RED SONJA AND LESSINGHAM
IN DREAMLAND
by Gwyneth Jones
____________________________________
Taken from: Year's Best SF 2
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Copyright © 1997 by David G. Hartwell
ISBN 0-06-105746-0

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-01-2002 [v1.0]




The earth walls of the caravanserai rose strangely from the empty plain. She let the black stallion slow his
pace. The silence of deep dusk had a taste, like a rich dark fruit; the air was keen. In the distance
mountains etched a jagged margin against an indigo sky; snow streaks glinting in the glimmer of the
dawning stars. She had never been here before, in life. But as she led her horse through the gap in the
high earthen banks she knew what she would see. The camping booths around the walls; the beaten
ground stained black by the ashes of countless cooking fires; the wattle-fenced enclosure where travelers'
riding beasts mingled indiscriminately with their host's goats and chickens . . . the tumbledown gallery,
where sheaves of russet plains-grass sprouted from empty window-spaces. Everything she looked on
had the luminous intensity of a place often visited in dreams.
      She was a tall woman, dressed for riding in a kilt and harness of supple leather over brief
close-fitting linen: a costume that left her sheeny, muscular limbs bare and outlined the taut, proud curves
of breast and haunches. Her red hair was bound in a braid as thick as a man's wrist. Her sword was
slung on her back, the great brazen hilt standing above her shoulder. Other guests were gathered by an
open-air kitchen, in the orange-red of firelight and the smoke of roasting meat. She returned their stares
coolly: she was accustomed to attracting attention. But she didn't like what she saw. The host of the
caravanserai came scuttling from the group by the fire. His manner was fawning. But his eyes measured,
with a thief's sly expertise, the worth of the sword she bore and the quality of Lemiak's harness. Sonja
tossed him a few coins and declined to join the company.
      She had counted fifteen of them. They were poorly dressed and heavily armed. They were all friends
together and their animals—both terror-birds and horses—were too good for any honest travelers'
purposes. Sonja had been told that this caravanserai was a safe halt. She judged that this was no longer
true. She considered riding out again onto the plain. But wolves and wild terror-birds roamed at night
between here and the mountains, at the end of winter. And there were worse dangers; ghosts and
demons. Sonja was neither credulous nor superstitious. But in this country no wayfarer willingly spent the
black hours alone.
      She unharnessed Lemiak and rubbed him down: taking sensual pleasure in the handling of his
powerful limbs; in the heat of his glossy hide, and the vigor of his great body. There was firewood ready
stacked in the roofless booth. Shouldering a cloth sling for corn and a hank of rope, she went to fetch her
own fodder. The corralled beasts shifted in a- mass to watch her. The great flightless birds, with their
pitiless raptors' eyes, were especially attentive. She felt an equally rapacious attention from the company
by the caravanserai kitchen, which amused her. The robbers—as she was sure they were—had all the
luck. For her, there wasn't one of the fifteen who rated a second glance.
      A man appeared, from the darkness under the ruined gallery. He was tall. The rippled muscle of his
chest, left bare by an unlaced leather jerkin, shone red-brown. His black hair fell in glossy curls to his
wide shoulders. He met her gaze and smiled, white teeth appearing in the darkness of his beard. "My
name is Ozymandias, king of kings . . . look on my works, ye mighty, and despair . . . Do you know
those lines?" He pointed to a lump of shapeless stone, one of several that lay about. It bore traces of
carving, almost effaced by time. "There was a city here once, with marketplaces, fine buildings, throngs of
proud people. Now they are dust, and only the caravanserai remains."
      He stood before her, one tanned and sinewy hand resting lightly on the hilt of a dagger in his belt.
Like Sonja, he carried his broadsword on his back. Sonja was tall. He topped her by a head: yet there
was nothing brutish in his size. His brow was wide and serene, his eyes were vivid blue: his lips full and
imperious; yet delicately modeled, in the rich nest of hair. Somewhere between eyes and lips there lurked
a spirit of mockery, as if he found some secret amusement in the perfection of his own beauty and
strength.
      The man and the woman measured each other. "You are a scholar," she said.
      "Of some sort. And a traveler from an antique land—where the cities are still standing. It seems we
are the only strangers here," he added, with a slight nod toward the convivial company. "We might be
well advised to become friends for the night."
      Sonja never wasted words. She considered his offer and nodded.
      They made a fire in the booth Sonja had chosen. Lemiak and the scholar's terror-bird, left loose
together in the back of the shelter, did not seem averse to each other's company. The woman and the
man ate spiced sausage, skewered and broiled over the red embers, with bread and dried fruit. They
drank water, each keeping to their own waterskin. They spoke little, after that first exchange—except to
discuss briefly the tactics of their defense, should defense be necessary.
      The attack came around midnight. At the first stir of covert movement, Sonja leapt up sword in
hand. She grasped a brand from the dying fire. The man who had been crawling on his hands and knees
toward her, bent on sly murder of a sleeping victim, scrabbled to his feet. "Defend yourself," yelled
Sonja, who despised to strike an unarmed foe. Instantly he was rushing at her with a heavy sword. A
great two-handed stroke would have cleft her to the waist. She parried the blow and caught him between
neck and shoulder, almost severing the head from his body. The beasts plunged and screamed at the rush
of blood scent. The scholar was grappling with another attacker, choking out the man's life with his bare
hands . . . and the booth was full of bodies: their enemies rushing in on every side.
      Sonja felt no fear. Stroke followed stroke, in a luxury of blood and effort and fire-shot darkness . . .
until the attack was over, as suddenly as it had begun.
      The brigands had vanished.
      "We killed five," breathed the scholar, "by my count. Three to you, two to me."
      She kicked together the remains of their fire and crouched to blow the embers to a blaze. By that
light they found five corpses, dragged them and flung them into the open square. The scholar had a cut on
his upper arm, which was -bleeding freely. Sonja was bruised and battered, but otherwise unhurt. The
worst loss was their woodstack, which had been trampled and blood-fouled. They would not be able to
keep a watchfire burning.
      "Perhaps they won't try again," said the warrior woman. "What can we have that's worth more than
five lives?"
      He laughed shortly. "I hope you're right."
      "We'll take turns to watch."
      Standing breathless, every sense alert, they smiled at each other in new-forged comradeship. There
was no second attack. At dawn Sonja, rousing from a light doze, sat up and pushed back the heavy
masses of her red hair.
      "You are very beautiful," said the man, gazing at her.
      "So are you," she answered.
      The caravanserai was deserted, except for the dead. The brigands' riding animals were gone. The
innkeeper and his family had vanished into some bolt-hole in the ruins.
      "I am heading for the mountains," he said, as they packed up their gear. "For the pass into
Zimiamvia."
      "I too."
      "Then our way lies together."
     He was wearing the same leather jerkin, over knee-length loose breeches of heavy violet silk. Sonja
looked at the strips of linen that bound the wound on his upper arm. "When did you tie up that cut?"
     "You dressed it for me, for which I thank you."
     "When did I do that?"
     He shrugged. "Oh, sometime."
     Sonja mounted Lemiak, a little frown between her brows. They rode together until dusk. She was
not talkative and the man soon accepted her silence. But when night fell, and they camped without a fire
on the houseless plain: then, as the demons stalked, they were glad of each other's company. Next dawn,
the mountains seemed as distant as ever. Again, they met no living creature all day, spoke little to each
other, and made the same comfortless camp. There was no moon. The stars were almost bright enough
to cast shadow; the cold was intense. Sleep was impossible, but they were not tempted to ride on. Few
travelers attempt the passage over the high plains to Zimiamvia. Of those few most turn back, defeated.
Some wander among the ruins forever, tearing at their own flesh. Those who survive are the ones who do
not defy the terrors of darkness.
     They crouched shoulder to shoulder, each wrapped in a single blanket, to endure. Evil emanations of
the death-steeped plain rose from the soil and bred phantoms. The sweat of fear was cold as ice melt on
Sonja's cheeks. Horrors made of nothingness prowled and muttered in her mind.
     "How long," she whispered. "How long do we have to bear this?"
     The man's shoulder lifted against hers. "Until we get well, I suppose."
     The warrior-woman turned to face him, green eyes flashing in appalled outrage.


"Sonja" discussed this group member's felony with the therapist. Dr. Hamilton—he wanted them to call
him Jim, but "Sonja" found this impossible—monitored everything that went on in the virtual environment.
But he never appeared there. They only met him in the one-to-one consultations that virtual-therapy buffs
called the meat sessions.
      "He's not supposed to do that," she protested, from the foam couch in the doctor's office. He was
sitting beside her, his notebook on his knee. "He damaged my experience."
      Dr. Hamilton nodded. "Okay. Let's take a step back. Leave aside the risk of disease or pregnancy:
because we can leave those bogeys aside, forever if you like. Would you agree that sex is essentially an
innocent and playful social behavior—something you'd offer to or take from a friend, in an ideal world, as
easily as food or drink?"
      "Sonja" recalled certain dreams—meat dreams, not the computer-assisted kind. She blushed. But
the man was a doctor after all. "That's what I do feel," she agreed. "That's why I'm here. I want to get
back to the pure pleasure, to get rid of the baggage."
      "The sexual experience offered in virtuality therapy is readily available on the nets. You know that.
And you could find an agency that would vet your partners for you. You chose to join this group because
you need to feel that you're taking medicine, so you don't have to feel ashamed. And because you need
to feel that you're interacting with people who, like yourself, perceive sex as a problem."
      "Doesn't everyone?"
      "You and another group member went off into your own private world. That's good. That's what's
supposed to happen. Let me tell you, it doesn't always. The software gives you access to a vast
multisensual library, all the sexual fantasy ever committed to media. But you and your partner, or
partners, have to customize the information and use it to create and maintain what we call the consensual
perceptual plenum. Success in holding a shared dreamland together is a knack. It depends on
something in the neural makeup that no one has yet fully analyzed. Some have it, some don't. You two
are really in sync."
      "That's exactly what I'm complaining about—" "You think he's damaging the pocket universe you
two built up. But he isn't, not from his character's point of view. It's part Lessingham's thing, to be
conscious that he's in a fantasy world."
      She started, accusingly. "I don't want to know his name."
      "Don't worry, I wouldn't tell you. "Lessingham" is the name of his virtuality persona. I'm surprised
you don't recognize it. He's a character from a series of classic fantasy novels by E.R. Eddison. . . . In
Eddison's glorious cosmos "Lessingham" is a splendidly endowed English gentleman, who visits
fantastic realms of ultra-masculine adventure as a lucid dreamer: though an actor in the drama,
he is partly conscious of another existence, while the characters around him are more or less
explicitly puppets of the dream ..."
      He sounded as if he was quoting from a reference book. He probably was: reading from an autocue
that had popped up in lenses of those doctorish horn-rims. She knew that the old-fashioned trappings
were there to reassure her. She rather despised them: but it was like the virtuality itself. The buttons were
pushed, the mechanism responded. She was reassured.
      Of course she knew the Eddison stories. She recalled "Lessingham" perfectly: the tall, strong,
handsome, cultured millionaire jock, who has magic journeys to another world, where he is a tall, strong,
handsome, cultured jock in Elizabethan costume, with a big sword. The whole thing was an absolutely
typical male power-fantasy, she thought—without rancor. Fantasy means never having to say you're
sorry. The women in those books, she remembered, were drenched in sex, but they had no part in the
action. They stayed at home being princesses, occasionally allowing the millionaire jocks to get them into
bed. She could understand why "Lessingham" would be interested in "Sonja" . . . for a change.
      "You think he goosed you, psychically. What do you expect? You can't dress the way 'Sonja'
dresses, and hope to be treated like the Queen of the May."
      Dr. Hamilton was only doing his job. He was supposed to be provocative, so they could react
against him. That was his excuse, anyway. . . . On the contrary, she thought. "Sonja" dresses the way she
does because she can dress any way she likes. "Sonja" doesn't have to hope for respect, and she doesn't
have to demand it. She just gets it. "It's dominance display," she said, enjoying the theft of his jargon.
"Females do that too, you know. The way 'Sonja' dresses is not an invitation. It's a warning. Or a
challenge, to anyone who can measure up."
      He laughed, but he sounded irritated. "Frankly, I'm amazed that you two work together. I'd have
expected 'Lessingham' to go for an ultrafeminine—"
      "I am . . . 'Sonja' is ultrafeminine. Isn't a tigress feminine?"
      "Well, okay. But I guess you've found out his little weakness. He likes to be a teeny bit in control,
even when he's letting his hair down in dreamland."
      She remembered the secret mockery lurking in those blue eyes. "That's the problem. That's exactly
what I don't want. I don't want either of us to be in control."
      "I can't interfere with his persona. So, it's up to you. Do you want to carry on?"
      "Something works," she muttered. She was unwilling to admit that there'd been no one else, in the
text interface phase of the group, that she found remotely attractive. It was "Lessingham," or drop out
and start again. "I just want him to stop spoiling things."
      "You can't expect your masturbation fantasies to mesh completely. This is about getting beyond
solitary sex. Go with it: where's the harm? One day you'll want to face a sexual partner in the real, and
then you'll be well. Meanwhile, you could be passing 'Lessingham' in reception—he comes to his meat
sessions around your time— and not know it. That's safety, and you never have to breach it. You two
have proved that you can sustain an imaginary world together: it's almost like being in love. I could argue
that lucid dreaming, being in the fantasy world but not of it, is the next big step. Think about that."
      The clinic room had mirrored walls: more deliberate provocation. How much reality can you take?,
the reflections asked. But she felt only a vague distaste for the woman she saw, at once hollow-cheeked
and bloated, lying in the doctor's foam couch. He was glancing over her records on his notebook screen:
which meant the session was almost up.
      "Still no overt sexual contact?"
      "I'm not ready ..." She stirred restlessly. "Is it a man or a woman?"
      "Ah!" smiled Dr. Hamilton, waving a finger at her. "Naughty, naughty—"
      He was the one who'd started taunting her, with his hints that the meat—"Lessingham"—might be
near. She hated herself for asking a genuine question. It was her rule to give him no entry to her real
thoughts. But Dr. Jim knew everything, without being told: every change in her brain chemistry, every
effect on her body: sweaty palms, racing heart, damp underwear. . . . The telltales on his damned autocue
left her precious little dignity. Why do I subject myself to this? she wondered, disgusted. But in the
virtuality she forgot utterly about Dr. Jim. She didn't care who was watching. She had her brazen-hilted
sword. She had the piercing intensity of dusk on the high plains, the snowlight on the mountains; the hard,
warm silk of her own perfect limbs. She felt a brief complicity with "Lessingham." She had a conviction
that Dr. Jim didn't play favorites. He despised all his patients equally. . . . You get your kicks, doctor.
But we have the freedom of dreamland.


"Sonja" read cards stuck in phone booths and store windows, in the tired little streets outside the building
that housed the clinic. Relaxing massage by clean-shaven young man in Luxurious Surroundings . .
. You can't expect your fantasies to mesh exactly, the doctor said. But how can it work if two people
disagree over something so vital as the difference between control and surrender? Her estranged husband
used to say: "why don't you just do it for me, as a favor. It wouldn't hurt. Like making someone a cup of
coffee ..." Offer the steaming cup, turn around and lift my skirts, pull down my underwear. I'm
ready. He opens his pants and slides it in, while his thumb is round in front rubbing me. ... I could
enjoy that, thought "Sonja," remembering the blithe abandon of her dreams. That's the damned shame.
If there were no nonsex consequences, I don't know that there's any limit to what I could enjoy. . .
. But all her husband had achieved was to make her feel she never wanted to make anyone, man,
woman, or child, a cup of coffee ever again. ... In luxurious surroundings. That's what I want. Sex
without engagement, pleasure without consequences. It's got to be possible.
     She gazed at the cards, feeling uneasily that she'd have to give up this habit. She used to glance at
them sidelong, now she'd pause and linger. She was getting desperate. She was lucky there was
medically supervised virtuality sex to be had. She would be helpless prey in the wild world of the nets,
and she'd never, ever risk trying one of these meat-numbers. And she had no intention of returning to her
husband. Let him make his own coffee. She wouldn't call that getting well. She turned, and caught the eye
of a nicely dressed young woman standing next to her. They walked away quickly in opposite directions.
Everybody's having the same dreams . . .


In the foothills of the mountains, the world became green and sweet. They followed the course of a little
river, that sometimes plunged far below their path, tumbling in white flurries in a narrow gorge; and
sometimes ran beside them, racing smooth and clear over colored pebbles. Flowers clustered on the
banks, birds darted in the thickets of wild rose and honeysuckle. They led their riding animals and walked
at ease: not speaking much. Sometimes the warrior woman's flank would brush the man's side: or he
would lean for a moment, as if by chance, his hand on her shoulder. Then they would move deliberately
apart, but they would smile at each other. Soon. Not yet. . .
     They must be vigilant. The approaches to fortunate Zimiamvia were guarded. They could not expect
to reach the pass unopposed. And the nights were haunted still. They made camp at a flat bend of the
river, where the crags of the defile drew away, and they could see far up and down their valley. To the
north, peaks of diamond and indigo reared above them. Their fire of aromatic wood burned brightly, as
the white stars began to blossom.
     "No one knows about the long-term effects," she said. "It can't be safe. At the least, we're risking
irreversible addiction, they warn you about that. I don't want to spend the rest of my life as a cyberspace
couch potato."
     "Nobody claims it's safe. If it was safe, it wouldn't be so intense."
     Their eyes met. "Sonja's" barbarian simplicity combined surprisingly well with the man's more
elaborate furnishing. The consensual perceptual plenum was a flawless reality: the sound of the river,
the clear silence of the mountain twilight . . . their two perfect bodies. She turned from him to gaze into
the sweet-scented flames. The warrior-woman's glorious vitality throbbed in her veins. The fire held
worlds of its own, liquid furnaces: the sunward surface of Mercury.
      "Have you ever been to a place like this in the real?"
      He grimaced. "You're kidding. In the real, I'm not a magic-wielding millionaire."
      Something howled. The bloodstopping cry was repeated. A taint of sickening foulness swept by
them. They both shuddered, and drew closer together. "Sonja" knew the scientific explanation for the
legendary virtuality-paranoia, the price you paid for the virtual world's superreal, dreamlike richness. It
was all down to heightened neurotransmitter levels, a positive feedback effect, psychic overheating. But
the horrors were still horrors.
      "The doctor says if we can talk like this, it means we're getting well."
      He shook his head. "I'm not sick. It's like you said. Virtuality's addictive and I'm an addict. I'm
getting my drug of choice safely, on prescription. That's how I see it."
      All this time "Sonja" was in her apartment, lying in a foam couch with a visor over her head. The
visor delivered compressed bursts of stimuli to her visual cortex: the other sense perceptions riding
piggyback on the visual, triggering a whole complex of neuronal groups; tricking her mind/brain into
believing the world of the dream was out there. The brain works like a computer. You cannot "see" a
hippopotamus, until your system has retrieved the "hippopotamus" template from memory, and checked it
against the incoming. Where does the "real" exist? In a sense this world was as real as the other ... But
the thought of "Lessingham's" unknown body disturbed her. If he was too poor to lease good equipment,
he might be lying in the clinic now in a grungy public cubicle . . . cathetered, and so forth: the sordid
details.
      She had never tried virtual sex. The solitary version had seemed a depressing idea. People said the
partnered kind was the perfect zipless fuck. He sounded experienced; she was afraid he would be able
to tell she was not. But it didn't matter. The virtual-therapy group wasn't like a dating agency. She would
never meet him in the real, that was the whole idea. She didn't have to think about that stranger's body.
She didn't have to worry about the real "Lessingham's" opinion of her. She drew herself up in the firelight.
It was right, she decided, that Sonja should be a virgin. When the moment came, her surrender would be
the more absolute.
      In their daytime he stayed in character. It was a tacit trade-off. She would acknowledge the other
world at nightfall by the campfire, as long as he didn't mention it the rest of the time. So they traveled on
together, Lessingham and Red Sonja, the courtly scholar-knight and the taciturn warrior-maiden, through
an exquisite Maytime: exchanging lingering glances, "accidental" touches . . . And still nothing happened.
"Sonja" was aware that "Lessingham," as much as herself, was holding back from the brink. She felt
piqued at this. But they were both, she guessed, waiting for the fantasy they had generated to throw up
the perfect moment of itself. It ought to. There was no other reason for ks existence.
      Turning a shoulder of the hillside, they found a sheltered hollow. Two rowan trees in flower grew
above the river. In the shadow of their blossom tumbled a little waterfall, so beautiful it was a wonder to
behold. The water fell clear from the upper edge of a slab of stone twice a man's height, into a rocky
basin. The water in the basin was clear and deep, a-churn with bubbles from the jet plunging from above.
The riverbanks were lawns of velvet, over the rocks grew emerald mosses and tiny water flowers.
      "I would live here," said Lessingham softly, his hand dropping from his riding bird's bridle. "I would
build me a house in this fairy place, and rest my heart here forever."
      Sonja loosed the black stallion's rein. The two beasts moved off, feeding each in its own way on the
sweet grasses and springtime foliage.
      "I would like to bathe in that pool," said the warrior-maiden.
      "Why not?" He smiled. "I will stand guard."
      She pulled off her leather harness and slowly unbound her hair. It fell in a trembling mass of copper
and russet lights, a cloud of glory around the richness of her barely clothed body. Gravely she gazed at
her own perfection, mirrored in the homage of his eyes. Lessingham's breath was coming fast. She saw a
pulse beat, in the strong beauty of his throat. The pure physical majesty of him caught her breath....
      It was their moment. But it still needed something to break this strange spell of reluctance. "Lady—"
he murmured—
       Sonja gasped. "Back to back!" she cried. "Quickly, or it is too late!"
       Six warriors surrounded them, covered from head to foot in red-and-black armor. They were
human in the lower body, but the head of each appeared beaked and fanged, with monstrous faceted
eyes, and each bore an extra pair of armored limbs between breastbone and belly. They fell on Sonja
and Lessingham without pause or a challenge.
       Sonja fought fiercely as always, her blade ringing against the monster armor. But something cogged
her fabulous skill. Some power had drained the strength from her splendid limbs. She was disarmed. The
clawed creatures held her, a monstrous head stooped over her, choking her with its fetid breath. . . .
       When she woke again she was bound against a great boulder, by thongs around her wrists and
ankles, tied to hoops of iron driven into the rock. She was naked but for her linen shift, it was in tatters.
Lessingham was standing, leaning on his sword. "I drove them off," he said. "At last." He dropped the
sword, and took his dagger to cut her down.
       She lay in his arms. "You are very beautiful," he murmured. She thought he would kiss her. His
mouth plunged instead to her breast, biting and sucking at the engorged nipple. She gasped in shock, a
fierce pang leapt through her virgin flesh. What did they want with kisses? They were warriors. Sonja
could not restrain a moan of pleasure. He had won her. How wonderful to be overwhelmed, to surrender
to the raw lust of this godlike animal.
       Lessingham set her on her feet.
       "Tie me up."
       He was proffering a handful of blood-slicked leather thongs. "What?"
       "Tie me to the rock, mount me. It's what I want." "The evil warriors tied you—?"
       "And you come and rescue me." He made an impatient gesture. "Whatever. Trust me. It'll be good
for you too." He tugged at his bloodstained silk breeches, releasing a huge, iron-hard erection. "See, they
tore my clothes. When you see that, you go crazy, you can't resist. . . and I'm at your mercy. Tie me
up!"
       "Sonja" had heard that eighty percent of the submissive partners in sadomasochist sex are male. But
it is still the man who dominates his "dominatrix": who says tie me tighter, beat me harder, you can
stop now. . . . Hey, she thought. Why all the stage directions, suddenly? What happened to my
zipless fuck? But what the hell. She wasn't going to back out now, having come so far. . . . There was a
seamless shift, and Lessingham was bound to the rock. She straddled his cock. He groaned. "Don't do
this to me." He thrust upward, into her, moaning. "You savage, you utter savage, uuunnh ..." Sonja
grasped the man's wrists and rode him without mercy. He was right, it was as good this way. His eyes
were half-closed. In the glimmer of blue under his lashes, a spirit of mockery trembled. . . . She heard a
laugh, and found her hands were no longer gripping Lessingham's wrists. He had broken free from her
bonds, he was laughing at her in triumph. He was wrestling her to the ground.
       "No!" she cried, genuinely outraged. But he was the stronger.


It was night when he was done with her. He rolled away and slept, as far as she could tell, instantly. Her
chief thought was that virtual sex didn't entirely connect. She remembered now, that was something else
people told you, as well as the "zipless fuck." It's like coming in your sleep, they said. It doesn't quite
make it. Maybe there was nothing virtuality could do to orgasm, to match the heightened richness of the
rest of the experience. She wondered if he, too, had felt cheated.
     She lay beside her hero, wondering, where did I go wrong? Why did he have to treat me that
way? Beside her, "Lessingham" cuddled a fragment of violet silk, torn from his own breeches. He
whimpered in his sleep, nuzzling the soft fabric, "Mama ..."


She told Dr. Hamilton that "Lessingham" had raped her.
     "And wasn't that what you wanted?"
     She lay on the couch in the mirrored office. The doctor sat beside her with his smart notebook on
his knee. The couch collected "Sonja's" physical responses as if she was an astronaut umbilicaled to
ground control; and Dr. Jim read the telltales popping up in his reassuring horn-rims. She remembered
the sneaking furtive thing that she had glimpsed in "Lessingham's" eyes, the moment before he took over
their lust scene. How could she explain the difference? "He wasn't playing. In the fantasy, anything's
allowed. But he wasn't playing. He was outside it, laughing at me."
      "I warned you he would want to stay in control."
      "But there was no need! I wanted him to be in control. Why did he have to steal what I wanted to
give him anyway?"
      "You have to understand, "Sonja," that to many men it's women who seem powerful. You women
feel dominated and try to achieve 'equality.' But the men don't perceive the situation like that. They're
mortally afraid of you: and anything, just about anything they do to keep the upper hand, seems like
justified self-defense."
      She could have wept with frustration. "I know all that! That's exactly what I was trying to get away
from. I thought we were supposed to leave the damn baggage behind. I wanted something purely
physical. . . . Something innocent."
      "Sex is not innocent, 'Sonja.' I know you believe it is, or 'should be.' But it's time you faced the truth.
Any interaction with another person involves some kind of jockeying for power, dickering over control.
Sex is no exception. Now that's basic. You can't escape from it in direct-cortical fantasy. It's in our
minds that relationships happen, and the mind, of course, is where virtuality happens too." He sighed, and
made an entry in her notes. "I want you to look on this as another step toward coping with the real.
You're not sick, 'Sonja.' You're unhappy. Not even unusually so. Most adults are unhappy, to some
degree—"
      "Or else they're in denial."
      Her sarcasm fell flat. "Right. A good place to be, at least some of the time. What we're trying to
achieve here—if we're trying to achieve anything at all—is to raise your pain threshold to somewhere
near average. I want you to walk away from therapy with lowered expectations: I guess that would be
success."
      "Great," she said, desolate. "That's just great." Suddenly he laughed. "Oh, you guys! You are so
weird. It's always the same story. Can't live with you, can't live without you . . . You can't go on this
way, you know. Its getting ridiculous. You want some real advice, 'Sonja'? Go home. Change your
attitudes, and start some hard peace talks with that husband of yours."
      "I don't want to change," she said coldly, staring with open distaste at his smooth profile, his soft
effeminate hands. Who was he to call her abnormal? "I like my sexuality just the way it is."
      Dr. Hamilton returned her look, a glint of human malice breaking through his doctor act, "Listen. I'll
tell you something for free." A weird sensation jumped in her crotch. For a moment she had a prick: a
hand lifted and cradled the warm weight of her balls. She stifled a yelp of shock. He grinned. "I've been
looking for a long time, and I know. There is no tall, dark man ..."
      He returned to her notes. "You say you were 'raped,' " he continued, as if nothing had happened.
"Yet you chose to continue the virtual session. Can you explain that?"
      She thought of the haunted darkness, the cold air on her naked body; the soreness of her bruises; a
rag of flesh used and tossed away. How it had felt to lie there: intensely alive, tasting the dregs, beaten
back at the gates of the fortunate land. In dreamland, even betrayal had such rich depth and fascination.
And she was free to enjoy, because it didn't matter. "You wouldn't understand."


Out in the lobby there were people coming and going. It was lunchtime, the lifts were busy. "Sonja"
noticed a round-shouldered geek of a little man making for the entrance to the clinic. She wondered idly
if that could be "Lessingham."
      She would drop out of the group. The adventure with "Lessingham" was over, and there was no one
else for her. She needed to start again. The doctor knew he'd lost a customer, that was why he'd been so
open with her today. He certainly guessed, too, that she'd lose no time in signing on somewhere else on
the semi-medical fringe. What a fraud all that therapy talk was! He'd never have dared to play the sex
change trick on her, except that he knew she was an addict. She wasn't likely to go accusing him of
unprofessional conduct. Oh, he knew it all. But his contempt didn't trouble her.
     So, she had joined the inner circle. She could trust Dr. Hamilton's judgment. He had the telltales: he
would know. She recognized with a feeling of mild surprise that she had become a statistic, an element in
a fashionable social concern: an epidemic flight into fantasy, inadequate personalities; unable to
deal with the reality of normal human sexual relations.... But that's crazy, she thought. / don't hate
men, and I don't believe "Lessingham" hates women. There's nothing psychotic about what we're
doing. We're making a consumer choice. Virtual sex is easier, that's all. Okay, it's convenience
food. It has too much sugar, and a certain blandness. But when a product comes along, that is
cheaper, easier, and more fun than the original version, of course people are going to buy it.
     The lift was full. She stood, drab bodies packed around her, breathing the stale air. Every face was
a mask of dull endurance. She closed her eyes. The caravanserai walls rose strangely from the empty
plain....

-end-


About the author:
Gwyneth Jones, whose first SF novel, Divine Endurance, was the harbinger of the British SF
renaissance of the late 1980s and early 1990s, has become in the intervening years the leading feminist
SF writer of her generation, and more. In some circles, she is considered simply the best of the younger
generation of British SF writers. Her novel, White Queen, one of the first winners of the James Tiptree,
Jr. Award for "gender bending" SF, is a major science fiction work of the 1990s; some of her fantasy
stories, collected in Seven Tales and a Fable, won a World Fantasy Award in 1996, as did one of her
short stories. This story, from Ellen Datlow's anthology, Off Limits—which is not an anthology of alien
sex stories but rather fantastic investigations of human sexuality— takes on the complexities of computer
online sex. Never lacking in ambition, Jones addresses role playing and the issues of control, bondage,
and therapy. In real life, says Jones in an afterword, "sexual negotiations are costly and dangerous," so a
lot of people would prefer escape. The story also makes a provocative contrast to Terry Bisson's "In the
Upper Room," and an interesting comparison to Allen Steele's "Doblin's Lecture."