Politician Read Free Page B

shape of man's desire. She leaned forward to kiss me, and her lips were honey and her breasts touched me with electrifying sensation. Suddenly I was in her, penetrating more deeply than I had thought possible, and my essence was pumping into her with an almost intolerable pleasure.
    Then she was gone, and I was left spent, my substance dribbling into the muck. Helse had not been real; she had been a succubus, a phantom of my desire.
    Yet I knew I had loved her in reality, once. Where and when and how had that been? What had become of her? What had become of me?
    Dispirited, I tried again to remember my situation but could not. All I remembered was my distant past. I had grown up on Callisto, part of a family of five. Two sisters, one older, one younger, but I could not recall their names. Mem-wash does tend to eradicate specifics, such as names, more than generalities, such as being part of a family.
    I wrestled with that, annoyed that my own family names should be lost. I was sure that if I could once catch a name, I would retain it. Helse had given me my own, Hope, though I seemed to have little hope at the moment. My father had been... surely my own surname should—ah, I had it! Major Hubris, who worked at the coffee plantation. My mother, his wife, Mrs.... Charity Hubris! And...
    Suddenly I had it all, as if the memories had been accumulating in the course of the recent hours, awaiting this effort. We three children—Faith, Hope, and Spirit. We had had to leave Callisto and had suffered disaster.
    Almost, I wished that memory had remained obscure. My father, my mother—brutally dead in space.
    My older sister raped. Our friends and associates perished. I alone had survived that terrible journey.
    No—some children had been taken as slaves perhaps. And my sisters had not died, that I knew of, but perhaps they might as well have. They had been taken aboard pirate ships. And my girl friend, my woman, my beloved Helse...
    I screamed, but it did no good. Still I saw Helse's corpse. I had survived but at what price? My love had perished.
    I banged my fist against the wall, trying to stifle the pain of memory; that was as bad in its fashion as the physical agony of the torture. But there was no escaping this horror. I sank back into the muck, my mind feeling as soiled as my body. The guilt of Helse's death lay on me.
    Yet she had returned to me, here in this hole, to love me one more time. How much better her love had been than mine!
    Finally I slept, dreamed, and woke in an agony of remorse. Whatever had happened after Helse died hardly mattered. If it had led me to this hole, well, here was my punishment, fitting enough. Helse had forgiven me, but I had not forgiven myself.
    At some point the panel opened and another meal plopped down. Another six hours gone, perhaps. I ate, having no resistance, and chewed on another object. This time I fished it out of my mouth and felt it with my fingers. It was a sharp-edged fragment of metal, a rivet or nail. It must have been a similar object that I had swallowed before. I hoped it wasn't chewing up my insides, then realized that it didn't matter; what was a little more punishment to one who deserved it?
    Yet the sharpness of it gave me a notion. Was it enough to scratch the metal wall? I could mark off meals, keeping track of time more precisely....
    Time? Why bother. I was here as long as my captors decreed. Better to write myself a message of consolation.
    I propped myself up, slid my fingers along the wall to verify that it was smooth—and discovered that it wasn't. There were scratches already on it, perhaps made by a prior prisoner. Not large or obvious—of course, they were invisible in the pitch darkness—but clearly the handiwork of some person. I traced to the upper left and found the edge of the scratches, licking my fingertips to make them more sensitive, never mind what they tasted of. Could it be?
    Yes! There was a number there. The figure 1. Next to it, the figure 2,