Free Robot Blues by Margaret Weis, Don Perrin Page A

masseuse, a sauna. Also a recreational
area. Watching the couples (with the occasional threesome or foursome) enter
the rec room and later emerge flushed and invigorated, Darlene guessed that the
Adonians weren’t playing shuffleboard.
    “People became so
restless on shuttle flights,” Raoul explained when he returned. He had changed
from a mauve jumpsuit with golden epaulets on the shoulders and matching gold
boots to a long flowing pink caftan with billowing sleeves, encrusted with
embroidery and glittering with sequins.
    “Restless! The
flight’s only two hours!” Darlene protested. “Why couldn’t you just ... read a
book?”
    Raoul laughed so
much he had to leave again to repair the damage done to his eyeliner.
    When he returned,
he regarded Darlene with a contemplative frown. “Now, do let me try to
do something with your hair!”
    While Raoul fussed
over her—murmuring despairingly beneath his breath—Darlene studied the other
passengers onboard the shuttle, trying to ascertain if any of them might be
shadowing her—although, she admitted to herself ruefully, spotting a tail would
be a difficult task on an Adonian shuttle. What with all the comings and goings
and clothes changing and appearance altering, she probably wouldn’t have
spotted her own mother.
    Was the drop-dead
gorgeous Adonian blond woman seated across the aisle from her the same
drop-dead gorgeous Adonian redhead who had occupied that seat on departure?
Darlene wasn’t sure. She had the dim notion that the woman wasn’t a woman at
all. Darlene was beginning to think Xris had been right. This trip was a
mistake.
    But there was
always the Little One. The telepath, having awakened, reported through Raoul
that no one was thinking about Darlene at all.
    “Not surprising,
with this hairdo,” Raoul muttered. He gazed sadly at Darlene. His voice had the
tragic note of a surgeon telling the nurses to pull the plug. “I’ve done all I
can conceivably be expected to do, given the circumstances.”
    The shuttle
landing took forever, the craft settled down very slowly and very gently. “It
would never do to jostle the wine,” Raoul explained.
    When the doors
were at last opened, the Adonians rose gracefully, bade good-bye to newfound
shipboard romances, and glided toward the exits on waves of rose and musk and
violet. The smoke of hookahs lingered in the air. The few off-world passengers,
feeling—as did Darlene—frumpy, dowdy, repressed, inhibited, and, most of all,
ugly, slumped down in the seats and wished they’d never come.
    Raoul was eager to
leave, however, and insisted that Darlene come with him. Walking off the
shuttle in company with the glittering, beautiful Adonian, she understood now
why the Little One chose to envelop himself in the raincoat; she envied him his
fedora.
    Shrinking into
herself, conscious of all eyes on her (disparagingly, it seemed), Darlene
Mohini picked up her computer case and her shabby overnight bag and prepared to
be thoroughly and deeply humiliated in customs.
    She would have
almost rather been shot.
     

Chapter 8
    So clomb this
first grand thief into God’s fold . . .
    John Milton, Paradise Lost
     
    The shuttle
landing on Pandor was considerably more jarring to its passengers than the
shuttle landing on Adonia. No champagne had been served on the flight; the
fragrances in the air were a mixture of disinfectant, boot polish, and machine
oil. No swimming pools; the passengers considered themselves lucky to have
toilets. The seats were benches, with worn and cracked vinyl cushions. The
passengers made no complaint about the discomfort, however. They were all Army
personnel, they’d all been in worse places, and there was a full-bull colonel
onboard, who was heard to remark to his aide that this landing was soft as a
baby’s bottom compared to the drop-ship landings he’d made during his days with
special forces.
    After that, of
course, the other passengers—two privates and two lieutenants—dared make