Free Eros Ascending: Book 1 of Tales of the Velvet Comet by Mike Resnick Page A

it. That's why you're the only man I trust.”
    “Well, you'd better find someone else after this job is over.”
    “Come to Deluros when you're through, and we'll talk about it, Harry,” said Bonhomme, touching a section of his desk with a long forefinger and breaking the connection.
    Redwine stalked over to the kitchenette, found a bottle of Alphard brandy, looked for something stronger, couldn't find it, filled up a glass with the brandy, and downed it in a single swallow. He poured another glass, then walked over to the sofa and sat down.
    The frustrating thing was that Bonhomme was right: he'd probably go stark staring crazy if he had to go back to working full-time in an office. Espionage wasn't much—certainly no honor or pride of accomplishment accrued to it—but it was all he had.
    He sipped his drink, more slowly this time, and wondered if this emptiness he felt was unique to him, or if it was common to everyone. Many times he had wanted to ask someone about it, but part of the emptiness was caused by the fact that he had never found anyone he could really talk to. Certainly not his ex-wife, though their parting had been relatively amicable.
    Not his three daughters, who were pleasant and cordial enough, but whom he understood about as well as he understood a six-legged chlorine-breathing native of far Teron. Not his fellow employees, who felt that the Good Life consisted of a portfolio, two homes, three mistresses, and four pension funds.
    The funny part was that he had really tried. He had worked hard at being a good husband and a good father and a good accountant, and he still didn't know what had gone wrong, or why he had jumped at the chance to start working for Bonhomme. Certainly it wasn't from any sense of moral commitment; he didn't even know who his employer was. He had told himself originally that he was doing it for the money, but that wasn't true: his needs and tastes were simple, his only luxury was his book collection, and he had been well-paid long before Bonhomme ever came along.
    He guessed that it was the excitement and the danger, which provided him with the certain knowledge that he was alive when he had been absolutely sure that he was just passing time, alone and isolated, from the womb to the grave. And because he cherished the knowledge that he mattered, even if only to someone whose identity was a mystery to him. So he mastered his new craft of destroying companies as competently as he had mastered his old craft of auditing them. Better, even.
    Which led to still another question that he had nobody to ask: was everyone better at destroying things than fixing them, or was it just him?
    He had the sinking feeling that he was unique, and he had a strong suspicion that those people who would think of him as a dashing and romantic figure if they knew what he really did were the same ones who currently considered him to be a fulfilled and successful man. Redwine sighed. He would be happy to settle for either description, instead of the one that was true: a hollow man, who had been lonely and empty for so long that he was half-convinced that this was the natural order of things.
    He looked down at the pin he always wore, tried to envision the bright, hopeful young man who had earned the right to wear it, and wondered exactly how he had come all the way from there to here.
    He stared at the pin for a long time. Finally he shrugged, finished his drink, and walked over to the computer.
    “Activate,” he said wearily, and a moment later he was going through the financial data banks of the Velvet Comet , hard at work at the only thing in his life at which he seemed able to excel.

Chapter 5

    Redwine was leaning back in his fur-covered contour chair that evening, reading his copy of The Inferno, when his computer came to life. A moment later he was confronting a full-sized holograph of the Leather Madonna.
    “Harry, is this some kind of joke?”
    “Absolutely not,” he assured her. “I'm just