She leaned far back in his arms, arching her fine body. "I want to go
to some dark and smoky gin-mill, and dance among the natives, to the
throbbing of tomtoms!"
Farradyne led her towards the door. The hellflower she wore in her hair
would do as much to her in a crowded nightery as it would if she were
forced to spend the next four hours in a closed telephone booth. He
wondered briefly whether he really wanted the damned thing to work; he
would much prefer to have her come to him without it--
The he forced himself to remember that she wore this hellflower not
because of his frustrated lust, but because he wanted Carolyn, alive
and vivid and charming, to change into the lifeless and futureless
woman that Norma Hannon was.
Their evening was a repetition of the evening on Mercury, except that
on Terra it was dark outside. They danced, and there was a steak dinner
at midnight, and there was Carolyn relaxed in his arms in the taxicab
on the way back to her hotel.
He took her up to her room and she handed him her key. They went in,
and Carolyn came into his arms again, soft and sweet. When he kissed
her, her response was deep and passionate in a mature sort of way
that Farradyne was not prepared for. It was not the mindless lust he
had expected. The woman in his arms was all woman and there could be
no mistaking the fact--but there was also the mysterious ability of
the woman to know when to call a halt at the proper height of the
lovemaking. She smiled a little, and put her hand on his chest.
"It's been wonderful again, Charles," she said quietly.
Farradyne rubbed his chin against the top of her head. Then Carolyn
swirled out of his arms. "It's incredibly late again, too," she told
him. "I'm going to come aboard your ship at seven tomorrow night so we
can take off before the crack of dawn. This much I'll tell you and no
more, now."
"But--"
"Easy, sweetheart, easy. Take it slow and lovely. Tomorrow night.
Tonight I need my beauty sleep."
He eyed her, saying nothing, and she laughed happily. "Charles, do me a
favor. Put this gardenia in the icebox for me. I'd like to wear it for
you tomorrow. Please?"
Farradyne nodded. Dumbly he nodded. Had that character bilked him out
of fifty dollars for a gardenia by calling it a love lotus? He watched
Carolyn put the thing into its plastic box, he watched her tie it up in
its original ribbon. She handed it to him, and then came into his arms
again for one last caress.
"Go," she told him with a wistful smile after she let him out of her
arms. "Go and dream about tomorrow night."
He went, half-propelled by her hands, his reluctance partly honest and
partly curious. But he went.
* * * * *
Farradyne walked into his spacer feeling like a man who had put his
last dollar on the turn of a card and lost. One moment he was on top of
the world with everything going according to plan; the next, his world
was kicked out from under him and he was dropped back into the mire of
fumbling, helpless ignorance.
When he entered the salon of the Lancaster he stopped short, because
the last peg had been pulled out of the creaky ladder of his success.
"What's the matter, Farradyne? Aren't you glad to see me?"
There was plenty the matter and he was not glad to see her. But she
sat there as though she had every right to bedevil his life. Her
eyes widened a bit and she came up out of her chair and towards him.
"Farradyne," she said with more eagerness in her voice than he had ever
heard before, "you've brought me a love lotus!"
Norma lifted the flower from its nest in the box, eyed it with relish,
and then buried her nose deep in the center of the blossom and inhaled
with a deep, shuddering sob. Her eyes closed, then opened slowly to
look up at Farradyne from beneath half-closed lids.
Then, oddly, she relaxed. The tension went out of her body and she
sank back against the cushions. Now Farradyne could see her face more
clearly. Her features had lost their chiseled immobility and her eyes
had lost the glassy stare. Her face became alive and mobile, and
pleasant color flooded it. Her lips parted slightly and curved into
normal lines.
The hand that held the flower lay idly on the seat beside her, the
other hand lay palm up on the other side. She looked like a young girl
that has just been kissed.
"Thanks, Farradyne," she said softly. She looked up at him with a
mixture of impishness and friendliness. "You're a sort of nice guy,
Farr--no, Charles. Probably a big lumbering bumble-puppy that doesn't
really mean any harm."
Farradyne's mind at first refused to work on any but the single
thought: Why didn't it work on Carolyn? Then he wondered whether Norma,
so obviously normal now, would react to any gesture of affection, and
absently he took a step towards her. He felt once again that flush of
pity for her, and anger for the rotten devils who had done this to her;
he wanted to comfort her. She had changed visibly from a hardened,
lackluster woman whose beauty was stiff and unnatural, to a girl whose
loveliness was vivid enough to shine through the hard facade of heavy
makeup.
"Norma," he said.
She smiled at him warmly but shook her head. Her arms raised as she
tucked the love lotus in the heavy hair over one ear. The gesture
slimmed her waist and raised her breasts, and through the triangle of
her arms he could see her eyes. They were sultry, but they rejected him
as she shook her head slowly.
"No," she said, and Farradyne stopped. "You're a nice sort of idiot,
Charles, and I've stopped hating you for the moment, but that doesn't
mean that I want you to make love to me." The smell of the love lotus,
identical to the heady perfume of a gardenia, permeated the room. Norma
breathed it in, lifting her face as she inhaled and closing her eyes.
"The smell of this is all I want."
She put her head back, and rested. A smile crossed her face, and
Farradyne realized that she had dozed off in an ecstasy of relaxation.
He wondered what to do next; his mind was torn between the desire to
protect her by letting her sleep off the effects of the love lotus, and
the certain knowledge that if he did, Norma would never leave him in
time for his meeting with Carolyn Niles tomorrow night. And of the two,
the latter was by far the more important.