grinned in the darkness and took his hand away, enjoying the weight of an unused erection. Couldn't do it in Key West, he remembered. Couldn't do it at all. I wonder why? Was it the racing?
An image came to him that filled the world with light. He was walking along a corridor in Tupamaro's ElComPod complex, carrying a bag of tools, headed for the engineer's station. He'd been hired to come here and fix up some waveguide panels by a contractor, and he came to get the purchasing credit for his work.
He entered the immaculate room and stared. The engineer was a slim, beautiful Spanish woman with strikingly intelligent eyes clad in a crisp linen dress that highlighted her eye-clutching breasts. He stared at her, eyes sweeping up and down her frame. God! She was a total beauty! 'Engineer Methol?' he asked, a catch in his voice. She nodded, turning away, and he felt slightly nauseous, lust tearing at him against his will. How could he work with something like this?
There was another woman there, sitting in the corner behind a console, and when he turned to look at her they locked eyes, his head canting sharply downward to face her, as if forced by a hand. He stared into her black-dark eyes, almost oblivious to the ripeness of her somewhat stocky form. Her arms were brown and supple.
This woman grinned at him. 'Hi!' she said. 'I'm Ariane's friend, Vana Berenguer!' The door of his bedroom popped open suddenly, spilling light from the hall and calling him back from his dreamland. It was Vana, springing lightly toward him, shedding clothes as she came. The door closed by itself, plunging them into darkness again, but the rustle of cloth continued. She sprang on the bed, bouncing and naked, and nuzzled against the skin of his chest. She was hot, drenched with sweat, and he wondered where she'd been. She ran her face down his chest, nibbling at his stomach and giggling.
Rhythmic motions drew him out of himself and made him unable to think, made him a slave. He didn't mind at all just then. . . .
What he felt, as her hips pounded up and down atop him, was a sense of belonging, not just to her but to the human race. It gave him a delicate sense of self-worth to know that this woman desired his flesh, when she could have any flesh that she wanted. He laughed into the face of the night and clasped her writhing form tight against him, feeling the muscles of her back straining under his hands. She was panting, short, sharp breaths through her open mouth. At these moments he knew he loved her above all else in the world.
It overcame him. His orgasm began, throbbing heavily, and she cried out briefly, shuddering as she settled down into a quiet, sweating stillness.
Unaccountably, they said nothing more, and Prynne imagined that it was because nothing needed to be said. After a while Vana got up and went to the bathroom. She came backto bed with a snack, crackers, cheese, and some sweet beverage. They shared it and he dozed in her arms.
Seven Red Anchorelles hovered a long way from the battle, watching carefully through the amplified senses of his old work vacuole. He knew it wasn't the same one, that reality was a long time dead, but it
The defensive spheres were gathered about the invaders now, subunits of Centrum's newly expanded consciousness attacking the alien program segments in swift movements of artificial thought. Like me, thought 7red, things of the imagination. The invaders fought back with their own electronic weaponry, bending the inner world to their will, providing an imagery that satisfied their mysterious needs. By all rights, the spheres should win, for they were closer to the source of their power. And yet ... Something was happening. A sense of greater power at immense distance pervaded the scene. It was as if a giant, invisible cable stretched upward to near infinity, providing a link with some massive entity lurking beyond the gentle blue of the sky. 7red expanded his horizons.
A tenuous being stood over the battle, watching. It had the same strange, mobile appearance as the aliens, and blank space where its eyes should have been. There was something familiar about it. ... There was some resemblance that connected the thing with the weird echo that dogged the voice of Centrum. It seemed to be looking at him.
It ended suddenly, shockingly. The brooding presence, the overseer, abruptly transformed itself into a great leathery creature that looked a bit like the memory of unknown origin identified with the ancient, extinct Starseeders. The being's mouth opened, a yawning, fiery pit, and the spheres were sucked away into nothingness.
7red felt stunned. How well prepared they were! Now he knew why Centrum had brought them all back from the grave. This was no ordinary menace that they faced. . . .
And yet . . .
Another presence made itself felt, not the invaders but something connected with Centrum itself. A pair of immense, cold, blue-stained eyes opened out of the void next to him and stared, a glittering, icy, emotionless look of measurement. The phenomenon lasted only the briefest instant, but 7red was chilled. I know it now, he thought. No matter what happens, this imaginary life I and all my kind have been granted will be all too brief. If the aliens win, we are lost. And even if Centrum triumphs, we will all be put away again, probably forever. We are here as mere weapons, to be used and discarded. He felt the beginnings of rage. Had it always been thus?
In the hierarchy of things, this requisition was perhaps little better than a note for the Suggestion File. Temujin slipped his hand into the warm sanctuary of his armpit and flexed the fingers until they began to lose the frozen stiffness. Another breach drill had left this section of Peirce a low-pressure icebox. No, there would be no official link with the Comnet people. Despite their continued advances in practical hard mathematics, despite the ease with which an exchange could be set up, it would not be. And to ask for even a brief contact with someone down there could be viewed as dangerously heterodoxical. Fuck them, he murmured, then repeated the phrase to himself for maximum adumbration. He chuckled. Tem was glad he could amuse himself so easily.
