The palace in which Penny lived was a thing of curves and pointed turrets joined by sweeping walkways. Balconies jutted from beneath arched windows, and flagstaffs streamed pennons in the breeze. The walls were slabs of pink marble with pearly inclusions, while the grilles and railings were pure yellow gold.
A central spire, slim and twice the height of any other portion of the palace, swelled at the top into an onion-domed suite.
"I always find it breathtaking," said Rolls dryly from the saddle of his giant elk.
"Indeed, my lord," said Fortin. He walked at Rolls' left stirrup and wore Roll's livery as though he were one of thirty human retainers accompanying their master on his visit to Penny.
Rolls looked down at the half android. They'd chosen slouch hats and capes of bright orange velvet for the retainers on this operation, a costume which hid the wearers' form and features. Penny's human servants wouldn't recognize Fortin, but she herself would if she saw him clearly. Even now that they'd reached the critical stage, Rolls remained sure that there was little chance of that happening.
Trumpeters on the lower balconies of the palace blew a greeting in sequential notes while flags of gold on pink—matching their livery—fluttered from their instruments.
The gate was also golden. The doorleaves, molded with cavorting cherubs, opened with glassy precision as Rolls and his entourage approached them. Hundreds of Penny's servants were drawn up in the entrance hall.
Rolls dismounted. Like his retainers, he wore orange—but briefs that were little more than a jockstrap and matching sandals. He'd been proud of his body before—before North, before godhead. If he was past his first youth and carrying ten kilos more than ideal, then it still was a body that justified pride.
For the moment, the important thing was that all eyes be on him and not on his servants—as was proper in any case.
The trumpet calls ended when Rolls and his entourage entered the hall. String instruments played by hidden servitors took up a melody so saccharine that Fortin murmured to Rolls, "Now the little cupids fly down from the ceiling, don't they?"
The entrance hall had coffered walls with tall sconces on the verticals and mirrors on the sunken central panels. Another set of great doors stood at the top of a pink marble staircase at the far end of the hall.
The music built to a crescendo. The pulses of light rising through the transparent sconces dimmed.
Rolls continued to walk forward. His servants fell off to either side and milled behind the lines of Penny's pink-clad folk. "Good luck," he murmured as the caped-and-hatted figure to his immediate left broke away.
"Good luck to you, my friend," Fortin whispered back. "Our Penny expects her standards to be met. . . ."
When Rolls passed the center of the room, the gold doors above the staircase swung open in silent majesty. The vague, mirrored glows of the sconces exaggerated the vast size of the hall.
Penny stood at the head of the stairs, a statuesque vision of beauty and passion. Her hair was black, her complexion as white as bleached flour. Penny's dress and elbow-length gloves were the same brilliant scarlet as her lips, and a single bright jewel gleamed at her throat.
"Greetings, Lord Rolls," Penny called in a throaty contralto. "It has been long since you visited us."
She pouted. In the same voice, but with utterly different intonation she added, "I thought you didn't like me any more."
"You know how jealous I am, my darling," Rolls said as he advanced to the foot of the stairs.
In this outfit, with his hairy, muscular body, he looked like an apeman approaching the mistress of the plantation. Penny would probably find the contrast piquant.
"But I found I couldn't keep myself away from you."
Of course, Penny found most things piquant when they touched on her areas of interest.
She extended a gloved hand to him. "You know the others mean nothing to me, darling," she said—and giggled, spoiling the effect.
Rolls took the first of the six steps normally, swung his long leg up the next two together, and mounted to the landing in a rush as Penny threw open her arms and allowed him to sweep her off her feet in a passionate embrace.
"Oh, Rolls," she murmured with her eyes closed. "You know I've missed you, honey."
It bothered Rolls that sometimes he had the feeling that Penny was much more intelligent than she seemed. Than she played, forming herself into a one-dimensional caricature. . . .
But then, that was what they all did, since godhead, unless they fought the tendency the way Rolls did.
And perhaps even if they did fight.
Rolls nodded upward and lifted his eyebrows. "Ah, can we . . . ?" he asked. The strings had resumed playing, but in whispered undertones of sweetness.
"I thought you'd never ask," said Penny haughtily.
She linked her arm with his and led him back through the gold columns. The doors closed behind them, shutting off the music and the sound of servants chattering as soon as their masters' backs were turned.
The room beyond the doors was a circular foyer, not as large as the entrance hall but huge in its own right. The floor was paved with marble. Around the walls roses had been trained into secluded arbors. Light flooded through high windows.
Rolls' bright sandals whisked on the stone as he led his hostess toward the transparent lift across the room.
Penny glanced down at herself. "How do you like this?" she asked critically.
Rolls paused and kissed her, resting his left hand on her shoulder and his right, caressingly, in the small of her back. In this form, Penny was supple and tall enough that her head reached his chin when they both stood erect.
"Now?" she said, urgent, questioning, hopeful. "Or in the roses?"
She nodded. As she did so, a pair of servants entered the foyer through a door hidden in the foliage, saw their mistress and her guest, and bolted back out of sight.
"No," Rolls said. He didn't have to fake the interest in his voice. "I have an idea."
He led her by the hand to the lift tube, their strides lengthening with each step.
The lift appeared to be an empty three-meter shaft until Rolls and Penny stood on it. The air beneath their feet hardened and they began to rise. A foreshortened figure in pink livery walked across the foyer, unaware of their rising presence.
Penny stroked Rolls' bulging groin. "I thought perhaps . . . ," she said, and as she spoke the figure in the air beside Rolls was shorter, slender, and nude except for the necklace.
"Or even—something unusual?" and she was fat, though her breasts were heavy rather than pendulous. Her hair was black for a moment, then blond, and finally a rich chestnut. She cocked an eyebrow at Rolls.
The lift rose through the ceiling of the foyer and into the shaft of the central tower. Individual rooms opened onto a hall which circled the shaft.
There were railings here. The lift was for Penny, her peers, and those whom her whim chose. It was a straight drop to marble for any ordinary human servant who stepped into the shaft.
Rolls leaned forward and kissed one of the dark nipples, letting it swell under his tongue. "No," he said as he straightened, "I don't think quite . . ."
Penny licked her lips. She let her body tremble through changes, one after the other, and as she did so her fingers reached under the waistband of Rolls' briefs.
The lift had risen past the servants' quarters, though a spiral staircase circled the shaft. The floors at this height were mostly open rooms whose furnishings were decorated with flounces and lace. Balconies bulged from the other walls.
"What I would like," Rolls said carefully, "is you, Penny."
They glided to a halt at the top of the tower. The dome was several times the diameter of the spire that supported it. Its floor area was divided into four suites, each with its own door off the lift shaft.
"Well, of course!" Penny said, throwing open a door into a huge bedroom furnished mostly in white fur. The outer wall was crystal and brilliant in the sunlight.
She looked at her companion in sudden surmise. "Oh . . ." she said. "This old thing?"
The woman before Rolls was suddenly a short, slightly overweight nineteen-year-old, with curly blond hair and pale areolae.
Rolls took Penny's left breast in his hand and kissed her hard on the lips. He stepped back and pulled down his briefs.
"You," he said. He smiled broadly. "On the balcony. But you, not the necklace."
Penny's tongue touched her lips again. Her hands rose and paused around the almost invisibly fine filament that supported the jewel that was all she now wore. Then she lifted it off in a convulsive motion and tossed it toward a dresser whose mirror and cosmetics were needless frills here—like most of this palace, like most of their lives, all of them.
The only change in the woman's appearance was that a mole sprouted on the side of her left breast. Its pigmentation was darker than that of the nipple.
"Come and get me, then," Penny giggled.
She turned and scampered toward the circular balcony. The crystalline panels slid open as she approached.
Rolls followed. It was necessary that he let her run partway around the dome before he caught her.
But he was as ready to catch her as she was to be caught.