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This, not sorrow over his losses or fear of a primitive Earth.
She clenched her fists, holding back. "This won't help me," she said.
"It will just make it harder for me when you're not around."
Nikanj freed one sensory arm from Joseph's waist and extended it
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r r
toward her.
She stayed where she was for a moment longer, proving to herself
that she was still in control of her behavior. Then she tore off her
jacket and seized the ugly, ugly elephant's trunk of an organ, letting it
coil around her as she climbed onto the bed. She sandwiched Nikanj's
body between her own and Joseph's, placing it for the first time in the
ooloi position between two humans. For an instant, this frightened
her. This was the way she might someday be made pregnant with an
other-than-human child. Not now while Nikanj wanted other work
from her, but someday. Once it plugged into her central nervous
system it could control her and do whatever it wanted.
She felt it tremble against her, and knew it was in.
7
She did not lose consciousness. Nikanj did not want to cheat itself of
sensation. Even Joseph was conscious, though utterly controlled,
unafraid because Nikanj kept him tranquil. Lilith was not controlled.
She could lift a free hand across Nikanj to take Joseph's cool,
seemingly lifeless hand.
"No," Nikanj said softly into her ear-or perhaps it stimulated the
auditory nerve directly. It could do that- stimulate her senses
individually or in any combination to make perfect hallucinations.
"Only through me," its voice insisted.
Lilith's hand tingled. She released Joseph's hand and immediately
received Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a compelling,
steadying presence.
She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj's approximation of
Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some
combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction.
What was Joseph feeling from her?
It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no
sensation of shifting gears, no "time alone" to contrast with the
present "time together." He had always been there, part of her,
essential.
Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It left
Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She sensed only
Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her.
Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved
together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless,
perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They
seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down
slowly, gradually, savoring a few more moments wholly together.
Noon, evening, dusk, darkness.
Her throat hurt. Her first solitary sensation was pain-as though she
had been shouting, screaming. She swallowed painfully and raised
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r r
her hand to her throat, but Nikanj's sensory aim was there ahead of
her and brushed her hand away. It laid its exposed sensory hand
across her throat. She felt it anchor itself, sensory fingers stretching,
clasping. She did not feel the tendrils of its substance penetrate her
flesh, but in a moment the pain in her throat was gone.
"All that and you only screamed once," it told her.
"How'd you let me do even that?" she asked.
"You surprised me. I've never made you scream before." She let it
withdraw from her throat, then moved languidly to stroke it. "How
much of that experience was Joseph's and mine?" she asked. "How
much did you make up?"
"I've never made up an experience for you," it said. "I won't have to
for him either. You both have memories filled with experiences."
"That was a new one."
"A combination. You had your own experiences and his. He had his
and yours. You both had me to keep it going much longer than it
would have otherwise. The whole was. . . overwhelming."
She looked around. "Joseph?"
"Asleep. Very deeply asleep. I didn't induce it. He's tired. He's all
right, though."
"He.. . felt everything I felt?"
"On a sensory level. Intellectually, he made his interpretations and
you made yours."
"I wouldn't call them intellectual."
"You understand me."
"Yes." She moved her hand over its chest, taking a perverse pleasure
in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten under her hand.
"Why do you do that?" it asked.
"Does it bother you?" she asked stilling her hand.
"No."
"Let me do it, then. I didn't used to be able to."
"I have to go. You should wash, then feed your people. Seal your mate
in. Be certain you're the first to talk to him when he wakes."
She watched it climb over her, joints bending all wrong, and lower
itself to the floor. She caught its hand before it could head for a wall.
Its head tentacles pointed at her loosely in unspoken question.
"Do you like him?" she asked.
The point focused briefly on Joseph. "Ahajas and Dichaan are
mystified," it said. "They thought you would choose one of the big
dark ones because they're like you. I said you would choose this one-
because he's like you." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]