The Ophiuchi Hotline

She felt good. It was like the peace that could be achieved when you had regained your breath after a ten-kilometer run, but without the pain and exhaustion that would have preceded it. She had wanted Vaffa in a good mood for what she was about to propose, and it looked as though she had succeeded. Vaffa was inclined to be perfunctory about copping; Lilo assumed that the woman had never attracted anyone to love her and had decided, like so many, that sex was overrated. Tonight might well have been the first time she had experienced copping as a sensual delight, not merely the pursuit of orgasm.

"Well, I certainly can't understand them," Vaffa said.

"That's because you've never run into anyone who dislikes people as much as you do," Lilo said. She hoped it would go over well, not be taken as an insult. Vaffa had never pretended to like people.

"Maybe you're right," Vaffa said. She seemed about to smile, but her lips did not quite know how to manage it. Lilo sat up on one elbow and faced the faintly glowing apparition. Her head felt a little thick now that she'd raised it; there had been entirely too many things to drink and smoke and sniff during the course of the day. Tiny red tongues of flame were dancing over the hairless woman's back. Lilo pursued them with her fingertips, pressing firmly into yielding muscle. Vaffa arched herself sensuously, with a contented moan.

"They're very sensitive, holehunters," Lilo said. "Am I right?"

"Very," Cathay mumbled. He shook his head to wake up, and sparks flew from his hair. Lilo was delighted.

"I think they're reacting to you," Lilo said.

"In what way?" Vaffa lifted her head, managing to look very like her pet python.

"I'm not sure. But they get almost telepathic. They don't see people for twenty years. When they get back they're sensitive, very touchy."

"Very perceptive," Cathay said. "The hunters, not you."

"Thanks. But they seem to feel when someone's dangerous. And I think they're feeling that from you."

Vaffa considered it, then let her head fall back. "You could be right." Lilo used both hands on Vaffa's neck and shoulders.

"I think I am. You're a killer; we both know it, so there's no need to mince words."

"No need at all."

"I happen to think there's more to you than that. Maybe you never got a chance to express it. Anyway, the hunters may not know that you've killed, but they sense the menace."

"I think you're right."

"Which leaves us the question of what to do about it. How can we charter a ship, and save the Boss a lot of money?" Lilo could have gone on, but it sounded like the place to stop. It would be better if Vaffa came up with the idea herself.

Cathay smiled at Lilo, then carefully turned away before Vaffa could see. The room was quiet for half an hour. Finally Vaffa rolled onto her side and rested her head on her arm. Her voice was sleepy when she spoke.

"Then you'll just have to go out alone."

16

Saint Peter's Casino was on fire, just as it had been the last time Lilo visited. Flames licked upward from the bottom edges of hanging tapestries, crackled through blistered oak paneling. The row of pews in the nave was an inferno, a whirling fire storm that reached to the ceiling. Smashed furniture had been heaped around the Pietà and set to the torch; the white marble was now coated with soot. Lilo took a sandwich and a drink from the snack bar that had been set up on the altar. She had been standing around the crap table all night and her feet hurt. St. Pete's bored her. But it was almost closing time. Soon Jesus would be there.

She went back into the Sistine Pit and worked her way over to the tables as one of the walls of the building crumbled. The smoke that had been trapped in the upper reaches of the chapel cleared enough for her to see Michelangelo's ceiling, by now considerably the worse for wear. There were cracks where holes had been drilled to anchor the crystal chandeliers which hung over every table. Beyond the vanished wall an angry Vesuvius could be seen belching fire and brimstone. Someone had a better sense of the dramatic than of historical geography, Lilo thought.

"Twenty on fifteen," she said, taking a seat to the left of the man she had been watching all night. He had lost heavily on the dice, and had shifted to roulette in a desperate effort to change his luck. The croupier in her black-and-white habit spun the wheel and the ball clattered into number eight. Lilo watched her chips being raked away along with the man's.

"Pardon me," said someone at Lilo's left. "Are you available?" She glanced at him. His eyes were glassy and his breath was sweet with the smell of Zongo, a powerful aphrodisiac. It was obviously not all he had ingested, and Lilo wondered what he saw when he looked at her. But she laughed when she looked down at him. His genitals had been radically modified according to the dictates of some new fad.

"Get out of here," she scoffed. "What good would that thing be to me?"

"It's okay," he slurred, nearly falling against her. "I've got an adapter." He brandished something pink and soft that seemed to be breathing. Lilo pushed him, and he staggered into the arms of a bouncer.

"Hey! You brought me luck!" the man next to her cried. The croupier was pushing a tall stack of chips in his direction.

"What'd I do?"

"You hit my elbow. I was going for twenty-six, you hit me, and it went to twenty-eight. I left it there. I mean, what the hell? I couldn't do worse than I've been doing, huh?"

If the aggressive little man had still been in sight, Lilo would have kissed him. The holehunter had ignored every conversational advance Lilo had made all night as he sank deeper into a black mood.

"Are you going to quit while you're ahead?" she asked.

"Ahead?... I don't know. You're lucky; what do you think?"

"I don't think we have much choice. J.C.'s coming."

And indeed he was. Bloody, naked, thorn-crowned, the bearded figure was driving the moneychangers from the temple before starting the task of rebuilding it.

"Saint Peter's will be in limbo for one hour, my children," he called out. "No need to leave, but you'll have to clear out of the gaming areas while we clean up. Refreshments are being served in the Pope Agnes Library, upstairs. Y'all come back, now, and bring money." He pulled a wall switch, and everything changed. Half the patrons vanished, along with most of the cathedral. There was a low white ceiling set with bare lights. Cleaning robots began to whir down the aisles, beeping angrily when they encountered the feet of slow-moving patrons.

"What do you say?" Lilo asked. "Are you tired of being taken?"

He laughed. "Maybe I ought to get out, for a little while anyway. You brought me luck. I'm at your disposal."

"All right. I think a bath might do us both some good. How long have you been here, anyway?"

Lilo knew very well that he had been in the casino for thirty-seven hours. Vaffa and Cathay had spelled her, keeping an eye on him, though Vaffa had stayed strictly in the background. She also knew his name, which was Quince, but she didn't tell him that. He was a holehunter, and a slightly unusual one, which was the cause of her interest.

Lilo had been working hard for the six days since Vaffa had given her a degree of freedom. Vaffa had decided that Lilo would be the one to operate on her own, because, while she did not really trust either one of them, she trusted Cathay less. But it had been a tough decision, and one she was still sweating over.

The job had not been easy, even without Vaffa. Quince was the best bet so far. The problem seemed to be that those hunters who owned their own ships didn't display the slightest interest in chartering them. A holehunter hunts holes, as she had been told many times and with great disdain; taxi drivers sell rides. The few working hunters who were on Pluto were there waiting for ships to be overhauled before setting out again, and they damn well did not intend to stop off at the Hotline.