Tanith Lee by Medra

Author:Medra [Medra]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:57+00:00

III

A couple of hours before sunrise, Jaxon left his lover, Medra, sleeping. He returned to his rooms on the seventy-fourth floor and operated the communicator. He gave details to the mother-ship of his time of return. He told the government officer who manned the intercom that there would be a passenger on the shuttle. The officer was open-faced and noncommittal of tone, not discouraging. “She’s the last of the colony,” said Jaxon, reasonably, insidiously threatening. There would be no trouble over it. The story of the MDD had been run to ground and could be exploded. Spirits would be high, and Jaxon in favor. Maybe rich, for a short while. She would like that, the harmony money would produce for her, not the raw essentials of cash… .

Having switched off and dismantled the communicator into its compact travelling form, Jaxon lay back on his bed. He thought about the woman fifteen stories above him, five minutes away. He thought about her as noncommittally and easily as the young man on the ship’s bridge. But nevertheless, or perhaps sequentially, a wave of desire came in on him. Jaxon was about to leave the bed and go back to her, when he heard the door open and a whisper of silk. Medra had come to him.

She walked towards him slowly. Her face was very serious and composed. In the dimness of the one low lamp he had kept alight, her black hair gathered up the shadows and draped her with them. She was, no less than he, like a figure from a myth. No less than he. More so than he. And then he saw—with a start of adrenalin that brought him to his feet—that the one low lamp was shining through her.

“What,” he said, putting his hand to the small gun by the bed—uselessly—”is going on? A real ghost, or just an inefficient hologram? Where are you really, Medra? If you are Medra.”

“Yes,” she said. The voice was exactly hers, the same voice which, a handful of hours ago, had answered his in passion and insistence. “I’m Medra. Truly Medra. Not a hologram. I must approximate. Will you countenance an astral projection—the subconscious, free of the body?”

“Oh, fine. And the body? Let’s not forget that. I’m rather fond of your body, Medra. Where is it?”

“Upstairs. Asleep. Very deeply asleep. A form of ultra-sleep it’s well used to.”

“If you’re playing some game, why not tell me the rules?”

“Yes, I know how dangerous you are. I know, better than I do, that is, my physical self. I’m sorry,” the translucent image of Medra said to him, most politely. “It can only be done this way. Please listen. You’ll find that you do grasp everything I say to you. On some level, you’ve known all the time. The inner mind is always stronger and more resilient than the thinking process we have, desperately, termed the brain.”

He sat down on the bed again. He allowed her to go on. At some point, he let the gun slide from his hand.

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