*

Some hours of the trip had gone by, and they were playing three-dimensional checkers on a curve-projection.

Gruce D’Olivan checked the time-clip on his lapel. Boris Druzhov rubbed his chin in thought, then directed a piece with his finger.

Gruce studied the playing field. “What kind are you gonna pick – assuming this works out?”

Boris scratched an ear. “Not sure… I don’t know how much choice we’ll have anyway. They say the Fortress only has maybe five, six of ’em.”

Gruce waited impatiently for Boris to move. “You have to capture, ya know.”

Boris frowned and played the move. He sighed and stretched his arms. Gruce made four captures, grinning, his death-dealing piece now close to promotion. 

Boris, demoralized, pretended to concentrate on the game. He rubbed the back of his neck. Finally he said:

“Curly, dark hair. Short and thin. A sweet face. That’d be my ideal.”

“Redhead for me,” said Gruce.

* * *

The interstellar bubble, ever self-guiding, left them beside a wide dirt road somewhere in a barren country, then retired behind a low hill not far away. To the west, a range of tall and unwooded mountains could be seen behind a thick blue haze. To the east, an immense plain stayed level beyond vision. The two men had no way of knowing what time of day it was, but something in the light told Gruce that it was evening rather than morning. Indeed, after a few minutes he could tell that the vast orange sun, hovering above them like a glowing blimp, was falling rather than rising. 

They were disoriented, tired, uncertain, but at least they had had their fill of food and liquor on the trip over, and the weather was mild and warm. The wind kept rising and falling in a strangely regular pattern as the minutes went by. As far as the two men could see, spongy, knee-high growths of a pockmarked vegetable matter studded the dry ground. The squat, rotund things were the color of dishwater, but some of them sported orange and yellow, tassel-like flowers. 

Gruce could see dust devils sweeping across the dusty land far away. The temperature seemed perfectly neutral, neither hot nor cold – as if it enjoyed staying perched on some narrow ledge.

Boris was a large man – that was mostly his height and his overeating. He had curly, dirty-blonde hair and a stubbly beard, and wore horn-rimmed glasses, a faintly ridiculous derby hat, and a faded tan suit. Gruce, clean-shaven, was about a decade younger than Boris, and was shorter and lighter. A fit man with a nondescript but handsome face, he always kept a good posture and wore neat clothes. On at least two occasions in his life, people he knew had told him he somehow reminded them of a mannequin. 

Gruce squinted. He shielded his eyes with his right hand. Far off in the southern sky, something that resembled a sea-scorpion was undulating through the haze. 

The two men kept searching for any sign of people.

“Not what I was expecting,” said Gruce.

Boris shook his head. “I thought they’d be here right away.”

The wind shook the tassel-like flowers.

“I feel about as important as an ant in this place,” said Gruce.

“I wonder if the bubble dropped us off at the right spot,” said Boris, getting annoyed. 

Gruce brushed the dust off his jacket. This was probably more pleasant than waiting in the rain beside a lonely road in South Dakota for the bubble to arrive and whisk them across the depths of space to Lejorum – but not by a whole lot. The space-bubble had been the most comfortable place he’d been in in years. He wished the journey had been longer.

Boris jabbed his arm. “Hey. Over there.”

Off to the north where the road disappeared, a triangle of green light hovered above the ground. As it moved nearer, they could discern three people inside it.

“Remember: low-lives, the both of us,” said Gruce. “Act tough.”

“I don’t need to act,” said Boris, and pulled at his collar. 

The green light and the figures approached. The triangle gained distinctness as a squat pyramid of force-fields, with the base a shade darker than the sides. The three figures sat cross-legged inside the speeding, translucent energy-form. As it pulled beside them, Gruce and Boris fixed their eyes on the man farthest from them, who sported an expensive-looking suit and dark sunglasses and had cultivated a pencil-mustache above his bright red lips. The other two men, thinner and fitter than he was, wore less dapper clothes, and eyed Gruce and Boris seriously.

The transport came to a stop, and the side of the pyramid facing Gruce and Boris vanished. The two fit-looking men slipped out. Gruce noticed the slight bulges in their suits at their chests: ray guns, or laser pistols. 

“Need to search you,” one of them said. “Arms out.” His hands passed over their calves, thighs, mid-sections, chests, armpits, and arms while the other kept watch a few feet away. Boris took his hat off to show there was nothing under it.

“All right,” said the one who had searched them. “Get in. We’re going to the Hotel.”

* * *

“To tell the truth, even with half the population gone, my profits haven’t suffered much,” Ilim Ruiza was telling his new contacts. The five men had traveled swiftly around some hills to the nearby Hotel: an immensely tall, shining, copper block of a building with arched loggias and a white, glinting onion dome. Gruce, Boris, and Ilim were now drinking on the drug honcho’s bill on one of the higher floors, in a blue-lit, smoky hall where a few other men, in groups and alone, sat at clear glass tables. Occasionally a server would wander in with mugs of beer or bottles of wine on a tray. The two bodyguards sat at a table of their own, smoking and not talking, keeping an eye on their boss and his surroundings, their ray guns available at a second’s notice. On a stage, the curve-projection of a beautiful woman was dancing slowly to down-tempo music.

“It’s a wash, more or less,” Ilim was saying. He’d taken his sunglasses off and was drinking a hard cider. Gruce thought that his eyes didn’t look as hard as he’d expected. “Fewer customers, of course, and transportation’s riskier and more expensive. But men are desperate for something to take their minds off this whole godawful state of things. New stuff keeps popping up everywhere. A drug-runner’s dream – as long as you can keep clear of the Symmetries.”

At the name, Gruce felt a nauseous surge of fear as he sipped his wine. The Symmetries: huge glimmering orbs and columns of an unknown, iridescent metal; enormous cubes and polyhedrons that glowed vibrant yellows, reds, and greens. They swooped and hovered, floated and dipped, mangling space vessels, setting cities ablaze, and – perhaps most horrific of all – abducting women by the billions from all inhabited worlds, drawing them into mysterious chambers within themselves before vanishing into the far reaches of space. No weapons could so much as leave a mark on them. It was believed that many populations, men along with the women, had taken refuge in the cavernous depths of some worlds; other planets had lost their female half entirely and were in the ruinous grip of societal collapse and male hedonistic abandon. The only place Gruce knew that there were women for sure was on Eptor V, in the Great Fortress of Baleda: perhaps half a dozen of them, young and fertile wards of the Centrality. 

“Right,” Boris was responding to Ilim, “that’s why we’re trying to get into this gig. Fifth Division of Peripheral Army broke up, we’ve got casino debts, and all the straight jobs pay a pittance.” He finished off another beer – now there were five empty bottles in front of him.

“It was either this line of work,” said Gruce, “or join one of those cockamamy crusades against the Symmetries, the ones that are leaving by needle-ship. And we figured the hell with that.”

Ilim nodded. “Well – just play it careful, you know? I got into the business when I was nineteen or twenty. Don’t have much to say about the old days. But about six years ago, I found myself with a bunch of dead friends, no money, and my right leg in a cast. Almost had gotten my skull drilled at one point, too… Lucky for me, the guy with the appliance passed out drunk. Hadn’t tied me up very well, either. After an hour, I managed to wriggle out – then I bashed his head in with a lockbox.” Ilim smiled wistfully and took a deep swig of his cider. “I’m a lot more cautious now, believe me.”

The drug kingpin noticed Gruce and Boris looking past him and turned round. Just below the stage, a shabbily-dressed man with a red beard was tottering toward an exit. Gruce saw that the holographic woman’s clothes had disappeared, and she was writhing on the stage like a creature trying to burrow into the ground. The tottering man was moving his arms and hands in strange ways – bending, twisting, curving, waving them. Gruce assumed the man was drunk, but he soon noticed that his arm movements seemed strangely precise and dance-like, almost practiced, albeit stiff and rigid like the staggering of his legs. Abruptly, he collapsed to his knees, then curled forward to execute an oddly graceful somersault. Some laughs and claps came from a few tables. Then, almost like some hefty marionette lifted by strings, the man sprang up and continued his dance-like motions as he staggered out the side door.

Gruce chuckled in disbelief. “Well I’ll be. Like some goddamn puppet. What’s he on?”

“Lozenge, no doubt,” said Ilim. “I’ve seen that sort of thing a few times. Some guys who take it start moving around weird, like they can’t help it. I saw one hop and jump, and another took a candlestick and started waving it around like a club.”

“But they go back to normal soon?” asked Boris.

“A few minutes,” said Ilim. “They remember it, they just can’t explain it.”

One of the bodyguards tapped his boss on the shoulder. Ilim turned away to speak softly with him. Gruce glanced at Boris, who didn’t return his gaze. He looked glassy-eyed and sleepy. 

Ilim turned back. “Ever try it?” Gruce asked him. 

“Hmm?”

“The lozenge.”

“All the time,” said Ilim. “A true high. And no side effects, other than acting funny, and even that’s rare. In fact…” With another smile, he took a small tin from his vest pocket. He opened it – inside were a number of orange, semi-transparent lozenges. 

“The protection has orders to hold me down if I act up,” he said. He swallowed one with his cider and pushed the tin forward. “Try.”

They hesitated. Boris suddenly took one, studied it, then sucked at it before gulping it down with his beer. Gruce shook his head, gave a little wave of his hand. 

Boris sighed deeply and closed his eyes. His whole body seemed to melt into relaxation. “You weren’t kidding,” he breathed.

Ilim himself looked flush with happiness. 

“Tasted sweet, like a cough drop,” said Boris.

“Gentlemen,” said Ilim warmly, “we’ll have to wrap up. Trust has been established; supplies are ready. Along with the initial sale, if it’s agreeable you may contract for regular purchases over the next few years.”

“Where do they make ’em?” asked Gruce.

Ilim shrugged. “No one’s really sure. My network’s been getting deliveries from our contacts in the Castor system these past six or seven Earth months. Can’t keep ’em in stock.”

“Castor system?” said Gruce. “The simulacra colonies? I thought those robots weren’t programmed to invent new things.”

“Maybe they’ve learned to reprogram themselves,” said Boris. He drained his sixth bottle of beer.

Gruce looked meditative. “Maybe.”

* * *

Two hundred and twenty kilograms of Tellerin-G, one hundred and forty-five of high-quality “sneezy dust,” one hundred and five of Lejorian psychoactive mushrooms, and six hundred and twelve packets of the new lozenges: this was the first shipment that would make its way from Ilim Ruiza’s operation to Earth and Mars, care of Gruce D’Olivan and Boris Druzhov. Gruce paid with a wad of large-denomination U-units from his wallet, and was given a holo-crystal loaded with the receipt and a copy of the contract he and Boris had signed for further purchases over the next five Earth years. The plan now was to take Ilim’s conveyance back to the interstellar bubble, nearby which crates of the drugs were hidden in a secret chamber in a hillside. Ilim showed the device he’d use to open the cache. 

In the lobby of the Hotel, Boris began looking unsteady. All the alcohol, interacting with the lozenge, was taking effect. The five men exited the building and turned a corner towards the conveyance, the two bodyguards – whom Gruce had heard Ilim call Charlie and Red – keeping behind the other three. 

It was nighttime, cold and windy. Boris, tottering, had to rest one arm on Gruce’s shoulders. His feet kicked up dust. 

Ilim offered something to Gruce. “Let your friend sleep it off in the bubble, then tell him to prick his finger with this when he wakes up. Should wipe out any hangover.”

Gruce saw by the Hotel’s outside lamps that the item was a small upright needle inside a glass cube. “Obliged,” he said, pocketing it.

Boris was growing heavier and saggier. “Can you help?” Gruce asked the nearest bodyguard. Charlie took Boris’s other arm over his shoulders. 

The party’s pace slowed. “What’s the matter?” Charlie asked Boris. “We’re almost there.”

Boris muttered something. By this point he was almost not walking at all, only dragging his feet. Charlie grumbled and cursed.

“Sorry about my friend,” said Gruce.

Suddenly, with a moan, Boris somehow fell, his arms sliding off his two helpers. On the ground, he tucked his knees toward his chest.

“You okay?” asked Gruce.

Boris babbled something indistinct. 

“What?” said Gruce.

“My hat,” Boris mumbled. “Forgot it.”

Charlie sighed in disgust.

“You left it at the table?” asked Gruce.

“Think so,” said Boris. “Expensive.”

“Didn’t look expensive,” muttered Gruce.

Ilim stood above Boris. “Red, take him to the cafe in the lobby and buy him some black coffee,” he said. “And look for the hat upstairs. We’ll wait here.”

“Hey, how’d your shoe come off?” Red asked Boris.

Boris gave two grunts that might have been, “Not sure.” Red wiggled the shoe back onto his foot. A tall, well-muscled man, he grabbed Boris by the upper arms and hauled him to his feet. As he did so, Gruce noticed that Boris held something cupped in his right hand. Gruce held his breath, glancing at Charlie, then Ilim. Neither one seemed to have noticed anything amiss.

Red wrapped Boris’s left arm over his shoulders, and the two began staggering back to the Hotel.

“Don’t be too long, Boris,” said Gruce. He walked beside Ilim toward the conveyance, Charlie following the two men.

“Hope my hospitality wasn’t too much for your friend,” said Ilim. 

Gruce said nothing, then stopped after a moment, bringing the other two to a halt. “One thing, Mr. Ruiza.” He pulled out the holo-crystal he’d been given. “I had a question about one stipulation in the contract…” He switched it on, and Ilim and Charlie both looked at the flickering image that leapt up.

At that moment, they all heard a laser blast and Red’s shout. They turned to see the bodyguard slipping to the ground beside Boris, who was already turning and aiming. 

Gruce ducked to the ground. Charlie had only just taken his ray gun out of his holster when a bolt struck the center of his neck, jolting him back.

Gruce scampered away, looking back as he did. For days afterward, nearly the only thing he could picture when he closed his eyes was Ilim’s look of disbelief and terror, eyes wide and bulging and then abruptly screwed shut, his palms thrust forward as if he could deflect the beam of energy that was already gathering its deadly purpose inside Boris’s miniature laser pistol.

* * *

“They’ll be lined up to greet you, and they’ve each prepared a short speech to tell you about themselves,” said the Centrality Sentinel, a simulacrum of a human, as it led Gruce and Boris down a corridor. “That’s after I toss the coin.” A revolver the robot carried in a holster at its hip swayed with each step. Gruce kept running his hands over his ceremonial uniform, which felt loose and baggy on him. Moreover, his hands were shaking and he didn’t want anyone to see.

Gruce glanced at Boris. The man had shaved and been given a haircut. 

Surreptitiously, he took a lozenge from his pocket and swallowed it. He had helped himself to the tin of them that Ilim had carried in his vest. Gruce had seen him consume one or two on the bubble-trip over to Eptor V. Even cleaned up, Boris didn’t look too good. He seemed withdrawn, zoned out, a little pale.

At the end of the corridor they came to a stained-glass door of intricate tessellations. The Sentinel placed its palm against a central section, and the door slid apart soundlessly in five sections.

Beyond was a well-lit room bare of furniture, with marble walls traced with grooves that formed overlapping circles, squares, and triangles. The marble floor was divided into levels, the lowest in the middle of the room and the two slightly higher ones forming concentric rings around it. On the middle level stood five young women, each dressed in a silk robe. Flanking them stood two Sentinels, each, like the one that entered, carrying a revolver.

The scent of perfume was thick in the air. Somewhere far off in the Fortress of Baleda, a fusion reactor emitted a deep, oddly comforting hum – the only sound except for the footsteps.

The door slipped shut behind Gruce and Boris. Gruce stared at the women, not blinking. Each wore make-up, and they stood completely still, like statues. Each may have been looking at him rather than at Boris – but it was hard to tell. 

The Sentinel brought the two men to the center of the room, then turned round. He held up a pad and read: “Gruce D’Olivan, Implementer First Class, and Boris Druzhov, Implementer First Class: The Coordinating Mind of Saturn extends to you its heartfelt thanks and congratulations. For dispatching most-wanted criminal Ilim Ruiza of Lejorum, drug-runner and corruptor of many populations, you are each awarded a woman of your choice. You are the first of five Implementers to be awarded a Fortress woman of the Orion Spur.”

Gruce looked at Boris, beaming – but his smile fell. The man looked worse now – trembling, beginning to sweat. Boris coughed slightly, and seemed to list to one side.

“First choice will be determined by coin toss,” said the Sentinel, holding up a coin.

Boris’s arms and legs quivered. Slowly, his right hand fumbled toward his pocket. 

“Gentlemen: heads for Mr. Druzhov, tails for Mr. D’Olivan.” The coin glimmered as it rose and spun in the air…

The robot was on the floor before the coin bounced, wires sparking in the blasted section of its chest. 

The next split-second, one of the women was shot. She fell, blood spilling from her stomach. Then the two other Sentinels, revolvers still in their holsters, were put down, their bodies hissing with ruined circuitry. The women were screaming, running, while Gruce ducked and scrambled away from Boris.

The women streamed around Boris toward the door and banged their fists against the glass, but couldn’t break it. Gruce was shouting incoherently. Boris pivoted stiffly with his laser pistol held out, his face frozen in a bewildered, anguished look, legs rocking side to side like a wind-up toy’s. Gruce ducked as the aim of the barrel passed over him. Two blasts, and two of the women at the glass door fell dead. 

Gruce thought of tackling Boris head-on, but the pistol seemed always the merest fraction of a second away from finding him, and it was all he could do to avoid it, frantically scampering, desperate not to stumble or fall. Lingering long enough to pull one of the Sentinel’s revolvers from its holster seemed out of the question. Maybe there was some inwardly-spiraling course he could take to keep ahead of Boris’s aim, then grab the pistol or tackle him from behind? The two remaining women were scampering too, frantic to find some escape.

Boris’s movements were calculated and precise, but not very quick. Running like mad in a spiral, Gruce managed to close in on him, preparing to wrest away the weapon. As he drew closer, one of the two women tripped on the body of a Sentinel – and the roving gun found its target. 

Gruce came at Boris from behind, seizing his wrists, and he forced the pistol’s aim slightly upward. The two men struggled. Boris seemed immensely strong.

“Stop!” Gruce shouted.

Boris managed to turn so that he almost faced his combatant. He seemed clenched by some terrible squeezing force: clothes drenched in sweat, his skin almost purplish-red, teeth bared, eyeballs trembling. The strange rigidity of his body, even down to his fingers, made it not too difficult for Gruce to keep the pistol pointed up, but the man had incredible power. Gruce didn’t dare let up any of his strength against Boris’s arms to try to grab the pistol itself. 

Boris wheezed through his teeth, trying to speak. 

“Can’t… help it,” he said.

“What?”

Boris closed his eyes in agony as his breathing grew even heavier. Tears streamed down his cheeks. 

“Them!”

Gruce couldn’t withstand the man’s power. Exerting a supreme effort, Boris began to force the pistol’s aim back down.

Through watering eyes, Gruce saw the last woman take something up from the floor. Then came a deafening bang – and Gruce felt all of Boris’s body shake, quiver, and finally go loose and collapse. Gruce leapt away as Boris fell, shoving the hands that held the pistol away from him. 

Gruce looked at the woman, who was panting as hard as he was. He looked down at the body. The bullet had passed clean through Boris’s flanks, missing Gruce, and blood from the two wounds was pooling over the floor. 

The two stared at each other. It occurred to Gruce that it probably had been less than a minute since Boris had first fired, but it had felt much longer.

The woman took her eyes off Gruce and, hands shaking, slipped the revolver neatly into the Sentinel’s holster. Gruce was thinking furiously.

“The Symmetries,” he muttered.

The woman looked up. “What’s that?”

He took a step toward her. “That… must have been their plan. They must have been… waiting for an opportunity.”

She shook her head in confusion.

“It’s the Symmetries who’ve been spreading this drug, this lozenge,” said Gruce. “Boris, the guy you shot, had been taking it. It makes some people act funny – move around stiffly, like he was. Something just takes hold of them, and they can’t help themselves. I saw it.” He moved closer to her, and she sat down on the middle level of the floor, listening. 

“The Symmetries… must be testing out their control over people, here and there,” said Gruce. “They wanted to eventually get someone who was on the lozenge inside here… and then take control of him and kill you, all five of you. Start wiping out the few women who are supposedly safe. Finish us humans off for good.”

Gruce sat down next to her, trying to calm himself. He leaned his forehead against his fingers, breathing deeply. He glanced round at the bodies, human and robot, but quickly looked at his lap again.

“Do you mean,” the woman asked, “I’m the only woman left alive in the universe?”

Gruce shook his head. “Probably not. They say there’re some women, along with their men, hidden in caves on some worlds… But then again, I’m not sure.”

His hands were still shaking. He rubbed them together. At last, he gazed at her steadily, finally really noticing what she looked like. She had dark hair and a slightly crooked nose.

“I should say thank you,” he said.

She shrugged. “You kept him busy.”

A pause. Gruce fidgeted.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

*