Foundation's Mistress

12. The Infinity Chamber

A woman must not fade or wilt in the face of her own doubt. It is forbidden.

- Excerpt: Philosophies Learned at the Feet of the Mother, Charon the Archivist, Priestess of the Line of the Eldest, 185 SSA

Renate sprang up the circular stone steps. Notwithstanding the exertion required to ascend the heights, her respiration felt gentle and light.

She'd made it all the way from her quarters with haste, dancing through the various security gates, then running through the mass transit corridors to the location mapped out and identified on her neuro-HUD. Hugo had advised Nebula that he'd prefer to meet with Renate in a location situated deep in the Spear of Heaven's Executive Zone, the area that was substantially off-limits.

Nebula's little exercise and diet regime was paying off. Renate had held off on her wine and cheese, and she was pleased to acknowledge it had made an appreciable difference. Nebula had gradually added newer calisthenic exercises of increasing levels of difficulty, with fabulous results. Renate was tighter around the stomach now, having lost a lot of the trademark Steenkamp flab. Her hips, thighs and buttocks had all slimmed beautifully. She felt proud when she looked in the mirror.

Now the wine and cheese were a distant memory. In the early stages of the voyage, they had been consolation indulgences, a crutch of sorts, a balm to soothe the loneliness. These days she had replaced food with another obsessive-compulsive form of behaviour: fucking Jeff on a very regular basis. Usually twice a day.

More, if she could help it.

And most often, she could help it. In fact, she could help herself to Jeff whenever she wanted. He had been more than obliging in that respect.

He was wonderfully virile, blessed with an enormity of manhood, not to mention potency in bed. He would make love to Renate for hours, which helped to pass the time very agreeably. It had to be said: she was head over heels in lust. Her body was perpetually wet. Every time Jeff left her quarters, she felt a gnawing, frustrating hunger. If it hadn't been for Hugo's ridiculous cohabitation directives, she was sure Jeff would have moved in with her some time ago.

Hugo's little rules about sex aboard the Spear of Heaven were a bit of a laughing stock. From what Renate could tell, they were being flouted all over the ship. And the hypocrisy was flat-out ridiculous. With the panoply of scantily-clad females on Hugo's personal staff, she could not imagine the Halcyon CEO keeping his own rules for a second. Yes, she was sure there would be a measure of technical compliance when it came to the fundamental wording of the directive, but Hugo was the boss. She doubted any of them would ever have said no to him in the first place. It was unlikely that the cohabitation directive would survive scrutiny in the International Court as an enforceable mechanism of employment law, but as far as Halcyon was concerned, that was hardly the point. The company had issued a defensible and reasonable directive as a way of dealing with the known problem of sexual harassment during interstellar flights. Its obligation had been met. It did not matter to Halcyon's employment lawyers that the means of compliance had become a farcical scandal.

But Jeff and Renate did not want to be chastised, penalised or undergo opprobrium in any other form for having breached the rules. At the end of the day, they were Halcyon employees. Consequently, they'd chosen to keep their more-than-substantial fling a secret for the time being.

As she climbed higher and higher on the stair, Renate's eye was drawn downward towards the floor below. Technical people in white overalls were milling about, peering at banks of equipment, bustling back and forth, appearing very productive.

Breathing a little harder on the ascent, she arrived at the top of the stair, which opened onto a viewing balcony perched high above the ship's floor.