Carlyle swallowed with difficulty. He tremblingly reached, thinking to touch her shoulders, wanting to touch all of her body, all the way down . . . but thinking—she isn't . . . isn't . . .
She sank a little and drew herself to him.
* * *
He tumbled first to the polyfluid bed. As she slid across toward him, the rest of her gown dropped away. With her hair cascading, breasts swaying, nipples hard, she pulled off his tunic and pants, and kissed him teasingly. Her hair brushed over him, her breath and lips warm and moist. When he was groaning, straining and bobbing against her, she moved back up, kissed his neck gently, and straddled him. Her breasts moved enchantingly over him, her breath hot and uneven against his face. She sank onto him, swallowing him in her heat.
He slid his hands along her back, following the curve of her hips, then rubbing softly at the fascinating dark fuzz between her thighs, and moving up along the gentle roundness of her belly and the abrupt roundness of her breasts. He caught her eyes, wide and sharp, and held them wonderingly, his thoughts tugging at hers, trying to know what she was feeling. She caught her breath as he, and then she, began to move . . .
* * *
Her back went rigid, and he clasped his hands and forearms to her sides and held her as she swayed, struggling. Moments later she bent toward him again, her face rubbing wetly against his. He closed his arms over her back and held her tightly. He had already come, and he was shrinking now, starting to pull free of her. Holding her close, warm and solid against him, he tried to make it last. He did not want to speak, did not want the moment to end yet . . .
* * *
How can she know me, how can she understand? Why have I done this? And does it matter?
* * *
"Did you enjoy making love with me?" she whispered, inches from his face, her fingers stroking his cheek.
"Yes," he whispered back, probably inaudibly; and he nodded against the pillow, almost imperceptibly. But you are not a rigger, he added silently. And that must make some difference—
A little later, as they lay still together, he gazed at her forehead and the fringe of hair behind it, while she studied his chest. She said, "Are you thinking of your friends?" She looked up.
Startled, he avoided her eyes. Yes, he had been, especially of Janofer. And what of Janofer? Had he been disloyal to her?
"That means 'yes,' " she said. He could not tell how she reacted to her own statement. "Well. I guess you would be, of course." She rolled back, looking up at the ceiling. She lay still like that for a moment, then turned back to him and pulled herself close. His feelings rushed dizzyingly as he held her, stroking her shoulders and hair, stroking, stroking. Attraction to Alyaca, longing for Janofer (for the Janofer who was, and for the Janofer who might have been; which Janofer was he thinking of now?). Fear. Fear of this woman, of loving her. What would she want of him, what could he ask of her?
She pressed her lips softly to his neck. "Good night," she murmured.
He stroked her and lay awake wondering.
* * *
During the days following, they swam together at the beach and hiked in the forest. They piloted a diving skate into the lake's depths, and they rode in the gondola of a balloon over the lake and the surrounding area. Carlyle told her something of rigging and the way of life it created, and the difficulties it entailed in the net of a star-ship; and he told her some of the legends of the riggers, some of the tales passed down through the centuries and across the worlds, some from before the days in which rigging first superseded the old
foreshortening
starflight, the sailing ship making obsolete the high-powered shell. The legend of
Impris
interested her particularly. "It's called the Dutchman," he said, "because in ancient times on one of the home worlds there was a seagoing ship called . . .
Flying Dutchman,
I think.
Impris
is supposed to be like that other ship, sailing eternally, lost in the Flux. She would be a ghost ship even if she returned, according to the legend. Of course the ship may never have existed. No one has ever proved that a ship named
Impris
actually existed and then disappeared, but it's said that the records were deliberately destroyed to discredit the legend, because it was thought to be too frightening a prospect to allow riggers to believe." He chuckled. "Anyway, the legend is probably a couple of hundred years old."
Alyaca asked him if he believed in the legends himself. "Well, that's hard to say," he said uncomfortably. "I think some of them might be true." He was glad, at least for the moment, that she was interested in these stories. It kept them from more painful personal topics, and made him almost believe that their affair together might last.
During their third night, however, Alyaca asked him to tell more about Janofer. The pain rushed back as though it had been building, waiting for a trigger.
"Do you still miss her that much?" she asked, sounding incredulous.
"It's hard to explain." His throat was very tight.
"Why? How long were you lovers?"
"We hardly were at all," he said. He dropped his face into the pillow. He lay that way, breathing through the hyperexpanded puff, not wanting to say another word. It wasn't fair that he should be tormented by thoughts of Janofer, here, now, while he was having trouble enough accepting Alyaca. It just wasn't fair. He looked up finally, to see her staring at him, waiting for him to make sense. "Well," he said, "we were. But it didn't last; it didn't work, even right from the beginning." His pulse pounded in his temples. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to talk; but there seemed no way out—he would have to talk sooner or later.
"Gev?"
"Uh?"
"How can you be so hooked on her if you really weren't even that close?"
The pounding increased: you don't talk about this with an outsider—
—but she's not really an outsider; after all, she's in your bed—
—but she's not a rigger, either—
"We were close," he said tightly. "Close friends." How could he explain how desperately important that was to him, to a man who had grown up so lonely he had not even
realized
how lonely he was? "She was my first real friend—" and she was a rigger. "I thought it would always last—"
He dropped his head lower again, staring at the pillow. Should he tell her what it was like growing up on Alcest IV, a growing frontier world where the unrelenting demand was for practical-minded people, for civilization builders? Should he tell her what it was like growing up an odd dreamer in a family of settlers and engineers and designers? What it was like as a child walking and playing endlessly through waking dreams, and failing in the goals set for him by others, and being thought curious—until someone, a friend of his father's, not even a member of his own family, had recognized the rigger in him?
"It was hard for me when I was young," he mumbled.
It was not that riggers weren't well thought of, not respected, not needed. But that didn't mean that his family wanted one of their own. Truthfully, he did not even recognize the emptiness until later. Even when he was sent to train—eventually off Alcest IV altogether, to other Aeregian planets—he was taught mastery of his dreams and mastery of the mechanics of space; but who needed companionship then, with dreams so attractive and so highly approved of? When they had taught him that rigging required the capacity for intimacy, for empathy—and when his needs finally awoke of their own accord—it was very nearly too late.
But how could he explain that to Alyaca?
"When I found Janofer," he said, "I already knew how much I needed her. And the others, too—Skan and Legroeder." He turned his head, biting his lip, and looked at her. Her eyes were dark, her hair tousled, her bare shoulders hunched together. "Does that make sense to you?"
She pulled her hair back, in frustration, from her eyes. "I understand, sure. She filled a need."
She doesn't understand at all—
"It's the same with anyone. But you have to let go when the time comes."
Not a word. How could she possibly know what I'm saying?
She gazed full into his eyes with what seemed too much like raw curiosity to make him comfortable. Then she reached over him, her breasts hanging oddly before him, and she adjusted the sparkle-pattern in the darkened room to a more erotic setting. When she slid back down, he started slightly. He felt naked, vulnerable—and aroused. And then he felt embarrassed.
In a sudden confusion of impulses, he buried his hands in her hair and pulled her close, pressing himself against her hip and the top of her thigh. Her eyes flickered and she responded with her own movements, rocking him and entwining her legs around him.
The erotic ringlets of the sparkle-pattern flashed about the room, distractingly.
When they stopped moving, a little later, Alyaca drifted off to sleep, but he did not. She slumped close to him, and when she rolled over he encircled her loosely with one arm, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep. Though they had completed their lovemaking, he felt that he had been a failure, or that it had been wrong.
Alyaca, still rising and falling slightly on the fluid bed, sleepily moved her arm up to cover his.
* * *
Over the next few days, he began to think how ironic it was. The more he felt the distance between them, the more he was enchanted by her body, her beauty, and her company, and the more determined he was to continue the affair regardless of painful consequences.
But the future was growing slimmer. He wondered what Alyaca thought she was getting out of the relationship, and if her continuing interest wasn't just some distorted impulse to "know a rigger"—any rigger. She was having to spend most of her days in the office, and one night she was recalled to Jarvis and did not return until the following afternoon. But she got a Kloss aircar the evening she returned and took Carlyle out to a spot known as Gloander Bluff, a hill of exposed bedrock which was considered one of the best scenic viewing spots in the area. They missed the sunset but watched the stars come out in the sky over a shadow-deepened land.
"They're out there somewhere, aren't they?" she asked pointedly. The words sent a stab through his heart. That was about all he knew, based on the latest word from Freyling and the Guild; his friends were out there somewhere. It would be a long trail for him to follow, if it came to that.
But why had she asked that question, here and now? Was she deliberately trying to hurt him? Was his pain of an alien sort to her?
She looked at him intently, her brows furrowed. She shivered and moved closer to him, touching him. "Are you going to go looking for them?" she asked in a low, not quite accusing voice.
Can she care that much about me? Does she love me, or does she just not want to lose the rigger she's finally found? He cleared his throat and shrugged slightly. "I might have to, yes." He was acutely aware of her body close to his, and he began to ache and tremble, wanting her. What was he doing to himself? He looked up, and the stars pulled at his soul. He looked at her, and she pulled at him, too.
"Well," she said, disguising what might have been anger or just disappointment, "I'd like to meet your friend Cephean, anyway, before you go." Her face was dim and beautiful in the starlight.
Is she trying to make me fall in love with her?
"I don't know if I'll even see Cephean again myself," he said uncomfortably. He could see Cephean standing beside him right now, hissing and muttering, and he felt a strange sorrow that the cynthian was not
really
here. He was also filled with desire for Alyaca—or for somebody—and he was sure that she knew it.
Janofer, what am I doing here?
To his surprise, Janofer came, peering wonderingly at him.
Gev, what's the matter? You want her, don't you? And she wants you.
How have I gotten myself into this?
Into what? She's attractive to you, and she wants you in her bed.
But—
What? She's not a rigger? So?
She doesn't understand. She doesn't know why I have to come looking for you.
Well, ease her down. Don't ruin it. Why not stay with her for a while?
I have to get back into space, or I'll lose your trail—
"Gev?" Alyaca was prodding him. When he focused on her, she slid her arms around him and kissed him. "What's wrong?" she whispered.
He shook his head. The curves of her body pressed against him, bringing him back to the present.
"Go back now?" she asked quietly. He nodded.
They returned quickly, touching one another in the car as they flew back. Soon enough they were in his suite, in his bed, halfway under the drift blanket. Alyaca's eyes glinted wetly as she rocked sideways and forward and back over him, her hair brushing his face as she bent to kiss him, preparing to straddle him. Janofer lowered herself over him, and he cried with pleasure at the sight of her. But—it was Alyaca, not Janofer, sinking down upon him—and for a moment he was confused and dismayed, and in the next moment he was coming in quick, spastic spurts. It was over before he was even inside her.
She smiled, breathing hard, and kissed him and stretched out full length against him, hiding her disappointment if that was what she felt. But he was flushed with shame—not so much for his premature climax as for his confusion. How could he have confused the two? How?
Alyaca whispered urgently that it was all right. But it was not. Though they tried again a little later, he could not achieve another erection.
* * *
Two days later, she called him at the lodge to tell him that Kloss had returned and would see him in his office. He hurried over, hoping that he could get into Kloss's office without having to face Alyaca. He was ashamed to face her and certain that she considered their problems of the last two nights a sign of waning desire on his part. And he was not altogether sure that she was wrong.