Absorption (18 page)

Did she feel invisible fingernails pass effortlessly through her clothing? She inhaled sharply as they might have brushed over her neck, arched her back as they would pass across her shoulders. A few moments later her face flushed. She gasped and leaned most of her weight against the cushions behind her. For a few moments she seemed to have trouble speaking, and when she managed her voice came out in an effortful whisper.

“How dare you! I never gave you permission to do that to me!”

Brett felt like a god.

“Tell me to stop and I’ll apologize and go away. Better yet, slap me in the face.”

He came close enough to make it easy. She whispered, “I can’t”

“I guess you could use the overrides on your equipment.”

She shook her head silently, closed the remaining distance between them.

He tried to lift her onto his lap, but instead she shifted him and pressed his back down towards the seats of the couch. He complied and she locked her legs around his hips. He savored the curve of her shoulders and back with his hands instead of virtually. She slid her tongue in his mouth and he became aware of the heat inside her.

When she pulled her tongue out of his mouth and started to undo his clothing, he managed to speak. “Ummm … birth control.”

“The nannies will take care of it.”

The couch was too narrow. A couple of hours ago, when Ariel had straddled him and enthusiastically begun bouncing up and down, her knee had slid off. Luckily she hadn’t pulled a groin muscle, which would have been an exceedingly painful way of killing the moment.

Now he lay on the leather stomach down, with his head turned to the side. It was getting a little sticky. Ariel lay on top of his back, with her breasts pressing into the spot that was hard to reach. His body felt good all over.

That part was nice, but when he relaxed his legs tended to sprawl. Either he made a conscious effort to keep them together, or his right leg fell over the side, pulling him off balance. He couldn’t even use his other leg for balance, because the couch had a back.

Then his stomach rumbled, and that decided it for him. He asked Ariel, “You mind if I grab a snack? Can I bring you anything?”

He felt her voice vibrating through his chest as well as hearing it with his ears. “Kitchen is right through there, or you can circle round through the hallway and go in the other side.”

She didn’t move though. When he nudged her she asked, “Am I too heavy for you? Maybe the Space Force should have their officers do some exercise.”

Her arms wrapped tightly around his chest as he levered himself to a standing position. Then she said innocently, “My legs are sort of dangling. Help me wrap them around your waist?”

Brett did so, gripping her warm thighs near the hips. She unwrapped her arms from around his chest and gripped his shoulders. Then she said, “OK, I’ll tell you how this is going to work. When I kick your sides like this …”

Her heels were dangling much too low to actually kick him in the sides. Instead they caught the outsides of his thighs. She continued, “… you walk forward. If I just kick on one side you turn away from the pain while continuing to walk forward. If I sit up straight and clench my thighs like this you stop.”

She scissored her thighs together but didn’t make much progress against Brett’s torso muscles.

Brett suddenly recalled video he had seen long ago on military history. A word drifted into his mind: ‘Cavalry’.

He reached behind him and slapped Ariel’s bottom hard enough to sting.

“Ow!”

“I am not a horse,” Brett told her firmly.

“The kitchen is still thataway, but I don’t know if I’m going to get you anything if you’re not good. There’s grass outside though.”

Did horses eat grass or hay or something? Was hay a species of grass or vice versa?

And did he really care? His stomach rumbled again. He walked towards the kitchen to get something for himself. He let Ariel stay as she was. The warmth of her body was pleasant, and she wasn’t that heavy to carry.

He’d walked out into the hallway and was about to turn left into the kitchen when she started kicking him in the left thigh. The joke was becoming a bit annoying.

“Even if I were a horse, you’d still be steering me the wrong way, away from the kitchen.”

Ariel replied, “I thought I’d take you for a little walk first. You can graze later. I didn’t signal a stop. Gee-yap!”

Presumably that was supposed to be horse language, though the little he recalled of horses made him uncertain they had their own language. Ariel kicked harder, and her round heels were becoming annoying. Enough was enough. He moved back to the plush carpeting of the interface room and got down on his hands and knees. People usually didn’t know how to fall right without training.

Then he twisted his torso sharply. Her thighs had no real purchase and he had no trouble pulling her hands off his shoulders.

“You bastard!”

She didn’t really sound frightened or hurt. He turned over, using his weight to pin her body to the carpet. His hands pinned her upper arms down, raised above her shoulders, which immobilized her unless she knew how to wrestle.

“You’re hurting me!”

The dulcet tones belied the words, so he brought his head forward and bit her on the neck, first wetting it with his tongue, then scraping it lightly with his teeth a couple of times first to prepare her.

Noises of protest soon changed to pleasure, but eventually he had to stop for breath.

Ariel asked him, “What took you so long?”

Brett studied her face, at a loss for words. So long to bite her? So long to seduce her? Something else entirely? She was an adult, capable of communicating, and had given him to understand she was in a relationship.

In some ways he had come to know her well in the past few months. Her gentleness could sometimes be eclipsed by mischievousness. She was knowing and capable, but had a vulnerable side beneath that, and deep passion layered beneath both.

Yet he had missed all the cues that she was part of the hive mind, because his brain was focused in one direction. Surely all the people at the party where he had met her had been wealthy, powerful, famous, or important in some other way. Nothing but the best for visiting diplomats from another world. He had never asked himself why she was there. Ariel had known as much as his instructors about nanotechnology. And she had argued with the imperious old gnome at the Herbirthday celebration as an equal. Brett could have seen if his eyes were open.

According to Muriel, his lover had been aware of and encouraged the misunderstanding. Perversely, Brett felt flattered, because he knew Ariel hadn’t wanted to drive him away. Now though, he would really get to know her.

Brett asked, “Did you grow up in Landfall?”

The city where foreign diplomats were hosted, the beautiful city by the Ocean and the spaceport, the only Oceanian city Brett had seen more than once. As good a guess as any.

She nodded. “My dad was a Meddy.”

When Brett’s eyes widened in puzzlement she added, “A medtech had some of the skills of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, and works closely with all three. They make housecalls and they’re especially trained to observe and do examinations.”

And the information could go directly to the doctor’s brain if needed. Convenient but creepy.

“Get off of me,” Ariel told him. “You’re heavy.”

He released her arms and propped himself up on his hands so they bore most of his weight, almost as if he were doing pushups. His knees were on the ground though, and his midriff and thighs still touched hers. He couldn’t quite give up the feeling of her underneath him yet, and she didn’t complain again. She continued, “He had a way with people and everybody loved him. So did my mom. I’m not sure she was an artistic genius or anything, but she made people feel good about the way their house was going to look.”

She swallowed and continued, “Not so little, Ariel. Maybe I was overwhelmed by the number of friends they had, and my brother and sister had. I kind of avoided crowds, even though I also wanted people to like me the way they did the rest of my family.”

The words came pouring out. Perhaps it had been hard for her to keep so much hidden.

“Even as a little girl I knew they had ways of learning stuff I couldn’t use. I somehow thought they could teach me the secret of having everyone at a party love me without my being overwhelmed or feeling shy. When I was old enough I begged to get the nannies early, but it’s not usually medically recommended, and my dad was especially against it. By the time I was safely a year past puberty I had turned fourteen, and it seemed to me I had waited forever.

“I wanted … I had natural talent. A few years later I was awarded a scholarship.”

What was she still keeping secret, hidden in that pause? She had suddenly ended her detailed autobiography at the age of fourteen. Brett started to ask but Ariel spoke first. “So now tell me your secrets.”

Brett opened his mouth to protest he didn’t have any personal secrets, just a few things that weren’t fun to talk about. It would be a relief though, to talk with someone about the past, to have one person who really knew him.

Brett began, “I don’t remember my father. Don’t even know if he saw me after I was born, or if he had already disappeared. My mother never talked about him.

“Things must have been pretty desperate then. I’m sure there were plenty of excuses for her drinking and drugs, but sometimes when I see a newborn baby, I think it’s so wonderful, should be enough to bring anyone hope. Even I must have been wonderful.

“It didn’t seem that way to her. Anyway, I ran away when I was twelve.

As he headed down the vacant corridor towards the VR conference room, Brett refrained from dancing and singing. No witnesses stood nearby, but he didn’t want to get into the habit. Somehow he hoped to take Ariel home with him. But regardless, he rejoiced in his part of her decision to dump Michael.

Best to keep the events of the past couple of weeks quiet. Otherwise half his chain of command would be reminded he was not a typical ambassadorial assistant, and the other half would hatch manipulative schemes. As for the Oceanians, except for Ariel, it wasn’t their business.

Even the prospect of another long session in the VR conference room seated in the metal chair couldn’t spoil his mood, though he did a few stretches before seating himself. Having set up this meeting was another small triumph for Brett, though he would have preferred spending one of the last days of the Oceanian summer with Ariel.

He wouldn’t try and reschedule after all the work he had put in. Senator Peterson’s request that Brett speak with his son hadn’t proved easy. Young Gregory Peterson guarded his privacy, and his address wasn’t publicly available. Initially, the best Brett could do involved sending him messages, without even any assurance that the messages were read or received.

Brett unclipped the computer from his belt and put it on the slice of conference table in front of him. Rather than showing the time, it was counting down the minutes and seconds until the moment when Gregory had agreed to meet with him.

Brett trusted Senator Peterson and remained certain that the man put his duty foremost. His request to Brett had been purely personal, and any private annoyance the Senator felt at Oceanian intransigence would not affect major issues of war and peace. Yet Brett’s respect for Ambassador Williams had grown, despite the initial bad impression the man had made and the cautions from the Senator. Following Williams’ advice, Brett had worked harder to get in touch with Gregory.

Under Oceanian law, the man was entitled to his privacy, and to read or not read his messages as he chose. With advice from Ambassador Williams, Brett had managed to explain the importance of the situation to the Oceanian Ambassador Nocker, without offending Oceanian pride by suggesting that since the Space Force could crush them like eggshells, they should forget their silly little laws.

No, Brett had no desire to break Oceanian laws, or even bend them. If Gregory didn’t want to communicate, make his address available, or even reply to messages from anyone involved with his father, that was that. Brett merely had to make sure the messages had been received, so that Gregory could make an informed decision as to whether he wished to reply to them, or even finish reading them.

How could they establish a protocol to make sure that Gregory had correctly received messages he didn’t want to read? Brett could work on it as long as necessary. Oddly enough, after several rounds of negotiation through intermediaries, Gregory himself had suggested they could have a short conference, under circumstances which would make Brett unable to track him down further. In return Brett would accept that all the messages had been received accurately, and bother him no further.

The computer had counted down to one minute and seventeen seconds. Brett seated himself and put the glasses on. His pie slice of conference table became part of a whole table, but the metal chair was still empty. Brett wouldn’t miss any clues to be seen in the first split second after Gregory’s appearance.

At the scheduled time, a body materialized in the chair. Gregory was on the chair, but not in the right position to sit there comfortably. Gregory might not see a virtual conference room at all. Was he slouching, or leaning back on a bed or couch? What else was Gregory’s software concealing?