Ritter, sluicing the last of his cider around his mouth, turned from contemplating the craftsmanship of the dimensional vehicle on the central examination stand.
A woman had entered the workroom. She was watching him.
"Look, do I have to lock the damned door?" the engineer snarled. "When I want you, I'll call—"
He broke off. Though the woman's features were unfamiliar—pretty but rail-thin, scarcely sixty kilos on a height of a meter sixty-five—he recognized the jewel glowing on her transparent choker.
"I thought I'd pay you a visit at home, you know," Penny said.
She was dressed as though she were a concubine: her black hair teased high on a framework so that she seemed to be wearing a shako; groin and oxters depilated; gold sandals and belt; and a baggy blouse and trousers which were transparent except for the hundred-millimeter net of metallized fabric woven in to flash as she moved.
"Look, not here, Penny," Ritter said in irritation. "I'm busy, and—"
A chime over the suite's outer door rang, a cheerful sound only if you didn't know what it meant. The screen showed a procession of courtiers who wore brocade and weapons decorated to catch the light. They were coming down the hallway in respectful attendance on Lord Greville.
"It never rains but it fucking pours," the engineer snarled. "Look, Penny, just disappear again or you'll cause all damn sorts of—"
But he wasn't speaking to Penny any more; not speaking to a concubine, that is. The woman before him was stooped and old, a housemaid. Her gray smock hid the jewel around her neck. The electrostatic broom she held in her gnarled fingers was reasonable enough, but—
"Get that damned thing out of here!" Ritter said. "Don't you know what it could do to some of these instruments?"
The outer door opened. "All rise for noble Lord Greville!" caroled the four courtiers in front.
The engineer had added a secret interlock which could prevent even Lord Greville from keying the mechanism against Ritter's will. Ritter was saving that modification for a great need which he hoped would never come. When Lord Greville did manage to batter through, lock or no lock, it would be with the fixed intention of flaying his insubordinate servant alive.
Ritter waited a moment until the Lord of Keep Greville had entered and seen him, then bowed. Otherwise the engineer would have disappeared within his dense clutter of equipment, creating an absurd situation.
That was never a good idea when dealing with an arrogant master who held the power of life and death.
The slavey bowed also. She held a long-handled duster of feathers from cranes like those which fished the marsh beyond the keep.
"Ah, there you are, Ritter," Lord Greville said amiably as he wove a path through the banks of instruments and test pieces. "I've just come to congratulate you on those triplex charges of yours. They penetrated the forcefields of Lord Worrel's tanks almost every time we hit."
Greville was a young man, clean-limbed and extremely handsome except for the white scar trailing up his cheek and deforming his left ear. He'd gotten that ten years ago, in the same skirmish which put paid to his uncle and made a fifteen-year-old Lord of Keep Greville.
The new lord's first act had been to execute his uncle's chief engineer and put Ritter in the victim's place. Since then, Keep Greville had been uniformly successful in its squabbles with its neighbors.
"Very glad to hear that, milord," Ritter said, nodding where a commoner of lower status would have bowed.
"Yes, I took two of them myself," Greville continued. "And damaged Worrel's marshal. Thought I had him too, but—"
Lord Greville's handsome face darkened; frustration bit as deeply from memory as it had during the event. "But he managed to restart and back away. It was a perfect shot. I saw his hatches lift, but he drove away."
"Well, milord," Ritter said, "it's a trade-off. Penetration or punch. I'll see what—"
"I'll tell you, I don't much like this new shit," interjected Colonel Maynor, one of the courtiers. He was a grizzled man who'd reached his rank because he was a favored drinking companion of the previous lord. "The old ammo opened 'em a treat every time we got home."
Ritter looked at the man who'd spoken. In theory, any soldier was the superior of any commoner. In practice here—
"Yes," Ritter said coolly, "the duplex rounds did pack more of a punch inside the forcefields. When they got there, that is. Which would be about one time in twelve with the beefed-up armor of Worrel's current production."
The soldier glared at Ritter, then glanced aside in willingness to end the exchange.
"Of course," Ritter continued, became he wasn't willing to let challenges to his professional judgment end as draws, "having gone over your accuracy records, Colonel Maynor, I don't think your personal experience with hits is enough of a sample for any meaningful generalization."
Lord Greville smiled. Several courtiers guffawed openly. Maynor turned and kicked an instrument console.
The engineer chuckled. He built his equipment to last. From the sound the boot made on the console, Maynor had broken a toe.
Lord Greville's eyes wandered toward the dragonfly in the center of the lab. "What on earth is this, Ritter?" he asked.
One of the courtiers put his hand on the dragonfly's saddle. He pumped the vehicle up and down against the shock absorbers in the legs.
"Oh, that's just a notion, milord," the engineer said calmly. "It may or may not pan out."
Lord Greville pursed his lips. "Doesn't look very sturdy," he said. "But—"
His face brightened into a patronizing smile. "—I suppose we can let you have your little surprise. You don't let us down very often, Master Ritter."
The engineer bowed.
"Come along, you lot," Greville said to his entourage. "Maxwell's creating a moving diorama of yesterday's battle, and I want to see what he's chosen for his color scheme."
Ritter's visitors swept out of the laboratory. The engineer wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving sweaty streaks across the electric blue fabric.
"You're really good at your job, aren't you?" Penny said sadly. "I suppose I should have known that, or Hansen wouldn't have . . ."
Ritter turned. She was beautiful again. Perfectly formed, at least. The puzzle-solving part of his mind traced the network of gold accents in Penny's clothing back to sunbursts centered at her nipples and vulva.
"Good?" the engineer snapped. "Do you want to know how good? I could design weapons that would vaporize Lord Worrel's tanks. I could vaporize Keep Worrel from right here, give me a year and the budget. And he tells me that I'm doing pretty well, I can keep it up!"
Penny took Ritter's left hand. She slid the loose sleeve above his elbow, checking critically to be sure that the firefight with the Lomeri had not left a permanent injury.
"Why don't you, then?" she asked. "Build the weapons?"
Ritter snorted and turned to look at the dragonfly again. The motion pulled him away from the woman's hands.
"Because if they even dreamed I could do that," he said, "they'd shoot me before I had time to blink. They don't want to upset the balance, you see."
Penny snuggled close to Ritter's side. The pistol holster interfered with her attempt to press their hips together.
"They just want to blow up a few of their neighbors' tanks and have a few of their own blown up too," the engineer continued, oblivious to his companion except as a wall from which he could echo his frustration. "And then all the survivors go home to drink and brag and get ready for the next pointless skirmish!"
"Do you think I'm pretty this way?" Penny asked abruptly.
Ritter blinked and looked at her. She stepped back obligingly and did a pirouette.
"Yeah, you're fine," Ritter said. Actually, she was too thin for the squat ideal of beauty here on Earth—
On Northworld, as Hansen and the ancient colonists called it.
—but Ritter's interest was in function, not form, in sex as in all his other pursuits. No one was likely to object to Penny's ability to function in that category of activity.
"I mean," the woman pressed, "because you said you wanted me the way I was, the—way before we came to Northworld and I got this."
She clutched the jewel at her throat, hiding for a moment the brilliance that flashed like a sun's core.
"I told you I didn't care," Ritter said, frowning at her misquote. Penny took his hands. "I said I'd as soon see you the way you really were. This is fine."
"Come on," she said, tugging him toward the door to his living quarters.
He might as well. The first thing he had to do about the dragonfly was think, just think, and he wasn't going to be able to concentrate anyway after Lord Greville's interrup—
Whoops.
"No," Ritter said, pulling back, but Penny was already within reach of the latchplate. "Don't—"
Penny opened the door. The concubine on the bedside chair was a sultry brunette. She had thrown back her robe while she did her toenails.
"Are there going to be two of us tonight, then?" she asked. Then, with a catty smile, she added, "Or one and a half, I should say, unless you've got another skinny one to come later."
"Look, you can leave—" Ritter began. It was always this way when he wanted to get stuck into a project, one balls-up after another—
Penny leaned forward, swept up the footstool, and went for the concubine.
Ritter didn't realize what was happening for an instant because the other woman—the woman who belonged in his bedroom—was twice Penny's size. The concubine raised her hand to keep Penny from clawing at her eyes and bleated, "What—"
Penny clouted the larger woman above the temple with the stool.
The concubine sprawled to the floor. Penny jerked the robe's sash of multicolored silk out of its loops and began to choke her rival with it.
Ritter grabbed Penny's wrists from behind. He squeezed and twisted until the garrote slipped out of her hands. He backed up, ignoring the way Penny kicked his shins with her slippered heels.
The concubine got slowly to her feet, rubbing her throat with her palms. She was wheezing.
"Go on, get out," Ritter snapped. "Next time, hold your smart remarks until somebody calls for them."
The concubine looked as though she might speak. Either her throat or the look in Penny's eyes convinced her to keep her mouth shut. She banged closed the door in the opposite wall.
Ritter let Penny go. He was breathing hard. She turned and struck at his face. He blocked the blow.
"Do you let her suck your cock?" Penny screamed. The puffed sleeve had torn loose from her left shoulder seam. It dangled around her wrist. "You do, don't you?"
"Look," said Ritter, "you better leave too. I should've listened to Hansen."
"Hansen?" the woman repeated, turning the name into a curse. "Oh, you think he'll save you, do you?"
She pointed her index finger at the engineer's chest.
"He never said he'd save me, Penny," Ritter said softly.
He wondered whether he would feel death. His mind clicked over and over like a tumbler lock. "But I guess he'll do what he did say."
Penny stood like a statue of Nemesis. "Do you think I'm afraid?" she shrilled.
"I'm afraid, Penny," Ritter said in a burst of dry-lipped honesty.
She lowered her hand.
Ritter took a deep breath.
"Look, lady," he said. "This doesn't make any sense. Pussy's cheap, so's dick, I suppose. You go find your Myron or whoever and we don't ever have to look at each other again. All right?"
Penny laced her fingers together like a knot of vipers. The dangling sleeve got in the way. She tugged at it. "What did Hansen say about me?" she demanded in a husky voice.
"Noth—" the engineer began, but he paused when he saw the spark ignite in her eyes.
"That you liked men," he continued flatly. "That you had a temper."
The woman lifted her chin in a brief nod of acceptance. Another time, she might have argued with the obvious.
"Look," Ritter went on, "I don't want trouble for you or him either. He didn't give me orders, he just . . ."
He smiled wryly. "Hansen treated me like a man," he said. "I don't get a lot of that from Lord Greville, you see."
"Or from me, you mean," Penny said bitterly.
Abruptly, she sobbed and threw herself against the engineer's chest. "Oh, darling," she said, "I'm sorry, I just—"
She leaned back so that she could meet Ritter's eyes. "Look," she went on, "I don't care who you fuck, just so you fuck me, all right? And, you know, you don't tell me about it . . . and I won't go looking."
As Penny spoke, she slid down Ritter's body and opened his trouser fly. She paused for a moment with his penis in her right hand, then began to lick it as she tore away the remnants of her blouse with the other hand.
"Does she take you up her ass, darling?" Penny murmured.
"For god's sake, woman!"
"Oh, darling, I'm sorry, I won't . . ."
Tears sparkled like jewels on her cheeks. "It doesn't matter."
Penny wiped her eyes quickly with her left wrist. "Look," she said, bright and controlled again. "I'll get you really good and slippery—"
She paused to engulf the shaft of his penis, then slide it back out and tongue it firmly.
"—and then I'll kneel on the bed and show you how much fun somebody who's really had practice can be!"