The new varieties were enormous improvements on the first product. It could run around in cells repairing DNA. It regulated the growth of cell types that had stopped reproducing-without inducing cancer. Some of the oldest test subjects were still alive.
Yankee put his arm around her soberly with the tender affection of a man who is trying to tell a youngster that they have rediscovered the wheel. “I know all about boosterspice. I’ve been reading up on it since before you were born. Every year Jinx turns out a better product and there is more ballyhoo. They are gradually nailing down all the side effects. Do you know what happens in your brain when neurons start to reproduce and connect up at the wrong places? Do you have any idea how expensive that stuff is? And what do you get for your money? Boosterspice has been known to extend lives. Or it might cripple you. Maybe even kill you. One of the richest old men on Earth jumped on the Boosterspice bandwagon. Now he’s very young-but he’s a mentally retarded youth and slightly musclebound.”
“That’s what rich people are for,” she said petulantly. “They are very useful experimental animals for us poor military types and carpenters. The rich pay through the nose for all the fancy new technology when it isn’t very good. They’re desperate to live so they pay thousands of crazy witch-doctors to kill them in fancy new ways. When the rich people stop dying, we know the product is ready for market and can be mass produced cheaply.”
“Chloe!”
“It’s like being a king and having a food-taster. The reason I want to many an older man is so you can test out the boosterspice for me. If you die, I get your money. If you stay young, I’ll know its safe to start taking boosterspice.”
“Chloe, how come you taste my pies for me? Through thick crust and thin?”
She snuggled. “How come you never tell me that you love me?”
“I love you.”
“That’s better. How come you never make love to me? I haven’t been a virgin since I was thirteen.”
“That’s why. When I was thirteen, seventeen-year-old girls were old crones. Every year since then they’ve been getting younger. It has gotten so that I can’t keep track of how old a seventeen-year-old girl is anymore.”
“That’s silly! Are we in a Kakabuni mood yet?”
“I have to decide whether you are grown-up or not.”
“I’m grown-up. I’m pregnant, remember. I’m in the army. My father is six light-years away.” She undid his belt.
“All right. You’re grown-up. I can’t go wrong. You’re getting older every year.” He picked her up, mostly to keep her from undressing him. He carried her across the threshold of his bedroom door and let her float dreamlike to the small navy bed in the light gravity. He sat down on its edge and began to undress her.
She grabbed his hand in both of hers, stopping him.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. “How come we are afraid of each other?”
He let her fingers stay with his hand. “Who knows? Maybe you’re afraid of yourself and I’m afraid of your father.”
She kissed his hand. “Are you a virgin? I mean before you met me.”
“Not likely. I’m a navy man-and I used to be handsome. I even had a flatlander marriage contract once.”
“You seem shy to me.”
“It depends upon whom I’m with.”
“How many women?”
“You ask too many questions, young lady” He kissed the tip of her nose.
She sat up. “I can undress myself I’ve had lots of men, too, you know. I sexed with your crashlander friend, Brobding What’s-his-Name.” She wasn’t used to her uniform-it didn’t come off gracefully, futz! “You can’t take off my wedding ring.” She fingered the iron ring hanging between her breasts. “I always wear it.”
“Was your mother as beautiful as you?”
“No. I’m prettier. I take after my father. Do I have to give you orders to strip? It’s a Wunderland custom for a man to make sex when he’s properly naked.”
He was smiling. “It’s a flatlander custom that love-partners help each other with their clothes. Unless, of course, when proceeding by the rules of unpremeditated Kakabuni.”
“You’re a pervert! I feel like a baby in diapers when a man tries to undress me. Is Clandeboye an Italian name?”
“I think it comes from a gloomy Scottish castle.” He said that to the ceiling because she was ripping his pants off. ‘Wait. I’ll help you with the shirt!”
Premeditated Kakabuni took over. The pleasure of flesh against flesh. Fond glances that cloak the human face in unnatural beauty. A hormonal passion driving bodies far past their design limits. “Had enough?” “No.” “Me neither.” It was strange to love a man who had no sweet talk.
Sleeping in a man’s arms was an unnatural thing to do unless you were in love with him. One had no choice in a navy bed. Her rump was pressed against the wall and a foot twisted by some kind of bar She couldn’t sleep. She was both comfortable and frightened. He didn’t talk. He hadn’t said anything. She rapped him on the skull with her knuckles. “Knock, knock. Are you there?”
“Mmmpf. Yah.”
“You haven’t proposed to me,” she accused.
He moved his head between her breasts and went back to sleep.
“Men always propose to me before they make love to me whether they are sincere or not. How come you haven’t proposed to me?”
“Formality… protocol… etiquette… propriety,” he muttered.
She crawled over him and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m not feeling secure. We could get married right now” She was looking down at him. “Hey, you’re awake! I woke you up!” She switched on the glow light
“Hey, you’re beautiful. You look like a woman. What’s happening to my mind?”
“Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about marriage.”
“Never tried it.”
“Did you like my rabbit stew?”
“Yah.”
“It went very well with your pie so we should get married right now”
“Our wedding guests would be appalled by our dishabille!”
“Are you going to propose to me?
“I don’t know how”
“You’re supposed to propose to a woman before you make love to her. Don’t they teach you any manners on Earth? I’ve never been treated so inconsiderately in my life.” She lifted the chain from her neck and stared at the ring. The iron had been formed under high pressure and it was full of bright little diamond crystals. She liberated her talisman from its chain. “Do you want to by it on?”
“It wouldn’t fit”
“It’s a Swiss precision telescoping ring. It will fit any finger.” She slipped it on his special finger. “See. It fits. Now we’re married. And oh, I forgot… it has an inscription that reads ‘forever.”
“It must have been made before boosterspice.” He held up his hand to look at it “You’re supposed to wear one of these things, too, you know”
“Then I couldn’t flirt with the boys.” She crawled back in bed, hip-whacking Yankee in order to make some room for herself ‘love, I forgot to ask you-do you snore? If you snore I’m getting an abortion right now”
“With you around I just stop breathing. How about a trip to Kzin for our honeymoon? I’ve got the tickets.”
“No, thank you! If you want a honeymoon on Kzin I’m filing for divorce in the morning.” She kissed him good night and went to sleep happier than she had ever been.
Chloe dreamed about a wedding feast on Kzin in an ancient manorial hail with Major Yankee Clandeboye as the main course and Nora Argamentine and her children as dessert. She was watching from a cage that sing from the ceiling. Yankee dreamed of Earth and the ancient Royal Navy He was being keelhauled across the barnacles of a ships bottom by a very irate British admiral.
