Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

flowering vines she'd wrapped around her waist. She smiled at them all.
    "No one bothers with clothes here. Why should we? The city is tailored to our every need, and the rain
    and what little weather there is in our balanced ecosystem doesn't bother us. In the old days, the colonists had to hide their bodies because of what leprosy had done to them. But the disease is long gone, and we are all in excellent condition, as you can see. With the Red Brain on our side, this is a perfect world for people to live in, so, we're naked. I trust this isn't going to be a problem?"
    She was looking at Brett as she said that, and he quickly averted his eyes from her breasts.
    "Don't let him bother you," said Jesamine. "Just hit him if he gets annoying. We do."
    "Come with me," said Hellen Adair. "And stay close. We don't normally allow outsiders into our city, and we wouldn't now, if Moon hadn't told me one of you was a Deathstalker. That is a worshiped name, here."
    "You know where Moon is?" said Lewis.
    "You'll get to see him, in time. For now, there is something here he wants you to see. Follow me."
    She led them through the living city, down leafy ways and through petaled corridors, across great open squares with blossoming displays. All the structures had rounded organic shapes, and fat pulpy flowers formed living mosaics. These were always changing, as the flowers opened and closed in subtly different positions, so that the images were never still. Lewis was particularly taken with a wide, beautiful face that slowly widened its smile and winked one eye as he passed. Perfumes hung heavy on the air, heady and stimulating, like taking in heaven with every breath. And everywhere now, the colonists strolled naked through theirEden , calm and unhurried and utterly indifferent to the strangers in their midst. Lewis and Jesamine did their best to keep their gazes to themselves. Brett tried, not particularly successfully. He was wishing he still had a camera in his eye. He could have sold this recording for a fortune. Several fortunes. Rose and Saturday didn't care at all; human nudity meant nothing to them.
    "I don't see any… toil," said Lewis. "What do people do here?"
    "We have no need or wish for business, or machinery," Hellen said easily. "Essentially, we're all gardeners. We tend to the needs of the plants. We prune, we dig out weeds, we prevent overcrowding and we encourage propagation in some species and discourage it in others. We also keep a watchful eye on the more aggressive examples, and destroy any that threaten to develop their own form of sentience.
    One Red Brain is quite enough to cope with. In return for our services, the Red Brain allows us to fell trees, gather fruit, and harvest crops—all of which have a ready market waiting for them out in the Empire. There are many species here unknown and unparalleled on any other world."
    "Damn right," said Brett, reluctantly tearing his gaze away from a particularly statuesque redhead as Jesamine elbowed him in the ribs. "They have fruits here the taste of which you wouldn't believe. Grapes that make wine to die for, and any furniture made from Lachrymae Christi lumber can pretty much command its own price. Goods from this planet are always in short supply. The colonists see to that, right, Hellen? Treat them mean, keep them keen, and the price never goes down. Scientists have been trying to synthesize your products in their labs for centuries, to no result—though there are those who say the esper drug came from here originally, distilled from the nerve fibers of the Red Brain itself."
    "You had to spoil the mood, didn't you?" said Jesamine. "Nasty little man. Here we are, walking through paradise, and all you can think of is drugs."
    "Another reason we're not too keen on outsiders," said Hellen. "There are always those unwilling to leave good enough alone. Certain business interests are always trying to set up shop here, legally or
    illegally. They want to introduce mechanization, to increase productivity. They want to set up labs to turn our produce into drugs. They'd strip mine this world to feed the greed of their customers, if they could.
    They hear we have no weapons, no army, and they think we're defenseless. Fools. The jungle is our weapon, and the only defense we need. The Red Brain watches over us. And Tobias Moon, of course."
    "What is the relationship between the Red Brain and Tobias Moon?" said Lewis, carefully casual. He'd been trying to turn the