Valkyrdom was a venerable Jeffrey pine, gnarled and aromatic, which had been bent by the winds and earlier generations of children. Its trunk splayed into three sections, one of which grew nearly horizontal, and it was here that the treehouse had been built. Over the years it had been added to, subtracted from, made out of different materials, wood brought from afar, plastic and metal from Stalinwood. Old men sometimes passed by, glanced at Valkyrdom, and smiled, and you knew that maybe they'd put a little labor into this thing when they had been children. It was a complex structure now, floor, walls, roof . . . some of the windows still had clear-plastic "glass" whose origins no one knew. As they stalked through wreckage toward the tree, they drew their swords, feeling the temper of adult-blunted edges on savoring thumbs, alert for the Enemy. It seemed safe, and they went up the tree like a horde of hairless monkeys, still cautious—you never knew. . . .
Up in the treehouse, they lolled about, giggling, unable to sustain the illusion of the Game indefinitely. Brendan turned away, internalized, keeping his own Game running, wanting it to continue as long as possible. He arose and went out onto a little porch that they'd made, leaned gingerly on a rather rickety railing, and looked around, searching. Suddenly he came alert. Sure enough, there were two tiny figures, walking along the edge of the cliff. . . . "Look! The Starlords have invaded Aerhurst!" Tom d'Alix picked up his sword from the floor and came to stand beside him. "Let's go," he said grimly.
Brendan took a last look at the tiny figures before coming down. There were other people living in the area. Einsalz Commune was a long but feasible walk away. These ... He peered at them, knowing that they must be Family members. He watched the way they were walking and saw the information that he needed in their respective gaits. It was Roger, who was seventeen, and Elspeth, fourteen. They all headed for Aerhurst, silent as children can be, following separate paths, intent on revenge, and
. . .
The world went two-dimensional, then fell away, snatched from their grasp, and the real world reemerged.
A timer was calling them, telling them that a midcourse correction had become necessary. "Shit," said Sealock. "Maybe we can get back to this later."
"Maybe." Still festooned with leads, Krzakwa watched the man, feeling him work through their still extant electronic connection. It's not supposed to be that good, he thought. Imagery of that depth and complexity calls for a DR therapy program and a lot more circuitry. . . . Sealock suddenly turned and looked at him, eyes still a little unfocused. "Stop leaking," he said, "it's distracting me."
Tem was appalled.
When the correction burn was done, Brendan and Tem were eating a little snack. "That sure as hell works a lot better than I expected," said the Selenite. "What're you using for a control-element matrix?" Brendan shrugged. "The contents of my memory. I've written a number of programs. I know how they work."
"We don't have anything that could contain and run something of that sophistication. I want to know how you're doing it!"
"Well . . . Brains are pretty complicated machines . . . they contain natural Turing circuits, even though we don't call them that. I'm just using my imagination."
Tem nodded slowly, thinking, Maybe so. And he's used to working through the interfaces in ways I'm not. "Can we finish your dream? It was pretty interesting."
The setup was already there. They were plugged in, the limited program up and running, so he began, in medias res , without preamble:
Brendan de Kathleen and Lena de Jane were crawling cautiously through the bushes that lined the bluff along the top of Aerhurst, ever alert for the sounds of the invading Starlords . A light, dry breeze was ruffling the vegetation, masking the little scuffling noises that they made as they crept along. Intent on their mission of revenge, they hardly noticed the dark dust adhering to their clothing. They would capture the two aliens and torture them, find out where the main body of the attacking force lay hidden. He figured that the two older children would go along with the Game. Erin, Alix's eighteen-year-old daughter, had once told him that they'd had similar fantasies, that the Game had, in fact, been started about ten years ago by Michael ne Harrison who, though a Father, was not much older than some of the youngsters. He'd joined the Family as a teenager, an immigrant from the still dead ruins of burned-out Atlanta, and had a penchant for evolving fantasies that had apparently sustained him on his two-thousand-mile walk.
Brendan stopped suddenly and raised his hand, motioning Lena to silence. He could hear them!
Taking out his sword, he crawled carefully forward, staying silent, sliding over grasses that hardly noticed his presence, until he could see through the bushes into an airy clearing ahead, on the edge of the cliff. They were there, not two meters away. . . . Hesaw, and was transfixed. Lena de Jane crept forward to his side, looked out with him, and they lay there, watching, mute.
Roger and Elspeth Sealock were the children of Diana and Jane, though who their fathers might be was kept a careful unknown. The boy was seventeen, tall and dark-haired, with a slim, muscular body. The girl was rather pretty, three years younger, and blond. Her breasts were small, high, and her sparse pubic hair was so light as to be almost invisible. The two lay together, naked on a soft blanket, handling each other gently.
What they were doing was similar to the experiments of the younger children, but with certain subtle differences: they sighed, where the little ones would giggle, and Brendan saw that they were sweating, though it wasn't very hot. Roger's penis was large and hard, reddish brown in the sunlight, not seeming to flex at all under the girl's touch. He could see a shining wetness at the juncture of Elspeth's thighs. They kissed and touched and murmured together, and after a while the girl lay back and the boy crawled on top of her.
By happenstance, their positioning was just right. Elspeth grunted when the first thrust came, and Brendan's eyes widened as he saw Roger's penis disappear into that odd sealed hole that he knew all his sib-sisters had. The two moved for a while, a strange rocking motion that looked rather silly, gasping with effort as they grew more frenzied, and then they stopped.
They lay motionless for a while, then Roger rolled off onto his back, and Brendan saw that Elspeth was bleeding from between her legs, a peculiarly watery blood. He glanced at Lena then and saw a certain look of horror in her eyes. He turned back to the clearing and saw that the other two were grinning, stroking each other languidly, and kissing again.
The spell abruptly broke, the world shattering back into normalcy, and Krzakwa was laughing. "Oh boy! You didn't tell me your family practiced incest, Bren. Look!" He pointed at his crotch, where the bulge of an erection showed. "I'll bet you broke it in a few years later with that Lena kid, didn't you?" Sealock shook his head, still remote in time. "No. I didn'tknow it then, but I had less than a year to go. They kicked me out the following spring. . . ." He wrapped his arms around his chest and shut his eyes, making a quick software-disconnect from the 'net element loop. Silenced, Krzakwa let the matter drop.
John and Beth had chosen to snuggle together in a small bathing cubical filled with blood-hot salt water. They drifted, face up, their naked bodies occasionally colliding. The lights were extinguished and extraneous sensory input was almost eliminated. It was a disjoint experience. In a way, it was all still superficial, if such an intimacy could be called that. 9Phase.DR strained to supply them with all that they wanted.