He closed his eyes.
On the water-world of Pluvial, where a day without rain came once in a thousand years, Louis had encountered several of the native Cetomorphs. He rather admired those marine intelligences, and certainly he envied one of their abilities. They slept with half of their brain at a time; the other half remained awake and available for discussion and action. After a while the halves were ready to swap roles and the sleeping side awoke.
Louis had asked them to teach him the trick. It turned out to be impossible. The best that he could manage was a light trance, in which he was neither asleep nor awake, but sensitive to all external stimuli.
He had been in that state for the past several hours, until finally he heard with drowsy satisfaction the far-off but distinctive sound of the pinnace docking with the Have-It-All. He had no doubt that Sinara and Claudius were the people aboard, because the ship’s security system would not allow anyone lacking correct identification within a thousand kilometers.
He would give Sinara a good chewing-out for failing to call in and tell Louis what they had been up to, but that could wait until morning.
The other noise began five minutes after the docking ended. It was much less familiar. Not at all familiar, in fact. It sounded like two people, singing raucously and off-key.
Louis rolled off the bed and padded toward the door. He felt naked without his boots, but the condition of the ship came first. As he left the master suite and stepped into the dark hallway that led aft, something fell against his chest. It giggled and said, “Oops!”
He called for lights. Sinara Bellstock stood in front of him, although stood was hardly the right word. Her arms were around his neck, and her face pushed close against his chest. She made a strange questioning sound and pulled one hand back to run her fingers over the pits and nodules of his pheromonal augment.
“Mmm,” she said. “Nice and fuzzy. Never saw one of these before.” She leaned close and sniffed his chest. “Interesting smell. I like that.”
He pushed her away, trying to avoid contact with bare flesh. That wasn’t easy, because she was wearing about half as much clothing as when she left the Have-It-All.
“What happened to you?” But he knew the answer. Sinara was drunk, and on something far stronger than alcohol.
“Happened? Happened? Nothing happened. Went down to Pompadour, keep an eye on Claudius. Thaswhat I did, Mr. Fuzzy. He showed me all over—all over the place. Had a real good time. Haven’t had a time like that since . . . since . . . I don’t know. Never had a good time like that. Real good time. Real, real good time.”
Her face was against his chest again, and he was supporting half her weight.
“He took you to some dive, didn’t he? Got you stoned. Did you know what was going on?”
He wasn’t sure she knew what was going on now, until she raised her head, frowned up at him, and said, “Course I knew. Met aliens—lots and lots of aliens. Treated me real nice. Wanted to have sex with me, some of ’em—Claudius too. He said, ’til you have sex with a Chism Polypheme you don’t know what sex is.”
“I bet. You—er—you didn’t, did you?”
“With Mr. Wriggly? Of course not. Be like having sex with a live corkscrew. Didn’t have sex with any of ’em. Told ’em the truth.” Sinara was weaving patterns with her right index finger around Louis’s navel. “Told ’em they didn’t have a chance. I was saving myself for my heart’s desire, Mr. Fuzzy, back on the Have-It-All.”
The notion of being anyone’s heart’s desire was utterly alien to Louis. It took him a few seconds to realize that this was an open invitation, and one that he badly needed. He had been without a woman for an awful long time. The fact that Sinara was smashed out of her mind and might regret this tomorrow was no concern of his. The fact that Atvar H’sial would claim that her worst suspicions had been realized did not matter. What stopped Louis was no concept of morality or post-coital criticisms, but an awful thought. “Claudius got you this way, but what about him? He didn’t go to any radiation hot spots, did he?”
“Dunno.” Sinara frowned and went cross-eyed with the effort to think. “Lessee. I remember some names of the places we went. The Solar Plexus, Roentgen’s Rendezvous, the Gamma Grille, Sunbathers’ Bar, the X-rayted . . . I’m missing some of ’em, there were at least five more. What you doing? Don’t go without me!”
Louis was trying to move past her and head for the aft part of the ship. She had her arms around him and held on, so she was towed along complaining at waist-level behind him.
“Claudius,” he said over his shoulder. “Where did you leave him on the ship?”
“Don’t know. Said he had work to do. I wasn’t interested in wriggly old Claudius. Did you know, he’s totally hairless? I like hair. Like yours. Did anyone ever tell you that you have a cute ass? Oof!”
Her face had banged hard into Nenda’s muscular rear, because he had frozen at the door of the aft control cabin. Claudius sat in the control chair. Every inch of visible skin bore the luminous apple-green that showed the Chism Polypheme to be baked to a turn.
“Claudius!”
“Yes?” The Polypheme turned. His five hands were flying over the controls so fast that Louis could not make out the individual movements. “Ah, it’s you, Captain. We’re toasty-warm and ready to go. On our way. Shipshape and Bristol fashion. Up anchor, splice the mainbrace, souse the herring and split the difference. Space reefs and space sounders, I spit on ’em. Marglot, here we come.”
“Claudius, don’t do it! Not ’til you’re off the boil.”
But Louis was too late. Inside him he could feel the multidimensional twists and turns that went with a Bose entry. Outside him, Sinara was busy with the personal explorations of his anatomy that normally preceded entry of a different kind.
The combination was certainly a first. Louis resigned himself to whatever came next. The Have-It-All was making a Bose transition, while at the same time Sinara continued to satisfy her prurient curiosity. Where either of them would finish up was anyone’s guess.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Marglottas?
Guardian of Travel had promised a transit to another world, but that long-abandoned being had offered no guarantees as to how much time the passage might take, or how it would feel.
Darya was drowning. Her eyes, mouth, nose, and lungs were filled with thick viscous mud. The suffocation had gone on forever, long past the point where she must be dead.
She tried to breathe, tried to cough, tried to scream—and could do none of them. After several lifetimes of misery, a new discomfort was added. Her body was now being extruded, forced through a tube far too narrow to admit it. She was changing shape, transformed by remorseless pressure to a long, pale worm. The agony of breathlessness was nothing compared to this.
And then, without warning, the pain ended. Darya felt a final moment of compression and rapid release, as though her body was being expelled like a cork from a bottle. Suddenly she was curled into a fetal position and lying on something soft. Her lungs and eyes were clear. She could breathe and see.
She sat up, but had to wait until a wave of nausea passed. She looked down at her suit, convinced that it must be coated with thick mud. But the outside was spotless, cleaner than ever before, as though the transit had removed every trace of dust and grime.