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“Is all well?” he called to Nieh Ho-T’ing.
“I think so,” Nieh answered, with a pointed glance toward Hsia’s companion. She glared at him like a cat with ruffled fur. If she wasn’t a security risk, Liu Han had never seen one. Could Hsia keep his mouth shut after he took her upstairs to see her body? Liu Han hoped so, but hope wasn’t enough in a game of this importance.
“Join us?” Hsia Shou-Tao asked.
“No, thank you,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered, rather coldly. The pretty girl muttered something through her painted lips; Liu Han had no doubt it wasn’t a compliment. She was pleased at Nieh’s answer. She didn’t want to sit at the same table with Hsia, even if he had another woman to distract him from her.
She and Nieh Ho-T’ing went to the stairway together. She saw Hsia smirking at the two of them, which only made her more angry with him. The stairwell was cold and dark. She stumbled. Nieh caught her elbow before she could fall. “Thank you,” she said.
“My pleasure,” he answered, and then laughed at himself. “I sound like a perfect member of the bourgeoisie, don’t I? But itis my pleasure. This was your idea, Comrade. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself just as it begins to unfold. You deserve the credit.”
“Thank you,” she said again. Her room was a couple of floors higher than Nieh’s, but she didn’t mind when he walked up past his floor with her. She wondered why she didn’t. Maybe she’d decided to pay Hsia Shou-Tao back for that smirk, maybe she felt filled with the triumph of finally paying back the scaly devils for all they’d done to her. Her mouth twisted. Maybe, after so long, she just wanted a man. Her hand was all right in its way-it knew exactly what she liked-but it couldn’t hold her and hug her afterwards. Of course, not all men did that, either, but the hope was always there.
She’d told Nieh she didn’t want to lie with him. That hadn’t been long ago, either. Neither of them mentioned it now. Liu Han opened the door to her room. A lamp still flickered in there. She used the flame to light the little brazier that gave the place such heat as it had-not much.
Even after she’d shut the door behind them, Nieh Ho-T’ing still hesitated. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s better than all right, in fact.”
That made him smile. He didn’t smile often. When he did, his whole face changed. It wasn’t hard and watchful-committed-any more. Not only did he seem happy, he seemed surprised at being happy, as if he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react.
“Nok’ang to lie on up here,” Liu Han said sadly. “Even with blankets”-she pointed to the mound under which she burrowed-“it won’t be warm.”
“We’ll have to make it warm, then,” he said, and smiled that uncertain smile once more. It grew broader when she smiled back at him. He glanced toward the little brass lamp. “Shall I blow that out?”
“I don’t think it matters,” she answered. “We’re going to be covered up anyhow.”
“True.” But Nieh did blow out the lamp, plunging the room into blackness. Liu Han got out of her layers of clothes as fast as she could and dove beneath the covers. Nieh almost stepped on the bedding-and her-when he walked over in the dark after undressing himself.
She shivered when he ran his hands up and down her body, partly from excitement and partly because they were cold. But he was warm elsewhere; his erection rubbed against her thigh. When she took him in her hand for a moment, he shivered, too, probably for both the reasons she had.
He kissed her. She stroked his cheek. It was almost as smooth as her own, not furry with beard or rough with the nubs of scraped-off whisker as Bobby Fiore’s had been. Nieh’s chest was smooth and hairless, too, with nothing like the black jungle the American had had growing there. When she’d first been forced to couple with Bobby Fiore, she’d thought that mat of hair disgusting. Then she’d got used to it. Now smoothness felt strange.
His mouth was warm, too. It came down on her left breast. His tongue teased her nipple. She sighed and rested a hand on the back of his head. But although the caresses felt good, they also reminded her of the baby-even if it was only a daughter-who should have been nursing there.
His mouth moved to her other breast. His hand took its place, squeezing her hard enough to be pleasurable and not quite enough to hurt. She sighed again. His other hand was busy between her legs, not yet stroking her most secret places but teasing all around them till she-almost-forgot how cold the room was. He understood patience in a way she’d had to teach to Bobby Fiore.
After a while, he grew too patient to suit her. She closed her fingers around him, gently tugging back his foreskin. He gasped and scrambled onto her. She spread her legs and arched her back to make his entry easy.
The darkness was so complete, she could not see his face above hers. It didn’t matter. She knew that, when their lips weren’t joined, it had to bear the same intent, inward, searching expression as her own. His hips bucked steadily, driving him in and out of her.
Her breath came in short gasps, as if she’d run a long way. Nieh grunted and shuddered, but kept moving inside her until, a moment later, she also quivered in release. Then, still thoughtful, he rolled off beside her so his weight, which suddenly seemed much heavier, wouldn’t flatten her.
He touched her cheek. “You are everything I thought you’d be, and more besides,” he said.
The words warmed her and left her wary at the same time. “I am not going to be your toy or your-what do you say? — your lackey, that’s it, because of what we just did,” she said. Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, but that was all right, too. He needed to know he couldn’t take advantage of her, in bed or out, because she’d lain with him once. The Communists preached of better days for women. As she’d seen from Hsia Shou-Tao, not all of them meant what they said. She thought Nieh was different. Now she’d find out.
“Fair enough,” he said. He sounded wintry, too, as he went on, “And just because you’ve lain down with me, don’t think I will press for your schemes unless they have merit.” Then he softened that by leaning up on an elbow and kissing her. “The one tonight certainly did.”
“I am glad you think so,” she said. Had she been wondering if she could use her body to influence Nieh and advance her own position among the revolutionaries who fought the scaly devils? She had to admit to herself that it had crossed her mind. In a man’s world, a woman’s body was sometimes the only weapon she had-and she did want to rise to where all her ideas were taken seriously, the better to avenge herself against the little devils. What Nieh said marked a better way, though. “Comrade, we have a bargain.”
As if by accident, his hands strayed along her body toward the joining of her legs. “How shall we seal it?” he asked slyly.
She hesitated, feeling him stir against her side and start to rise. She wouldn’t have minded another round, but-“Notlike that,” she said, and took his hand away. “Didn’t you listen to what I told you?”
To her relief, he didn’t sound angry when he answered, “I listened, but sometimes-often-people do nothing but mouth empty phrases. The Kuomintang, for instance, calls itself a revolutionary party.” His contemptuous snort showed what he thought of that. “But you, Liu Han, you mean what you say. This is something I need to know.”
“Good enough,” Liu Han said after a moment “We seal it like this, then.” Now she kissed him. “It is enough for now.”
The Emperor’s holographic image beamed down on the shiplords’ celebration aboard the127th Emperor Hetto. On three worlds of the Empire, billions from the Race, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi were celebrating their sovereign’s hatching day at just this moment. Knowing that made Atvar feel part of the great community the Race had built, not the embattled outsider into which he sometimes seemed transformed by the pestilential war on Tosev 3.
Some of the shiplords were behaving so boisterously, he wondered whether they’d illicitly tasted ginger before their shuttlecraft brought them here to the bannership. He didn’t like to think high-ranking commanders c
ould fall victim to the insidious Tosevite herb, but on Tosev 3 what he liked and the truth were often-too often-far apart.
There over to one side floated Kirel, his usual standoffishness forgotten, talking animatedly with a couple of males who had been of Straha’s faction back in the days when Straha was around to have a faction. Atvar was glad to see his chief subordinate happier than usual, less glad to see the company with which he chose to enjoy himself. On the other fork of the tongue, a considerable majority of males had voted for Atvar’s ouster after the SSSR set off its nuclear bomb, so for Kirel to ignore all of them would have left him on good terms with only a few shiplords.
And there was poor, hardworking Pshing. He had in his hand a squeezebulb filled with the fermented juices of certain Tosevite fruits. The Big Uglies, being unable to enjoy the intoxicating effects of ginger, made do with ethanol and various flavorings. Males of the Race found some of those vile-why anyone, even a Big Ugly, would drink whiskey, was beyond Atvar-but others might be worth exporting to Home after the conquest was complete.
Atvar drifted over to Pshing, checked himself by snagging a grab ring with the claws of one toe. “How does it feel not to be waking me up to report some disaster?” he asked.
