Intensity

They sounded like a plea, and she didn't want him to think that she was begging for her life. Even in her despair, she would not be reduced to groveling.
        A sudden smile made Vess look almost like a boy, one given to puns and pranks, collector of baseball cards, rider of bikes, builder of model airplanes, and altar boy on Sundays. She thought that he was smiling at what she'd said, amused by her naiveté, but this was not the case, as he made clear with his next words.
        "Maybe… what I want from you," Vess said, "is to be with me when I finally make Ariel snap. Instead of killing you in front of her to drive her over the edge, I'll drive her some other way. And you can watch."
         Oh, God.
        "You're a psychology student, after all, almost a genuine master of psychology. Right? Sitting there in such stern judgment of me, so certain that my mind is 'aberrant' and that you know exactly how I think. Well, then, how interesting it would be to see if any of the modern theories of the working of the mind are undone by this little experiment. Don't you think so? After I break Ariel, you could write a paper about it, Chyna, for my eyes only. I'd enjoy reading your considered observations."
        Dear God, it would never come to that. She'd never be a witness to such a thing. Though in shackles, she would find a way to commit suicide before she would let him take her down to that room to watch that lovely girl… to watch her dissolve. Chyna would bite open her own wrists, swallow her tongue, contrive to fall down the steps and break her neck, something. Something.
        Evidently aware that he had jolted her out of gray despair into stark horror, Vess smiled again-and then turned his attention to her breakfast plate. "Do you intend to eat the rest of that?"
        "No."
        "Then I'll have it."
        He slid his empty plate aside and pulled hers in front of him. Using her fork, he cut a bite-size piece of the cold omelet, put it in his mouth, and moaned softly in delight. Slowly, sensuously, Vess extracted the tines from his mouth, pressing his lips firmly around them as they slid loose, then reaching with his tongue for one last lick.
        After he swallowed the bite of eggs, he said, "I could taste you on the fork. Your saliva has a lovely flavor-except for a faint bitterness. No doubt that's not a usual component, just the result of a sour stomach."
        She could find no escape by closing her eyes, so she watched as he devoured the remains of her breakfast.
        When he finished, she had a question of her own. "Last night… why did you eat the spider?"
        "Why not?"
        "That's no answer."
        "It's the best answer to any question."
        "Then give me second-best."
        "You think it was disgusting?"
        "I'm just curious."
        "No doubt, you see it as a negative experience-eating an icky, squirmy spider."
        "No doubt."
        "But there are no negative experiences, Chyna. Only sensations. No values can be attached to pure sensation."
        "Of course they can."
        "If you think so, then you're in the wrong century. Anyway, the spider had an interesting flavor, and now I understand spiders better for having absorbed one. Do you know about flatworm learning?"
        "Flatworm?"
        "You should have encountered it in a basic biology course along the way to becoming such a highly educated woman. You see, certain flatworms can gradually learn to negotiate a maze-"
        She did remember, and interrupted: "Then if you grind them up and feed them to another batch of flatworms, batch number two can run the same maze on the first try."
        "Good. Yes." Vess nodded happily. "They absorb the knowledge with the flesh."
        She didn't need to consider how to phrase her next question, for Vess could be neither insulted nor flattered. "Jesus, you don't actually believe you now know what it's like to be a spider, have all the knowledge of a spider, because you've eaten one?"
        "Of course not, Chyna. If I were that literal-minded, I'd be crazy. Wouldn't I? In an institution somewhere, talking to a crowd of imaginary friends. But because of my sharp senses, I did absorb from the spider an ineffable quality of spiderness that you'll never be able to understand. I heightened my awareness of the spider as a marvelously engineered little hunter, a creature of power. Spider is a power word, you know, though it