They walked on, looking at the sky and the park's attractions, isolated from each other but together. They went on the Sunburst ride, a sort of magnetic-field roller coaster in which the flying cars soared on unique, randomly programmed paths. She sat on his lap, facing him, looking steadfastly into his eyes as the ride threw them around. Her breasts brushed against his chest and he held his hands clamped around her waist. The motion of the car moved them against each other and they felt a hot tension forming between them. The ride ended and they walked on.
Darkness fell, and they strolled along the beach, watching the meaningless stars and listening to the surf hissing across the sand, breaking in cool surges around their ankles, excavating the ground from beneath their feet. As they walked, Maraia pressed close against his side, her shoulder under his arm and her head nestled at the base of his throat. He felt the wisps of her hair, stirring in the gentle, fresh sea breezes, tickling on his bare skin. They stopped, wrapping their arms about each other, and kissed for a long time, and a heavier wave burst over them, throwing foamy water up onto their thighs. They went up into the higher dunes and lay down, squirming together to make a pocket in the sand. They touched and stroked each other and Brendan felt her breath like a hot little furnace on the side of his face. They were ready to make love, but this was too exquisite. Thescraps of cloth that were their scant pieces of apparel held them apart just long enough, prolonging their excitement, bringing them to levels of anticipation from which the act itself could only be a denouement. They lay still for a while, letting the matter subside. Their hearts slowed and their skins cooled with the evaporation of drying sweat.
After a while they got up and walked on, holding hands again. Their hips bumped together as they moved up the beach, renewing a touch of their excitement. They came to a long, dark wooden pier, a carefully preserved relic of a former era, and walked out on it. They sat at the end of the structure, sides touching, and let their feet dangle down into an infinite-seeming darkness. Sealock put his arm around her side, reaching under her arm to toy with the firmness of a small breast. He felt her nipple stiffening and enlarging under the movement of his fingers. She nuzzled her head against his chest, rubbing her face against his skin, and her breath snarled softly in her throat, a faint, desire-driven purr. She lay down along the edge of the pier, putting her head in his lap, facing upward to gaze at his face, her eyes pools of glinting moisture in the starlight. She reached her hand up and drew her fingernails softly across his chest, making long trails in his dense hair. He shivered and ran his hand down across her stomach and onto the outside of her thin shorts, drawing his fingers softly between her legs. Her hips rocked back and forth once and she sighed, closing her eyes. She turned her head and bit gently at the ridged flesh of his stomach, then turned on her side and ran one hand up the inside of his thigh. The spell of apartness, of waiting, seemed broken then and they clutched at each other hungrily.
I'm going to Montevideo in the morning, he thought with a small pang of regret. They made love at last, slowly and far into the night, and the quiet sea breezes sighed a steady accompaniment to awaken their senses.
Stereotaxis.
Brendan and Demogorgon lay together on the roof garden of Tupamaro Arcology, cooling slowly as the night progressed and the southern stars wheeled above them. The
Arab lay sprawled across his chest, hand grappling low, following the development of a slow detumescence. Another episode, another bit of disagreeability. It wasn't all that different from his relationship with Ariane. Where did all these things come from?
'You know,' said Demo, 'I can always taste the woman on you.' Brendan snorted softly. 'You're imagining things again.'
'It doesn't matter. I know she's there and what I taste is the bitterness of that knowledge.'
'What do you expect me to do?'
Demogorgon sat up and let his head drop forward onto his knees, long black hair flowing over his forearms. 'I don't know. A little something for me, I suppose. It'd be nice.'
'I'm submitting to your desires; letting you do things to me. That's the best I can manage.'
'I know.' The man got up suddenly and walked off into the darkness. Brendan called after him, but he didn't turn back, disappearing swiftly into the night, a phantasm that quickly wasted away. Brendan lay there for a while longer, his mind deliberately kept blank, feeling the warm summer wind rush over him. The upper atmosphere seemed to be heavily disturbed at the moment and the stars were twinkling violently. He got up and walked through the damp grass, feeling the rough edges of the blades clutch at his bare feet and stroke the tender spaces between his toes. He shook his head angrily and went below, looking for Ariane.
He was back in New York again and an MCD board meeting was breaking up, the nine members rising to their feet, chairs making hollow sounds as they scraped across the floor. Cass Mitchell had been his usual raucous, giggling self, a miasma of seeming senility interspersed with flashes of the old brilliance. Sealock started to follow Gina Redden out the door, his eyes fixed on the delicate, 2/4 twitching of her jeans-clad buttocks, but the chairman stopped him.
'Boy, I wish I could still fuck!' he said, grinning up at him, his face a mass of leathery, cancerous-looking wrinkles. 'Youknow what? It hurts to get a hard-on when you're as old as me. Sometimes it even hurts to pee. I haven't gotten laid in almost forty years. Do yourself a favor, kid: live gloriously and die young!' He stalked off like a baggy insect, shaking his head and muttering angrily to himself.
Brendan stood motionless for a moment, then drew his hand across his face like an old-time comedian, stretching his features downward. Jesus! What next? He walked out the door, intent on catching up with the woman. She was waiting for him by the elevator.
'Is he nutty, or what?' Gina Redden was not a particularly attractive woman. She had long brown hair which she wore in a high ponytail, with wings of hair hanging down beside her narrow, triangular face. Her nose was large, aquiline, and her eyes were dark brown and looked watery all the time. She was grinning and he noticed that her lips were getting chapped again.
