The Chemickal Marriage

efficiency, set to unbuttoning his trouser-front. Unable to contain himself, Svenson reached down and gently sank his fingers under the Contessa’s bodice and corset. For the first time she met his eyes. She smiled, warmly – to his shame the whole of his heart leapt – and shifted her posture to give his hand more room to grope. His fingers went deeper, until the tips curled beneath the curve of her breast, the edge of his hand dragging against the soft stud of her nipple. His other hand smoothed the hair from her eyes with a tenderness at odds with his desire.
    With a two-handed wrench the Contessa peeled his trousers to his thighs and then with another ripped open his knitted woollen undersuit, bursting the buttons to his ribcage. She laughed at the flying buttons and then chuckled more deeply – with pleasure and, Svenson wanted to believe, appreciation – at the sight of his arousal. One gloved hand wrapped around his extended flesh, the grip of silk perfectly exquisite. The Contessa coyly bit her lip.
    ‘True bargains are tricky things, Doctor … would you not agree?’
    ‘They are the soul of civilized society.’
    ‘Civilization?’ Her hand resumed its measured stroke. ‘We live in the same riot as old Rome and stinking Egypt … my goodness, there it is …’ Her free hand reached to push aside his underclothes and expose the pink whorl of his scar. ‘That you did not die is a miracle.’ Her hand slid upwards, and, as she stretched, the Contessa’s full mouth came closer to her stroking. ‘But
bargains
, Doctor … between the likes of us, we have no need for such veneer.’
    ‘What would you offer, then?’
    The Contessa grinned at his dry tone. ‘Well … I
could
give you what I gave Harcourt. The card is in my bag.’ She smeared a bead of fluid across the sensitive plumskin with the flat of her thumb and the Doctor hissed withpleasure. ‘The experience it holds is singularly transporting … if transport is what you want.’
    ‘And if I decline?’
    ‘Then perhaps I could give you the key to Oskar’s grand strategy.’
    ‘You know what he plans?’
    ‘I have always known. He is complicated, but still a man.’
    As a man well in her power Svenson let this pass. ‘And in exchange I would do my best to stop him. Is that why I am alive?’
    ‘O Doctor Svenson,’ she cooed disapprovingly, ‘we are alive for
pleasure
…’
    Her head dipped and the Doctor gasped with anticipation of her tongue, but instead he felt only the cool tease of her blown breath. The Contessa rose and with both hands took his greatcoat’s lapels and shoved him into her place on the divan. Bared and straining, trousers balled at the knees, with the pistol to one side and her jewelled bag to the other, he looked up at her. The Contessa gathered her dress – revealing her splendid, shapely, stockinged calves – and knelt astride him, her thighs upon his own, the mass of red silk covering his body near to the neck. His stiffness pulled against her petticoats. He gripped her waist.
    ‘This means nothing to you,’ he gasped.
    ‘What a ridiculous thing to say.’ Her voice was husky and low.
    ‘I remain your enemy.’
    ‘And I may kill you.’ She nudged her hips forward, sliding herself along his length. ‘Or make you my slave.’
    ‘I would rather die.’
    ‘As if the choice were yours.’
    She drew her tongue over the gash below his eye. Svenson shifted his hips, seeking her with a blind nudge, but the Contessa edged away. His hands slid to her buttocks and pulled her closer, encountering another tangled layer of frustrating silk. The Contessa chuckled and raised her face. Too late he saw that she had reached into her bag. Before he could blink her gloved fingers had a blue glass card before his eyes, sticking Svenson as fast as an insect impaled on a board.
    The Doctor’s mind traversed the entire cycle of experience inside the card but without understanding. So immersive were the colours that he lost all sense of space, and so vivid the curving lines and modelled forms that their images vibrated inside his brain, as if they’d been accompanied by silent explosions of gunpowder. More confusing still was the disconnection between the chaotic tableau before him and the still position of his body – and the body of the person from whom the memory originally came, the mind from whom this card had been harvested.
    But slowly the space around him cleared …
    A brightly lit room … an enormous room,