,,Great," Stephen Thomas said. "One more reason for Gerald to dislike me." "Let's forget about Gerald."
Satoshi kissed Stephen Thomas's lips, his cheek, his throat, nibbling at the thin gold chain around his neck. The crystal slid along the chain and landed against his collarbone, cool as water. Stephen Thomas pulled Satoshi closer, and rubbed the small of his back with one hand. He loved the way Satoshi's muscles moved beneath his fingers.
"You still didn't tell me why you don't like Blades."
"I don't know why I don't like him. I just don't. Maybe I don't like his aura."
"Very funny," Stephen Thomas said. Satoshi did not believe in auras. "His aura was just fine."
"Hmm." Satoshi kept his voice neutral. He knew
when he had teased Stephen Thomas enough. Neither Satoshi nor Victoria would even try to look for auras.
The blue sparks of anger faded from Satoshi's aura. A gold glow of excitement flashed around him, and scarlet contentment shimmered beyond the gold.
Satoshi pushed Stephen Thomas's hair away from his forehead, caressed his face with both hands, and kissed him again, quickly, then harder. He slid his knee up Stephen Thomas's thigh. Stephen Thomas dragged his fingers down Satoshi's belly and ruffled his dark pubic hair with his fingernails. Satoshi's body was like a furnace, blasting out heat, when he was sexually aroused.
"Blades-"
"I don't want to talk about Chancellor Blades anymore," Satoshi said. He clenched his teeth and his back arched. He drew in a long, shuddering breath. He laid his hand over Stephen Thomas's, guiding him. Stephen Thomas forgot about everything except his partner's pleasure.
-Now, in the health center, Stephen Thomas closed his eyes and brought himself back to the present. Leaning against the doorjamb, he imagined making love to Feral.
Though they had never had a chance to go to bed together, they had made an immediate connection. It would have happened. And they had been well on the way to a close, solid friendship. Stephen Thomas had imagined their making love, and he had imagined inviting Feral to join the partnership. Satoshi and Victoria liked him. The family needed another member, and Feral fit in well. Someday they all had to stop grieving over Merry.
But what Stephen Thomas had done, by making friends with Feral, was put him in danger.
The health center was warm and pleasant and deserted. All the people injured in Arachne's first crash had recovered and gone home. Only one person was hurt in Arachne's second crash, and the one person was Feral.
Stephen Thomas passed through the deserted rooms. No one was around to ask him what he wanted, or whether he needed help. The mobile health Als had been disabled just like the ASes.
He expected the morgue to be cold, but it was the same temperature as the rest of the health center. When he opened the drawer where Feral lay, chill air washed over him.
He drew back the shroud. Feral stared up at him with dull, open eyes. Dry blood smeared his face and streaked in caked rivulets from his nose.
Blood from his ears matted his curly chestnut hair.
Stephen Thomas stepped back, in grief and despair,
Everybody had too much to worry about when Feral died, Stephen Thomas thought. Too much to do, to think about one dead man, to worry about what death would do to his gentle brown eyes.
And what did I do? I shut down, got on the Chi, and flew away.
Stephen Thomas took a ragged breath and returned to Feral's side. He touched his friend's cold cheek, his forehead; he drew his webbed hand down over Feral's eyes. The stiffness of death had passed from Feral's body, and his eyelids closed easily.
Stephen Thomas got a washcloth and cleaned the dry blood from Feral's skin and hair. Feral's expression was somber, but Stephen Thomas could imagine his full, mobile lips ready to smile. His chestnut hair curled around his face.
Stephen Thomas had been telling himself all along that he only planned to come to the health center and say goodbye to Feral. But he had been lying to himself.
"Gerald can go fuck himself," Stephen Thomas said. "I'll be damned if I'll leave you here."
Feral's clothes had been ripped and cut away during the attempts to revive him. Livid bruises mottled his chest. Stephen Thomas found a clean sheet and wrapped it around Feral's body. The health center lay well up the side of Starfarer's end hill, where the gravity was very low. When Stephen Thomas picked Feral up,
his body felt absurdly light, as if death had taken away his substance. Stephen Thomas easily carried Feral's body to the hub of Starfarer. The gravity continued to diminish, till it was barely perceptible. He floated himself and his burden to the ferry station, boarded the capsule, and strapped Feral's body on the back platform.
He had not been to the wild side since the wild side's previous spring. Spring on the wild side was fall in the campus cylinder. Summer had passed in the wilderness, winter had passed on campus. A short trip would take him from campus spring into wild side autumn.
Infinity crossed the lawn in front of the chancellor's house. Three exterior ASes, silver slugs, sprawled like shiny boneless rhinoceroses in front of the building and guarded its front door. All the house's other doors, its windows, its balconies, had been covered with ugly, irregular slabs of overlapping rock foam. The secret tunnels leading from it had been plugged with rock foam.
The exterior ASes were the only mobile artificials left working. The chancellor had disrupted the campus by recalling the service machines.
He must have thought that would be a minor irritation compared to Arachne's crash; maybe he thought it would be the last straw for the expedition members.
But his petty irritation had backfired on him. He had not realized the silver slugs could work inside as well as outside-they could work almost anywhere-and had released them to finish repairing Starfarer's damaged hull.
The oversight had been his downfall, for once Stephen Thomas and J.D. traced the sabotage of Arachne to Blades, the silver slugs had driven the chancellor from the administration building, through the underground tunnels, and trapped him in his house. He was cut off from Arachne now. The computer had activated its immune system and destroyed Blades's neural node, and the silver slugs had cut the house's hard links.
Infinity wished Blades had been stopped before anyone died.
Blades could communicate by note. He could ask for anything he liked, and a silver slug would carry it to him. Anything but electronic communication, or company. The slugs guarded his door for the protection of the expedition, and for his own protection as well. They let no one pass in either direction.
Infinity approached the chancellor's house, crossing behind a rough sculpture of tumbled chunks of raw moon rock.
Like the manicured yard in front of the administration building, the green turf around the chancellor's house showed the scars of an angry, milling crowd. The tracks of the silver slugs gouged wide, shallow trenches in the earth.
Infinity paused at the edge of the swath of grass. All three silver slugs lay facing the same direction, an odd alignment.
Curious, cautious, he moved forward. One of the silver slugs, a lithoclast, reared up to sense him. The slugs knew him. He had called them in from repairing Starfarer's outer surface; he had set them to guarding Blades. But they would not let him into Blades's house, even if that was where he wanted to go.
The lithoclast subsided. Its bulk eased onto the ground and spread out, shimmering. It rested, waiting, its senses trained on the group of rocks. The smell of crushed grass, green and light, filled the air.
In a recess in the tumbled stone, lphigenie Dupre sat staring past the silver slugs at the open door of the chancellor's home. Infinity watched her uneasily, reluctant to disturb her solitude, but more reluctant to leave her here alone.