Hansen used the manual controls rather than the aircar's artificial intelligence to settle them in front of the palace's gold-barred gate. String instruments inside played lushly.
"I feel," said Ritter acidly, "like a load of protein being delivered to the commissary."
Penny's palace was a gingerbread creation of marble and gold. It sprouted upward from a dozen turrets and a great, onion-domed tower in the center. Now, close on to midnight, lights concealed in the machicolations illuminated swathes of the pink stone. The creation seemed even more of a fairytale castle than it did by daylight.
"I need to talk with her," Hansen said mildly. "When I've done that, I'm going to leave. You can come straight back with me if that's really what you want to do."
The gates opened. A dozen male servants in pink and white livery marched out carrying trumpets festooned with pennons. The servants did not step in close unison, and a few of them did not seem to realize that they were even supposed to.
"I don't owe her anything, you know," the engineer said truculently. "I never asked anything from her, and I never promised anything either."
Hansen got out of the car. "I'm not arguing with you," he said. "I just need to talk to the lady."
Penny's servants raised their instruments to their lips. Instead of crashing peals of brass, sophisticated electronics within the seeming trumpets sang like harps and violins.
Trumpets looked right, but Penny was not to be balked of her saccharine string music.
Hansen strode between the two lines of musicians. The engineer was still in the aircar. Hansen didn't look back.
Penny's reception hall had a thirty-meter ceiling. The walls were of mirrors; gold panels—antiqued bronze would have been far more attractive—with love scenes in low relief; and internally-lighted sconces of frosted glass.
More liveried servants lined the walls. They serenaded the visitor with music that might have been Wagnerian before being transmuted through the tastes of the palace's mistress.
Six red-plush steps rose to another portal at the far end of the hall. The doors were closed, and no one stood on the upper landing where Penny normally greeted male visitors.
Hansen paused, just within the outer set of doors. Penny's major domo scurried to his side. The man was plump, balding, and ridiculous in his costume: pink tights and body stocking, with white pompons on his toes, shorts, and sleeves.
For all that, the major domo looked less harried than most of the other male servants, probably because his duties to his mistress were unlikely to include the most basic one. Penny was quite particular about the performance of her lovers, and a fit of godlike pique could have horrifying results for the victim.
The major domo bowed to Hansen. "The mistress has asked me to conduct you to her in the garden, sir," he said over the murmur of the music. "If you'll follow me . . . ?"
They went out through a side door concealed in the paneling. Behind them, servants continued to play, but the walls thankfully muted the sound.
The walls of the service corridor were pink stucco, decorated with swags and Cupids and highlighted in gold. Neither the walls nor the floor were particularly clean. The building could have been constructed to maintain itself—as Hansen's utilitarian home did—but Penny cared too little about such details to bother.
A couple was making love in an alcove. When the woman suddenly realized that Hansen wasn't just another servant, she shrieked and knocked over a potted fern in trying to rise. By the time her partner looked around, Hansen and the major domo were out of sight around a corner.
Hansen heard the chuckle of water even before his guide unlocked the wrought-gold wicket gate and ushered him through. "Milady," the major domo called. "Your visitor is here."
Warm twilight hung over the garden, though there was deep night beyond the palace walls. Bowered roses and wisteria perfumed the air, lotuses bloomed in the spring-fed pond.
There was a gazebo in the center of the pond. A bridge of gold bars led to it. Penny stood hipshot in the gazebo's doorway, wearing her own form and draped in a single off-the-shoulder length of translucent silk.
For the first time since he met her, Hansen felt a touch of desire for Penny.
Her half-closed eyes opened. "Hansen!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"
The major domo staggered as though shot. "B-but milady!" he whimpered. "You said to show your visitor—"
"Not him!" the woman shouted. She pointed her finger.
Hansen stepped between Penny and the servant.
"Wait, for god's sake, Penny!" he snapped, thinking as he did so that his choice of words was as unfortunate as everything else about this situation. "He just did what you told him."
The woman remained poised to send her major domo to death or a worse fate . . . and there assuredly were fates worse than simple death at Penny's godlike command.
"Ritter came along, Penny," Hansen said in a calmer voice. "He's out in the car for the moment, but I think he'll come in later, after I talk to you."
Penny lowered her arm and turned away. After a moment, her figure changed to that of a tall, slim woman with a skullcap of blond hair. She was dressed in a high-necked black chemise.
Hansen stepped onto the bridge. It creaked softly, making him wonder how it would perform under the engineer's great weight. Behind him, he heard the wicket click as the major domo fled, safe at least for the moment.
"You won't give him up, will you?" the woman said sadly. Her back was straight, but she dabbed at her eyes with one hand.
Carp with streaming fins and scales of mottled gold and silver stared open-mouthed from either side of the walkway, hoping for scraps of food.
Hansen reached the gazebo. "Ritter won't give up," he said. "And I won't order him not to go."
Penny walked across the octagonal building and sat on one of the ermine-fur couches. She crossed her legs at the knee and said brightly, "Ritter doesn't love me, you know. Isn't that amusing? I love a man, and he doesn't love me."
"People are different, Penny," Hansen said. He licked his lips, hoping to find words that would help him—
Explain? Apologize? He didn't know. Maybe just show sympathy.
"Look," he said aloud, "I asked him to come along so you could, you know, see him off. All I want is that you bring him back in good shape, because he's got a tough job to do."
Penny flared her aquiline nostrils. "Very magnanimous, aren't you, Commissioner?"
"Look, Penny," Hansen snapped. "If you treated him like a man instead of the latest goody in the candy store, it might be that he liked you better than he does!"
He paused and grimaced. In a softer tone he continued, "You might find that you liked him better, too."
The wicket squeaked open. Ritter stood in the gateway, filling it with his massive body.
"Guess I'll leave now," Hansen murmured as he turned.
He heard Penny get to her feet. "Like him better, Hansen?" she said. "That's the biggest joke of all. I couldn't like him better than I already do. The bastard."
The engineer waited at the gate until Hansen reached it.
Hansen nodded. "Thanks," he said to Ritter. "She's not a bad kid."
Ritter snorted. "The hell she's not," he said. "But she's a human being. And it's not as though it costs me anything I can't afford."
Hansen closed the gate behind him. He took one last look over his shoulder at Ritter crossing to the gazebo.
The engineer was doing his duty, because he was a responsible man.