Free Shiva and Other Stories by Catska Ench, Barry N. Malzberg, Cory Ench Page A

something can be worked out,” Hawkins said carefully. “It isn’t absolutely necessary—”
    “Offer him the diamonds, but don’t offer him me.”
    “I don’t want the diamonds,” the King said. He sounded petulant. “I can have the diamonds anyway .”
    She is a simulacrum, Hawkins thought, a memory, an instance, unpurchasable. But instead he said, “If you return with me to the Inner Cluster you can have her.”
    “Why return? I want her here .”
    “Love is impossible in space,” Hawkins said quietly. “The eternal vacuum, the interposition of organism upon the void makes love impossible. Accept my assurances on that.”
    “I cannot return with you,” the King said after some silence. “I would burn in the vastnesses of space. I am unprepared for a journey of any sort, confined to my castle. Leave her here.”
    “I’m afraid not,” Hawkins said. “She would perish.”
    “Yes, I would perish,” Maria said coldly. “I would most surely perish, Hawkins, if I could not have you. I am not property; I am your lover, I cannot be treated in this fashion.”
    “You can be treated in any way I want,” Hawkins said. “Remember the conditions. You were delivered to give me solace, not argument.
    “Nonetheless,” he said to the King, “as you see, it is quite impossible.”
    “Nothing is impossible,” the bird said, “not to the King of the Universe,” and the bird turned, opened both impenetrable eyes and clawed at the floor. “That is my demand,” he said, “leave her here and the diamonds and you may go. The Inner Cluster will be spared. Take the diamonds, in fact. I don’t need them.”
    Hawkins said, “For the greater good, Maria, for all circumstances, I ask you—”
    “I love you,” the simulacrum said. “I know that I was made part of the equipment merely to convenience, to give you solace, but I am quite out of control and it’s you I love. I don’t want to deal with any bird.”
    “I’m not really a bird,” the King said, “this is merely a form which I project. Actually, I can be anything at all. You would be most pleasantly surprised.”
    “Appearances mean nothing to me,” Maria said. “I’m sorry but it’s quite impossible. This wasn’t how the situation was supposed to be but it’s how matters have turned out, I’m afraid. No, Hawkins, I will not yield.”
    “Then neither will I,” the King said. “I am not a paranoid Pleiadan but the true and invincible King of the Universe, and I will make good on my threats. I tracked you from Jovian orbit, Hawkins; I had hoped that it would be for better outcome.”
    Hawkins looked at the figure of the bird, the eyes and figures glinting in the tight spaces of the cabin; he listened to the continued murmuring of Maria, now plaintive as she explained why she could not leave him. Hawkins looked at one simulacra and listened to the other as the Broadway ebbed and dipped in station, thinking I am man, I am twenty-fourth-century man, era of accommodation and paradox, felon of the twelfth order; you are in a Hell of a spot now. A Hell of a spot, for she cares.
    But he wasn’t. He really wasn’t, after all. As he heard Maria begin to shriek in passion, as he heard her say Oh, King o King o King he came to understand that for some dilemmas there is, after all, resolution; if not flesh, then steel is all. Oh Kingokingoking Maria cried, and as the Broadway grandly broke stasis he began to see the light of eternity open up to him. He’s wonderful! Maria cried, O King!
    There was this woman and her name was Maria; she loved Hawkins, she said, and first refused the impossible embraces of a mad Pleiadan but there was a grander design and she saw it saw it saw it okingoking.
    Hawkins felt the tumble of paradox.
    Just before the blankness, he mumbled, faithless bitch .
    O flawless faithless one.

Folly for Three
    G OOD, HE SAID AGAIN, THIS IS VERY GOOD. Just turn a little, let the light catch you. I want to see you in profile, against