Maelstrom Read Free Page A

take the tables in before the last rain.” Masumi spilled the film of water from the waist-high massage table and rubbed it dry while Sparta stood at the low rail, swiping at the last drops of moisture on her flanks and calves.
    She looked down over the houses and gardens of Port Hesperus. The flat roofs descended below her in steps, like the roofs of a Greek village on a steep hillside, each house with its enclosed courtyard of citrus trees and flowering plants. At the bottom of the hill were the parallel main streets of the village, and between them, gardens of exotic shrubs and towering trees, redwoods and firs, tall poplars and yellow ginkgoes. These famous gardens, landscaped by Seno Sato, were what made Port Hesperus a destination worth a wealthy tourist’s visit.
    The streets and the gardens curved sharply up to the left and right and met high above Sparta’s head. Behind her and to both sides a huge concavity of glass slats swept up to embrace the houses and trees in a single globe. Half a kilometer away in the enclosed sky, a metal spindle threaded this sphere of glass and metal and plants and people; around the shining spindle the whole populous globe turned twice a minute.
    To Sparta’s right, sunlight poured into the sphere. To her left, an arc of Venus blazed like a polished shield; the planet’s white clouds showed no detail, seemed not to move, although they were driven by supersonic winds. Over Sparta’s head the whirling sun was rivaled by the reflection of Venus–a million reflections, one in each louvered pane, rolling around the axis of Port Hesperus.
    The high-orbiting station would take another hour to pass over the planet’s sunlit hemisphere and into the night. By natural sunlight, the days on Port Hesperus were only a few hours long, but people here made their own time.
“Is there anything you particularly wanted to work on?” Masumi asked. “Keiko mentioned recurring headaches?”
     
“I seem to have a lot of tension at the base of my skull.”
     
“If you would just lie down–”
    Sparta climbed onto the table and lay with her cheek pressed into the padding. She closed her eyes. She heard the woman moving about, arranging her things–the oil, the towels, the footstool she would stand on when she needed to reach Sparta’s lower back from above. With her acute hearing, Sparta heard the almost inaudible sound of fragrant oil flowing onto Masumi’s hands, heard the louder sound of Masumi’s palms briskly stroking each other and warming the oil . . .
    The heat of Masumi’s palms hovered an inch above Sparta’s shoulders, then descended strongly, moving the flesh. . . . As the minutes passed, her strong fingers and the heels of her hands plowed the muscles of Sparta’s back down the whole length of her trunk, from shoulders to buttocks and back again, and down her arms to her upturned, lightly curled fingers.
There Masumi hesitated. To pause at this moment in a massage, just after a strong beginning, was not characteristic of an alert, trained masseuse–but Sparta was used to it, and anticipated the question. “You were injured?”
     
“A traffic accident,” Sparta mumbled, her cheek pressed hard into the fabric. “When I was sixteen. Almost ten years ago.” It was a lie, repeated so often she sometimes forgot it was a lie.
     
“Bone grafts?”
     
“Something like that. Artificial reinforcements.”
     
“Any sensitivity?”
     
“Please don’t worry,” Sparta said. “Keiko usually goes deep. I like that.”
     
“Very well.”
    The woman resumed her work. The repetitive long strokes of Masumi’s hands on Sparta’s bare skin warmed her; she felt herself sinking warmly into the padded table, under the warm sun and the reflected warmth of Venus and the circulating warmth of the space station’s great garden sphere. Before long she had been kneaded and stretched into complete and rubbery relaxation.
    Sparta’s eyelid opened at the hot bite of pain, as Masumi’s