I awoke, unsure of exactly how I had made it home. My head was still groggy from the beating. Rays of sunlight filtered into the room through the yellow drapes. I raised my cybernaughtic arm up over my eyes, the cool metal shielding me from the piercing sunlight. But almost as soon as I raised it, I dropped my arm.
I wasn't home. My apartment had no yellow drapes. My bed didn't have silken sheets in warm, sunny pastels. As I rose, groaning, with those silken sheets falling away from me, I also realized one other thing. I have never once in my life slept without a stitch on before.
So I stood, naked as the day I was born, looking around for something to wear, taking in the strange room and noticing that my ribs had been bound. The grating pain from my ribs was a memory, replaced by a dull ache. I tried not to move suddenly nor stretch them too far.
Then the door opened and a short, slender Oriental man entered the room. He smiled at me warmly and spoke.
"Are you feeling better yet, Mr. Kendall?" he said in perfect, unaccented English.
"Who in the hell are you, where am I and how the blazes did I get here?" I replied, grasping a corner of the sheets and pulling them up over my nakedness.
“My friends call me Sun. I was brought here to tend to your injuries, sir. As to how you got to Miss Sweete's estate, I couldn't tell you. I certainly can't imagine her dragging you here all by yourself.”
“Who?”
“Miss Sweete, your benefactor. She had you brought here, then called upon me to tend to you, as I said.”
“I don't know anyone named Sweete,” I growled.
Sun was unperterbed, and the broad smile remained upon his face.
“She certainly seems to know you, Mr. Kendall. Now, if I can have a look at you?”
“What are you, a doctor? How long have I been here, how long have I been out of it?” I questioned him, testing my range of movement by stretching.
My ribs didn't hurt nearly as much as they should, having been broken just recently.
“Oh, no, not a doctor, Mr. Kendall,” he said with a chuckle, and then adopted a very forced accent, wiggling his fingers at me, “It's ancient Chinese secret!”
“A mean feat, for a Korean man,” I grunted in response.
He chuckled again, “How did you know?”
“Spent a year in Korea, in an action sanctioned by the Japanese government against an opium warlord on the border, very covert, hush-hush stuff. Enough time to tell the difference.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, lifting my meat arm to begin unwrapping the binding around my chest, “A man of the world, much like myself. I attended university in London; that's where I met Miss Sweete.”
I lifted the cybernaughtic arm to accommodate his unwwrapping of the bandage.
“So how long have I been here?” I asked again.
“Oh, I would say that it's been about ten hours. Sleeping most of that time, except the past few minutes, of course. I've been tending to you for about two of that now, I suppose.”
“Two hours? What did you do, work a miracle?”
He laughed heartily.
“I suppose I did. I'm a sorcerer, after all. Aren't we supposed to?”
I looked at him, a bit taken aback. I had never until that day met a practitioner of magic in any form. Sure, I'd heard of them in stories when I was a kid back in Huyton, but I had never expected to meet one.
“So you can work magic and all that?”
“Yes, Mr. Kendall. You are looking so much better; how do your ribs feel?”
“Quite a bit better than when they were about staved in, I'd say,” I said as I stretched some more, trying to keep my fascination for Sun's professed talent from showing.
“Well, you will feel even better once you've taken to the nice, hot herbal bath I've made for you; then I will perform some acupuncture and see if I can work out some of the minor damage I've found in examining you.”
He led me to the bathroom adjoining the bedchamber I'd awoken in, and I begrudgingly let the sheets fall to the floor to step into the tub.
“So, how's our guest this morning?” came a musical voice from the doorway.
I knew who it was immediately, but I still couldn't stop myself from turning to the voice. The light scent of citrus filled my nostrils. Standing in the doorway, in a flimsy bit of nightclothes, was Polly. Her eyes glanced over me and then down briefly, and I moved my arms down so quickly to cover myself that I almost banged my joint with my metal hand.
“So you are quite awake now, aren't you, Soldier-Boy?” she purred with a smile.
“Don't you knock?” I grumbled, clutching myself in a vain attempt to cover up my nudity.
“Not really,” she said nonchalantly, “Sun, is he well enough now after your ministrations?”
Everything about the two rooms I'd been in spoke of money. I was working it in my head how a woman working in a factory by day and carousing in a club by night might afford such a place, when she laughed again.
“I don't work there, silly, I subsidize it. I go in every now and then to check things out, make sure the workers are getting fair treatment.”
“That's a first,” I snorted, moving quickly to seat myself in the bath.
“I am hoping so,” she said, smiling warmly.
“Well, he's much better off now than when you brought him here, that much is certain. A little more work and he will be as good as new, maybe even better,” Sun replied to Polly's earlier question.
“Good,” she said, smiling at Sun.
He smiled back, basking in her approval. I didn't doubt anyone wouldn't want to.
“So, does Soldier-Boy need help with his little bath?” Polly said huskily, bending to grab a loofah from the side of the large tub.
“Ah, no, I don't... but thank you very much for the offer. I think I can handle it, really.”
She stood straight, laughing and shaking her long, luxurious pale mane, brushing a few stray locks from her face.
“Alright then, Soldier-Boy, I'll leave you to your bath,” she said with a grin, then turned and walked through the door.
Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, she stopped, turning just her head, and offered me one of the prettiest smiles I'd ever seen.
“You are an interesting man, Robb Kendall. Most men wouldn't have turned down such an offer. I'll be back in a bit to check on you. I must get ready for my luncheon, I've some friends coming over to call.”
Sun laughed when she exited the bedchamber and shut the door. Flustered, I threw the loofah, which Polly had dropped into the tub, at him. It smacked him wetly directly in the center of his chest. He was almost bowled over by it.
What? What does she want from me?” I asked Sun.
He laughed again, pushing the loofah from his chest where it had stuck.
“I should think that would be obvious, Mr. Kendall. Now finish your bath, and get a towel on and I'll be waiting in the bedchamber with the needles.”
I bathed quickly, contemplating the sensual siren who had rescued me from my injuries with her acquaintance's aid and what the price for such aid would be. Nothing's free, and I couldn't really bring myself, attractive as she was, to think that Polly Sweete's sole interest in me was as a sexual plaything.
It wouldn't be long before my hunch would prove right.
Tags: Scifi Etherpunk
