The guests seemed happy to drink and laugh and party endlessly, with nary a genuine concern about their gracious host, and so as the evening dragged on, Sydney's proactive nature made the decision for her. She went below deck.
She noticed the slightly ajar room of what appeared to be a sauna. She dared to venture in. "Gospodin Petrenko?" she wondered.
She entered a great cloud of what appeared to be steam --
-- and then awoke lying on some sort of slab in a dark room.
"I know that you're working for Arvin."
"What?" Sydney felt terribly groggy.
"Arvin Sloane." There was a weak light above her, and a rather ordinary-looking man stepped into it -- Petrenko. "Arvin and I are rivals. We both seek the world's greatest relics. You do realize that's all he cares about -- not peace, not patriotism, none of those lies, just the power of certain priceless objects."
She was beginning not to doubt that, but was still rightfully upset. "Are you any better?"
"Ah, I suppose not -- not if I stage an elaborate ruse to trap Arvin's very own secret agent, luring her into a cloud of what appears to be sauna steam but is in fact a drug delivered as a vapor. The simple fact is, Miss Whoever-you-are, that Arvin does not deserve the Venus of Wellendaud -- but you, my dear, do."
A new light came on. Sydney sat up on her slab and confronted no less than the Venus itself sitting several meters away from her.
"Arvin is such a bore, my dear. Rambaldi ... always, always his sacred Rambaldi. But Rambaldi is nothing, I believe, compared to a little known extinct race of humanity known as Homo zarbaibai. Homo zarbaibai comprise a far greater and more intriguing puzzle than the Neanderthals. I believe that, if ever there was some prehistoric equivalent of Atlantis, it was theirs. We have science, but they, they mastered what we misunderstand and sneer at todays as 'mere' magic.
"Right now, physicists are going crazy trying to understand dark matter and dark energy. What no one appreciates -- but the Homo zarbaibai wizards did! -- is that matter is sexual. Not biologically, but Yin and Yang in its own way. Most matter is the feminine, which I call matrimatter -- and then there is the male principle, the rare catalyst, which is called mystermatter. What we have here in the Venus, my dear, is not simply a work of art, but an enhancer of matrimatter. In her presence, that which is feminine, becomes more feminine."
Sydney instinctively doubted him -- but then she looked at the Venus's absurd breasts ... and then slowly looked down to check herself.
Her bosom felt utterly natural -- and yet had clearly expanded by several cup sizes ...
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