Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

eyes mischievous-looking and flanked by “laugh lines,” dressed in deep black and gold. He just had to be Talant Ypsir.

Scampering around were four scantily clad young women of inordinate beauty and sexual endowments, supplying hors d’oeuvres, replenishing glasses, lighting Kobe’s Lilithian cigars, all with a smile and an adoring expression. Goodtime Girls, happily plying their trade. Idly he wondered if they were always here, waiting for that incredibly rare occasion when their master might show up, or whether they were part of his traveling party.

Ypsir spotted him, grinned a politician’s grin, and made his way over to him, hand out. “Well, well! So you’re the man’s who’s going to save the universe!” His manner was joking, not sarcastic-sounding, and he recognized the man’s public persona in an instant. The eternal baby-kissing hypocritical politician, the crook who knows full well he’s got everything in the bag. He snapped his finger and a Good-time Girl was immediately at hand, eagerly awaiting a command. “Get Mr.—Carroll, I believe?—a homau and a tray of those little sausage things with the cheese inside.”

The girl was quick to obey and was soon back with both. He sipped the sweet drink and took a small sausage on a toothpick and tasted it. The drink was a bit sweet for him—he recognized it as some blend of Charonese fruits and alcohol—but the appetizer was quite good.

Ypsir engaged him in small talk for some tune, and he found it remarkably easy to do. His indignation and outright hatred were still there, of course, but under complete control. He doubted if he’d ever met someone so internally corrupt and evil, but he’d tracked down and caught a bunch of very unpleasant types in the past, and quite often he’d had a meal with them and been forced to endure their bizarre lifestyles and values.

All the men in the room except himself were in that class, he realized. Laroo had been the criminal boss of a dozen worlds; Morah had run the criminal brotherhood’s scientific branch, which included projects that would probably make the Goodtime Girls seem tame. Kobe had in his youth been a master of the robot and computerized alarm systems, personally looting more works of art by great masters from impregnable fortresses—or so they were thought to be—than any other single human being. And yet, oddly, he felt almost a kinship with those three, whose careers were based upon disdain for the very values he now disdained, and who, beyond that, were at least sane enough to live in the real universe.

Of them all, only Talant Ypsir hoped he would fail to stop the impending war. Dumonia had been most specific about that point. Ypsir saw the destruction of the Confederacy, and perhaps the whole non-Warden branch of humanity, as something very much to be desired. He was assured of survival with his harem, and that was all that mattered to him. He did not consider the Altavar any threat, because they did not interfere with him or threaten what he considered important. In fact, to Talant Ypsir the entire alien race was just another tool against his enemies.

Ypsir held up a finger and grinned broadly, ever the jovial, friendly politician, only his incredibly cold eyes betraying anything of his inner self. “Wait herel I want to show you my most precious possession!” And, with that, he ducked from the room.

He heard the others whispering admiringly of what they knew was coming. But when Talant Ypsir re-entered, in spectacular fashion, he was aware that the eyes of the other Lords—Morah’s inhuman, burning orbs in particular—were all upon him and not on the newcomer to the room. To Ypsir, this was fun torture; to the others, it was very much a test of his own self-control and resolve. If he blew it now, there would be no tomorrow morning.

She was almost inhuman in her wild, exotic, sensuous beauty, far beyond the sketches he’d seen in Fallon’s office. Despite all his knowledge and feelings, he was almost overcome by wanton desire, by pure lust, and that, he realized later, was the key.

You must think of her as someone you do not know and have never met.

It was easier to do than he’d believed.

She entered on all fours, playfully tugging at a golden leash held by Ypsir, whose face showed absolute ecstasy and triumph. Ypsir was having a doubly fine tune, not only tweaking this outsider’s nose and, by so doing, the Confederacy’s, but also showing off to the other Lords, his political equals, with an air of I have her and you never can or will.

Ypsir and the girl halted just inside the entrance door, and she rolled over and then partly propped herself up on one arm, legs crossed, and looked up at them with those enormous green eyes, at once sexy and, somehow, wild as well.

She was, he thought lustfully in spite of himself, the ten best pornographic performances ever given all rolled up into one. She was quite literally designed to create instant envy and lust, and he could only stare at her. She looked straight into his face and there was no glimmer of any recognition at all, but there was a vibrancy, a fire in those eyes that was not in any of the Goodtime Girls.

Ypsir looked down at her with pride. “Tell the nice men your name,” he urged softly, as if talking to a trained animal or a child.

“I’m Ass,” she purred. “I’m a baaad Ass.”

“And why are you named Ass?”

“ ’Cause Ass was ’sassin. Ass try to kill Master.”

He was under control now, perfectly so, and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the others. They were still looking only at him.

“And what happened when you tried?”

“Master too smart. Master too wise for Ass. Master so generous. Master no kill Ass. Master no hurt Ass. Master make Ass love him. Master take ugly, evil ’sassin, make into Ass, to love Master.”

Despite the depravity of the scene, this was becoming interesting, he thought. If they retold her that much, how much did she know of her former self? Not enough to recognize him, certainly. This was different from what he expected, yet it was consistent. Ypsir wanted her to know.

“Do you remember who. you were?”

She looked slightly confused by that one. “Ass not ’member old self. Ass no want to ’member.”

“Are you happy now, Ass?”

“Oh,, yes!”

“Would you want to be anybody else—anybody or anything in the whole wide universe?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Ass loves being Ass. Feels so good.”

Ypsir looked up straight at him. “Your former agent.”

“Very creative,” he responded dryly, sipping at his drink. “And very lovely. Maybe we missed a bet, Lord Ypsir. Maybe we should have made you into a gorgeous beauty like that instead of sending you to Medusa. That’s what you would have done with you.”

Ypsir’s face clouded, and he literally shook with emotion, his inner self coming out in the twisting of his face, in his expression, in his every mannerism. It was a frightening, totally evil visage, a demonic creature that could no longer hide behind the mask of the cheery politician for very long.

He was about to add more, but felt Morah’s arm touch his and thought better of it. He’d done his job, and that was all that mattered, but he took a strong pleasure in twisting Talant Ypsir’s vision of beauty back upon him by applying the Medusan’s standards to himself.

Ypsir took a minute or-so to regain control, and slowly that terrible demon faded and the cheery politician was back with only a nasty leer remaining. He knew now, though, that he was in complete control, and his self- confidence, which had been badly wavering, flowed back into him in a grand surge. He also now knew that, while he still couldn’t believe in a god, he would always afterward believe in the existence of pure evil.

The rest of the evening was strained, but he found the right balance that not only Morah but the other Lords could approve. Not that Ypsir didn’t try, parading Ass, making her do pretty disgusting and degrading things, and pushing him as far as the Medusan could push using her, but to no avail. Ypsir fought his war with grand and ugly gestures; he fought back with sarcasm and flip comments, and totally frustrated the great Lord of Medusa. It was a very rare evening, really, he told himself, equally unpleasant, and rewarding.

Morah got him out of there as soon as dessert was finished, though. Ypsir would be boiling, horrible mad for hours after. Still, the Charonese was more than impressed by his behavior, and seemed to regard him even more as