She thought there could be nothing more seductive than an ooloi speaking in that particular tone, making that particular suggestion. She realized she had stood up without meaning to and taken a step toward the bed. She stopped, stared at the two of them. Joseph's breathing now became a gentle snore and he seemed to sleep comfortably against Nikanj as she had awakened to find him sleeping comfortably against her many times. She did not pretend outwardly or to herself that she would resist Nikanj's invitation-or that she wanted to resist it. Nikanj could give her an intimacy with Joseph that was beyond ordinary human experience. And what it gave, it also experienced. This was what had captured Paul Titus, she thought. This, not sorrow over his losses or fear of a primitive Earth.
She clenched her fists, holding back. 'This won't help me,' she said. 'It will just make it harder for me when you're not around.'
Nikanj freed one sensory arm from Joseph's waist and extended it toward her.
She stayed where she was for a moment longer, proving to herself that she was still in control of her behavior. Then she tore off her jacket and seized the ugly, ugly elephant's trunk of an organ, letting it coil around her as she climbed onto the bed. She sandwiched Nikanj's body between her own and Joseph's, placing it for the first time in the ooloi position between two humans. For an instant, this frightened her. This was the way she might someday be made pregnant with an other-than-human child. Not now while Nikanj wanted other work from her, but someday. Once it plugged into her central nervous system it could control her and do whatever it wanted.
She felt it tremble against her, and knew it was in.
7
She did not lose consciousness. Nikanj did not want to cheat itself of sensation. Even Joseph was conscious, though utterly controlled, unafraid because Nikanj kept him tranquil. Lilith was not controlled. She could lift a free hand across Nikanj to take Joseph's cool, seemingly lifeless hand.
'No,' Nikanj said softly into her ear-or perhaps it stimulated the auditory nerve directly. It could do that- stimulate her senses individually or in any combination to make perfect hallucinations. 'Only through me,' its voice insisted.
Lilith's hand tingled. She released Joseph's hand and immediately received Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a compelling, steadying presence.
She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj's approximation of Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction.
What was Joseph feeling from her?
It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no sensation of shifting gears, no 'time alone' to contrast with the present 'time together.' He had always been there, part of her, essential.
Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It left Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She sensed only Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her.
Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down slowly, gradually, savoring a few more moments wholly together.
Noon, evening, dusk, darkness.
Her throat hurt. Her first solitary sensation was pain-as though she had been shouting, screaming. She swallowed painfully and raised her hand to her throat, but Nikanj's sensory aim was there ahead of her and brushed her hand away. It laid its exposed sensory hand across her throat. She felt it anchor itself, sensory fingers stretching, clasping. She did not feel the tendrils of its substance penetrate her flesh, but in a moment the pain in her throat was gone.
'All that and you only screamed once,' it told her.
'How'd you let me do even that?' she asked.
'You surprised me. I've never made you scream before.' She let it withdraw from her throat, then moved languidly to stroke it. 'How much of that experience was Joseph's and mine?' she asked. 'How much did you make up?'
'I've never made up an experience for you,' it said. 'I won't have to for him either. You both have memories filled with experiences.'
'That was a new one.'
'A combination. You had your own experiences and his. He had his and yours. You both had me to keep it going much longer than it would have otherwise. The whole was. . . overwhelming.'
She looked around. 'Joseph?'
'Asleep. Very deeply asleep. I didn't induce it. He's tired. He's all right, though.'
'He.. . felt everything I felt?'
'On a sensory level. Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours.'
'I wouldn't call them intellectual.'
'You understand me.'
'Yes.' She moved her hand over its chest, taking a perverse pleasure in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten under her hand.
'Why do you do that?' it asked.
'Does it bother you?' she asked stilling her hand.
'No.'
'Let me do it, then. I didn't used to be able to.'
