THE GIRL IN HIS MIND
By ROBERT F. YOUNG
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Every man's mind is a universe with countless
places in which he can hide—even from himself!
The dance that the chocoletto girl was performing was an expurgatedversion of the kylee sex ritual which the Louave maidens of Dubhe 7practiced on the eve of their betrothal. Expurgated or not, however,it was still on the lascivious side. The G-string that constitutedthe chocoletto girl's entire costume put her but one degree above thenakedness which the original dance demanded. Nathan Blake's voice wasslightly thick when he summoned the waiter who was hovering in theshadows at the back of the room. "Is she free?" he asked.
"I do not know, mensakin. Perhaps."
Blake resumed watching. The girl's movements were a delicate blend oflove and lust. Her face accompanied her body, eyes half-lidded onemoment to match the languid motion of her limbs, wide and feral thenext to match the furious bump and grind of her hips. For a chocolettoshe was light-skinned—more bronze, really, than brown. But then,the word "chocoletto", coined by the early beche-la-mer traders, wasmisleading, and few of the natives of Dubhe 4's southern-most continentlived up to it completely.
She was beautiful too. Her high-cheekboned face was striking—the eyesdark-brown and wide-apart, the mouth sensuous, the teeth showing in avivid white line between the half-parted purple lips. And her body wassplendid. Blake had never seen anyone quite like her.
He beckoned to her when the dance was over and, after slipping intoa white thigh-length tunic, she joined him at his table. She orderedMartian wine in a liquid voice, and sipped it with a finesse thatbelied her cannibalistic forebears. "You wish a night?" she asked.
Blake nodded. "If you are free."
"Three thousand quandoes."
He did not haggle, but counted out the amount and handed it to her. Sheslipped the bills into a thigh sheath-purse, told him her hut numberand stood up to leave. "I will meet you there in an hour," she said.
Her hut was as good a place to wait for her as any. After buying abottle of native whiskey at the bar, Blake went out into the Dubhe 4night and made his way through the labyrinthine alleys of the nativesector. In common with all chocoletto huts, Eldoria's was uncared foron the outside, and gave a false impression of poverty. He expected tofind the usual hanger-on waiting in the anteroom, and looked forward tobooting him out into the alley. Instead he found a young girl—
A human girl.
He paused in the doorway. The girl was sitting cross-legged on a smallmat, a book open on her lap. Xenophon's Anabasis. Her hair made himthink of the copper-colored sunrises of Norma 9 and her eyes remindedhim of the blue tarns of Fornax 6. "Come in," she said.
After closing the door, he sat down opposite her on the guest mat.Behind her, a gaudy arras hid the hut's other room. "You are here towait for Eldoria?" she asked.
Blake nodded. "And you?"
She laughed. "I am here because I live here," she said.
He tried to assimilate the information, but could not. Perceiving hisdifficulty, the girl went on, "My parents indentured themselves to theGreat Starway Cartel and were assigned to the rubber plantations ofDubhe 4. They died of yellow-water dysentery befo