The air was getting hot and sticky, and there was the ripe sweet smell
that made him sick. At that moment, Caine realized that he hadn't eaten
since this trip began and his stomach was like a hard knot.
Ahead was a small dark opening. Caine could see there a large
scattering of the purple wild grapes out of which the common settlers
had made so much wine. He pushed into the clearing and grabbed a
handful of the rich-colored fruit.
He kept his back to the girl who had entered the clearing behind him.
He sorted out one of the ripest of the grapes and lifted it to his
mouth.
He felt his hand being caught.
The girl was beside him and her tan fingers were around his wrist.
He turned and faced her.
With her other hand, she took the grape from his fingers and held it up
to his mouth. Her eyes were deep blue sparkling lights that shone even
in the dimly filtered light. Her skin was golden and shiny, and Caine
could see the long bare V that ran from her throat to the belted waist.
The blue dress was filled with a jutting mound on either side of the V.
She took a breath and the dress drew taut.
Caine slapped the grape from her hand.
She shook her head, her hair soft and rustling. She lifted another
grape and held it to his lips. "You can't refuse it," she said.
"The hell I can't," he said, and his hand was an arcing motion that
sent the grape whirling across the clearing.
"You can't," she repeated, and she touched her fingers against his
chest.
He watched her steadily, seeing the blue eyes narrow to thin sparkling
slits, the whiteness of the small teeth as her lips parted.
"I'm paying you back, Driver."
"You're cheap. For all your money and your breeding, you're no better
than the ones who walk the streets."
"You're right, Driver," she said, and her voice was soft and husky.
"And you want to be so strong and self-contained. You want to rule
everything you touch or look at. You worship your own shrine, Driver,
only you're not strong enough to refuse this. You can slap dead kids,
only you're too damned weak to walk away from me. You hate me for that,
Driver, and you hate yourself. But you can't do anything about it
because I'm stronger than you are, and you're weak, you're really weak,
Driver."
He watched her, and her face was a golden oval that waited for him. He
swept her hands from his chest.
She stood there, hands at her sides, and still she waited. He wanted to
lash out at her face with his fist but he couldn't. All he could do was
stand there, as though he were frozen, locked by her eyes and the white
shine of her teeth and the golden smoothness of her skin.
Then he felt his hands and arms moving and he couldn't stop them. His
fingers were jerking blue cloth and touching cool skin, and her face
was in front of his, the blue eyes glittering, the white teeth shining.
He tried to fight it and when she whispered, "You weak miserable
coward," he wanted to crack her body in two.
But he didn't and all he could do was know the golden face was coming
up to his, her eyes nearly closed, her lips apart--and then all at once
he swore and sent her spinning away from him.
He stepped back feeling his heart jumping inside of him. Sweat prickled
out on his forehead.
On the ground in front of him were five girls with the tan skin and
shimmering brown hair. He heard "Nic ..." and it was a multi-voiced
echo. Five faces paled and ten eyes stared in panic. Fifty fingers
clutched at five throats. It was a quintuple exposure of the girl he
had just held in his arms, and it made his blood thin and chill in his
veins.
"For heaven's sake, Nic ..." and the echo of five voices wavered
through the jungle.
Caine stood motionless, staring.
Five hands reached out for help. Ten eyes pleaded.
His nerves were like flying charges of electricity along his spine.
Then there was a sudden swift movement and the five figures before him
meshed into one jumbled mass and began moving away from him, through
the green growth.
He watched, feeling the sweat on his forehead turn cold. This would
be the way the Venusians would do it. Not force or violence, but this.
A quiet, smooth absorption of the girl through illusion, the deadliest
power of the Venusian. A hypnotic lock of his brain and hers so that
instead of seeing four green-skinned Venusians and one girl, he saw
five girls.
And there was, he knew, no way to break through the spell. The illusion
would remain true to smell and touch as well as sight and hearing.
He heard five voices ring out together through the jungle. "Nic,
please!"
* * * * *
He started forward. As he moved, he examined himself for one brief
moment, asking himself why he was going after a girl he told himself he
hated. And there was no answer, except the same pulling force that had
made him want her with every fiber of his body only a few seconds ago.
He knew, reasonably, that a loss of a girl who was a daughter of a
Colony official would have the same effect as a fired fuse in the
relations between the natives and the Colonizers. But even this was,
at the moment, unimportant, and it was only an emotion that drove him
forward, an emotion that got into his blood and brain. And he hated
it and he tried to free himself of it, but it drove him on, and all
he could think of was tearing the girl free from the grasp of the
creatures.
But how?
He didn't know, and he kept following the jumbled movement of tan skin
and blue cloth ahead of him. He couldn't use the gun at his side,
because he couldn't tell reality from illusion. He wouldn't know
whether he would find his bullet in a green globular head or in the
finely shaped head with the shimmering brown hair. He could only follow
and think, think of an answer.
The jungle rippled with the movement of the five forms ahead of him,
and Caine went on, swinging at the growth, swearing, sweating, driving
his brain to find the solution.
The figures stopped, finally, in a short vine-enclosed square. He
walked to the fringe of the opening and watched the five faces, pale
and frightened, staring back it him. Five hands went up to five mouths
and trembled against red lips. "Nic, please do something!" The five
voices rang against his ears.
"I'm here, Nic. Here!" The five faces pleaded with him.
He closed his hands, his eyes shifting from one face to another. He
couldn't tell. It was like trying to capture an image in a room full of
mirrors.
"Oh, God," the voices moaned, and together the figures slumped to the
ground.
They were considerate and polite even now, Caine thought. They were
letting her rest. They wouldn't hurt her physically, only move her
steadily away to the oblivion of illusion. Cultured, quiet, but because
of what had been done in a clearing miles back, deadly.
And he would have to fight it the same way. Against everything he had
tried to do here, he was finally ending it up, forced to fight the
people he had tried to protect and defend. He hated the memory of the
boy and he hated the girl, but he was drawn into it as though he were
being swept into a sucking, swirling whirlpool.
Caine kneeled down, his eyes watching the trembling figures in front
of him, each of the forms precise images of the girl. He was tired,
and even in the tenseness of the moment he could feel his hunger. But
there was no time now, except to try to break through this armour of
hypnotism.
"Cice," he said, listening to his voice saying her name for the first
time. "When I say move, put your right hand out in front of you."
Five faces watched him.
"Move," he said.
Five hands extended into the air.
"What's my name, Cice?"