The Third Force : a novel of Gadget by Laidlaw Marc

Author:Laidlaw, Marc
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction
Publisher: New York : Scribner Paperback Fiction
Published: 1996-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

MARC LAIDLAW

could pour for Slowslop, there was a rap at the door and a heavy-set, balding man peered into the room. She recognized Oskar Gondarev from surveillance photographs taken by Third Force agents.

Slowslop excused himself and joined Gondarev in the hall. She had covered her own glass to keep it from being refilled, but Paulo drained his in a single swallow, then pushed back in his chair.

"Let us move to a more comfortable room," he said, coming to pull back her chair.

Next door was a small parlor reeking of stale cigar smoke, containing several plush armchairs and a small leather sofa. Ancestral photographs hung on the walls, and there were shelves full of books. Old books, real books, with distinctive spines. Testing her liberty, she plucked a volume from a shelf, certain it must be one of the forbidden volumes. Orlovsky watched her with scarcely veiled amusement.

"You're welcome to borrow anything you like," he said. "I promise not to tell."

The book fell open to a color plate, a detail from an old tapestry, all the colors delicate and subdued. It was an image of a young woman seated on a green plain studded with stylized tufts of embroidered grass; she sat cross-legged, and beside her lay a unicorn with its head in her lap. It was a peaceful scene, the woman's eyes resting serenely on the trusting unicorn, and Elena turned the page expecting more of the same.

But here, in what must have been another detail from the same tapestry, the same young woman lay on her back with her arms around the unicorn's neck, one of her fists gripping its polished horn. She was disheveled, clothed only in shreds, and the unicorn stood over her with its male member enormous and erect against her bare belly.

Elena nearly dropped the book. Instead, more ill than before, she shut it quietly and slid it back onto the shelf.

Orlovsky watched her keenly, but she was careful to let her face reveal nothing.

"Please," he said, "please have a seat. Let's sit and talk. So much time has passed. Let's remember the old days for a while."

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