Short Fiction Complete by Ray Aldridge

Author:Ray Aldridge [Aldridge, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2024-04-18T21:00:00+00:00

The following days passed in a simulation of normality. While that time lasted, Arriangel could almost believe that she was the guest of some wealthy, reclusive friend.

Accompanied by a tiny, unobtrusive mech guide, she was free to roam the vast compound—though many doors were closed to her, and she could only imagine what went on behind the steel.

She spent much time in the well-equipped gymnasium, using the devices there to restore her body to perfection. After several vigorous hours, her regrets would surrender to the anesthesia of exhaustion, and she could be happy for a while.

Nearby she found a self-service euphorium, but she felt no interest in the drugs it could dispense. Down the corridor from the gymnasium was an alcove full of sexual toys, including autonomous simulacra of various sorts, which winked and smiled at her from their preservative niches. The glass door was locked against her. For some reason she was reluctant to ask Memfis why that was so; perhaps she feared he would say that his purposes were well served by her growing sexual frustration. In all her long life, she had never been without ready companionship, and now she had another resentment to bear.

Still, late at night in her empty bed, she couldn’t help thinking about Memfis and his beauty, so that her annoyance was increasingly tinged with involuntary lust.

She swam in the large bubble pool, luxuriating in the warm, supporting water. One of her favorite diversions was a zero-gravity, intelligent maze, which reordered itself before each of her many attempts to penetrate to its heart. Its narrow tubes were spun from an empathic plastic, and as she flew slowly through the branchings and turnings, the plastic altered color in coruscating washes—and sang a low, wordless, ever-changing music.

She discovered that her holotank could be tuned to the Dystan dream, that vast tangle of story and myth, and found that the melodramatic lives of the dream-dwellers still held the same fascination for her, even in her changed circumstances. Over the hundreds of years, her old favorites had been replaced by new characters, but the dream was as vivid as before.

She was surprised to learn that Memfis was also a watcher, and they spent several evenings together in her rooms, in the glow of the dreamscreen. He spoke little, and she found undignified the thought of making friendly overtures to the slaver, so that the evenings passed uncomfortably. Still, it seemed more interesting than watching alone.

Memfis favored the doings of the lowland wizards who held fiefs at the south end of the dream’s greatest island. Currently, a handsome woman of unknown ancestry and motives was wreaking havoc in princely hearts throughout the region.

In the spell of the dream, Memfis seemed to grow younger and less driven.

“Oh yes,” he said one night, sitting beside her on her couch. “They know how to love there. If only I could reach into the dream and steal that one.” The black-haired dream-dweller lay in a glade, naked on her cloak, her white body dappled with sunbeams.

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