the wall and begin to experiment with it on Jarred's balls.

"They assigned a psychiatrist to ask me some questions. When I told her what my father had done to me, she tried to explain some sort of bull to me I never understood and I wasn't about to tell her about the pleasure I got when I imagined causing pain. I was stuck with, indeed driven to, self-gratification from images of torture, but I'm incapable of getting pleasure from doing it myself. You see, I'm forced to get sexual feelings from seeing or thinking about tor-ture, but it's present in everyone to one degree or another. Most people are like me, they couldn't do it themselves. But unlike me, I don't recoil from watching it. I get hot as a firecracker and need release, serial orgasms I can't get any other way. You both felt the sensation when I opened the window, Delusia perhaps more than you, Marise, perhaps because Delusia has a reason to feel it more because of what Jarred did to her."

She fell silent, revealing Marise's breathing, silent but present, with Delusia's more vocal as they watched the square of light with its intent figures playing out their drama of pain as pleasure.

"I could mention J. F. Damiens," Ronbodlt said into the silence. "He tried to assassinate Louis XV. Louis XV ordered Damiens put to death in the slowest and most painful method possible in the most visible part of Paris, where the most people could observe, osten-sibly so any potential assassin might see what's in store for assas-sins. The crowds of elite and commoners who viewed the daylong spectacle, the process of opening holes in Damien's body with hot pinchers and then dripping molten lead into the wounds, raised the birth rate nine months later. They brought their lunches, they brought their drinks, and they brought their lovers for a long day of sexual frenzy that followed the feelings of desire raised by watch-ing Damiens slowly mutilated."

The sound of a buzzer almost made Delusia jump out of her wet panties, so transfixed had she been as the girls once again con-ferred and started taking various interesting implements off the wall.

"Intercom," Ronbodlt finished, clicking the intercom on speaker. "Security reports Block arriving

"Have the girls dress in their skimpiest and prepare to serve me dinner for two in the Jarrecuzi," Marise told Ronbodlt.

Ronbodlt gave her sharp, almost mock salute. "Will do," she said.

Ronbodlt opened the door to Jarred's room as they left, giving full access to his agonizing screams. Delusia surreptiously checked to make sure her wet pleasure wasn't peeking through her tight dress, a small smile flickering across her face

The smile was still there as she stood in her staged position, listening to Marise enter the room behind her.

Block's gaze, which had been intently focused on her, instantly switched to Marise. She felt a twinge of unexpected jealously, but dismissed it immediately. What difference did it make if she was the loser in the comparison process when she had no interest in its outcome. And besides, there was Jarred to contemplate, or rather what she would do to him.

"Mr. Block, I presume," Marise said, pausing to mentally feel the full effect of his gaze on her body.

The words broke the tableaux and Block walked over to the fig-ure in blue, taking her hand. "Ronald Block," he said.

"Delusia Dillon," she responded, but he'd already turned his full attention to Marise.

"Risa," Marise replied, looking him directly in the eyes, taking his hand and holding it, letting the touch linger.

"If you'll excuse me," Delusia said. "I have some matters I want to go over with Jeremy."

"Certainly," Marise said. "You won't join us for dinner?"

"No. I really must get busy on this, Risa. I'm sure Jeremy is anxious to know what the situation is, or more to the point, what it's going to be for a good time to come, and I mean a good time, and I'm very anxious to show him the details. You two enjoy each other," she added, smiling at Block. "Maybe I'll see you before you leave."

"Enjoy yourself," Marise said, "just don't get carried away."

"Oh, I won't," Delusia replied, turning to leave. "I'll be care-ful, and very, vary slow."

The two watched as she left through the door Marise entered.

"Well," Marise said, turning to Block, looking closely at his face, searching for recognition. "You must be very tired after your trip." She held out her hand. "How about some dinner?"

Block showed no sign of recognition. He was too involved taking in the beauty of this vision offering him her hand. Marise was duty. Risa, with her incredible body, had awakened the newfound fasci-nation for breasts he'd accidentally programmed into his feminine ideal, a fascination he thought Dareze'd rid him of. He could think of nothing but the da Vinci of mammary perfection in front of his eager eyes, but duty still intervened.

"Did, ah, Marise leave a message for me?"

He was hesitant because he was talking to Jarred's assistant and Jarred was the enemy. The thought was beginning to form that Marise might've screwed the whole thing up, been charmed to death by Jarred. Jarred was probably still in control, somehow keeping the CORWOG forces on the perimeter while he worked up an escape plan. He had to control his sexual fascination until he found out what the situation was.

"Don't worry," Marise said, noting with satisfaction Block had no clue to her true identity. "Everybody here has been put on COR-WOG's payroll, several of the guards, the girls, me, all, in fact, but Delusia, who's here to pick up the threads of Jarred's far flung em-pire."

"And Marise?"

"She had to fly into the interior. If her Stratodart isn't out front, she's still out conferring with the survey teams. I set up the meetings for her. We all assumed Jarred couldn't continue as the project manager for the Amazonian Internationalization, which was, by the way, my primary job."

"By good, you mean . . ."

"That I'll take it over, but right now, I can spend some time with you. Come on, let me show you around."

Marise led Block into the Great Hall. The aquarium sat majesti-cally on its pedestal, Jarrezonia dominating the huge window.

"How about a drink?" she asked, pulling him playfully by the hand. "Scotch?"

"That's fine," Block replied, following her, his hand still in hers, but slightly to the rear to get a view of her marvelous gluteus maximus, incredible counterweights to her equally marvelous mammaries. It made him dizzy trying to take everything in at once, and then finding it was connected by almost nothing, the wisp of breath-taking pleasure that was her waist. He almost stumbled when she stopped at the bar.

"Aren't those piranha?" he asked, regaining his composure.

"Jarred kept them as a showcase for the Amazon. Everybody expected Piranha and Jarred gave them what they expected."

Block took the drink Marise prepared and walked over to the tank, trying to keep from looking directly at her, trying to keep from thinking about her, the very process of thinking about her forcing his eyes to move to her, fix on her presence, dumbfounding him with her flawless beauty.

He spotted the rubber teat on the backside of the case. "What's this for," he asked, "testing to see if the piranha are hungry?"

Block's studied nonchalance conflicted with the picture she had of herself, with his eyes only on her, for her, and Marise felt a twinge of doubt. She looked down and was comforted by the deep cleft her breasts made as they appeared, half globes, through the bands of cloth that barely covered her nipples while outlining their perfect shape, prominently pointed through the material. Her hand went nervously to the zipper in back, underneath her hair, to as-sure herself it was there, providing maximum exposure, ready to go the mile and unveil her sculptured body in all of its newfound magnificence, making her irresistible to the loving caresses of Ronald Block.

She picked up her wine and walked over to where he was squinting at the strange rubber diaphragm.

"That's right," she replied, although from what Delusia told her, she knew exactly what it was for.

Block stuck his finger in hesitantly, ready to jerk it out at the slightest movement from the fish languidly swimming about.

They didn't move.

"Must be full," he said, pulling his finger out, stood up and looked around, taking in the other parts of the room. He saw the battery of video equipment, but as he started over to examine it, his eyes unexpectedly moved back to Marise, freezing on her.

Block was avoiding looking directly at her, but he found himself unable not to, so he decided to quit trying.

It made him dizzy, so he downed his drink to steady his reeling mind.

Marise thought she'd seen him make a move toward her just before he downed his drink, hopefully to gather her into his arms, gently stroke her cheek with his lips, lift her onto the platform of womanhood, but he seemed to check himself, using his drink rather than her to carry out the act.

But Block had totally abdicated resistance. He saw himself in the middle of a Great Hall with an oversized aquarium looking out on a fantasy confection floating above the darkening mists in front of Risa, stuck, immobile, his body filled with so much desire, he couldn't move.

"I've prepared a nice dinner for us over in Jarrecuzi," Marise said, taking Block by the hand and leading him through the door be-hind the bar to the walkway connecting the Great Hall to Jarrecuzi arcing over the rising mists.

"Did you know that Jarred was defalcating?" Block asked.

The picture the word created in Marise's mind broke her ro-mantic mood. "He was?" She thought a minute. "What's that?" Was it something she should know?

"Stealing," Block answered. "He was converting Amazonian as-sets to his own private use."

"Marise just said he was violating the food and drug laws, cor-rupting ostrich meat he was shipping to schools under what passed as public contracts. He was stealing, too?"

Marise was genuinely surprised. Stealing from the Amazonian project was minor when compared with his attempt to take over the world, but she couldn't let Block know Jarred was making a power play to substitute himself for the duly elected Council of Representative World Governments.

Unbridled ambition, the naked pursuit of power, could justify trying to take over the world, but stealing from the Amazonian Project, the first attempt to conserve planetary resources in the name of international cooperation, that was simple stupidity.

Marise stopped midpoint in the passageway between Jarrezonia, and the Jarrecuzi, letting the settling darkness isolate the Jarre-cuzi, making it appear to float freely in space, the picture recap-turing the romantic feeling she'd temporarily lost.

"That was quite stupid of him," she said. "I want to assure you I had no idea he was, what do you call it, defalcating," she said, laughing. "It sounds so gross, he was defalcating all over himself and Jarrezonia. Yet he built this place with his own funds."

Marise took Block by the arm and began walking slowly toward the floating vision.

"What makes someone who has it all start stealing," she asked "especially from a public project, a project that's as visible as Jarrecuzi there?"

They came to the end of the tunnel connecting the Jarrecuzi with Jarrezonia. Both stopped cold. One step more and they'd fall off the walkway into the Amazon below. Marise had taken the walkway earlier and knew it was solid, but now it was invisible, with the waters of the Amazon rippling quietly in the moonlight perhaps forty feet beneath their feet. In the moonlight, the water looked placid, but being the Amazon, somehow took on ominous tones.

The momentary hesitation, the sensation, was contradicted by the light forty feet ahead, an illuminated oasis in the darkness whose existence implied a solid floor beneath and thus, a solid floor between them and the Amazon below.

Marise tested it first, putting her foot out gingerly while in-creasing the hold she had on Block's arm, not loosening the pressure even when her foot found purchase on the invisible surface. Moving forward, she pulled Block with her onto the surface, only then see-ing the tiny firefly-like sparks announcing its surface and providing a path from the end of the walkway to the circular island of light at the center of Jarrecuzi.

"An elaborate setting for dinner," Block remarked.

"And maybe more," Marise whispered, pulling him onto and over the silvery shimmer below, the waters now reflecting tiny dots of starlight as well as the moon.

Block slid his feet, getting assurance there actually was a sur-face to walk on, whether it was eternity or reality, and, reas-sured, followed closely behind Marise whose beauty, shadowed but undimmed by the effect, drew him forward by its very existence.

They moved across the circle of light at the end of the walkway to the lush sunken oasis where Marise planned to wine, dine and supine Block. In the middle, two glasses of wine rested on a raised table sparkling in the moonlight, the bubbles rising in golden swirls and, bursting into the darkness, becoming tiny sparkles of reflected light.

Marise handed Block a glass and, her hand still firmly in his, took the other, holding it up in a silent toast he gladly matched, entwining his arm in her's to drink.

The table itself was circular. Up close, it was one of three con-centric surfaces, one atop the other, each recessed six inches from the one below. Overall, it averaged six feet in diameter. Block, us-ing his finger, idly pushed one of the surfaces to confirm it rotated, then did the same on each to see the layered table was a tiered Lazy Susan carrying three levels of dishes accessible to the fixed table below.

Still holding hands, they walked around opposite sides of the cir-cular table, their arms making an arch as they moved toward the cushions on the other side. The seats were built in front of a mas-sive bed that spread in a crescent away from the table.

"Where's the Jacuzzi?" Block asked.

"I think it's the idea, rather than the reality, he was trying to preserve," Marise replied softly.

"You've been here before?" Block asked, settling into the form fitting chair that adjusted itself so it provided easy access to the table and Marise's chair.

"Of course, silly" Marise said coyly, "No one can work close to Jarred without succumbing to his considerable charms."

She picked up a small bell and shook it, the delicate sounds matching the sparkling points of light all around them.

Block looked up, thinking the bell had turned off the oval light at the end of the tunnel. Startled, he realized with a jolt of excite-ment, the light in the oval was filled with a moving vision of femi-nine flesh floating luminously over the darkness.

He blinked to get a better look, thinking he was seeing double, the first apparition joined by a second, identical, then a third, fourth, and fifth. He looked for the sixth, but realized five was it, five visions of loveliness floating in the semi-darkness.

He looked around for the source of the light enhancing their creamy flesh and, finding none, returned his gaze to the visions, spotting the soft cold light emitters hanging from various folds of the diaphanous material barely covering their fabulous bodies. They all stopped in unison at the other side of the tiered table and depos-ited their burdens, cups with spicy shrimps, sauces, clams, oys-ters, vegetables, fruits. Every movement accentuated their young firm bodies exultant in their near nudity, inviting, massaging the nerves running between his mind and body, strumming them with electrical bursts of anticipated pleasure. The symphony produced a picture of him reaching out and touching the girls, pulling them to-ward him over the back of the cushions into a tangled bed of breasts and buttocks, slender stomachs and legs so long they reached into his crotch.

No matter how much the images drew visions of the possible, of indescribable pleasure, they failed to obliterate his desire to move his eyes back to the flawless form beside him that was Risa.

"So what do you think?" Marise asked.

"On . . ." the sound of Marise's voice brought him back to reality but he was grasping for the subject.

"About Jarred stealing from the public trough when he had all of this," Marise said, gesturing around the suspended bubble of light far above the Amazon River.

Block rotated the concentric tables, bringing the colorful dishes to their side, his eyes arcing over the shrimp, glimpsing five sets of perfect buttocks bouncing into the darkness, each with its own personality and promise.

"I think everybody is generally two people," he said, picking up a shrimp and dipping it into one of the sauces.

"Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?" Marise asked, taking the unof-fered shrimp from Block and popping it into her mouth.

"The idea of Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde involves the con-cept we all harbor a hidden evil that's just waiting to come out."

"God and the devil," Marise commented.

"Only if you define the devil as an unseen cause of actions. Jarred, a successful market participant, is appointed to a prestig-ious post, the internationalization of the Amazon, and he brings his wealth, builds a world within a world, conforming a small area of the Earth to enclose his desires."

Block waited for the R girls to drop their second contingent on the table before rotating a level, bringing them crabmeat.

"So he takes from the market," he continued, "and gives back, and the market honors him, allows him leeway to manipulate his surroundings. How does that turn into stealing from it, the second Jarred, the thief?"

Marise as Risa couldn't tell Block it was the drive to power, that Jarred was attempting to take over the world.

"I think some people start to live in their own fantasy world, which this is, and are so used to having things go their way, they begin to view themselves as something special," she finally said.

"This is a fantasy world here, isn't it? You live in it."

"It never made me think I could do anything illegal," Marise re-plied. "I'm just doing a job."

"Well, believe me, Jarred thought he could get away with any-thing," Block said, spinning the table to bring around more delica-cies. "You're lucky you're not involved."

"Thank you," she said, taking a glass of white wine from Re-anne, who curtsied in unison with Ronay who'd done the same for Block.

Block twirled the liquid in the glass, then took a sip.

"We're all two different people and simply stated, the way our mind operates, we need to adopt the persona that makes us com-fortable. If the cards that you've been dealt give you low self-esteem, you might run around looking like a frump because that's what makes you feel comfortable. If you, ah, let's say, you're as beautiful as you are, you're going to exploit that beauty whether it's for business or political reasons, or just for personal pleas-ure."

"Ah," Marise said, looking closely to see if he was talking about her, "what do you think turns the R girls into submissives, wafting around according to Jarred's whims?"

"Well," Block replied, again rotating the table for a delicacy, "it's hard to tell what makes someone submissive. There's no end to people, regardless of sex, who want to be abused in the most amazing ways. Before the Internet came along, people with unusual sexual proclivities pretty much had to live in silence and frustra-tion, or if they were bold enough to propose them to a partner, be ostracized."

"I'd never thought of that," Marise said, as the R girls began loading up the other side of the stacked Lazy Susans with main courses. "I knew a girl once who liked to be spanked, and I don't mean just spanked, she wanted to be slapped on her, ah, feminine parts. It was the only way she could get an orgasm. So she goes and gets married, and spends several years without ever having an or-gasm. Then she asked her husband for what she wanted and he kicked her out the next day, divorced her without ever doing what she wanted."

"The Internet provided a method for people with diverse sexual needs to find each other, form a community," Block noted. "That's probably where Jarred gets his R girls, he plucks the cream of the crop. You're not submissive, are you?"

Marise laughed. "No, but I see why you asked. Listen, it's hard not to take advantage of the R girls' knowledge of cosmetics. They haven't got much else to do all day long."

She didn't want to tell him just how submissive she was to the desire for him to get in her pants, although she didn't have any on. Her mind, however, couldn't help but wander to the R girls caught up in their desire for abuse, a desire driving them to the grossest abuses again and again. She knew they were driven to it, but after what Block said about the Internet, community, and Jarred's plucking the cream of a particular community, she realized what the bargain they were making was.

The R girls were loading the top Lazy Susan with desserts and after dinner drinks. Block rotated a decanter of dark yellow, almost blood red brandy, pouring each a splash in the matching snifters.

Marise, who'd been wrapped up in the conversation, was sur-prised as her image appeared in the decanter, both aggressive and invitingly compliant. It startled her back to her main purpose.

She'd wondered earlier when she was overseeing the prepara-tion of the massive bed in Jarrecuzi why, given Jarred's proclivi-ties, he hadn't equipped the bed with restraints. Perhaps the straight, elaborate sex the bed suggested was designed to hide his sadistic proclivities. She wished she'd added them so she could strap Block in and proceed to deflower herself at her leisure.

But, she thought, brushing his arm as she took the Brandy Snif-fer, her deflowering would be better at his hopefully frantic lei-sure.

Just so his leisure started right now.

Block felt her touch and again became aware of Risa's image, the most perfect women he'd ever seen, a women he'd made up in his mind a million times, but one he'd never visualized sitting with, available to pleasure his senses.

Before her touch, her beauty, her lines, angles and curves, their shadows and colors, sent electrical jolts into his body, pro-ducing bits and pieces of emotion, excitement, wonder, all unclas-sifiable, just beyond understanding.

Marise was so beautiful he couldn't, if he shut his eyes, recall her beauty. To feel her beauty, he had to look directly at her, visu-ally take in her form, her presence, the image that was her.

She only existed when he was looking directly at her.

Blinking, closing his eyes, moving into the darkness outside the Jarrecuzi, ended her existence. She ceased to exist in his mind, his only memory her imprint on his body, a desire driving his eyes to search out what had created his pleasure, finding it only when he was again looking at her.

Her touch, however, created an uncontrollable desire in his body satisfiable only by reaching out and touching her in turn, bringing her into his mind through his sense of touch as well as through his vision.

His mind, directed by his eyes, created a picture of him reach-ing out to caress her, revel in her existence, but as his mind re-sponded by sending out instructions to his arm to move, it became aware of the vast distance it had to travel to make contact.

The futility of crossing that distance made the attempt useless and his muscles relaxed before he even started to move, making his aborted attempt to reach out almost imperceptible.

But not so imperceptible Marise didn't see it. Her movement, her casual caress, elicited a response, albeit an aborted one.

She moved her hand more purposely up his arm.

His arm recoiled beneath her touch as if his flesh had an opposite polarity to her's.

As she moved it away, however, the polarity reversed, with his hand racing to embrace hers.

She rushed to meet his hand only to see him strain to avoid the contact, pulling his hand away, the momentum moving him physi-cally further away.

She turned so that her upper body invited him, her lips inches from his own, her chest almost brushing his, and, reaching behind her, flipped the catch on the zipper, letting it slide down her back with a tiny zip.

Block's chin involuntarily tucked as the front of her dress popped off the end of her breasts, hitting him in the chest before falling between them, leaving her breasts bare, open, swelling in anticipation of his touch.

They got his attention. He opened his eyes wide, his chin un-tucking on his stiffened shoulders as he attempted to comprehend the glory filling his vision.

Marise arched her back, her pointed nipples increasing her al-ready overwhelming existence in hopes of attracting his hands, his mouth, anything physical.

Block returned to his dance of space, moving his entire body, stiff, unyielding, away from her, never varying the short distance between his chest and her perking nipples.

She moved back from him. The polarity reversed again as he followed her, keeping his closeness without touching her.

The zipper, caught by the bulge of her hips, needed coaxing, so she reached back, being careful not to change the distance between their bodies, and eased it over the slope of her buttocks where it found a downhill path to accelerate her promise.

She leaned back slowly so Block could move around in front of her and slid herself up the back of the cushion toward the bed.

The zipper, caught between her and the cushion, slid down, parting at the bottom, allowing her dress to fall completely open between her and Block.

She let it slide from her body.

Block reflexively moved his head back to better view the en-tirety of the wonder slipping into his reality. At the same time, he was moving with her, his hands gaining purchase on the edge of the bed behind her, incapable of letting go, relaxing his muscles so he could fall in passion on perfection.

As Marise moved onto the bed, however, Block rolled onto his side so he could face her, taking in her entirety. She was deter-mined to end the dance. He had nowhere to go but in her, covering her with kisses, blinding her mind with caresses while he moved inexorably to her intended purpose.

She shut her eyes and waited a nonexistent second before she felt a gentle breeze on her cheek, a soft smacking sound in her ears. When she opened her eyes, she saw Block's hand caressing the air just above her face, his lips kissing the air he'd touched.

She leaned forward to put her lips in the place of the air, but he danced away, staying just out of reach.

He'd opened his pants to free himself, and they'd ridden down past his thighs, leaving him exposed to her gaze. She looked down to see his excitement.

She saw it, and was unexpectedly overwhelmed, having never been this close to an operating member of the opposite sex.

Damn it, she thought, this has got to be it.

She reached down, and, hesitating, more to prepare herself to remember the experience than from inexperience, took the target of her pleasure gently in her hand. At first, she thought she'd just gotten on a wild horse, but only for a moment because this horse made a mighty buck and died in its tracks.

The jolt of electricity that the touch of his smooth, hard skin sent through her body distracted her attention, so it took a second for her to feel the warm, sticky sensation that'd replaced the smooth skin, the smooth skin wrinkling, shriveling up in her hand.

Her first thoughts, what have I done to him, with visions of the wicked witch melting in water, were replaced with the realization, as Block collapsed snoring quietly beside her, she'd ejaculated him by merely touching him.

Excitement was still reverberating through her body, echoes of what might have been, as she took stock. She moved her hand be-tween her legs to see if she could take advantage of the dwindling feeling, but her touch dampened the bell and brought out her disap-pointment.

She shut her eyes. The picture of Risa, reflected in the brandy decanter, formed behind her eyelids.

"Hey," she yelled, rolling off the edge of the bed, holding her discarded dress in front of her body. She flung it aside, leaving herself bare beside the tiered table.

"Ralisse," she yelled again, "are you out there? Turn the damn lights on, will you?"

"You want the lights, Risa?" Ralisse said, her voice coming out of the darkness.

"Yes," she shouted back.

The Jarrecuzi was immediately bathed in bright light.

Marise blinked, looking around the vast room, feeling small in comparison.

Block lay sprawled on the bed, his breathing becoming silent.

Marise walked over to the kitchen area beside the tube. Ronay and Reanne appeared, wearing smocks, Reanne with rubber gloves holding a towel and a dish.

"Where're the clothes I wore when I came here?" she asked. "I want to get cleaned up and back to work."

Ralisse led her through the room where she'd been made over and showed her the bathing facilities.

It felt good washing everything off. When she came out, the lights were once again dimmed, the dishes and table removed, the place turned into Block's bedroom. She ducked into the corridor and disappeared through a sliding panel leading to the hanger area.

Getting into the pilot's seat, she started the engine and, opening the hanger door, moved the Stratodart out of the hanger onto the lawn beside Block's craft.

She woke early the next morning to a chime specific to The Chairman. He was in Taranto and wanted Block and her to visit at their convenience, which, the way he moved around, was immedi-ately. She went into Jarrezonia, through the front door this time, punching her computer ID for the puzzled guard at the door.

Disappearing once again through a sliding door into the hidden passageways, she made her way quickly to the Jarrecuzi.

Block was up, talking to the R girls.

He understood completely, after the prior night's stupendous sexual experience, why he felt so aroused talking to these beauties. He let his mind run down between his legs. There was no question he'd experienced an explosive climax. When he awoke, he was stuck to the bed, and it'd taken a vigorous shower to get him back in shape.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember the sen-sation of entering Risa.

And worse, neither Ralisse here, nor Renell, Ronay, Reline or Reanne could tell him where Risa was. Even though he couldn't re-member being in her, he had an overwhelming desire to get back in her, to occupy her, to fit in her skin.

"Ah, Marise," he said, as Marise emerged from the tube. "Where is Rise? Have you seen her?"

"Ronald. How are you? Risa, no, she had to go out and mend some broken fences I found on the project. We've got to get going. The Chairman wants us to meet with him as soon as possible."