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increasingly attractive and willing sexual partner, but no one could know how long it would be before I took advantage of that. It might have been days, or weeks (as was the case), or months. Probably the nomenklatura didn't care; they were assured that eventually I would get around to it, and then I would be dead. Thus they had no need to imperil their position by any other attempts against me; they had their sleeper placed.
    What I needed to do was keep Tasha, who was, after all, an excellent secretary, but not attempt any further sex with her. In that manner she should serve as my protection from my enemies.
    But I didn't want her mole-self forever lurking, waiting to assassinate me. Could I recondition her? I was not expert in this science, but I could try. Perhaps if she believed, in her assassin guise, that she already had killed me, then she would not be inclined to try again.
    So I played it through. I continued my motions, working up to my sexual climax, which despite my narrow escape was not really difficult. Tasha remained an infernally attractive woman, after all, and aspects of this engagement were reminiscent of the manner I raped Roulette, half my life ago. What a woman Rue had been! Still was, for my taste, though she was now nearing fifty. The thought of her enhanced my performance, and in due course I erupted in creditable fashion.
    “Now I shall do it,” Tasha said, smiling grimly. She tightened her lock.
    Her effort was not sufficient, but I made up for it with my performance. I gagged and held my breath, trying to make my face go mottled, and in due course collapsed. I came down on her luscious torso, my face separated from hers only by her grip.
    Tasha lifted her head to touch my lips with hers. We kissed, in our fashion, though I remained carefully unresponsive, playing dead.
    But I knew I wasn't fooling her. Dazed she might be, but she could still tell the living from the dead.
    She rolled me off her, then got up, went to the bathroom, dressed, and put her hair and makeup back in order. She left the room without speaking again.
    I got up and followed much the same routine. Soon I returned to the main office, where Tasha had resumed work.
    I hesitated, then approached her. “How's it going?” I asked.
    She flashed her décolletage at me. “We're making progress, Tyrant. We'll be ready for a field trip in perhaps three days.”
    I read her as she talked. She was the normal secretary, with no killer instinct. She surely had no memory of her attempt on my life. Once the sexual encounter was over, she had reverted to her innocent state.
    And to her effort to seduce me. It was as though the past half hour had not happened.
    What disturbed me was that, though I had just had my sexual satisfaction of her, her manner and appearance still turned me on. Of course I knew better than to ever get intimate with her again—not unless I first tied her down! But if she could tempt me even slightly, immediately after my satiation and my close escape from assassination, she would surely tempt me more as time passed. I would be wanting this woman, despite the danger. Perhaps even because of the danger, because there is a special challenge to possess the woman who is emphatically not a casual plaything. At my age, it seemed to be more natural to flirt with the inevitable extinction, as if by averting it I could deny its inevitability.
    I could not afford to take that risk. Yet I did not want to expose Tasha's nature, thus clearing the way for some new threat. What should I do?
    I had another inspiration. The solution lay not with Tasha, who was what she was, but with me. I needed to arrange to eliminate any future temptation I might feel for her body.
    We worked on the research until Spirit returned. She knew immediately that something had happened; my sister does not read people the way I do, but she knows me as well as anyone ever has. She made no comment, but when the day concluded and Tasha departed for her