Metaphase. Part 11

Her expression was her only question.

"He said he was achy, he said he'd thrash around. . . ." Satos.h.i.+ was not lying. Not technically. "I don't know," he said.

"One of his moody spells," Victoria said. She had learned to overlook them, as Stephen Thomas preferred. "He'll be okay in the morning."

"Victoria," Satos.h.i.+ said, "he's growingfur."

"I know. I saw." She grinned. "I think it's kind of s.e.xy, don't you?"

She reached out to him. He grasped her long, slender fingers, lay beside her, and pulled the blanket over them both. Victoria hooked her foot over his leg, sliding her instep up his calf. She pulled him closer and kissed him, hard and hungrily. He opened his mouth for her tongue, and rolled over on his back, drawing her on top of him, abandoning himself to her, abandoning his worries and his fears.

And yet, making love with Victoria in the starlight, in the harsh reflected s.h.i.+ne of Sirius, Satos.h.i.+ missed the touch of Stephen Thomas's body, the strength of his hands, his voice.

After Satos.h.i.+ left, Stephen Thomas stared at the cell cultures for a few more minutes. He did not want to move. His whole body hurt.

Just ignore it, he said to himself. You'd feel worse after a rough soccer game.

He was used to recovering quickly. He still did recover quickly: a few days ago he had had two black eyes and a livid cut across his forehead. Those bruises had vanished and the scar was fading.

The ache of the changing virus remained. And once in a while, completely unexpectedly, real pain ambushed 79.him. Before he realized how badly the slug had bruised him, he had feared something was going wrong with the changes.

He wished he could just take to his bed and get his partners to bring him chicken soup. They would do it, too . . . except that then he would end up having to tell Victoria what had really happened. Admitting to Satos.h.i.+ what a fool he had been was bad enough. He did not think he could stand to admit it to Victoria.

He swore out loud, shut down the lab, and went across the Chi to his cubicle. In the far cabin, Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ murmured to each other. An ache radiated from the center of his pelvis. It spread in a wave. He quietly closed the door that joined his partners' cabins to his own.

He stripped off his clothes, untangled his quilt, and lay down on the sleeping surface. He pulled the quilt around his shoulders. It used to smell like Merry, but it did not anymore, even in his imagination.

He was wide awake. He flung off the quilt, turned over, stretched, and looked at himself.His body proportions were similar to Zev's: he was slender, narrow-hipped; he had good shoulders. But Zev, like most divers, was rather short. Stephen Thomas liked being tall. He hoped that would not change.

So far, his toenails had not begun to change to semiretractile claws. He curled his toes. His feet were about the only part of him that did not hurt.

His skin changed from day to day. Not only its color. He had traded the maddening itch between his fingers, while the webbing formed, for a milder itch all over his body as the fine, nearly invisible hair grew in.

He liked the delicate pelt. He thought he would find it s.e.xy on another person. He rubbed his hand down his forearm, down his side. He hoped Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ would get to like it, too.

I wonder whether Merry would have liked it? Stephen Thomas thought.

Probably. Merry was always the one who wanted to experiment.

The partners.h.i.+p had never quite perfected the com-80 plex, erotic chaos of four people making love to each other in the same bed. They had needed more time. They had all been looking forward to trying s.e.x in freefall. But they never got to try it as a foursome; Merry died before their first trip into s.p.a.ce.

With a sharp pang of loneliness, Stephen Thomas wished he were sleeping with his partners. But all his reasons for sleeping alone remained. He hurt, he was restless, he would keep them awake. Besides, he liked to please them, and for the past couple of days his interest in s.e.x had been very low.

That worried him. He explained his lack of interest to himself with the bruises, the persistent ache, the occasional intense pain.

He told the lights to turn off, curled up in his quilt, and hugged his knees to his chest. That eased him a little.

His mind spun around the strange behavior of his cell cultures, the disturbing encounter with Nerno's pond creatures.

Trying to take his mind off his work, Stephen Thomas thought about Feral.

Feral liked change, just like Merry did. That was one of the reasons Stephen Thomas had been attracted to hirn. Feral had joined the expedition's revolt without hesitation. Hc had been excited when Stephen Thomas decided to finish turning into a diver. He had even been envious.

Stephen Thomas smiled wryly to himself.

Some of these changes you wouldn't be envious of, my friend, he thought.

But I bet you would've liked my new fur.

On impulse, he opened a private channel back to Starfarer. In response to his call, Gerald Hernminge appeared, his dark hair mussed. A wrinkle, the image of a crease in his pillow, was imprinted across his cheek.

"Did I wake you up?"

Gerald glanced sideways, realized he was transmitting his image, and snapped a command to Arachne. He faded out. 81."What is it? Has there been a new development?"

"No," Stephen Thomas said. "Nerno's still quiet."

"Then why did you call me? Don't you ever sleep?"

No, Stephen Thomas thought, I don't, these days."I called you because I want to talk to you for a minute. Why'd you answer, if you were asleep?"

"Because I'm your b.l.o.o.d.y liaison!"

"But I marked the message private-"

Stephen Thomas stopped. No point in deliberately getting into an argument with Gerald. They argued enough anyway.

"It's about Feral."

"What about him?"

Gerald's image reappeared. He had combed his hair and put on a s.h.i.+rt.

Except for the crease across his cheek, he looked wide awake and professional.

"His funeral. We should do something-"

Gerald stared at him. "You never cease to amaze me. You're in the midst of humanity's first alien contact-"

"It's only the first if you don't count Europa," Stephen Thomas said.

"Europa isn't an alien."

"Europa's the first human to meet aliens-Look, Gerald, forget Europa, I want to talk about Feral."

"There's nothing we can do here and now."

"I know, but when I come back-"

"When we return to Earth, we'll turn his body over to his family."

""at? That might be years!"

"I sincerely hope not."

"Besides, he hasn't got any family."

"The proper authorities, in that case."

"But-"

"I'm sorry. There's nothing to be done. I haven't any authority to make any arrangements. It will have to wait till we go home."

Stephen Thomas started to object again, but Gerald interrupted.82 "And now, if you don't mind, some of us would like to be fresh for the next conversation with Nemo."

He broke the connection.

"s.h.i.+t," Stephen Thomas muttered to the air where Gerald's image had faded.

J.D. woke, disoriented. Stars and darkness surrounded her.

It was nearly morning. She was still in her couch in the observers'

circle, but the couch had been extended flat. A blanket covered her.

Oh, no, she thought. I fell asleep during the conference. I was just going to close my eyes. . . .

Zev curled nearby, on his own couch. He woke and drew in a deep gasp of air. Divers slept like orcas, napping till they needed another breath, waking, breathing, drifting back to sleep. Zev turned toward her, his dark eyes reflecting light like a cat's, his fine fur catching the starlight. He looked like a gilded statue, with eerie emerald eyes.

"Hi, Zev."

In silence, he left his couch and joined her in hers, snuggling close.

His webbed hand slid beneath her s.h.i.+rt and over her full breast. In a moment of embarra.s.sment she started to draw away. But the sensors and the cameras and the microphones were all turned off. No one could watch themthrough the transparent walls of the circle. The Chi was quiet, Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ and Stephen Thomas asleep together in their cabin.

J.D. hugged Zev closer, and kissed him. Her tongue touched his sharp, dangerous canine teeth. He nibbled at her lips, at her throat, at her collarbone, unb.u.t.toning her s.h.i.+rt with his free hand. She pressed her hands down his muscular back, beneath his loose silk shorts. His body was hot against her, urgent with his insistent, ingenuous s.e.xuality.

He wriggled out of his shorts. He straddled J.D.'s thighs while he unfastened her pants and pushed them down over her hips, then when she had kicked them to 83.the floor he moved between her legs. Among divers, men as well as women produced a s.e.xual lubricant. As J.D. and Zev played and caressed and teased each other, Zev grew slick just like J.D.

J.D. kissed Zev's shoulder. His fur felt soft and bright against her lips.

She gasped as he stroked her inner thigh with his warm webbed fingers.

They moved with each other in the slow, luxurious rhythms of the sea, leading each other on. The rhythm quickened, grew desperate and joyful, and they loved each other beneath the alien stars.

CHAPTER 5.

J.D. FELT P14YSICALLY REFRESHED, IF STILL intellectually and emotionally overwhelmed by her time with Nemo. She and Zev had slept for several hours, first in the observers' chamber and then in J.D.'s cabin, holding each other. Zev nuzzled her throat, or kissed the cleft between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, whenever he woke to breathe.

She left him napping in her bed. While she bathed and dressed, she re- viewed the proceedings of last night's conference, including the few minutes after she had fallen asleep.

I don't believe I did that, she thought.

She told the onboard computer to 85.take away that display and show her the recordings of her colleagues'

experiences with Nemo.

Nemo had tempted Victoria with the inner workings of a stars.h.i.+p, and tantalized Satos.h.i.+ with more hints of the complexity of the web community.

What Nemo had offered Stephen Thomas, J.D. did not understand any better than Stephen Thomas did. The violence of the inner pool shocked her.

We were visiting an alien, she thought. We have to expect encounters that are . . . alien.

And . . . if I were inside my own body, watching blood cells attack pathogens, watching osteoclasts break down bone, I'd be just as surprised, and repelled.

She kept waiting for a message from Nemo. It worried her to have heard nothing.

You're thinking hard and long, Nemo my friend, she said to herself I wonder what that means for us?

The computer put away the displays. J.D. went to the galley to find some breakfast.

Satos.h.i.+ hunched over a cup of coffee, staring into the steam.

"Good morning," J.D. said, surprised to see him. Satos.h.i.+ was not known as an early riser.

"Hi," he said shortly.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," she said.

He raised his head; his expression remained blank, distracted.

"Huh?"

"For falling asleep."

"Oh. G.o.d, don't apologize. You've been going flat out for days."

J.D. reconst.i.tuted some milk-Starfarer did not have any cows, and she had not worked herself up to making hot chocolate with goat's milk-and heated it.

"Satos.h.i.+ . . . do you think we ought to let Nemo into Arachne?"

He sipped coffee, his strong square hands wrapped around the mug, lifting it slowly, putting it down deliberately.