imported vast quantities of delicacies and wines from across the Confederation. They could afford it. But Helen obviously couldn’t. Despite its size, the full teats and absence of materialism marked the apartment down as student digs.
“Help yourself to a drink,” Helen said. “I’m getting out of this customer-friendly dress.” She walked through an archway into the bedroom, leaving the screen folded back.
“What else do you do apart from serve bar at Harkey’s?” he asked.
“I’m studying art,” she called back. “Harkey’s is just for funtime money.”
Joshua broke off from examining the bottles and gave the screens with their animals a more appraising look. “Are you any good?”
“I might be eventually. My tutor says I have a good feel for form. But it’s a five-year course, we’re still on basic sketching and painting. We don’t even get to AV technology until next year, and mood synthesis is another year after that. It’s a drag, but you need to know the fundamentals.”
“So how long have you been at Harkey’s?”
“A couple of months. It’s not bad work, you space industry people tip well, and you’re not a pain like the finance mob. I worked at a bar over in the StPelham for a week. Crapoodle!”
“Have you ever seen Erick Thakrar before? He was sitting at my table, thirtyish, in a blue ship-suit.”
“Yes. He’s been in most nights for a fortnight or so. He’s another good tipper.”
“Do you know where he’s been working?”
“Out in the dock; the Lowndes company, I think. He started a couple of days after he arrived.”
“Which ship did he arrive on?”
“The
Joshua opened a channel into Tranquillity’s communication net, and datavised a search request into the Lloyd’s office. The
Gotcha, Joshua thought.
“Did you ever meet any of the crew?” he asked.
Helen reappeared in the bedroom archway. She was wearing a long-sleeved net body-stocking, and white suede boots which came halfway up her thighs.
“Tell you later,” she said.
Joshua gave his lips an involuntary lick. “I’ve got a great location file to match that costume, if you want to try it.”
She took a step into the room. “Sure.”
He accessed the sensenviron file, and ordered his neural nanonics to open a channel to Helen. A subliminal flicker crossed his optic nerves. Her sparse apartment gave way to the silk walls of a magnificent desert pavilion. There were tall ferns in brass urns around the entrance, a banquet table along one side was laid out with golden plates and jewelled goblets, and exotic, intricate drapes swung slowly in the warm, dry breeze that blew in from the crimson desert outside. Behind Helen was a curtained-off section, with the silk drawn apart just enough to show them a huge bed with purple sheets and a satin canopy which rose behind the scarlet-tasselled pillows like a sunrise sculpted from fabric.
“Nice,” she said, glancing round.
“It’s where Lawrence of Arabia pleasured his harem back in the eighteenth century. He was some sort of sheik king who fought the Roman Empire. Absolutely guaranteed genuine sensevise recording from old Earth. I got it from a starship captain friend of mine who visited the museum.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Old Lawrence had about a hundred and fifty wives, so they say.”
“Wow. And he pleasured all of them himself?”
“Oh, yeah, he had to, there was an army of eunuchs to protect them. No other men could get in.”
“Does the magic linger?”
“Wanna find out?”
Ione’s mind encompassed the entirety of Helen Vanham’s bedroom, the photosensitive cells in the bare polyp walls, floor, and ceiling giving her a complete visualization. It was a thousand times more detailed than an AV projection. She could move through the bedroom as if she was there, which in a way she was.
The bed was simply a plump mattress on the floor. Helen lay across it, with a naked Joshua straddling her. He was slowly and deliberately tearing the body-stocking off her.
Interesting,ione observed.
If you say so,tranquillity replied coolly.
Helen’s long booted legs kicked the air behind his back. She was giggling and squealing as more and more strips of her stocking were ripped away.
I don’t mean the sex, though judging by the way he’s turned on I’ll have to try wearing something like that for him myself one day. I was thinking of the way he latched on to Erick Thakrar.
His alleged psychic ability again?
He has had twelve applicants for the post of ship’s general systems engineer so far. All of them legitimate. Yet the minute Erick asked for the berth, he was suspicious. Are you going to maintain it was nothing but luck?
I acknowledge Joshua’s actions do indicate a degree of prescience on his part.
At last! Thank you.
This means you will be going ahead with the zygote extraction, then?
Yes. Unless you have an objection.
I would never object to receiving your child into me, no matter who was the father. It will be our child, too.
And I’ll never know him, she said sadly, not really, just for a few years of his childhood, like I saw Daddy. Sometimes I think our way is too harsh.
I will love him. I will tell him of you when he asks.
Thank you. I shall have other children, though. And I’ll know them.
