Rachel breathed a
sigh of relief as the electronic twang of the latest popular song
“Crystal
Magenta Cherry Soda.” began to
fade out, only to be replaced by the strident fanfare that heralded a
breaking news story. “Revolutionary news rocks the brothel world,”
a breathless voice gasped. “We are reporting live from Megan of
Urban's Sacrifice. The
exquisite Victim has outdone all expectations. She has show her
cutting wit with such great knee-slappers regarding her former
four-star competition as dismissing Smith's slogan about unearthing
ancient secret treasures with a snicker of 'very ancient' and
Hubbard's claim about clearing all your stress with the rejoinder
that they are still far too busy clearing all the garbage from their
last party out of their front room. While her comments about
Dunstan's two-for-one deal are too racy to repeat, we promise they
were hilarious. Popular commentators agree, brothel gains one star.
Urban's is now Her-Babylon's
newest five-star brothel. Watch out ladies, you've got some serious
competition.” Before the announcer could get another word in,
Susan walked over and switched off the radio, her mouth pressed into
a thin line of tension.
“I always hated
Urban's,” sniffed Rachel as
she squinted into the mirror, attempting to keep her hand steady as
she drew in the huge side wings of her sparkling silver eye-liner.
Urban's
had always seemed solidly mid-level to her and their slogan:
“Crusaders for Change,” did nothing to improve their status.
Perhaps because, for them, “Change” seemed to mean lowering
standards and raising prices.
“They're so
crude,” Susan fumed, forgetting to remove the hair-art machine from
her head and bashing her knuckles on it as she waved the pore
contractor about in aggravation. “They can't afford to go to the
top ranking clothing artists like Steward's Presents, so they buy
cheap knock-offs of the latest style...and then they stand out on the
street flaunting them, almost like a one-star brothel taxi line. And
their conversational skills... Did you hear those lame jokes
the Victim was spouting?”
Rachel ground her
teeth. “Well, apparently, people like that. I can't
believe we're now going to be expected to move in the same social
circles as those bitches.”
“We better not.
With clothes and skills like theirs, it's not like they're a real
five-star brothel and, even if some stupid newsman insists on calling
them that, they're still the very lowest five-star brothel so
it doesn't really count. Now hand me one of those glow patches.”
With only a few
minutes left to prepare for the party, Susan was helping Rachel get
ready, while also attempting to smooth her temper, an endeavor only
partially successful, especially after the distressing news about
Urban's. Rachel still didn't
understand how Susan had gotten her to agree to this. Perhaps her
cheery personality was just so infectious. She'd have to be careful
about that. If she spent too much time around Susan, she might
forget just how miserable she was supposed to be. If it wasn't that,
then it must be gratitude at Susan understanding, at least more than
she could ever hope anyone else would. Even though Susan still
frequently insisted on putting the financial needs of the brothel
ahead of the emotional needs of individuals, a fact that Rachel found
highly offensive, especially when those emotional needs were her own,
she did so less frequently than anyone else. And she was the only
person in the entire world who used Rachel's nickname, “the Demon,”
as a term of endearment instead of an insult. Not to mention the
fact that she hadn't even suggested the concept of pills once since
Rachel had.... had been returned. Although she had done so when
Rachel was younger, she seemed to have gotten the message, which
meant she saw Rachel as an individual with different needs from other
people. Rachel felt herself start to choke up just at the thought.
That alone was worth a few hours of discomfort.
As Rachel was
thinking these thoughts, she turned around so Susan could zip up her
purple vinyl miniskirt, then looked in the mirror expectantly. It
had been fifteen minutes since she had taken the fullness pill and
already her breasts were appearing noticeably larger. She could
definitely afford to wear her low-necked top tonight. But not too
low cut. Rachel was attempting to look a bit nice to please Susan
but she couldn't overdo it. Then people might think she was okay,
that she had “gotten over” herself finally. She glanced quickly
at the bottle. These were Ultra
brand pills, guaranteed to last for at least six hours. Good.
The party should be well over by then so she didn't have to worry
about deflating in front of everyone. How embarrassing that would
be. Someone had once told Rachel that, in the distant past, women
had had to rely on painful surgery in order to make their breasts
look full. Her stomach turned at the thought and she fought down a
wave of nausea. Thank goodness for fullness pills, even if they did
sometimes run out at inconvenient moments. "What else should I
wear?" she asked.
"The black
boots, the pearlastic choker, and matching feathers in your hair,"
said Susan, not even looking up. Rachel nodded. Susan looked
stunning in a black and red silkone gown slit up the side and ruby
earrings, with her lips painted red to match. Rachel felt a grudging
respect for her and hoped her sense of style would be as good when
she herself was forty. Hurrying down to the front door of the
brothel, their high-heeled footwear clicking loudly on the steps,
they found a small round transport waiting for them. She noticed
with a blend of irritation and satisfied malice that Luther's still
hadn't upgrated from their outdated Vis8 model. Climbing inside,
they sat on the bench that ran around the edge of the small chamber
with about six other women from the brothel. As the saucer rose
gently and glided along about eight feet above the ground, Rachel
gazed out of one of the round windows next to her. She found the
images of buildings sliding past her small portal relaxing because
she was looking at something real when there was so much artifice in
her world. Her stomach turned. Artificial things, like the worlds
inside computers. With a great effort, she refrained from biting her
lips and clenching her fists to keep herself unmarked for the dinner.
One of the other
girls had switched on the overhead light, which covered the floor
with a swirling pattern in tranquil blue. Rachel sighed and fixed
her eyes more determinedly on the view outside the window, hoping no
one would want to sleep with her tonight. Beyond the irritation and
boredom, that was the true danger of agreeing to go to the party. Of
course, if she was asked for, she could not refuse. Their financial
situation was too dire to say no, even if doing so wasn’t
considered highly unprofessional. But she didn't feel she could do
it. The very thought made her nauseous. Any sex would just remind
her of the nights she spent with Esteban who had now forsaken her for
Eternaraid. Something ached inside her, but she must not cry
as that would make her unattractive, which would devalue her for the
clients, the clients she didn't even want. Though the purpose of sex
was not to give her pleasure, she now felt clumsy and awkward, as if
any attempt to perform would merely cause her to flounder foolishly.
After
about twenty minutes of this unpleasantness, they pulled up next to a
large, opulent building, covered in panels of highly reflective
glass, with an image of two triangles inside of a circle with a line
running through on one side, illuminated by a spotlight. Like most
stylized logos, Rachel found it aesthetically displeasing. Not only
did it not look like anything, it wasn't even symmetrical, at least
from left to right. This was the head office of Lagrange
Incorporated, experts in astral mega engineering, whatever that
meant, and the saucer sank slightly as it maneuvered into the docking
alcove. The dinner was in a large upper chamber, right across the
hall from the docking bay, and the women arranged themselves in a
decorative manner on the edges of the thick red carpet as they waited
for the men to appear. When the doors opened however, it was another
group of women, whom Rachel did not recognize, waiting on the other
side. The host must have “double dipped,” hired women from two
different brothels, as men sometimes did, especially if they had
favorites at both.
There
was no way to prevent this, but it could cause a lot of stress when
business rivals were forced to be in such close quarters and act
civil. With disgust she noted the women were from Calvin's—tag
line: doubly destined to please.
At least they weren't from Urban's.
She doubted anyone could have kept their composure in that situation
after the news broadcast earlier. Furtively, she scanned the
opposing line of women for any familiar faces from before her time as
a house pet. She thought she could see one or two but none whose
names she could remember. Thankfully, there was no sign of Lily who
had been and, according to gossip, still was, Calvin's primary
earner. The new women also arranged themselves on the carpet
but with as large a gap between the two groups as possible. Rachel
saw several of them, as well as Luther’s
girls, fumbling in their purses and guessed they were trying to see
if they had happened to pack an emergency dose of un-hostile takeover
or some other such thing. There was a very awkward silence.
Thankfully, the guests soon came in from the
far doors and the host introduced all of them to the women, who tried
to look pleasant and hide the fact that they had spent the last
several minutes glaring at each other, so that each man could enjoy
the intimacy of having his personal servant for the evening address
him by name. This was a large party and Rachel did not catch all the
names. She did hear Robert, David, Rolf, and Paul. She was assigned
to Paul anyway, Paul CKO Lagrange to be precise, so none of the rest
mattered, though two of the other names stuck in her mind because
they were somewhat unusual, David Technical Expert Libertus and
Robert CVO Lagrange Triumphatus. Libertus, free-man, was the surname
taken by the few men who operated independently as they were so
talented they could survive without being employed by a corporation,
while the presence of a fourth name marked one who was so exceptional
in their area of expertise that it was a known fact far outside the
walls of their own company, usually becoming a household name across
the city and featured on many news episodes.
While a Libertus might sometimes make a
marginally more interesting conversation partner than an ordinary
man, she was very glad indeed that she had not had the misfortune to
be paired with Robert. Honorary
fourth names like Triumphatus were rare and so, naturally, such
individuals had egos to match. Worse, because their status that gave
them the right to the title was always deteriorating and had to be
constantly shorn up to maintain it, they were all obsessive
workaholics, far more concerned about what would make them look good
to the gossip mongers than about what their clients wanted and were
often dangerously prone to taking extravagant risks or were rigidly
risk adverse, sometimes flip-flopping between the two, depending on
what they thought would make them look the best in a given situation.
Loss of one's fourth name could be devastating to all but the most
stable of individuals. Some had gone into shameful downward spirals
of madness and had to be taken away to medicals, often never to be
seen again. Others had been driven to violence or suicide.
Brothel
girls could also get an honorary extra name though, since brothels'
had no official internal ranks, this just brought them to three,
rather than four, unless they also happened to be a house pet. But
that did not make any of the attendant behavioral issues less severe
for them. Rachel shuddered, remembering the horrible incident with
Gloria of Elijah's that had happened a couple of years after her
Sacrifice and been burned indelibly into her mind. Since Elijah's
had been a respectable five-star brothel...at the time, though Gloria
was soon to change that, she and Rachel had wound up at a lot of the
same parties and, being close to the same age, got on unusually well
together. Gloria Meretrix, as she had been known at the time, had an
amazing skill at rapid fire wit and could keep a lively conversation
going under almost any circumstances, which Rachel greatly admired.
In fact, Gloria had been one of her primary models for shaping her
own professional skills. Unfortunately, that was until Gloria's
premier client had been involved in some professional scandal and the
news decided to drag her through the mud along with him. To calm her
nerves in the face of the hostility, Gloria began drinking at parties
far in excess of the already large amount most women consumed in the
course of their professional duties, going from sharp and sparkling
to sloppy and embarrassing. It didn't take long before she lost her
Meretrix title at which point her behavior became exponentially
extreme and erratic.
Rachel
clearly remembered her younger self, practicing her stretches in her
room, blasting some Metal Brain, when a crowd of other women burst in
looking for Susan, eager to spill the gossip that Gloria had finally
truly lost it and started crying and raging about her lost title in
the middle of a large party, at which point at least twenty people
had simultaneously pulled out their devices and contacted a medical.
At least four different ambulances had actually arrived and then a
long episode of hilarity followed while the different companies
wrangled and argued over who would get to take away such a
prestigious and rich patient, knowing the lucky winner would have
their name all over the news for months. Rachel did not join in the
fun, already being slightly leery of medicals and feeling bad for
Gloria as someone she had admired, rather than as the dangerous rival
the older women saw her as. But that was only the beginning of the
story because, when Gloria was finally released, almost a year later,
she was a totally different person. Gone was the cutting humor
Rachel had loved, the flare of genuine passion behind her
professional exterior that had added an additional spark to much that
she did.
Rachel
did not see much of her because, by then, the scandal and resulting
loss of business had caused Elijah's to be demoted to four stars, but
she did run into her at the annual Holidays tree lighting event at
Navona plazza. Ignoring and evading Beth and Laura who had angrily
told her to stay away from such a bad influence, she had tried to
strike up a conversation with Gloria, who had responded with distant
politeness, the prefect model of boring professionalism. Stung,
Rachel had resorted to insults, secretly hoping she could cut deep
enough to let out the real Gloria, who used to have the quickest draw
on clever come-backs that Rachel had ever known. Instead, this
vacant thing
in front of her refused even to play the game, only making a canned
display of condescending sympathy for Rachel's unhealthy insecurity
before walking away slowly, leaving Rachel in a cold sweat, heart
racing. So that
was what happened inside a medical. Your body might come back out
but the thing that made you you was no longer inside it, like a
zombie creature in a scary movie. Frantically, she wondered what
happened to the real you that was no longer there. Was it just
deeply, deeply sleeping and might wake up, or be woken up, later?
Did they take it out and put it in a jar that could be rescued, at
least in theory? Or was it just gone, your existence erased, beyond
recovery forever? It was the first time young Rachel had ever
contemplated such horrible thoughts and she knew she absolutely did
not want to ever go to a medical and find out the answer.
Rachel
shook herself out of her memories. This was a bad place for her
thoughts to have been going. She could feel her palms starting to
get clammy just from the memory. She had always thought it seemed
foolish to get so worked up over a name but now she could feel more
sympathy for those people when she recalled how miserable she was
over losing her third name, even though that was a bit different, as
it was not really the name itself but her relationship with Esteban
that it symbolized that she was most upset about losing. In any
case, none of it mattered right now. She had been spared any
unpleasantness of whatever nature she would have experienced being
paired with someone with a fourth name so she needed to stop thinking
about it and, instead, focus on the situation she did currently have
to deal with.
Paul's rank of chief knowledge officer
was quite a respectable position but not nearly as prestigious as CEO
which gave her a hint as to the type of person she would be dealing
with as they all filed into the next room and took their seats at a
long table, to the irritating upbeat and synth-heavy pop music played
at all the best parties, each man sitting across from his dinner
companion. The sex of each pair was reversed so all the men also had
a woman on both sides of them to see to their needs as well. Rachel
wound up sitting next to David, who had been paired with Susan. She
did not remember the name of the man on the other side of her and
carefully kept her face turned slightly away from him so he would not
be tempted to speak to her and discover her oversight. Paul had
shaggy black hair cut close to the head and wore carefully tailored
matching black clothing, very crisp with sharp pressed angles and not
at all shiny. It was an expensive but very unimaginative and
conservative look, which meant he was likely to be a dull companion,
in line with what she would have guessed from his solid but not
outstanding position. At least she did not clash with him as she did
with almost everyone she talked to, especially when she wore her
purple clothing. He smiled often and broadly, seeming to take great
pride in his large and well-shaped teeth. Rachel put her head
slightly to one side since she had been told that helped reveal the
lines of her throat as well as drawing attention to her breasts.
Paul grinned idiotically and she lifted her chest encouragingly.
"I find your
hair ornaments very attractive," he said, a bit awkwardly and
Rachel tried to look comforting. He must be young and unused to
women, which could also explain his boring clothes.
"My friend
recommended them to me." She nodded towards Susan.
“Do you use
them for anything besides adornment?" asked Paul, his face
flushing slightly with desire. Although she did not, Rachel knew she
shouldn't tell him that, so, instead, she embarked on an account of
various erotic things she had, supposedly, done with her feathers,
expecting him to get bored soon as her stories were not very
original. But when, after fifteen minutes, his interest showed no
sign of flagging, Rachel squirmed internally. She did not want to
talk about sex. She did not want to think about sex. She wanted to
vomit. Smiling pleasantly, she continued to fill her stories with
sensuous details.
"Let's ask
my friend Rachel what she thinks," she heard Susan say
playfully. Rachel turned towards her, confused but grateful. Paul
appeared annoyed at first, but Susan batted her eyelashes and pursed
her lips in his direction until he was pacified.
"What do you
want?" asked Rachel.
"David here
has been trying to talk to me about building designs, specifically
the secondary complex on the outskirts of the city that Lagrange
built last year."
"And?"
"Boooring,
so I wanted to drag you into this."
"I fail to
see why it's boring," said a voice beside her. She turned to
see David leaning away from her and realized she had narrowly missed
impaling him with one of her hair ornaments.
"Sorry,"
she said lamely as he raised his head, his face somewhat heavy with a
well-defined, jaw and pale skin which looked even lighter against the
deep brown of his hair. He wore it long, wrapped in a pony tail,
which hung forward over his shoulder and the movement of his head
caused the light to reflect off red high-lights hidden among the dark
strands, while his shirt was black and embroidered with the image of
a dragon in gold.
"So, what is
your opinion of building designs?" he asked.
"He probably
wants me to twist it in some kind of sexual way," she thought
sourly. "Damn it, I won't." Aloud she said, "I've
never really thought about building design before. But, now that you
mention it, I've always liked domes and arches. I wonder if it would
be possible to construct a building from nothing but domes and
arches."
"That's an
interesting idea. Some of the oldest buildings in our city's history
were made from them, like the ancient
stadium,
you know, the Colander, and the elevated
water pipes from the same era. I should try it sometime." As
he spoke, Rachel scanned his eyes closely for any sign of a
lascivious glance, or annoyance that she had failed to make the topic
suggestive, but she could see none. Those eyes were the same deep
brown as his hair and so large and open it seemed impossible for them
to conceal anything. Pleased but confused, she wondered what would
happen next.
"You work in
building construction?" Rachel asked. This was interesting,
much more interesting than trying to indulge some lout's sexual
fantasies.
"Sometimes.
I make models of them on the computer." Computer. Cringe.
"It's not a job, more of a hobby. My real work involves
synthesis through molecular manipulation” he said proudly. “But,
sometimes, people pay me to oversee the construction of the buildings
I designed. I made the plan for the flagship factory at Hexaport."
"I've never
seen it, but they must have been desperate to get your expertise in
the hope that you could build them something that might actually
inspire some respect." Hexaport was kind of a joke in brothel
gossip. They were attempting to corner the saucer market with their
“revolutionary” hexagonal design, which no one liked because it
made the social minefield of choosing who to sit by and how close to
sit to them far more complicated than it was in the traditional round
saucers. Further, in an effort to get noticed, they also advertised
aggressively with every ad having to contain some horrible pun
involving the word “bestagons” which was so ludicrous that few
people could refrain from snickering whenever they came on.
"I also
designed the dome of the Corridor of Visions museum. Have you seen
that?"
"Oh yes."
She gasped. The Corridor of Visions? Ever since its new dome had
been built, she had been in awe of its beauty and here was the person
who had designed it. "How did you come up with the idea for
such a beautiful thing?"
"An
accident, really. It started as an attempt to model a cave complex
inside a stone mountain, connected to a project I was doing at work
trying to create better synthetic stone. Then, I decided to see what
would happen if I changed the mountain into a translucent material.
From there, I began modeling the various sculptures and…"
“My favorite is
the mermaid,” Rachel burst out excitedly before he was really
finished. “It has such a nice flow to it.”
“Yes, that one
turned out really well. But it was easier to make because it was
larger. The amorphous compound loses its elasticity when it gets
smaller.” Rachel listened in fascination as he went on even though
she did not understand most of the words. Unfortunately, she was not
allowed to go on enjoying this.
"I would
like some of the extra dark red In Vino Veritas wine and so would my
friend here," said Paul, cutting in with obvious irritation.
Rachel apologized and rose to obey. The wines were on a side table,
so, she took one of the bottles, brought it back, and poured
gracefully for Paul and the other man he indicated before returning
it to the table. Then Paul insisted that his friend wanted to hear
her feather stories, which took up a sizable portion of the evening.
Although she was greatly annoyed about having been dragged away from
the first interesting conversation she had had in months, she had to
hide her feelings. Men paid for the privilege of having a companion
who never questioned them or disagreed with them, was never bored or
uncomfortable, and treated them as if they could never do wrong in
even the slightest way so, to do otherwise would have been supremely
bad for business.
The party was
starting to wind down, which Rachel was intensely happy about, when
it happened. In an attempt to enliven what had become, even
from a conventional socialite's perspective, a rather dull evening,
one of the men, she vaguely remembered his name as Rolf, had arranged
a game of trivia or tricks. At first he had only been able to get a
very few people to participate, his dinner companion and a couple of
other women who were clearly her friends and/or felt sorry for him.
But, as more and more people began to finish their food and become
tired of sitting at the table, they gradually attracted a bit of a
crowd. Eventually, even Paul decided to take a look, thankfully
freeing Rachel from the need to invent any more feather erotica. Not
that she had any intention of getting roped into a game of trivia or
tricks, the object of the game being either to coerce people into
giving out sexual tricks or pressure them into revealing “trivia,”
sensitive information that would be embarrassing or dangerous for
them. So, she hung back as far behind Paul as she decently could, to
reduce the risk of being called on to participate.
As she peered
tentatively over the heads of the people in front of her, she saw
Rolf was back in the hot seat, being grilled by a lady from Calvin's
in a hot pink mini dress printed with bold black astrological
symbols. The fact that Rachel would have liked to have the dress for
herself made her deeply instilled dislike of anyone from a rival
brothel sharper and more immediate. “So” the woman prodded in,
what seemed to Rachel an almost unbearably shrill and nasal voice,
“what is the most extreme sexual thing you've ever done?” Rolf
looked down at the floor and shifted his feet. “I'm waiting.”
The woman clutched at his shoulder. Rolf mumbled something.
“What was
that?” her friend leaned in from the other side. “I think the
people in the back couldn't hear you.”
“In the back?
Those of us in the front couldn't hear,” the first woman jeered.
“Fine, fine.”
Rolf straightened up a bit, seeming to recover his composure.
“There was this one time, when I was really, really drunk by the
way...”
“Excuses,”
someone yelled from the back of the crowd.
“...like can't
walk straight, and you order weird shit off the internet and don't
remember doing it the next morning, that level of drunk...I used a
pair of fuzzy handcuffs.” There were some gasps of horror and
sounds of not very nice laughter. Rachel had to suppress a yawn.
While most would try to avoid revealing they had used fuzzy
handcuffs, it was a common enough sexual oddity that it was almost
inevitably mentioned at least once every time this topic came up.
“If you were so
drunk you couldn't walk, how'd you get the handcuffs?” sneered the
host pushing forward to stand next to the women from Calvin's. “Do
you use them so often that you have them easy to hand even at moments
like that?”
“No, no, no,”
Rolf protested a little too vehemently. “The girl had them.”
“That's what
they all say.” They would probably try to grill him on what
brothel she was from, said brothel would deny it if they ever found
out, and so on and so on. It was a song and dance she had heard many
times before and was completely sick of it. Too irritated to even
make much effort to be subtle, Rachel scanned the room in her boredom
and saw David still sitting at the table with his back to the whole
sorry proceeding and vaguely wondered if she dared attempt slipping
off to talk to him while most people were focused on the game. Yes,
she would be deserting her dinner companion but he was occupied right
now so she could argue she was just doing her job to go attend on a
man sitting all by himself. She looked back towards the game
tentatively, gauging her chances. While her attention had been
elsewhere, the stupid argument about where the fuzzy handcuffs had
come from had ended and Rolf was energetically trying to force
another participant into the hot seat, the sooner the better, to make
them all forget about his discomfort.
Rachel had to
repress another yawn. Every time this topic came up at parties, she
found herself hoping that someone would actually provide tangible
evidence for the existence of the legendary Konrad's brothel, a place
rumored to specialize in acts so extreme there were no words for
them. Of course one could never actually find anyone who had been
there or who knew someone who had actually been there. It was one of
those rumors, like ghost stories about businessmen haunting buildings
where they died from overwork, that people would tell each other for
the pleasure of being scared or horrified but the truth of which were
dubious and could never actually be confirmed. Careful to be as
unobtrusive as possible, she began moving towards the back of the
room but, before she had gone many steps, the voices behind her began
to become rapidly louder and more aggressive. One of the younger
girls from Luther's, Rachel vaguely remember her name was Sherita,
had been persuaded, or pressured, to take the hot seat and the women
from Calvin's were attempting to grill her over something
uncomfortable, doubtless hoping she was too young and inexperienced
to navigate the situation with grace.
“So what really
happened when Sir Aaron Armstrong won you at your Sacrifice,” asked
the woman in the drool-worthy pink and black dress, a vindictive edge
to her voice. Rachel felt vaguely interested. Aaron CEO Kingdom of
the Mind Braccium-Fortis or, as he preferred to be known, Sir Aaron
Armstrong was one of the wealthiest executives in Her-Babylon,
naturally, as his company's products were considered so
indispensable, so it must have been quite the score for Luther's. Of
course, Rachel disapproved of his success and eagerly devoured all
the gossipy reports hinting that he was hopelessly addicted to his
own pills, completely unable to function emotionally without them,
doubtless the secret to why he was able to perfect his formula to
such a high degree. “I hear there was a bit of a close race at the
end,” the woman went on. “Tell us who the other contender was,
or if there was more than one.” This was, of course, outrageous.
While the official assumption of confidentiality at all parties,
including Sacrifices, was not always honored, especially by the other
guests, for the Victim herself to humiliate one of her guests by
exposing his dramatic defeat would almost certainly leave her and her
brothel vulnerable to heavy social criticism and there was no way the
questioner was unaware of this.
But Sherita was
smarter than the rival women had predicted. She lowered her eyes
and, somehow, managed to make herself blush. “I'm terribly sorry,”
she said, putting a crooked finger in her mouth, “but I was such a
mess of nerves that night that I don't remember much. And I was so
honored by Sir Aaron's patronage that I completely forgot everything
that happened during the bidding. Who was the other contender? Let
me see. It was someone from a company that makes kitchen appliances,
no beauty devices, no... I know it was something electronic. Maybe
it was washing machines.” She shrugged helplessly. Rachel had to
struggle not to laugh and a quick glace confirmed several of her
associates were also making an effort to hide their amusement.
Rachel highly doubted that Sherita actually had so little memory of
her own Sacrifice and the other women probably knew that for sure but
it would be almost impossible for the women from Calvin's to prove
and she had given the appearance of trying to be helpful so they had
no basis for complaint but she had made her information so vague
that, even in the incredibly unlikely event that they somehow managed
to get hold of a guest list for the Sacrifice, the rival's identity
would never be more than a guess.
“What a shame,”
said the questioner's friend with obviously feigned pleasantness.
“But at least you did your best.” Her tone was insultingly
indulgent as if speaking to a child. “I suppose we'll just have to
ask a different question instead.”
“I know, I
know,” someone yelled from the audience. Rachel did not recognize
the woman so she must be from Calvin's as well. “She can tell us
which company executives are the worst in bed.”
“Which
company?” asked Sherita innocently, looking and, perhaps actually
being, very confused.
“This one
obviously,” the woman snapped back, not even pretending to be
polite like her associates. This was even more outrageous than the
Sacrifice question as they were, essentially trying to get her to
insult her clients to their faces. This was the kind of question to
be asked about the members of companies who were not present.
Then everyone could join in laughing at their expense and, even if
rumors about what had been said leaked out, the slighted executives
could never prove the specifics and would be more likely to keep
quiet to avoid drawing attention to their shortcomings. “Well,”
the woman in the astrological dress prompted more firmly. “We're
waiting.” But Sherita remained silent, frozen like the proverbial
dear in the headlights, this latest situation having finally exceeded
her capacity for clever evasion.
“Are you
backing out of the terms of the game?” someone in the audience
cried mockingly and Sherita flinched, eyes wide with panic at the
impossible situation in which she found herself. “Come on you
dog.” The dog had been one of the last animals to survive and was
once common enough that phrases and expressions about dogs were still
part of everyday speech. There were shrieks of eager laughter at the
escalating situation.
“She's not a
dog,” objected one of the men, perhaps trying to calm things down.
“She's far too pretty for that.”
“Yes she is, a
female dog. A bee-atch.” And the cry was taken up around the room
so that all the women from Calvin's and even some of the men were
chanting “bee-atch, bee-atch.” Sherita's face was red with
humiliation and the tension was plain in every muscle as she
struggled to keep from burying her head in her hands. Not having
taking enough of the right kind of pills to keep her steady under
this type of pressure it was clear she was going to burst into tears
at any moment.
“Why are you
wasting your time asking someone so young for that kind of
information?” called Grace derisively. “Beatrice is an expert on
many things, including this topic and she will tell you with absolute
certainty that the person from Lagrange Inc. who was worst in bed by
a wide margin was Pablo CMO Lagrange.”
“He was the
best marketing officer this company every had,” one of the men
yelled in protest.
“That may be
so,” replied Grace tartly. “But according to Beatrice he was
completely awful in bed, and they were associates with benefits for
several years so she would know. He's dead now anyway so none of it
matters and you should all be glad none of you are that terrible.”
“It might be
worth it to be that good at marketing,” someone muttered, prompting
shrieks of laughter, but the speaker proved impossible to identify.
“It's true,”
said Susan more placidly. “It seems like things are falling apart
more and more every year. People no longer have the sense to trust
the wisdom of those who have gone before.” This was clearly a dig
at the women from Calvin's for asking one of the youngest people
present for general information, but Susan went on speaking before
they could react. “It almost doesn't matter that no one knows how
to do that level of marketing anymore because people these days are
so stupid. Anyone else hear the news about Urban's?”
“You mean that
the bitches are now considered five-star?” someone yelled
vindictively. “Yea I heard that.”
“Wish I
hadn't,” someone else called out. “The very idea is BS.”
“See, that's
what I mean,” said Susan mildly. “Only a society full of idiots
could have possibly thought Urban's worthy of five-star status, let
alone that their pathetic Sacrifice Victim and her terrible sense of
humor would qualify them for it.”
“I heard some
of her jokes,” objected one of the executives. “On the news
cast, of course,” he added hastily, “and I thought some of them
were rather funny. What's wrong with mocking four-star brothels?”
“Nothing, of
course,” said Susan sweetly. “They deserve to be mocked. But,
her jokes require a certain level of knowledge about the individual
brothels in question to be truly funny, a level of knowledge that I
for one would certainly never want to subject myself to having.”
There were many loud shouts of agreement from around the room, mixed
with malicious laughter, the present tensions seemingly forgotten in
the shared hatred of the upstart. Everyone wanted to be the one to
tell the most outrageous story about their unfortunate interactions
with Urban's and how they exposed the brothel's utter lack of
quality. The only downside was the all the commotion made the idea
of attempting to have a quiet conversation with David utterly
impossible.
When the party
broke up, sometime between midnight and one o'clock, the number of
women who climbed back into the transport saucer was much smaller
than the group that had come, since several men had requested women
to sleep with them. Rachel was surprised Paul had not asked for her.
Perhaps he was too shy, thankfully. Or maybe he had just forgotten
about her in all the excitement surrounding the trivia or tricks
game. The few passengers who remained were in a generally jovial
mood, still enjoying the thrill of their rivals' discomfort. Susan
leaned against Rachel's shoulder, her body completely relaxed at
first but, gradually becoming more tense.
"What got
into you tonight?" she asked, a slight edge to her voice.
"I don't
know what you're talking about," mumbled Rachel, groggy herself
"Why did you
behave in such a strange way towards David?"
"I see
nothing strange about the way I behaved. I just answered his
questions. I thought that was the proper way to carry on a
conversation."
"Don't be
smart with me. We've known each other too long for that."
Susan lifted her head resentfully. "No man wants a woman to
speak to him as an intellectual equal, espeially front of others.
Then you become a rival, instead of his toy. Yes, you should nod and
smile if that’s what he insists on talking about but don’t keep
encouraging him or look like you can fully follow what he’s
saying.”
"We've also known each other too long for you to try to teach me
my job. He didn't seem to mind. In fact, he, or rather, you, asked
me to join the conversation."
"Yes, I
asked you. I was trying to be flirtatious. You were supposed to
support my statement that no self-respecting women would care to talk
about such things."
"Well, I was
interested," snapped Rachel resentfully. "I'm sick of
talking about sex. I'm no good at it anyway, so I might was well try
something else."
"You're
still sexy, Rachel, and your skills are certainly not lacking.
Esteban is an idiot. There is absolutely no reason why another man
wouldn't want you if you didn't alienate him by doing foolish things
like acting like you can operate on his intellectual level. We need
all the money we can get."
"So, throw
out Alice to cut down on expenses."
"How
heartless. Cooperation is the core of survival."
"Now you
sound like Stacy."
"Sorry. I
know, I know. But it's true and I thought you would be more likely
to listen to me."
"Fuck you,"
said Rachel, turning her back on Susan, and they did not speak again
for the rest of the night.
©Amanda Hamlin 2025
