"In a few moments you won't find me so hard to look at," Hiram said. His voice sounded strange, as if someone were doing a creditable imitation of him.

"Hi-Hiram," she managed in a whisper. "I-I w-wouldn't--h-hurt--"

Small fingers touched her back, and she realized what was happening. She opened her eyes, "No, Hiram," she begged, her voice getting stronger, "don't let it-don't let it-"

Hiram's curious look had vanished. In its place was an expression so griefstricken, she automatically tried to reach out to him, but the weight barely let her move her hand. He looked into her eyes and she had the impression he was struggling with something.

The thing was fully on her back now, nestling in; she could feel something moving along her neck.

Suddenly the weight was gone. Tears glittered in Hiram's eyes, and she thought she heard him whisper, Run.

And then something stabbed her neck.

She must have blacked out at the first contact; she felt as though she were swimming through the air, or being carried to and fro by air currents. The weight's gone, she thought, Hiram's made me weightless and I'm floating through the room. Then her vision cleared and she saw she was still lying on the floor.

Hiram was reaching for her, intending to gather her to him in an embrace.

"Stop:" It was her voice, but she had no control over it. Something else was speaking through her. The panic that rose in her at the realization trans.m.u.ted into a mild pleasure that began to grow more intense.

Hiram hesitated for a moment and then continued to pull her close.

"I said, stop!" The command in her voice stopped Hiram cold. From the last tiny part of her that was still herself, Jane watched as her hand lifted and paused; a small waterfall congealed out of the air and splashed down on the carpet. A wave of pleasure swept through her, overruling that little bit of her that was horrified. It was as though she had been split into two people, one very large one full of irresistible pleasure and energetic appet.i.tes, and one very, very small Jane Dow confined in a cage and buried too deeply to surface and regain control, but able to observe-and feel-everything the large one did. The large one, she realized, was the creature on her back.

She got to her feet and stretched, feeling her muscles. Hiram sat up and watched her with hurt, suspicious eyes. "You promised," he said sulkily, as though he were a little boy deprived of a treat.

"I promised you pleasure beyond anything in your artificial, white world," the creature said with her voice. "You have that. Please do not disturb me when I am getting the feel of a new mount." The little tiny Jane gave a surge of outrage but was quickly subdued. Somewhere in her mind she felt the presence of humiliation and panic, but it was so far away, it might as well have been happening to someone else. The pure pleasure coursing through her body in everstrengthening waves, that was the only thing really happening to her.

"Why not?" Hiram said, sounding almost whiny. "Haven't I been good to you? Don't I give you everything and everyone you ask for? I even gave you her. I wanted her all to myself, but I didn't hold out on you."

The creature used Jane's laugh. There was another surge of outrage that turned to pleasure even more quickly than before. "You're in love with this little white flower?"

Hiram dropped his gaze for a moment and muttered something she couldn't hear. It might have been yes. There was a part of her that was important to, but the rising pleasure displaced everything. Nothing could be important next to that.

"Ah, but you love me more. Don't you."

Hiram raised his head. "Yes," he said tonelessly.

Jane felt the creature move her hand to touch Hiram's head with the benevolence of superiority, n.o.blesse oblige, and every movement sent new waves of pleasure through her.

She had not thought it possible that just simple movement could suffuse her with pure ecstasy. That was the only word for it: ecstasy. "And I love you, too, of course." The creature was feeling around in her mind for all her thoughts of Hiram. She had a faint, distant sense of wanting to shut him off, evict him, how dare he-but the pleasure. No. He could take what he wanted, take anything he wanted, take it all if it meant that she could go on feeling like this. "How could I not love such tastes and appet.i.tes, such a capacity to enjoy life?" The creature probed more deeply, and Jane thought she must be ringing like a bell, vibrating with heaven. "I'm quite--attached to you. I couldn't live without you."

She knelt down beside him and touched his face. Hiram looked as though he were about to cry. "Is it hard for you to hear those words from this mouth?" The creature poured its knowledge into her mind and she wanted to be sorrowful, but it seemed that even the chemical reactions in her brain cells detonated more pleasure within her. How could someone feel so much of this without dying, she wondered. Perhaps she was dying. If so, that was fine, she would die, too, if it felt this good. Whatever, she promised the creature, begging it to like her, love her. Whatever. Always. She was telling it something it already knew, and such a superior form of life could hardly be bothered with her supplications, but she made the offering anyway. It deserved no less.

"We must always do whatever is in our best interests," the creature told Hiram through her, and she felt herself wiggling inwardly like a delighted puppy because it had chosen to acknowledge her by using her words. "Hiram, my own.

This is a mount with everything to discover. Everything." Yes, everything, anything, she gibbered. Whatever. Always. "This will be a new pleasure for me, the pleasure of discovery, of gratification finally taken." The creature using her face to smile was a sun shining within her. "Call Ezili to us."

Hiram went to the doorway. Jane pulled herself up onto the bed, enjoying each separate part of the movement and all of it together. How was it she had never realized what a good body she had, how much feeling it was capable of? Well, she would not waste any more time. The world was full of pleasure.

"Ah. As I thought."

She turned at the sound of Ezili's voice and laughed. "Ezili-je-rouge, my own.

See this unexpected pleasure." Jane stood up, rejoicing in the sensation, and smoothed her hands over her hips.

Ezili walked over to her and looked her up and down. "Does it please you, then?"

She was looking into Ezili's face as though it were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. How could she have ever thought Ezili's eyes were evil? The red in those eyes was pleasurable to see; seeing was another act of pleasure, and seeing Ezili was even more pleasure because she pleased him so much. She could only love Ezili helplessly because Ezili made her Master so happy, and her Master's happiness meant more ecstasy for herself. "It pleases me so much."

Jane's hand moved toward Ezili and then paused, shaking a little. Her vision swam and darkened, and for a moment she was thinking. What am I doing, no, stop, STOP!.

And then the pleasure was back, bringing with it the antic.i.p.ation of even greater pleasures, and her hand was moving on Ezili's breast. Ezili quickly pulled down the front of her dress.

Jane looked over at Hiram with a smile. "Here's something I bet you never thought you'd see." Moisture condensed out of the air and fell on herself and Ezili in a gentle mist, moving over them selectively. She bent her head to Ezili's breast. The wet flesh was soft and firm and very warm. Hiram made a small noise. It registered on her only as the vague noting that hearing, too, could turn the pleasure up higher and higher.

Absolute pleasure, she discovered, could make a person swoon. At least it did her. Sometimes it seemed she was nearly at the point of blacking out, and then she would find herself following a smooth curve of hip, or gazing down at Ezili's face. The pleasure pulsing through her would grow again until it overwhelmed her.

Once she found herself staring into Hiram's eyes while Ezili knelt before her, and she felt an almost psychic connection with him. He was hungry for her, for Ezili, for both of them, but even more for the thing on her back. He felt a bit bewildered and abandoned. He knew this pleasure, not just the pleasure of Ezili's body but of this contact, the ecstasy of the kiss. The kiss. Ezili's mouth, skilled as it was, paled next to the real kiss.

Absently she pushed Ezili away and gave herself over fully to the creature, obeying its silent commands, reveling in what it could do for her all by itself.

Eventually she found herself languid on the bed, drifting in half-consciousness, still aglow with pleasure. She was aware of the way the covers felt against her skin, of the wetness between her thighs and the water still slowly caressing her body, of the murmur of Hiram and Ezili's talking. It should have been uncomfortable with her Master on her back (Ti Malice, her mind told her, and she accepted the name), but it felt perfectly natural there, as though it were something that always should have been there and had been missing until now. She sighed with contentment. How had she gone all her life without the comfort of the weight there, the sweet pressure at her neck? She had been incomplete before, pathetically unfinished. Now she was whole, more than whole; perhaps even more than human.

Yes, much more than human. She had been waiting for this all her life without knowing it, to be ridden by this creature of beauty that could bring her spirit to new heights of awareness. This was living a plane above human. All the new thoughts it gave her ... but most of all, the pleasure. She had been made for pleasure, she thought happily; how fortunate that she had been able to find that out.

"Ezili," her voice said. Somewhere out of the range of her vision she felt Ezili snap to attention.

"I have been waiting," Ezili said, sounding acquiescent and yet petulant all at once.

"It is not done yet."

Ezili sighed. A moment later she felt the touch of Ezili's hand.

"No, not that. Is your traveling cloak here? We wish to ... travel." Jane heard herself laugh softly.

"What about me?" Hiram said.

"You can help me dress." Jane's hand lifted in his direction. "Come, help me up."

The traveling cloak was a long, flowing cape with a cowl and a large collar in layered rules. The rules hid the hump the creature would have made under the more conventional covering of a sweater or a jacket. The cloak itself was a bit ostentatious, but on the streets of wild card New York, it wouldn't cause much comment. The shrouded forms of jokers hiding some prominent feature or another had been commonplace for years.

Ezili pulled up the cowl so that it hid Jane's face completely. Jane gathered the cloak about herself, enjoying the small pleasure of the way it touched her.

"Somewhere interesting," she told Ezili. "Something in a man this time."

"And I just stay here and wait for you?" Hiram said. His tone was satisfyingly servile.

"You know I will come back for you later. Be here."

"Yes," said Hiram. "Always." He kept his gaze on the carpet. "I'll phone for the car."

Jane was delighted to see that Hiram was traveling by private limo these days, with a driver who left the soundproofed part.i.tion up at all times. It gave her the privacy she wanted, with Ezili or anyone else.

It was like being a queen, Jane thought; a queen or an empress. Now she could understand what it must have been like to be the Astronomer, the way he was. She had been calling him poison and resisting certain aspects of her own power-it was to laugh. What she had thought of as evil was just a matter of power. There wasn't really even such a thing as evil or good-only power and the pleasure that it brought. And anything could be sacrificed for that, anything at all, and everything if necessary. Whatever. Always.

They pa.s.sed a newsstand and she had a glimpse of a magazine with a picture of Jumpin' Jack Flash on the cover. Something tw.a.n.ged within her. How nice it would have been to have him now. But there were plenty of good-looking men in the world, red-haired or not. And what did good-looking have to do with it anyway?

There were whispers about jokers, about how sometimes the more grotesque the deformity, the more endowed and skilled they were for certain things....

Hey, baby, I got more than just the ears of a donkey! She gave Ezili an attention-getting pinch, once more generating a burst of pleasure just in the movement, and told her where she wanted to go. Then she sat back while Ezili told the driver, experiencing the ecstasy of just breathing in and out. In and out.

If the joker with the donkey ears recognized her, he gave no sign. He stood gawking with his squirt bottle in one hand and a filthy rag in the other as Jane beckoned through the open door to him. For a moment he looked as though he were going to climb in, but when he saw Ezili, he suddenly bolted. Surprise and anger surged through Jane, and that, too, was great pleasure to feel. From now on she would feel every emotion there was to feel, anything that pleased her Master.

Whatever. Always.

Ezili shut the door and told the driver to go on. "Don't worry," she purred, to Jane or to Ti Malice, it didn't matter. Sound was exquisite. "We'll find another that isn't all talk."

The next joker they found was eyeless, but he had no problem climbing into the back of the limo. Jane studied him; his head was elongated, bullet-shaped, with just a blank expanse of skin running from the straight hairline to his nose.

Seeing deformity was as delicious as seeing Ezili naked.

The joker sniffed suspiciously and turned his face to her. "How many of you are there?" he said in a ridiculously high voice. Jane reached down between his legs and he jumped. Ezili held him back against the seat.

"Hey, hey," the joker shrilled. "You don't have to pin me down, I know what you want." He began to undo his baggy trousers.

Her Master rode her awe as if it were a wave. "Is that ... standard equipment?"

she was allowed to ask.

The joker gave a high laugh. "It is on this model. G.o.d bless the wild card, hey, ladies?"

Her Master bent her head for her; even the antic.i.p.ation of pleasure was a whole pleasure in itself. As was having Ezili watch.

The bar was dark, except for the hot, white spotlight on the small stage where a many-breasted hermaphroditic joker and a normal man did unusual things to each other in time to music. Jane watched through her new eyes, embracing the experience of curiosity and interest. Even more interesting was the way the other patrons cruised her and Ezili. They moved past their corner table, ostensibly on their way to the bar or to the rest room, slowing to make eye contact. It was exhilirating to find she could dismiss someone with a look. They all wanted her; some of them stared at Ezili, but they all looked at her, nestled in her cloak, hiding the spirit of power on her back. They knew, she thought. They all knew that she was the real presence and Ezili wasn't much more than her servant, if that. Servant to the thing on her back, yes, but it was on her back. No matter what happened later, it was on her back now, and even if it should leave, if she should never have it again, she had been the Queen of Pleasure for a little while and she could not imagine not feeling that way ever again.

There was a young man standing in front of the table expectantly. Her Master told Jane to appraise him-skinny, young, probably not more than seventeen or eighteen. No visible distinguishing characteristics other than his s.h.a.ggy red hair. A little pretty boy. She leaned forward.

"You're blocking our view. Why don't you sit down?" She indicated the chair beside her.

The boy sat down, staring at her intently. Then, without a word, he slid off the chair and knelt in front of her. When she pulled up her dress, she knew it was the creature moving her arms, but she poured all her enthusiasm into it, going with him joyfully, accepting the pleasure of her fingers twisting in the boy's hair. Red hair, she thought dreamily; I'll pretend it's him, Jumpin' Jack Flash....

There was a mild ripple in the pleasure running through her, as though something in her had been distracted. Without volition she looked over her shoulder at Ezili.

"It's starting to bore me," she heard herself say in a flat voice. "Perhaps it doesn't fight me enough, or perhaps it just doesn't have enough ideas of its own. Take the cape, Ezili." Ezili's eyes seemed to glow in the darkness.

"Move carefully, my own."

Ezili whispered something in French and slipped under the side of the cloak, putting one arm around Jane.

Jane held tighter to the boy's head, feeling something like hurt surprise. It was leaving her? Now? Even as she thought it, she felt it withdraw from her neck. There was a moment of sharp pain, followed by a sudden blankness, as if a switch had been thrown to off. She was aware of the creature's moving from her back to Ezili's, and she wanted to turn and grab it back, but she couldn't move.

And the cloak was resettled around Ezili's shoulders and she was now the Queen of Pleasure.

Ezili rose from her chair as if she were levitating and looked down at Jane with scornful triumph.

"Why?" Jane pleaded. "I thought-I thought-"

Ezili stroked Jane's head roughly, as if she were a dog. "Old favorites are not forgotten. New pleasures bring great thrills, yes, but the old favorites such as this mount, it knows how to please me. And the richness of its appet.i.tes-you have far to go, little mount, before you can compare with this." Ezili cupped her hands around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and held them out proudly.

Jane turned away, starting to tremble. Ezili bent down and put her mouth close to her ear. "Goes right to the pleasure place in your brain, did you know that?"

she said in her own, hateful Ezili-voice. "Yeah. Maybe you can get hold of some drug does the same. Might get you through the hours without him. You can try that, might help. And maybe you be a lot nicer to me now, white meat. If you want the kiss again." She thrust her tongue into Jane's ear, and Jane gave a little screech, slapping at her. Ezili laughed and moved around the table, going toward the exit.

"Wait!" Jane shouted over the music. "Where are you going?", Ezili paused, sneering at her. "Out for some real action."

"What about me?" she cried desperately.

Ezili laughed again; the cape swirled gracefully as she headed for the exit.

Jane sat frozen for a moment. Drown her! she thought, but her mind shied away from the necessary concentration. The pleasure that had been thrumming all through her like the vibrations from some smooth-running engine were gone, and in its place was a terrible hollowness as if, when the creature had pulled away from her, it had taken everything inside of her with it.

Then she looked down and saw the boy between her legs, grinning up at her, his mouth and chin shining wetly in the faint light.

"Get away!" she shrieked and beat at him madly, horrified at herself and him and at the way the creature had left her.

"Hey, hey!" the boy yelled, trying to fend off her flailing hands. "Handyman, help! c.u.n.t gone crazy!"

Several arms grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.

"Let me go!" She tried to twist away and the arms hugged her tighter, threatening to crush her rib cage. She tried to call water to dash it into her captor's face, but her ability seemed to have deserted her; there was only hollowness where it had once been. Panic jumped in her. "Help, police, somebody!"

"Shut your f.u.c.king mouth, c.u.n.t," said a deep male voice close to her ear, the same ear where Ezili had stuck her tongue. Jane squirmed in revulsion and the arms squeezed again painfully. She forced herself to go limp. After a moment the arms relaxed slightly, ready to tighten again if she started to struggle.

"Now what were you saying about the police? Maybe you seen a crime being committed?"

Jane looked around. They were all staring at her, all the people at the little tables spread through the room, but there was no emotion in most of the faces.

On stage the hermaphrodite and the man had paused, sitting on a platform with legs entwined, squinting out at the room in annoyance. The hermaphrodite shielded his/her eyes from the spotlights with one hand, searching for the cause of the disturbance.

"Hey, do you f.u.c.king mind?" s/he yelled, his/her face turned in Jane's direction. "I'm trying to concentrate up here. You think this she-male s.h.i.t's easy or something?"

"Go f.u.c.k yourself!" someone yelled hoa.r.s.ely. "That's the late show, sweetheart!"

"Okay, c.u.n.t, let's go," said the male voice in Jane's ear. "You ruined the show," The arms lifted her and dragged her across the back of the room to a different exit than the one Ezili had taken. The red-haired kid ran to open the door, and Jane was shoved out into a narrow, dirty alley. She hit the ground on hands and knees, crying out in rage and pain.

"Blow, c.u.n.t. And don't bring it around here again."

She scrambled up, ready to protest, and then jumped back, falling against some garbage cans. The man standing in the doorway was no taller than she was, but his torso was wide and misshapen, to accommodate the three pairs of arms.