Patron of the Arts

latch! You fucked up my fucking knee, you dumb cleanboot!”

“Clear your core,” I said to him. “Shut up and we’ll get you a medic.”

“We just wanted to play with the lady, goddamn it!”

“Maybe the lady didn’t want to play,” I said.

“You tumbled your gyro or something? Hurting a man like that?”

I didn’t mention his knife. I gave Nikolai another look, then I went into the Elysium Tripper and spoke to the lean dispenser just inside. I came back out and spoke to Nova. “A medic team will be over from Dome Eight in a few minutes.” She was on her knees trying to get the redhead to breathe easier. She gave me a venomous look.

“You could have killed them!”

I rolled my eyes upwards. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go to the Inn.”

“And leave them?” She shrugged away my suggestion and I became angry. One minute they’re trying to rape her and the next she’s being Florence Nightingale on Mars.

“Which way is it?” I asked. She waved an arm toward the noisiest part of the dome. Already a few drunken and curious bystanders were gathering.

“God bless,” one of them said as I shouldered past. “Nikolai and his grunts. I wonder if the Tolliver boys did it to ’em.”

The Redplanet Inn was the biggest structure I had yet seen on the planet. Only a few months younger than the oldest dome, it was older than I was and considerably more famous. A scandal when it was first constructed, it had become a legend simply because the independent nuvomartians wanted it there and to hell with the bluenoses back home. Earth

had

plenty

of

sex

and

entertainment

places

and

computer-controlled roving bisexual professionals. Earth had tri-di sex shows, labor contracts that amounted to slavery in a vastly overpopped world, and specialists galore. Earth had “balancing salons” where men or women could “center” themselves by experiencing carefully applied amounts of everything from extreme pleasure to extreme masochism. But all Mars had was the Redplanet Inn and others like it. I can’t say I disapproved. Sex on Earth had become almost ritualistic, determinedly democratic, all-too-casual, and very, very zongo. They sold everything with sex, and if that wasn’t enough, the SensoryTrips provided anything you thought you might have missed. Even illegal pleasure-center brain probes were to be had, for a price. There was something old-fashioned about the Inn. Or perhaps the word is timeless. There was direct and personal social intercourse. This was no Dial-A-Prostie service, impersonal and efficient as hell.

“Whirr-click! 1.8-meter female, brunette, 101.6—60.96—81.44

centimeters, D-cup. Fellatio skill rating 12, as requested. Conversant with the Baroque Period and the subkingdom Embryophyta. B.A., Saskatchewan College of Erotic Arts. Minimum credit, period one, applied Account XL-7-4522-T-8733 . Whirr-click! 2.1 meter male, blonde, 29 centimeter penis, Type 6 muscularity, Fornicon rating 11. Conversant with the Zorgasm Method, Early American Football, and interior decoration of the Plastiform Period. M.A., School for Creative Sexuality, Boston; B.A. from Climaxite. Minimum credit, periods one to five, applied Account GA-6-487-W-8990. Whirr-click!

As per request.

Just what you’ve always wanted. So perfect you keep buying more of them, trying variations. Pleasure units. Use and discard.