“Why can’t people switch fams when they make love?” She just laughed and used the finger with which she had been holding him off to give his nose an affectionate finger slap-tap, on both sides. Since she wasn’t able to push on his nose while she did this, he moved closer.
He knew he had led with a silly question, so he asked another, carefully selected for the seriousness of its content. Bad move. It gave her an excuse to leave the couch. Soon she was showing him some of her portable diagnostic equipment and explaining to him more about quantum switching probabilities than he could easily follow in his aroused state. He had such a stupid fam; he should be able to follow everything she said, never asking her to repeat herself, never losing the flow of argument. He didn’t mind so much asking clarifying questions, or asking her to pause while his fam conducted a search—but he did mind that he was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t even think of a clarifying question. Murek was a better teacher than Nemia, but she had the sharper mind. He became curious about how she got that way, and began asking her personal questions.
She talked for a long while. He wasn’t sure he even followed her then. She had secrets and she danced around them and he felt helpless trying to find a way to penetrate her secrecy. Sometimes she was very moody and then she’d jump out of it, again to flirt with him as if she didn’t have a care in the world. He wanted her to tell him secrets that no woman should be obliged to tell a man.
“I’m going to elope with him” she said out of the blue. He knew she meant Murek. They were back on the couch, slouched the way people doodle with their bodies when they are saying more than their voices can convey. She looked up at Eron, over his torso, with her teasing smile. “We’ll all elope together, the three of us.”
“He’d kill me,” said Eron, sobering, trying to sit up, but she wouldn’t let him.
“No, he wouldn’t! Why would I let him do that?” She fell back into her mood and snuggled her cheek on Eron’s stomach. “I haven’t told him that I’m going to elope with him. Does he ever talk to you about me? Does he like me?”
“Well,” said Eron honestly, “I think you are just another good lay to him.” At her stricken tenseness he added, “But he likes you a lot”
She relaxed again. “You’re probably right. He’s a wanderer, strangely closed into himself. I don’t think he thinks of ties at all.”
“He makes ties,” said Eron wryly, “but you don’t know where the other end of the string goes.”
“I want to elope with him to the most obscure part of the Galaxy where I have no competition and I can nail him down. You, my lovely boy-love, are going to have to help me.” She had his shirt pulled up and kissed his belly button.
“What can I do? You’ve already done everything. You’ve already seduced him!”
“Sex isn’t enough,” she admonished. “There is more to love than that even if you’re not mature enough to appreciate the finer nobilities of love. We’ll have to have the perfect honeymoon together. Then he’ll find his love. He will love me.” She cast a calculating glance at Eron. “I think I know the perfect honeymoon retreat. Can you share a secret?” She was easing him out of his shirt.
“Lakgan?” he guessed, recollecting certain porno vids he’d stolen from a classmate back on Agander.
Nemia shrieked with horror and laughter. “They breed dancing girls on Lakgan.”
“They have pleasure palaces, too.”
“I had in mind someplace more sedate. Zural. My Grandfa used to tell me stories about Zural. I picked Zural because you two are off to Faraway and Zural is on the way. If we are all eloping together to the Periphery, a little side trip could be interesting.”
“Never heard of it,” said Eron. Even his fam didn’t come up with a hit.
“It’s not on the charts.” She grinned. “That’s why it is such a good honeymoon spot.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know where it is. That’s what makes it so deliciously mysterious. But I have a lead. It just came in a few watches ago. There’s an old first edition of a star-map. It’s been lost for a long time. I think I’ll be able to find Zural in time.”
Galactic enigmas intrigued Eron. “What’s it like?”
“I don’t know. No one knows,” she said. “That’s the point. Obviously when a honeymooning couple gets there, they won’t be interrupted.” She was speaking to Eron firmly. “You’ll help me?” It was both a question and a command. “You have some strange power over your friend. I need your help.”
Eron just fingered her hair. She had a grip on him and he wasn’t able to inch away, even a centimeter. He didn’t know what to say.
“You have to answer me,” she commanded, moving up on him and staring down at his head, which was embedded in a pillow.
He stared up at her. “I don’t think I should be gazing into your eyes while I think about it.”
She took his jaw in her hand so that his eyes couldn’t escape. She laid her nose on his, just barely kissing him with her lips. “Will you help me?”
What was a farman to do? Farmen were supposed to have galactic adventures. When he tried to avoid her eyes all he saw was her smile. “What’s the worst that can happen?” He shrugged, trying to think rationally.
“Go on,” she prompted. “Tell me the worst.” She kissed him.
“We could get hurt,” he concluded.
She was now holding him by the shoulders and beaming. “Badly?”
“Two scraped knees is my limit.”
“It will be fun,” she said.
An ancient poem came to his mind. A bottle of wine, a mapless void, and thou. “Scary fun,” he said. “You’ll have to convince Murek to give me back my kick.”
“It’s a deal,” she said instantly.
Had he said yes? She seemed to think so. Her hand was feeling down to his buttocks. Control was like driving a fast car; first you were doing twenty meters a jiff, with the trees whizzing by delightfully—and then you were skidding. He tried hugging her in return. That only made it worse. She picked him up in her arms. He hadn’t actually realized until now that she was bigger than he was. “Where are we going?”
“To the bedroom.”
“Isn’t this of a sudden? I mean, we hardly know each other.”
“You’ve earned your reward.”
“Put me down! It is not supposed to be a reward! It’s supposed to be love!”
“Eron,” she said sweetly as she carried him over the threshold, “you can’t imagine how much I love you right now.” She set him gently on the already turned-down bed, and while he was still mute, degaussed his belt buckle, dropping his pants—and then her own. She filled two graven goblets from an antique urn. Then she did something totally preposterous. She took off her fam.
Her personality didn't seem to change at all. She just stood there smiling at him, more naked than any woman he had ever imagined in his most secret fantasy. Was she a witch? “We're going to do it the wild way,” she said. “Without a fam. You, too.”
He reached instinctively for his kick, which wasn’t there, not even a harness, and then reached up and touched his fam protectively. She had such round breasts. They jiggled.