The Universe of Things Read online

  The clinic room had mirrored walls: more deliberate provocation. How much reality can you take? the reflections asked. But she felt only a vague distaste for the woman she saw, at once hollow-cheeked and bloated, lying on the doctor’s foam couch. He was glancing over her records on his desk screen, which meant the session was almost up.

  “Still no overt sexual contact?”

  “I’m not ready…” She stirred restlessly. “Is it a man or a woman?”

  “Ah!” smiled Dr. Hamilton, waving a finger at her. “Naughty, naughty!”

  He was the one who’d started taunting her, with his hints that the meat “Lessingham” might be near. She hated herself for asking a genuine question. It was her rule to give him no entry to her real thoughts. It was a flimsy reserve; Dr. Jim knew everything, without being told: every change in her brain chemistry, every effect on her body — sweaty palms, racing heart, damp underwear… The telltales on his damned autocue left her little dignity. Why do I subject myself to this? she wondered, disgusted. But in the virtuality she forgot utterly about Dr. Jim. She didn’t care who was watching. She had her brazen-hilted sword. She had the piercing intensity of dusk on the high plains, the snowlight on the mountains; the hard, warm silk of her own perfect limbs. She felt a brief complicity with “Lessingham.” She had a conviction that Dr. Jim didn’t play favorites. He despised all his patients equally… You get your kicks, doctor. But we have the freedom of dreamland.

  “Sonja” read cards stuck in phonebooths and store windows, in the tired little streets outside the building that housed the clinic. Relaxing Massage by clean shaven young man in Luxurious Surroundings… You can’t expect your fantasies to mesh exactly, the doctor said. But how can it work if two people disagree over something so vital as the difference between control and surrender? Her estranged husband used to say: “why don’t you just do it for me, as a favor? It wouldn’t hurt. Like making someone a cup of coffee…” Offer the steaming cup, turn around and lift my skirts, pull down my underwear. I’m ready. He opens his pants and slides it in, while his thumb is round in front rubbing me… I could enjoy that, thought “Sonja,” remembering the blithe abandon of her dreams. That’s the damned shame. If there were no non-sex consequences, I don’t know that there’s any limit to what I could enjoy… But all her husband had achieved was to make her feel she never wanted to make anyone, man woman or child, a cup of coffee ever again… In luxurious surroundings. That’s what I want. Sex without engagement, pleasure without consequences. It’s got to be possible.

  She gazed at the cards, feeling uneasily that she’d have to give up this habit. She used to glance at them sidelong, now she’d pause and linger. She was getting desperate. She was lucky there was medically-supervised virtuality sex to be had. She would be helpless prey in the wild world of the nets, and she’d never, ever risk trying one of these meat-numbers. And she had no intention of returning to her husband. Let him make his own coffee. She wouldn’t call that getting well. She turned, and caught the eye of a nicely-dressed young woman standing next to her. They walked away quickly in opposite directions.

  Everybody’s having the same dreams…

  In the foothills of the mountains the world became green and sweet. They followed the course of a little river that sometimes plunged far below their path, tumbling in white flurries in a narrow gorge and sometimes ran beside them, racing smooth and clear over colored pebbles. Flowers clustered on the banks; birds darted in the thickets of wild rose and honeysuckle. They led their riding animals and walked at ease: not speaking much. Sometimes the warrior woman’s flank would brush the man’s side; or he would lean for a moment, as if by chance, his hand on her shoulder. Then they would move deliberately apart, but they would smile at each other. Soon. Not yet…

  They must be vigilant. The approaches to fortunate Zimiamvia were guarded. They could not expect to reach the pass unopposed. And the nights were haunted still. They made camp at a flat bend of the river, where the crags of the defile drew away, and they could see far up and down their valley. To the north, peaks of diamond and indigo reared above them. Their fire of aromatic wood burned brightly, as the white stars began to blossom.

  “No one knows about the long-term effects,” she said. “It can’t be safe. At the least, we’re risking irreversible addiction, they warn you about that. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a cyberspace couch potato.”

  “Nobody claims it’s safe. If it was safe, it wouldn’t be so intense.”

  Their eyes met. “Sonja’s” barbarian simplicity combined surprisingly well with the man’s more elaborate furnishing. The consensual perceptual plenum was a flawless reality: the sound of the river, the clear silence of the mountain twilight…their two perfect bodies. She turned from him to gaze into the sweet-scented flames. The warrior-woman’s glorious vitality throbbed in her veins. The fire held worlds of its own, liquid furnaces: the sunward surface of Mercury.

  “Have you ever been to a place like this in the real?”

  He grimaced. “You’re kidding. In the real, I’m not a magic-wielding millionaire.”

  Something howled. The bloodstopping cry was repeated. A taint of sickening foulness swept by them. They both shuddered, and drew closer together. “Sonja” knew the scientific explanation for the paranoia, the price you paid for the virtual world’s super-real, dreamlike richness. It was all down to heightened neurotransmitter levels, a positive feedback effect, psychic overheating. But the horrors were still horrors.

  “The doctor says if we can talk like this, it means we’re getting well.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sick. It’s like you said. Virtuality’s addictive and I’m an addict. I’m getting my drug of choice safely, on prescription. That’s how I see it.”

  All this time “Sonja” was in her apartment, lying in a foam couch with a visor over her head. The visor delivered compressed bursts of stimuli to her visual cortex: the other sense perceptions riding piggyback on the visual, triggering a whole complex of neuronal groups, tricking her mind/brain into believing the world of the dream was out there. The brain works like a computer. You cannot “see” a hippopotamus until your system has retrieved the “hippopotamus” template from memory and checked it against the incoming. Where does “the real thing” exist? In a sense this world was as real as the other. But the thought of “Lessingham’s” unknown body disturbed her. If he was too poor to lease good equipment, he might be lying in a grungy public cubicle…cathetered, and so forth: the sordid details.

  She had never yet tried virtual sex. The solitary version had seemed a depressing idea. People said the partnered kind was the perfect zipless fuck. He sounded experienced; she was afraid he would be able to tell she was not. But it didn’t matter. The virtual-therapy group wasn’t like a dating agency. She would never meet him in the real, that was the whole idea. She didn’t have to think about that stranger’s body. She didn’t have to worry about the real “Lessingham’s” opinion of her. She drew herself up in the firelight. It was right, she decided, that Sonja should be a virgin. When the moment came, her surrender would be the more absolute.

  In their daytime he stayed in character. It was a tacit trade-off. She would acknowledge the other world at nightfall by the camp-fire, as long as he didn’t mention it the rest of the time. So they traveled on together, Lessingham and Red Sonja, the courtly scholar-knight and the taciturn warrior-maiden, through an exquisite Maytime — exchanging lingering glances, “accidental” touches… And still nothing happened. “Sonja” was aware that “Lessingham,” as much as herself, was holding back from the brink. She felt piqued at this. But they were both, she guessed, waiting for the fantasy they had generated to throw up the perfect moment of itself. It ought to. There was no other reason for its existence.

  Turning a shoulder of the hillside, they found a sheltered hollow. Two rowan trees in flower grew above the river. In the shadow of their blossom tumbled a little waterfall, so beautiful it was a wonder to behold. Th
e water fell clear, from the edge of a slab of stone twice a man’s height, into a rocky basin. The water in the basin was dark and deep, a-churn with bubbles from the plunging jet above. The river banks were lawns of velvet; over the rocks grew emerald mosses and tiny water flowers.

  “I would live here,” said Lessingham softly, his hand dropping from his riding bird’s bridle. “I would build me a house in this fairy place and rest my heart here forever.”

  Sonja loosed the black stallion’s rein. The two beasts moved off, feeding each in their own way on the sweet grasses and springtime foliage.

  “I would like to bathe in that pool,” said the warrior-maiden.

  “Why not?” He smiled. “I will stand guard.”

  She pulled off her leather harness and slowly unbound her hair. It fell in a trembling mass of copper and russet lights, a cloud of glory around the richness of her barely clothed body. Gravely she gazed at her own perfection, mirrored in the homage of his eyes. Lessingham’s breath was coming fast. She saw a pulse beat, in the strong beauty of his throat. The pure physical majesty of him caught her breath…

  It was their moment. But it still needed something to break this strange spell of reluctance. “Lady,” he murmured —

  Sonja gasped. “Back to back!” she cried. “Quickly, or it is too late!”

  Six warriors surrounded them, covered from head to foot in red and black armor. They were human in the lower body, but the head of each appeared beaked and fanged, with monstrous faceted eyes, and each bore an extra pair of armored limbs between breastbone and belly. They fell on Sonja and Lessingham without pause or a challenge. Sonja fought fiercely as always, her blade ringing against the monster armor. But something cogged her fabulous skill. Some power had drained the strength from her splendid limbs. She was disarmed. The clawed creatures held her, a monstrous head stooped over her, choking her with its fetid breath…

  When she woke again she was bound against a great boulder, by thongs around her wrists and ankles, tied to hoops of iron driven into the rock. She was naked but for her linen shift, which was in tatters. Lessingham was standing, leaning on his sword. “I drove them off,” he said. “At last.” He dropped the sword, and took his dagger to cut her down.

  She lay in his arms. “You are very beautiful,” he murmured. She thought he would kiss her. His mouth plunged instead to her breast, biting and sucking at the engorged nipple. She gasped in shock, a fierce pang leapt through her virgin flesh. What did they want with kisses? They were warriors. Sonja could not restrain a moan of pleasure. He had won her. How wonderful to be overwhelmed, to surrender to the raw lust of this godlike animal.

  Lessingham set her on her feet.

  “Tie me up.”

  He was proffering a handful of blood-slicked leather thongs.

  “What?”

  “Tie me to the rock, mount me. It’s what I want.”

  “The evil warriors tied you — ?”

  “And you come and rescue me.” He made an impatient gesture. “Whatever. Trust me. It’ll be good for you too.” He tugged at his bloodstained silk breeches, releasing a huge, iron-hard erection. “See, they tore my clothes. When you see that, you go crazy, you can’t resist…and I’m at your mercy. Tie me up!”

  “Sonja” had heard that eighty percent of the submissive partners in sadomasochistic sex are male; but it is still the man who dominates his “dominatrix”: who says tie me tighter, beat me harder, you can stop now… Hey, she thought. Why all the stage-directions, suddenly? What happened to my zipless fuck? But what the hell. She wasn’t going to back out now, having come so far… There was a seamless shift, and Lessingham was bound to the rock. She straddled his cock. He groaned. “Don’t do this to me.” He thrust upwards, into her, moaning. “You savage, you utter savage, uuunnnh…” Sonja grasped the man’s wrists and rode him without mercy. He was right, it was as good this way. His eyes were half closed. In the glimmer of blue under his lashes, a spirit of mockery trembled… She heard a laugh, and found her hands were no longer gripping Lessingham’s wrists. He had broken free from her bonds, he was laughing at her in triumph. He was wrestling her to the ground.

  “No!” she cried, genuinely outraged. But he was the stronger.

  It was night when he was done with her. He rolled away and slept, as far as she could tell, instantly. Her chief thought was that virtual sex didn’t entirely connect. She remembered now, that was something else people told you, as well as the “zipless fuck.” It’s like coming in your sleep, they said. It doesn’t quite make it. Maybe there was nothing virtuality could do to orgasm to match the heightened richness of the rest of the experience. She wondered if he too had felt cheated.

  She lay beside her hero, wondering where did I go wrong? Why did he have to treat me that way? Beside her, “Lessingham” cuddled a fragment of violet silk, torn from his own breeches. He whimpered in his sleep, nuzzling the soft fabric, “Mama…”

  She told Dr. Hamilton that “Lessingham” had raped her.

  “And wasn’t that what you wanted?”

  She lay on the couch in the mirrored office. The doctor sat beside her with his smart notebook on his knee. The couch collected “Sonja’s” physical responses as if she was an astronaut umbilicaled to ground control, and Dr. Jim read the telltales popping up in his reassuring hornrims. She remembered the sneaking furtive thing that she had glimpsed in “Lessingham’s” eyes, the moment before he took over their lust-scene. How could she explain the difference? “He wasn’t playing. In the fantasy, anything’s allowed. But he wasn’t playing. He was outside it, laughing at me.”

  “I warned you he would want to stay in control.”

  “But there was no need! I wanted him to be in control. Why did he have to steal what I wanted to give him anyway?”

  “You have to understand, ‘Sonja,’ that to many men it’s women who seem powerful. You women feel dominated and try to achieve ‘equality.’ But the men don’t perceive the situation like that. They’re mortally afraid of you; and anything, just about anything they do to keep the upper hand, can seem like justified self-defense.”

  She could have wept with frustration. “I know all that! That’s exactly what I was trying to get away from. I thought we were supposed to leave the damn baggage behind. I wanted something purely physical… Something innocent.”

  “Sex is not innocent, ‘Sonja.’ I know you believe it is, or ‘should be.’ But it’s time you faced the truth. Any interaction with another person involves some kind of jockeying for power, dickering over control. Sex is no exception. Now that’s basic. You can’t escape from it in direct-cortical fantasy. It’s in our minds that relationships happen, and the mind, of course, is where virtuality happens too.” He sighed, and made an entry in her notes. “I want you to look on this as another step toward coping with the real. You’re not sick, Sonja. You’re unhappy. Not even unusually so. Most adults are unhappy, to some degree —”

  “Or else they’re in denial.”

  Her sarcasm fell flat. “Right. A good place to be, at least some of the time. What we’re trying to achieve here — if we’re trying to achieve anything at all — is to raise your pain threshold to somewhere near average. I want you to walk away from therapy with lowered expectations. I guess that would be success.”

  “Great,” she said, desolate. “That’s just great.”

  Suddenly he laughed. “Oh, you guys! You are so weird. It’s always the same story. Can’t live with you, can’t live without you… You can’t go on this way, you know. It’s getting ridiculous. You want some real advice, ‘Sonja’? Go home. Change your attitudes, and start some hard peace talks with that husband of yours.”

  “I don’t want to change,” she said coldly, staring with open distaste at his smooth profile, his soft effeminate hands. Who was he to call her abnormal? “I like my sexuality just the way it is.”

  Dr. Hamilton returned her look, a glint of human malice breaking through his doctor-act. “Listen. I’ll tell you something
for free.” A weird sensation jumped in her crotch. For a moment she had a prick: a hand lifted and cradled the warm weight of her balls. She stifled a yelp of shock. The therapist could do things like that, by tweaking the system that monitored her brain-states; it was part of some people’s treatment. She knew that, and she didn’t care that he should have had a signed permission, but she was horrified. For a moment she knew, a fleeting, terrible loss, that Sonja was just a blast of fake neuronal firings —

  The phantom maleness vanished. Hamilton grinned. “I’ve been looking for a long time, and I know. There is no tall, dark man…”

  He returned to her notes. “You say you were ‘raped,’” he continued, as if nothing had happened. “Yet you chose to continue the virtual session. Can you explain that?”

  She thought of the haunted darkness, the cold air on her naked body; the soreness of her bruises; a rag of flesh used and tossed away. How it had felt to lie there: intensely alive, tasting the dregs, beaten back at the gates of the fortunate land. In dreamland, even betrayal had such rich depth and fascination. And she was free to enjoy, because it didn’t matter.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Out in the lobby there were people coming and going. It was lunchtime; the lifts were busy. “Sonja” noticed a round-shouldered geek of a little man making for the entrance to the clinic. She wondered idly if that could be “Lessingham.”

  She would drop out of the group. The adventure with “Lessingham” was over, and there was no one else for her. She needed to start again. The doctor knew he’d lost a customer; that was why he’d been so open with her today. He certainly guessed, too, that she’d lose no time in signing on somewhere else on the semi-medical fringe. What a fraud all that therapy-talk was! He’d never have dared to play the sex-change trick on her, except that he knew she was an addict. She wasn’t likely to go accusing him of unprofessional conduct. Oh, he knew it all. But his contempt didn’t trouble her.