Chapter Twenty Three

Beck parked the land rover before he turned and unbuckled Lisbet.

“I’m sure you don’t need to do that for me. I can manage,” she said with a touch of frost in her voice.

“Fine,” he said, getting out of the land rover.

He went back to the door, dropped the curtain back into place, and then pressed the button to roll the metal garage door back into place. Then he went to a control panel and pressed a series of buttons.

“Is this garage all there is, or is there more to this hideout?” Lisbet asked, coming up beside him.

“There’s more,” he said with a quick glance. “I just need to make sure that the rooms are ready for people to inhabit them. I have already switched it from the secondary power supply to the primary power supply. The air needs to be the proper temperature and have the right composition. I need to turn on the hot water tanks and… all that is going to take a few minutes.”

“Wait,” Lisbet asked, taking a step forward and zeroing in on the most important thing Beck said. “This place has water?”

He nodded, pulling up his wrist and setting a timer. “We should be able to go inside in twenty minutes.”

“Wait a second. You’re not getting off that easy. Why does this place have water when the ship we just left didn’t?”

Beck rolled his eyes so far back in his head, Lisbet was afraid they wouldn’t come down again. “I need a smoke,” he said dully.

Lisbet tapped her toe and waited.

Finally, he relented. “You’ll be inside soon, so I guess there’s no point in hiding it. This place is a pleasure palace.”

“An abandoned one?” she asked fiercely.

“Sort of, though it is not one of the palaces that the Voynich boys dismantled and left bombs. It’s mine,” he said hoarsely.

“It’s yours?” Lisbet repeated.

“Yeah.” He took a step away from her. He didn’t need to look at her or even stand near her for his voice to be in her ear like he was whispering it. “I told you that I am the son of Carlos Beltrose. That means that I was raised in a pleasure palace and when my father saw how much I enjoyed my privacy, he built this palace for me. It was a gift for my twelfth birthday. I lived here apart from my family for most of my teens.”

“What did you do here?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“I mostly studied terratology. You knew that. Vantz’s accomplishments are my accomplishments.”

Lisbet relaxed at his words. He had graduated swiftly and with high grades. Doubtless, the palace gave him a lot of space from his family’s depravity to get a great deal of work done. “Your father must have been very proud.”

“Why do you think that?” Beck said as he turned around to face her. “I guess your father must have been very proud of your scholastic achievements. My father doesn’t know about them. He had very good reasons to believe I was doing things he would approve of heartily for the majority of the time that I lived here.”

“Are you saying that your family has no idea you have been working for Vantz?” she asked, a little dumbfounded. It made sense that he would be able to hide Vantz as his persona, but how had he hidden that he was working on the terratology project?

“They know, but they think I’m an errand boy.”

“So they’re mad at you?”

Beck huffed. “It’s more like they’re disappointed in me because they think that nothing in the world could make Vantz succeed. Their arrogance overpowers everything. They have always thought I was working on a doomed project.”

He looked at this watch again. “The garage is filled with air. We can unload the rover even if we can’t enter the palace yet. Keep your helmet on until I tell you. It’s still pretty cold in here.”

Lisbet followed his instructions, trying to be as patient as possible. Finally, he took her into a room he called the mud room. There he organized their cargo, wasting as much time as he could. Finally, his watch started blinking.

“Can we go in now?” Lisbet asked nervously.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He nodded. He took off his helmet and helped her take hers off.

Once their helmets were off, he reached for his cigarette and flicked it on.

Lisbet reached for the door before turning one last time to Beck. “Can I go in?”

He nodded. “Please.”

When Lisbet stepped into the space, it was a surprise, because it was nothing like the wealth that had been exhibited back in Castle Ares. That had been luxurious for Mars. That was what she was told. But what was in front of her was far more luxurious than even what her father’s home on Earth had been like.

Everything around her sparkled. There was a waterfall in the middle of the great room. It was surrounded by plush sofas. The water filled the room with moisture in a way Lisbet had not felt since she arrived on Mars. Every room she had been in had been like a frozen desert before this room. It was still chilly, but the water in the air hit her cheeks like snow spray. It was very welcome.

“This place is ridiculous,” Beck said as he came around behind her. “That water falling pointlessly is part of the hydration system of the palace. It is clean and can be drunk or bathed in. It’s constantly being cleaned and recirculated.”

Lisbet listened to him as she circled the room, noticing the whiter-than-white walls, the intricate molding clinging to the ceiling, the murals were painted with green and blue water lilies on a planet that was dusty red. Every surface gleamed. Every couch looked soft and comfortable. Every lamp, every carpet, every table, every painting, every place she looked was beyond beautiful.

“The decorators must hate the red planet down here,” Lisbet commented as she pulled at the collar of her suit.

“They don’t,” Beck contradicted. “It’s green and blue down here because I hate red. My father knew that and asked the decorators to make it to suit me.”

“Why do you hate red?” she asked, following him past a side room that was filled with VR cages. When he didn’t answer her, she asked another question. “What did you use all those cages for? Don’t you only need one?”

He shot a backward glance at the cages. “That’s where I did my studying. Two of them don’t work, but it was a hassle to dump them, so I left them there.”

She followed Beck as he stomped through the palace. He took her to the back and brought her into a bathroom. The tub was humongous.

“The hot water will take a few hours to heat up,” he explained as he took her past walls of mirrors and gleaming ceramic appliances.

Beck led her further into a dressing room. Lisbet had thought that the dressing room he gave her in the castle back in Noachis had been luxurious because of its size and all the clothes that filled all the racks. However, it was insignificant compared to the closet in his pleasure palace. It was a hallway that ran in a huge circle. The doors that hid the clothes were huge. The mirrors between the closets showed endless elegance as they faced each other.

Beck knocked the doors to the closets open as he walked like they were the most meaningless things in the world.

Finally, he stopped at one closet. “This is where I kept my clothes.” He opened the door and showed her a half-full closet with black clothes. There was one suit coat. The clothes there were mostly track pants and hoodies.

Suddenly, Lisbet realized something strange. “All the other closets are filled with women’s clothes?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“This is a pleasure palace. My father would send me slave girls to entertain me. This is where they played dress up,” he explained tersely before leading her into the bedroom.

Lisbet was suddenly in a place she knew must have existed somewhere, but she never expected to be there herself. The first thing that caught her attention was the bed. It was a huge circle at the back of the room. Except it was larger than a king-sized bed and when she touched it, it started to turn.

Beck went to the head of the bed and flipped a switch to keep it steady. “Sorry, the cleaners are instructed to leave it unanchored after they’re finished cleaning it.”

Lisbet stepped further into the room. There were twin poles that gleamed gold and reached to the ceiling.

“You had pole dancers in here?” she asked incredulously.

He nodded and puffed on his cigarette while keeping his head down.

There was a stage at the back of the room. Three steps led up to an area where a curtain could be pulled or drawn back. Lisbet took the stairs and saw a few odd props that had been left abandoned. There was a swing that looked like a crescent moon. It was hanging from the ceiling. There were wooden horses. She went further back and saw multiple backdrops against the wall and a control panel for the lights. She flicked one of the switches and turned a spotlight onto the stage.

“Please don’t play with that panel,” Beck called to her. “You’ll drop artificial snow or confetti on the stage and we don’t need that right now.”

Lisbet came out from behind the curtain. “What did you do with the girls?” she asked seriously with her eyebrows drawn together.

He blinked. “You need to understand that this is a space that was designed by my father. A lot of individual pleasure palaces look different because they’re built in caverns that dictate the space, but this one was designed to imitate his palace. It’s smaller, but the main thought is the same. This was his kind of place. Now, why don’t you come down and get out of your spacesuit?”

“Why should I?” she asked, coming forward with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Look, we are hiding here until that helocarrier has backed off. In the meantime, there’s no reason for you to pee in your suit. We can eat and use the bathroom while we wait, but you have nothing on under that suit. You need some clothes.”

She hesitated.

He explained further. “There’s no need for you to be creeped out by what is in my closet. A lot of it has never been worn and what has been worn has been cleaned.”

Lisbet stepped toward him, a thousand dirty questions on her lips and she didn’t know how to ask them.

She would have settled for a smaller question when there was a sound from out in the great room.

It was a “Yoohoo!”

Beck was so startled, he dropped his cigarette.