Takeshi Kovacs - Broken Angels Part 17

"Do you have somewhere in mind?"

"Yes." It was like a children's game of dare.

"So where is that exactly?"

"Downstairs." She got up and looked down at me. "You know, you ask a lot of questions for a man that's about to get laid."

Downstairs was a floor about midway up the tower which the elevator announced as a recreational level. The doors opened onto the unpart.i.tioned s.p.a.ce of a fitness centre, machines bulking insect-like and menacing in the unlit gloom. Towards the back, I spotted the tilted webs of a dozen or so virtualink racks.

"We doing this out here?" I asked uncomfortably.

"No. Closed chambers at the back. Come on on."

We pa.s.sed through the forest of stilled machines, lights flickering up above and amongst them, then flickering out again as we moved on. I watched the process out of a neurasthenic grotto that had been growing up around me like coral since before I came down from the roof. Too much virtuality will do that to you sometimes. There's this vague feeling of abrasion in the head when you disconnect, a disquieting sense that reality isn't quite sharp enough any more, a waxing and waning fuzziness that might be what the edge of madness feels like.

The cure for this definitely is not not more virtual time. more virtual time.

There were nine closed chambers, modular blisters swelling out of the end wall under their respective numbers. Seven and eight were cracked open, spilling low orange light around the line of the hatch. Wardani stopped in front of seven and the door hinged outward. The orange light expanded pleasantly in the gap, tuned into soft hypnomode. No dazzle. She turned to look back at me.

"Go ahead," she said. "Eight is slaved to this one. Just hit 'consensual' on the menu pad."

And she disappeared into the warm orange glow.

Inside module eight, someone had seen fit to cover the walls and roofing with empathist psychogram art, which in the hypnomode lighting seemed little more than a random set of fishtail swirls and spots. Then again, that's what most empathist stuff looks like to me in any light. The air was just the right side of warm and beside the automould couch there was a complicated spiral of metal to hang clothes.

I stripped off and settled on the automould, pulled down the headgear and swiped the flas.h.i.+ng consensual diamond as the displays came online. I just remembered to knock out the physical feedback baffle option before the system kicked in.

The orange light appeared to thicken, taking on a foggy substance through which the psychogram swirls and dots swam like complex equations or maybe some kind of pond life. I had a moment to wonder if the artist had intended either of those comparisons-empathists are a weird lot-and then the orange was fading and shredding away like steam, and I stood in an immense tunnel of black vented metal panels, lit only by lines of flas.h.i.+ng red diodes that receded to infinity in both directions.

In front of me, more of the orange fog boiled up out of a vent and shredded into a recognisably female form. I watched fascinated as Tanya Wardani began to emerge from the general outline, made at first entirely of flickering orange smoke, then seemingly veiled in it from head to foot, then clad only in patches, and then, as these tore away, clad in nothing at all.

Glancing down at myself, I saw I was similarly naked.

"Welcome to the loading deck."

Looking up again, my first thought was that she had already gone to work on herself. Most constructs load on self-images held in the memory, with subroutines to beat anything too delusional-you end up looking pretty much the way you do in reality, less a couple of kilos and maybe plus a centimetre or two. The version of Tanya Wardani I was looking at didn't have those kind of discrepancies-it was more a general sheen of health that she didn't yet have back in the real world, or perhaps just the lack of a similar, more grimy sheen of unhealth unhealth. The eyes were less sunken, the cheek and collar bones less p.r.o.nounced. Under the slightly pouched b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the ribs were there, but fleshed far past what I'd imagined below her draped clothing.

"They're not big on mirrors in the camp," she said, maybe reading something in my expression. "Except for interrogation. And after a while you try not to see yourself in windows walking past. I probably still look a lot worse than I think I do. Especially after that instant fix you loaded into me."

I couldn't think of anything even remotely appropriate to say.

"You on the other hand..." She stepped forward and, reaching out low, caught me by the p.r.i.c.k. "Well, let's see what you've got here."

I was hard almost instantly.

Maybe it was something written into the protocols of the system, maybe just too long without the release. Or maybe there was some unclean fascination in antic.i.p.ating the use of this body with its lightly accented marks of privation. Enough to hint artfully at abuse, not enough to repel. Freaks who like starved p.u.b.escents to f.u.c.k Freaks who like starved p.u.b.escents to f.u.c.k? No telling how a combat sleeve might be wired at this level. Or any male sleeve, come to that. Dig down into the blood depths of hormonal bedrock, where violence and s.e.x and power grow fibrously entwined. It's a murky, complicated place down there. No telling what you'll drag up once you start excavating.

"That's good," she breathed, abruptly close to my ear. She had not let go. "But I don't rate this much. You've not been looking after yourself, soldier."

Her other hand spread wide and sc.r.a.ped up my belly from the roots of my p.r.i.c.k to the arc of my ribcage. Like a carpenter's sanding glove, planing back the layering of flab that had begun to thicken over my sleeve's tank-grown abdominal musculature. I glanced down, and saw with a slight visceral shock that some of the flab really had started to plane off, fading out with the motion of her flattened palm. It left a warm feeling threaded through the muscle beneath, like whisky going down.

Sy-system magic, I managed through the spasm as she tugged hard at me with the gripping hand and repeated the upward smoothing gesture with the other.

I lifted my own hands towards her, and she skipped back.

"Uh-uh." She took another step away. "I'm not ready yet. Look at me."

She lifted both hands and cupped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Pushed upward with the heels of her palms, then let them fall back, fuller, larger. The nipples-had one of them been broken before?-swollen dark and conical like chocolate sheathing on the copper skin.

"Like that?" she asked.

"Very much."

She repeated the open-handed grasping motion, topping it with a circular ma.s.saging action. When she let go this time, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were well on their way to the dimensions of one of Djoko Roespinoedji's gravity-defying concubines. She reached back and did something similar to her b.u.t.tocks, turning to show me the cartoon rounding she'd given them. She bent forward and pulled the cheeks apart.

"Lick me," she said, with sudden urgency.

I went down on one knee and pressed my face into the crease, spearing forward with my tongue, working at the tight whorl of closed sphincter. I wrapped an arm around one long thigh to steady myself and with the other hand I reached up and found her already wet. The ball of my thumb sank into her from the front as my tongue worked deeper from the rear, both rubbing soft synchronised circles amid her insides. She grunted, somewhere at the base of her throat, and we s.h.i.+fted Into liquid blue. The floor was gone, and most of the gravity with it. I thrashed and lost my thumbhold. Wardani twisted languidly around and fastened to me like belaweed around a rock. The fluid was not water; it had left our skins slick against each other, and I could breath it as well as if it were tropical air. I gasped my lungs full of it as Wardani slithered down, biting at my chest and stomach, and finally laid hands and mouth on my hard-on.

I didn't last long. Floating in the infinite blue while Tanya Wardani's newly pneumatic b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against my thighs and her nipples traced up and down on my oiled skin and her mouth sucked and her curled fingers pumped, I had just enough time to notice a light source above us before my neck muscles started to tauten, cranking my head back, and the twitching messages along my nerves gathered together for a final climactic rush.

There was a scratch replay vibrato effect built into the construct. My o.r.g.a.s.m went on for over thirty seconds.

As it tailed off, Tanya Wardani floated up past me, hair spread around her face, threads of s.e.m.e.n blown out amidst bubbles from the corners of her grin. I struck out and grabbed one pa.s.sing thigh, dragged her back into range.

She flexed in the water a.n.a.logue as my tongue sank into her, and more bubbles ran out of her mouth. I caught the reverberation of her moan through the fluid like the sympathetic vibration of jet engines in the pit of my stomach, and felt myself stiffening in response. I pressed my tongue down harder, forgetting to breathe and then discovering I didn't actually need to for a long time. Wardani's writhing grew more urgent and she crooked her legs around my back to anchor herself in place. I cupped her b.u.t.tocks and squeezed, pus.h.i.+ng my face into the folds of her c.u.n.t, then slid my thumb back inside her and recommenced the soft circular motion in counterpoint to the spiralling of my tongue. She gripped my head in both hands and crushed my face against her. Her writhings became thras.h.i.+ngs, her moans a sustained shout that filled my ears like the sound of surf overhead. I sucked. She stiffened, and screamed, and then shuddered for minutes.

We drifted to the surface together, An astronomically unlikely red giant sun was sinking at the horizon, bathing the suddenly normalised water around us in stained-gla.s.s light. Two moons sat high in the eastern sky and behind us waves broke on a white sand beach fringed by palms.

"Did you. Write this?" I asked, treading water and nodding at the view.

"Hardly." She wiped water out of her eyes and slicked back her hair with both, hands. "It's off the rack. I checked out what they had this afternoon. Why, you like it?"

"So far. But I have a feeling that sun is an astronomical impossibility."

"Yeah, well, breathing underwater's not overly realistic either."

"I didn't get to breathe." I held my hands above the water in claws, miming the grip she'd had on my head, and pulled a suffocated face. "This bring back any memories?"

To my amazement, she flushed scarlet. Then she laughed, splashed water in my face and struck out for the sh.o.r.e. I trod water for a moment, laughing too, and then went after her.

The sand was warm, powder fine and system-magically unwilling to stick to wet flesh. Behind the beach, coconuts fell sporadically from the palms and, unless collected, broke down into fragments which were carried away by tiny jewel-coloured crabs.

We f.u.c.ked again at the water's edge, Tanya Wardani seated astride my c.o.c.k, cartoon a.s.s bedded soft and warm on my crossed legs. I buried my face in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, settled hands at her hips and lifted her gently up and down until the shuddering started in her again, caught me like a contagious fever and ran through us both. The scratch replay subroutine had a resonance system built in that cycled the o.r.g.a.s.m back and forth between us like an oscillating signal, swamping and ebbing for what felt like forever.

It was love. Perfect pa.s.sion compatibility, trapped, distilled and amped up almost beyond bearing.

"You knock out the baffles?" she asked me, a little breathlessly, after.

"Of course. You think I want to go through all this and still still come out swilling full of s.e.m.e.n and s.e.x hormones?" come out swilling full of s.e.m.e.n and s.e.x hormones?"

"Go through?" She lifted her head from the sand, outraged.

I grinned back. "Sure. This is for your your benefit, Tanya. I wouldn't be here other-Hoy, no throwing sand." benefit, Tanya. I wouldn't be here other-Hoy, no throwing sand."

"f.u.c.king-"

"Look-"

I fended off the fistful of sand with one arm and pushed her into the surf. She went over backwards, laughing. I stood up in a ludicrous Micky Nozawa fighting stance, while she picked herself up. Something out of Siren Fist Demons Siren Fist Demons.

"Don't try to lay your profane hands on me, woman."

"Looks to me like you want to have hands laid on you," she said, shaking back her hair and pointing.

It was true. The sight of the system magic-enhanced body, beaded with water, had the signals flickering through my nerve endings again, and my glans was already filling up with blood like a ripening plum in time-lapse fast-forward sequence.

I gave up the guard, and glanced around the construct. "You know, off the rack or not, this is some good s.h.i.+t, Tanya."

"Last year's Cybers.e.x Down Cybers.e.x Down seal of approval, apparently." She shrugged. "I took a chance. You want to try the water again? Or, apparently there's this waterfall thing back through the trees." seal of approval, apparently." She shrugged. "I took a chance. You want to try the water again? Or, apparently there's this waterfall thing back through the trees."

"Sounds good to me."

On the way past the front line of palms with their huge phallic trunks lifting like dinosaur necks off the sand, I scooped up a newly fallen coconut. The crabs scattered with comic speed, scuttling for burrows in the sand from which they poked cautious eyestalks. I turned the coconut over in my hands. It had landed with a small chunk already torn out of the green sh.e.l.l, exposing soft, rubbery flesh beneath. Nice touch. I punctured the inner membrane with my thumb and tipped it back like a gourd. The milk inside was improbably chilled.

Another nice touch.

The forest floor beyond was conveniently clear of sharp debris and insects. Water poured and splashed somewhere with attention-grabbing clarity. An obvious path led through the palm trunks towards the sound. We walked, hand in hand, beneath rainforest foliage filled with brightly-coloured birds and small monkeys making suspiciously harmonic noises.

The waterfall was a two-tier affair, pouring down in a long plume into a wide basin, then tumbling through rocks and rapids to another smaller pool where the drop was less. I arrived slightly ahead of her and stood on wet rocks at the edge of the second pool, arms akimbo, looking down. I repressed a grin. The moment was cleared for her to push me in, trembling with the potential.

Nothing.

I turned to look at her, and saw she was trembling slightly.

"Hoy, Tanya." I took her face between my hands. "Are you OK? What's the matter?"

But I knew what the motherf.u.c.king motherf.u.c.king matter was. matter was.

Because Envoy techniques or not, healing is a complex, creeping process, and it'll glitch on you as soon as your back's turned.

The motherf.u.c.king motherf.u.c.king camp. camp.

The low-key arousal fled, leaching out of my system like saliva from a mouthful of lemon. The fury sheeted up through me.

The motherf.u.c.king motherf.u.c.king war. war.

If I'd had Isaac Carrera and Joshua Kemp there, in the middle of all that edenic beauty, I'd have torn their entrails out with my bare hands, knotted them together and kicked them into the pool to drown.

Can't drown in this water, sneered the part of me that would never shut down, the smug Envoy control. You can breathe in this water You can breathe in this water.

Maybe men like Kemp and Carrera couldn't.

Yeah, right.

So instead, I caught Tanya Wardani around the waist, and crushed her against me, and jumped for us both.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

I came out of it with an alkaline smell in my nostrils and my belly sticky with fresh s.e.m.e.n. My b.a.l.l.s ached as if they'd been kicked. Over my head, the display had cleared to standby. A time-check pulsed in one corner. I'd been under less than two minutes, real time.

I sat up groggily.

"f.u.c.k. Me." I cleared my throat, and looked around. Fresh self-moistening towelling hung from a roll behind the automould, presumably with just this in mind. I tore off a handful and wiped myself down, still trying to blink the virtuality out of my eyes.

We'd f.u.c.ked in the waterfall pool, languid underwater once Wardani's trembling had pa.s.sed.

We'd f.u.c.ked again on the beach.

We'd f.u.c.ked back up on the loading deck, a last-chance-grabbed-at-leaving sort of thing.

I tore off more towel, wiped my face and rubbed at my eyes. I dressed slowly, stowed the smart gun, wincing as it prodded down from my waistband into my tender groin. I found a mirror on the wall of the chamber and peered into it, trying to sort out what had happened to me in there.

Envoy psychoglue.

I'd used it on Wardani without really thinking about it, and now she was up and walking around. That was what I'd wanted. The dependency whiplash was an almost inevitable side-effect, but so what? It was the kind of thing that didn't much matter in the usual Envoy run of things-as likely as not you were in combat with other things to worry about, often you'd moved on by the time it became a problem the subject had to deal with. What didn't generally happen was the kind of restorative purging Wardani had prescribed for herself and then gone after.

I couldn't predict how that would work.

I'd never known it to happen before. Never even seen seen it before. it before.

I couldn't work out what she'd made me feel in turn.

And I wasn't learning anything new looking at myself in the mirror.

I built a shrug and a grin, and walked out of the chamber into the pre-dawn gloom among the stilled machines. Wardani was waiting outside, by one of the open-rig webs and Not alone.

The thought jarred through my soggy nervous system, painfully sluggish, and then the unmistakeable spike-and-ring configuration at the projection end of a Sunjet was pushed against the back of my neck.

"You want to avoid any sudden moves, chum." It was a strange accent, an equatorial tw.a.n.g to it even through the voiceprint distorter. "Or you and your girlfriend here are going to be wearing no heads."

A professional hand snaked round my waist, plucked the Kalashnikov from its resting place and tossed it away across the room. I heard the m.u.f.fled clunk as it hit the carpeted floor and slid.