she picked up another strawberry and held it delicately in her teeth. Very slowly she undid her bathrobe and pulled it open, then leaned in toward him, guiding the strawberry into his mouth. He bit into it, their lips touching.
“Oh, God.” He was trembling, his eyes damp.
“Now you feed me something.”
Dudley held up a slim slice of pancake dripping with maple syrup. She laughed as the drops fell on her breasts, then nibbled her way up the pancake slice. Dudley leaped at her, knocking the breakfast trays across the table. She was amazed he’d shown that much restraint, and laughed again as her chair went flying backward. They both tumbled onto the floor, with Dudley tugging frantically at his own bathrobe.
He fucked her there and then on the expensive moozaki rug with orange juice leaking down on top of them from the overturned glasses on the table. Then she was pulled over to the bed and fucked again.
“I’m going to need another bath,” she said after he’d finally spent himself. Even though he’d done his best to lick all the syrup and juicy lolabeans off her chest and thighs she was still awfully sticky.
“I’ll join you.”
She grinned, snuggling up against him. “So when did you meet Paula Myo?”
“Before the flight,” he said, sighing. “They took me out of rejuve for the interview.”
“They did what?”
“I was undergoing partial rejuvenation before the flight. There wasn’t time for a full one, but I was quite old, physiologically, so they were going to bring my age down as much as they could before they started my crew training. Paula Myo had me taken out. She questioned me and Wendy. I can’t remember much of what I said, it was very disorienting having the procedure interrupted. That’s why I wasn’t as young as I wanted to be when we left. Not as young as Oscar Monroe wanted, either.”
“Don’t start putting any value on what that old lush says. You said Myo was quizzing you about a break-in.”
“Yeah. My bitch ex talked to Bradley Johansson, who was masquerading as a reporter; he asked her about the organizations who funded my observation. The next thing we know our home was broken into and every file copied from the house array.”
“What did Myo think the connection was?”
“That moron Johansson believed one of the charities funding my observation was a front for the Starflyer. That’s the alien…”
“I know what the Starflyer is. When did this happen, exactly?”
“Right after the attack on the Second Chance. Myo had the authority to do pretty much anything she wanted when they gave her that case, including yanking me out of rejuve.”
“And she’d tracked down that connection. Why?”
“I’ve no idea. She just said she was looking for anomalies; anyone connected to the Second Chance project was reviewed. But the queer thing is that Johansson knew she’d find the connection, he told Wendy to give Myo a message.”
“Really, what was it?”
“Stop concentrating on the details, it’s the big picture that counts.”
“Weird. Do you remember which charity Johansson was suspicious about?”
“Yeah, the Cox Educational charity.”
“Never heard of them.” She patted his arm as she stood up. “You know what you’ve just been doing, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Talking about what happened to your previous body as if it was you. You’re starting to connect your body lives. Well done. I told you I was good for you.” She blew a kiss at his startled young face and went into the bathroom.
The big sunken tub was filled to its rim, with a burg of soapy bubbles floating on the surface. Mellanie stepped in, sighing gratefully as she sat down in the warm scented water. She turned the nozzles on, welcoming the gentle flow of air bubbles around her body as they eased away the aches. Dudley hadn’t been gentle the last time. His desperation and fierceness had made it a lot more interesting than his usual monotonous perfunctory act.
She turned up the music and rested her head back on the rim cushions. Her virtual hand touched the SI icon. “I need some financial information,” she said.
“You know we cannot provide confidential records, Mellanie.”
“I just need what’s on public record. It might be a little difficult to track it all down, that’s all, and I don’t want to go through the show’s researchers.” And I can’t use poor old Paul Cramley anymore.
“Very well.”
“The Cox Educational charity helped fund Dr. Bose’s observation. How much did they give him?”
“In total, one point three million Earth dollars, spread over eleven years.”
“Where does their money come from?”
“It is a private charity.”
“What does that mean?”
“The source of the money is not open to inspection.”
“Okay, so who runs it?”
“The registered commissioners are three lawyers, Ms. Daltra, Mr. Pomanskie, and Mr. Seeton, who all work for Bromley, Waterford, and Granku, a New York legal firm.”
“Humm.” She ran a sponge along her legs. “What else does the Cox support?”
“It contributed to over a hundred universities and colleges across the Commonwealth. Do you want the list?”
“Not right now.”
“Would you like the total amount of money given to the other institutions.”
She opened her eyes, suddenly very interested—it wasn’t like the SI to volunteer information. “Yes please.”
“Seventy thousand Earth dollars.”
“For each one?”
“No. That is the total payout.”
“Hell. How long has it been going for?”
“Fourteen years. It shut down two years after Dudley Bose observed the envelopment. Six months after Paula Myo interviewed Dudley Bose.”
“So, most hated man in the Commonwealth,” Carys said with a taunting smile. “Quite a title. As voted for on the Maxis unisphere poll. Never guessed my little nephew would be so famous.”
Mark just grunted in response, and wormed down deeper into his favorite chair. They were all sitting around in the living room, giving Carys a taste of last year’s Ulon Valley wine before lunch.
“Nobody here cares,” he said. “It’s not important.”
“Oh, yes. It’s only relevant to us, isn’t it. Us, being decadent metropolitan types practicing our intellectual snobbery over you poor country bumpkins.”
Mark shrugged, smiling. “You said it.”
“Wake up and smell the coffee,” she snapped. “The media is going to screw your beautiful little town into the bedrock: I know from my contacts that Alessandra Baron is already planning a follow up. Have you tried booking a skiing holiday here for this next season? I did. They’re offering fifty percent discounts already. Nobody’s coming.”
“And you can fix all that, can you?”
Carys exchanged a glance with Liz. “You need some serious PR, Mark. And I’m the only expert you’ve got.”
“You called her!” Mark accused Liz.
“You have to listen to somebody, baby. Everyone around here is being very careful not to lay any blame. To your face.”
He turned to Carys, appealing. “I never said it the way that interview came out. They edited me to make it sound bad.”
“The technical term is raunching up,” Carys said. “They always do it. We can use that to fight back.”
“How?” he said suspiciously.
“I can get you interviewed on other shows. Live studio interviews, so they can’t mess with your message. You’ll need a lot of coaching before we let you on, and you’ll have to grow a decent sense of humor. But it can be done.”
“I’ve got a sense of humor,” he protested indignantly.
Carys opened her mouth to answer. There was a bright flash outside. Mark and Liz frowned in unison. There were no thunderclouds anywhere.
Out in the garden, Sandy was squealing as if she were in pain. Both parents jumped up and went through the open patio doors.
“What’s the matter, poppet?” Mark asked.
Panda was going berserk, barking, jumping up and down. Sandy ran to her mother, arms flung wide. “In the sky,” she wailed. “My eyes hurt. I see purple.”
Mark’s wrist array crashed. The sky to the southeast turned dazzling white. “Damn, what the hell…” All the autopickers had stopped. As had the tractors. Every bot he could see was motionless and silent.
The smear of silky light above the mountains was draining away to leave the normal blue sky in its wake. Then a vivid rose-gold sun climbed up from behind the peaks, its surface writhing with webs of black fire. It cast long moving shadows across the ground.
“Oh, my God,” Liz murmured.
The new sun was rising on a stalk of brilliant raging flame. All the remaining snow on the Regents vaporized in a single violent white explosion. The tops of the mountains looked as if they were vibrating. They started to crumble just as the ferocious vapor cloud swarmed around them, obliterating them from sight.
Sandy’s shrieks reached a crescendo.
“They nuked it,” Mark shouted in awe. “They nuked the detector station.” He watched the mushroom cloud swelling out, its color darkening, deepening as it spread its bruised perimeter across the clean sky. Then the sound blast reached them.
