She shook her head.
“I take it having a female body hasn’t helped any.”
We stopped at the robot’s leg. “Thanks to their ‘adjustments,’ my body’s of use to them now. I can have an orgasm from just about anything, even if I don’t want to. It’s completely vacked. They’ve taken everything, Challers. Everything. I don’t even have my body anymore. It belongs to them now; it answers their directions, not mine.”
I saw her pain like she had never let me see it before. How could they not know they were torturing her? How could they see this and still do this to her?
I did the only thing I could think of, and put my arms around her.
She stiffened. “No,” she choked, “I don’t want . . . I don’t want to . . .”
Sobs escaped, one by one, then a steady stream. Her body relaxed, letting me hold her, comfort her the only way I knew how. We stood there, under the dark frame of the robot, crying softly together, mourning the person she had been, that she could never be again.
When she quieted, I whispered, “So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m just going to go on my training cruise tomorrow.”
“Don’t do anything extreme,” I said.
She pulled away and looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
I hesitated. Should I even mention it? Too late to hold back.
“Back on Stakroya Station, during a hull survey, a classmate unclipped his tether, turned off the magnetics on his boots, and floated off. Before anyone could rescue him, he took off his helmet. The vacuum took him.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I won’t.”
“We’re friends, okay? And friends don’t do things like that to each other.” I wished I could believe her. “Promise me.”
She put her head against my chest again. “I promise.”
“Is there anyone else like you? I mean, men they’ve turned into women because of this.”
“I guess. They seemed familiar with the problem.”
“Maybe someday they’ll let you pilot a ship with another man.”
She pulled back and looked me in the eye. “What?”
“Maybe someday they’ll let you just, you know, be who you are.”
She snorted. “Never going to happen.”
Suna’s voice ended the moment. “Just couldn’t control yourselves until you got inside, eh?”
Trace gave her a glare that would’ve split hull plates, then turned and twisted the robot’s toe to open the hatch.
As she climbed up, I put my hand on Suna’s shoulder. “I was just soothing the nerves of a friend. She’s not having a good day.”
“I was just teasing,” she said, but there was regret in her eyes and in her voice. She was dressed the same as the last time I saw her, with colorful scarves tied crosswise over her four breasts and wearing a knee-length skirt. The look passed quickly and she leaned close to whisper, “I hope we can have fun together again sometime soon.”
The thought did give my cock a little throb, but I shook my head. “Tonight I’m here for Trace. I think that would be inappropriate.”
She pouted. “Doesn’t have to be tonight,” she grumbled, and climbed up the robot’s leg.
When I reached the hatch, Trace was packing the pipe full of leaves. As soon as it was ready, she drew a deep breath through it and held the smoke in her lungs. She clearly meant to get the most out of it.
I noticed a new set of makeshift shelves near the hatch with some clean towels, a cylinder of water, some tubes of various cleaning solutions, and some basic cleaning implements.
Trace jabbed the mouthpiece of the pipe at the collection. “Whose idea was that?”
“Mine,” said Suna. “We do need to clean up around here from time to time. We don’t have any janitorial robots, you know.”
I had to admit she was right. The place was a mess. I wondered how we had managed to keep our nighttime meetings here secret without bringing back telltale smudges on our clothes and bodies.
Trace shrugged. “Fine with me. It’s your place now.” She took another lungful of smoke and handed me the pipe.
Suna glanced at the holographic displays above the computer. “Oh, Zun’s here.” She touched the tablet and the hatch clanked open.
Zun turned out to be a Chevalier newgen, like the ones I had met down at the river. He wasn’t naked, but I could see similarities in the way his face and body were put together. It bothered me a little, but I swallowed the little knot of uncertainty, and when Suna introduced him to me, and I bowed respectfully.
We took our places around the table. As before, Suna passed on her turn with the pipe, but Zun took a long pull from it before handing it to me.
“I’m going to miss this,” said Trace, softly, as the pipe came around to her again. “The smoke. You folks.” She took another deep draft of smoke.
“We’re going to miss you, too,” said Zun.
The standard response seemed trite, and I could see in his eyes that it felt that way to him, too. I know I felt helpless in the face of Trace’s dilemma, and I had only known her a few days. Zun and Suna had known her for longer, it seemed, and they were no better equipped to deal with her pain than I was.
I took the pipe, filled my lungs, and let the effects dull the edge of my emotions.
“Let’s play a game,” said Zun. “Take our mind off things.”
“You always want to play games.” Trace took the pipe, but didn’t draw so deep this time.
“Better than just sitting around,” he said. From a carry-pouch, he took out a little holo device and set it in the middle of the table. To me, he asked, “Ever played Rubysocks?”
“No.” The device looked like a portable desk emitter, but I had never seen that model before.
He waved his hand over it and it started up, displaying a bright red sphere in the center of the table. “Each of us tells a story. The one whose story makes the biggest impression on the others around the table wins the game. The story can be sexy or scary or funny, but it has to create a reaction. The device will measure the reactions from everyone around the table and declare the winner.”
“I’m not much of a storyteller,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not true.” Suna waved her hand dismissively. “Everyone has stories. It’s part of the human condition.”
“Does it have to be true?”
“No,” said Zun. “Though sometimes that’s the best. So who’s first?”
“I’ll go,” said Suna and she waved her hand over the unit. The red sphere flashed and the name “Suna Vol” rotated briefly in the center, along with a chronometer set to ten minutes.
“It knows your name,” I said.
“It reads your ID implant.”
“So it’s a Scout device?”
“No, but the ID implant isn’t hard to read, if you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m just worried this will get back to them.”
Trace shook her head. “You can trust Zun. He’s been here longer than any of us.”
“All right.”
“Begin,” said Suna, rubbing her hands together. The clock ticked down the seconds.
Suna stood up, beginning her story with a grand gesture.
“So there was this woman, captain of a Merchant ship that ran the routes between the Central Cluster and the Sandral Rim. It wasn’t a big ship by Merchant standards, maybe five hundred hearts aboard, but it was hers and she was proud of it. Being small, it was also quick, by Merchant standards, easily making a thousand to one on the limit. It made port every few days, making short local hops to speculate on goods the bigger ships left behind as too small to bother with. Or they contracted out for short high-money missions from one star to the next.
“It was on one of these short contracts that her cargo-mistress came to tell her that something was moving inside one of the crates. Of course, stowaways are rare on a Merchant ship, but they happen from time to time. The captain opened the crate and they found a Marine, delirious with thirst. They managed to get him wheeled into the sick bay, and once they got some water into him, he recovered pretty fast. The Marine wasn’t about to talk, though, so they locked him in the brig to sort out when they got to their destination.
“They thought they were safe with him there, but one night, while the captain was asleep, the Marine broke out of the brig, knocked out his guards, and made his way to the captain’s stateroom. He slowly eased the door open, and a shaft of light from the hallway fell across the captain’s face. She was beautiful, at least to his eyes. He knew right then that he had to have her.
“Marines, you know, don’t get much contact with women, and a buck private like this one never does. So, even though the captain of this Merchant ship was just as over-endowed as the rest of her crew, he got a serious itch on for her. He crept in, on feet built and trained for silence, and stood next to the bed.
“Now, this Marine wasn’t stupid. He knew that the bed had orgone collectors in it, and that if he messed around with it, there would be an alert or alarm or something. So, first thing he did was close the door and fix it so it wasn’t going to open right away. Then he crawled into bed next to her and yanked away the covers, exposing her body to his eager eyes.
“Each breast was the size of a bucket with nipples as big as dinner plates. Her belly was even bigger. Her sex was invisible, lost under her spreading flesh. Even so, her skin was smooth and fair, and her long hair fell in golden cascades across her shoulders. Uncovered, she was only more beautiful to him.
“She woke up and asked him why he was there, but he didn’t say anything, he just put one huge hand behind her head and pulled her in and kissed her. Nobody had ever treated her like that before and she loved it. She kissed him back, wrapping her arms around his huge, muscular chest.
“‘Take me,’ she gasped, but he never needed her permission.
“He stroked and squeezed her soft, tender body, exploring the soft folds until he found her warm, moist center. She moaned in ecstasy as his thick, calloused finger invaded, seeking out her feminine secrets. Probing and pushing, he plumbed the depths of her sex. An instinct took hold of him, something raw and primal, something all the alterations of the tank could never touch. He crept on top of her, putting his muscular thighs between hers, but she shook her head.
“She rolled over onto her huge belly, offering the twin globes of her posterior. ‘Like this,’ she gasped, hungrily. ‘Much better like this.’
“The Marine took aim at her target and started thrusting for all he was worth.
“‘Go ahead,’ she cried, ‘what are you waiting for? Put it in me!’
“‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘It’s in!’
“In disgust, she tried to pull away, but he was too strong. He grunted and groaned and strained and finally shouted a roar of triumph and collapsed on top of her, totally spent.
“Of course, this was the moment when the ship’s security officer finally broke down the door. If the Marine had not been in a state of sexual exhaustion, they never would have subdued him, but they managed to tie him up and put him back in the cell before he came out of it.
The unit on the table let out a quiet tone as her timer reached zero.
“Vack!” She slumped down into her seat.
A score flashed on the sphere floating above the table. I had nothing to compare it to, but from her expression, I could tell it wasn’t very good.
“That’s how it goes,” said Zun. “You have to keep your eye on that timer. Now, if I may . . .”
He waved his hand over the device, and the timer flashed his name and reset the clock.
“Begin.” The timer ticked down the seconds, but Zun just leaned back in his chair and stretched. “Kal, my grandparent, tells this story . . .”
Zun screwed up his face in an imitation of an elderly person. “In my youth, I was something of a wanderer, traveling the trade routes in search of fortune and adventure. I had a bit of cash to my name, so I hired out space on Merchant ships and speculated on high-value cargoes, buying and selling at each station on the route. Of course, everywhere I went, there were interesting people to meet, and Corgela Station was no different.
“This particular station specialized in cybernetic enhancements—you know, robotic body parts of various sorts. I was in the middle of negotiations with a charming young creature by the name of Rol, when a sudden sneeze caused this person’s ocular implant to sail across the table.