Mirna now ran her fingers through her hair, tugging and combing, wincing as the knots and snags came out. Her eyes seldom left Blade's face, except to run up and down his body. He was barefoot and wore only a pair of the baggy Hashom trousers, leaving his massive torso with its display of muscles and scars entirely bare.

At last Mirna seemed to finish with both her hair and her examination of Blade. She wore a plain gray robe, belted in at the waist with a knitted sash of black wool. The garment barely hinted at any female curves underneath. Women's garments in this valley seemed to be about as stylish as flour sacks.

Mirna's hands closed over the knot in the sash, and Blade felt a sudden tightening in his loins and a dryness in his throat as her fingers went to work on the knot. He'd been living without women far longer than he ever did by choice.

He still did not let desire rise to swallow his judgment. He continued to stand by the bed, the knife in his hand, as Mirna finished unknotting the sash. He watched as she rose to her feet, the robe drifting open to give tantalizing hints of beauty underneath. Now she shrugged the robe from her shoulders. It whispered to the floor and she faced him across the bed, gloriously naked.

There was a faint hint of perfume in the air of the room now that it could play freely over all of Mirna's body. Blade saw that the nipples of her delicately rounded breasts were darkened with some cosmetic. The dark triangle of hair between her thighs had also been rubbed with something that gave it a silvery sheen in the dimly lit room.

Slowly she raised her arms above her head, which gave her breasts new and fascinating movements, then slowly turned her back to Blade. He found his eyes drawn to the line of her spine where it emerged from under her hair, downward to the cleft between her firm buttocks.

Blade's eyes were not the only part of his body moving now. He pushed his trousers and loinguard under them down his legs, and stepped around the bed as naked as Mirna. She stepped away from the bed without turning around. He came up to her from behind, burying his face in her hair, smelling its perfume, while his hands went around her and cupped her breasts. The solid warmth of her buttocks nestled against his groin, and it was like a caress. Suddenly warmth was flaring up in Blade, and his hands tightened on Mirna's breasts as her nipples thrust out hard against his palms.

They stood there for a long moment, in a flare of desire so intense that neither wanted to move apart for fear of losing it. Somehow their minds told their bodies that they had to move, if they wanted to reach the goal they both now desperately sought. Mirna turned toward Blade, standing on tip-toe to raise her lips to his as his arms locked around her and lifted her.

There was a moment when it seemed that Mirna would insist on Blade taking her then and there, as they stood by the bed. But her desire lifted her high, and Blade's arms lifted her higher. He picked her up and held her in his arms as easily as a child while his lips caressed her breasts. Then he turned and lowered her gently to the bed. The leather straps that supported the thin mattress groaned under Blade's weight as he lay down beside her. He ignored the sounds. Like all the buildings of the Hashomi, the hospital had thick walls. He could play trumpets, set off firecrackers, or make love to Mirna as passionately as they both wished without anyone in the next room being much the wiser.

Mirna clutched at him furiously, arms and legs thrashing. Then she maneuvered him over on his back, straddled his thighs, and dropped upon his massively swollen and upthrust manhood. She bent forward, and her hands clutched Blade's dark hair as her inward warmth and wetness gripped his swollen flesh. Her hands gripped so hard that pain stabbed Blade for a moment. Then the pain was gone, and only pleasure remained, swelling slowly and then not so slowly as Mirna began to move upon him.

She moved in more different ways than Blade would have thought possible for any one woman. Sometimes she bent far backward until her hair brushed his ankles, sometimes she stopped moving altogether and sat bolt upright, motionless except for the rise and fall of her breasts. Did she do that to prolong her own desire or Blade's? It was impossible to tell, and in the end it was a question with no meaning.

Suddenly she bent far backward, and Blade could both see and feel the twisting and tightening of her pelvic muscles. Then she bent as far forward, with a small scream that turned into a long tearing gasp, and her teeth clamped down on her lower lip until Blade could see drops of blood.

Then he could see nothing, for the room became even darker and seemed to vanish in a swirling blue haze. He was conscious only of a blaze of sheer ecstasy in the middle of that blueness, as he found his own release. He thrust his own hips upward, until Mirna was tossed about on top of him like a chip of wood on top of a wave. His own breath came out in a long groan that turned into a hiss as his lungs emptied. Then his hands groped for Mirna, ran up and down the smooth, sweat-slick back, and drew her against him as both of them relaxed.

The relaxation lasted only moments. Somehow Mirna found enough strength to lift herself off Blade. She half-rolled, half-fell off the bed and for a moment held onto the edge to keep from slumping to the floor. Then she rose on shaky legs, and stood looking down at Blade.

She sighed. «Blade, if we had time, and this place was safer-«She seemed to run out of breath.

«Yes,» he prompted her. «If the time and place were better-«

She took a deep breath, and ran her hands through hair that spread damp and tangled all over her shoulders. «No. The time and place have been good enough, for now. You have been given another test, Blade-and you have passed it as you did the test against the fighting Hashomi.»

«Who has been giving me this test besides yourself?» said Blade.

«The women of the Valley of the Hashomi,» she replied. «The women who cannot live as they wish because of the ways of the Hashomi.»

Blade started to laugh at the idea of the women of the valley testing his virility, then sobered. Behind Mirna's cryptic words was a very real meaning-and perhaps a very real opportunity.

«The ways of the Hashomi?» he repeated slowly. «You think particularly of their ways with women?»

«Yes. Or of their not-ways,» she said, her face twisting bitterly. «They are taught, and exercised, and drugged until they are less than men, as far as the women are concerned.»

«How many women?» said Blade. The opportunity was taking firmer shape in his mind.

«More women than there are men who can help them live as women ought to,» said Mirna. The way she hammered out the words told Blade clearly that he wasn't going to learn any more-at least not yet.

Mirna bent with swift grace to retrieve her robe and tie it about herself. Then she bent again, and her lips ran warmly and lightly down Blade's stomach into his groin. He could feel desire stirring again, but before it had time to do more than that, Mirna's lips were no longer there. Blade sighed. As she said, the time and place were not the best, but still-

She laid a hand lightly on his cheek. «Blade, I must go. The women of the valley will hear of this-«

«Not the men?»

Her voice hardened. «They keep their secrets from us. We keep ours from them.» Again Blade understood that she would tell him no more tonight. «The women will hear, and then in time I shall come to you again.»

«Not alone?» Blade hinted.

She hesitated for a moment, then-

«No. Not alone»

A moment later she was gone, and the door slid into place. Blade lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He suspected he'd found not only willing women, but perhaps willing allies as well. With the eyes and ears of even a few of the valley's women at his command, his ability to penetrate the secrets of the Hashomi could be multiplied many times over.