“Fine,” Joshua said automatically. He hadn’t got a clue what she was talking about.
She patted his thigh, and bounced to her feet. “Don’t go away, I’m going to do my rounds here, then I’ll be back to collect
you later.” “Er, yes.” What else was there to say? He still wasn’t sure who had seduced who the day after he returned from
the Ruin Ring, but he’d spent every night since then in Dominique’s big bed, and a lot of the daytime, too. She had the same
kind of sexual stamina as Jezzibella, boisterous and frighteningly energetic.
He glanced down at the processor block, datavising a file-title request. It was a program that analysed all the possible free-fall
sexual positions where bounceback didn’t use the male’s feet. The block’s screen was showing two humanoid simulacrums running
through contortional permutations.
“Hello.”
Joshua tipped the processor block screen side down with an incredibly guilty start, datavising a shutdown instruction, and
codelocked the file.
Ione was standing next to the couch, head cocked to one side, smiling innocently.
“Er, hello, Ione.”
The smile widened. “You remembered my name.”
“Hard to forget a girl like you.”
She sat in the imprint Dominique had left in the cushions. There was something quirky about her, a suggestion of hidden depth.
He experienced that same uncanny thrill he had when he was on the trail of a Laymil artefact, not quite arousal, but close.
“I’m afraid I forgot what you do, though,” he said.
“Same as everyone else in here, a rich heiress.”
“Not quite everybody.”
“No?” Her mouth flickered in an uncertain smile.
“No, there’s me, you see. I didn’t inherit anything.” Joshua let his eyes linger on the outline of her figure below the light
blouse. She was nicely proportioned, skin silk-smooth and sun kissed. He wondered what she would look like naked. Very nice,
he decided.
“Apart from your ship, the
Lady Macbeth
.”
“Now it’s my turn to say: you remembered.”
She laughed. “No. It’s what everyone is talking about. That and your find. Do you know what’s in those Laymil memory crystals?”
“No idea. I just find them, I don’t understand them.” “Do you ever wonder why they did it? Kill themselves like that? There
must have been millions of them, children, babies. I can’t believe it was suicide the way everyone says.”
“You try not to think about it when you’re out in the Ruin Ring. There are just too many ghosts out there. Have you ever been
in it?”
She shook her head.
“It’s spooky, Ione. Really, people laugh, but sometimes they’ll creep in on you out of the shadows if you don’t keep your
guard up. And there are a lot of shadows out there; sometimes I think it isn’t made of anything else.”
“Is that why you’re leaving?”
“Not really. The Ruin Ring was a means to me, a way to get the money for
Lady Mac
. I’ve always planned on leaving.”
“Is Tranquillity that bad?”
“No. It’s more of a pride thing. I want to see
Lady Mac
spaceworthy again. She got damaged quite badly in the rescue attempt. My father barely made it back to Tranquillity alive.
The old girl deserves another chance. I could never bring myself to sell her. That’s why I started scavenging, despite the
risks. I just wish my father could have stayed around to see me succeed.”
“A rescue mission?” She sucked in her lower lip, intrigued. It was an endearing action, making her look even younger.
Dominique was nowhere to be seen, and the music was almost painfully loud now, the band just hitting their stride. Ione was
clearly hooked on the story, on him. They could find a bedroom and spend a couple of hours screwing each other’s brains out.
And it was only early evening, this party wouldn’t wind down for another five or six hours yet, he could still be back in
time for his night with Dominique.
Jesus! What a way to celebrate.
“It’s a long story,” he said, gesturing round. “Let’s find somewhere quieter.”
She nodded eagerly. “I know a place.”
The trip on the tube carriage wasn’t quite what Joshua had in mind. There were plenty of spare bedrooms at the lake house
which he could codelock. But Ione had been surprisingly adamant, that elusive hint of steel in her personality surfacing as
she said: “My apartment is the quietest in Tranquillity, you can tell me everything there, and we’ll never be overheard.”
She paused, eyes teasing. “Or interrupted.”
That settled it.
They took the carriage from the little underground station which served all the residences around the lake. The tube trains
were a mechanical system, like the lifts in the starscrapers, which were all installed after Tranquillity reached its full
size. Bitek was a powerful technology, but even it had limits on the services it could provide; internal transport lay outside
the geneticists’ ability. The tubes formed a grid network throughout the cylinder, providing access to all sections of the
interior. Carriages were independent, taking passengers to whichever station they wanted, a system orchestrated by the habitat
personality, which was spliced into processor blocks in every station. There was no private transport in Tranquillity, and
everyone from billionaires to the lowest-paid spaceport handler used the tubes to get around.
Joshua and Ione got into a waiting ten-seater carriage, sitting opposite each other. It started off straight away under Ione’s
command, accelerating smoothly. Joshua offered her a sip from the fresh bottle of Norfolk Tears he’d liberated from Parris
Vasilkovsky’s bar, and started to tell her about the rescue mission, eyes tracing the line of her legs under the flimsy sarong.
There had been a research starship in orbit around a gas giant, he said, it had suffered a life-support blow-out. His father
had got the twenty-five-strong crew out, straining the
Lady Macbeth
’s own life support dangerously close to capacity. And because several of the injured research crew needed treatment urgently
they jumped while they were still inside the gas giant’s gravity field, which wrecked some of
Lady Macbeth
’s energy-patterning nodes, which in turn put a massive strain on the remaining nodes when the next jump was made. The starship
managed the jump into Tranquillity’s system, a distance of eight light-years, ruining forty per cent of her remaining nodes
in the process.
“He was lucky to make it,” Joshua said. “The nodes have a built-in compensation factor in case a few fail, but that distance
was really tempting fate.”
“I can see why you’re so proud of him.”
“Yes, well…” He shrugged.
The carriage slowed its madcap dash down the length of the habitat, and pulled to a halt. The door slid open. Joshua didn’t
recognize the station: it was small, barely large enough to hold the length of the carriage, a featureless white bubble of
polyp. Broad strips of electrophorescent cells in the ceiling gave off a strong light; a semicircular muscle membrane door
was set in the wall at the back of the narrow platform. Certainly not a starscraper lobby.
The carriage door closed, and the grey cylinder slipped noiselessly into the tunnel on its magnetic track. Currents of dry
air flapped Ione’s sarong as it vanished from sight.
Joshua felt unaccountably chilly. “Where are we?” he asked.
Ione gave him a bright smile. “Home.”
Hidden depths. The chill persisted obstinately.
The muscle membrane door opened like a pair of stone curtains being drawn apart, and Joshua gaped at the apartment inside,
bad vibes forgotten.
Starscraper apartments were luxurious even without money for elaborate furnishings; given time the polyp would grow into the
shapes of any furniture you wanted, but this…
It was split level, a wide oblong reception area with an iron rail running along one side opposite the door, overlooking a
lounge four metres below. A staircase set in the middle of the railings extended out for three metres, then split into two
symmetrically opposed loops that wound down to the lower floor. Every wall was marbled. Up in the reception area it was green
and cream; on both sides of the lounge it was purple and ruby; at the back of the lounge it was hazel and sapphire; the stairs
were snow white. Recessed alcoves were spaced equidistantly around the whole reception area, bordered in fluted sable-black
columns. One of them framed an ancient orange spacesuit, the lettering Russian Cyrillic. The furniture was heavy and ornate,
rose wood and teak, polished to a gleam, carved with beautiful intaglio designs, rich with age, the work of master craftsmen
from centuries past. A thick living apricot-coloured moss absorbed every footfall.
Joshua walked over to the top of the stairs without a word, trying to take it all in. The wall ahead of him, some thirty metres
long and ten high, was a single window. It showed him a seabed.
Tranquillity had a circumfluous salt-water reservoir at its southern end, like all Edenist habitats. In keeping with the size
of the habitat, it was some eight kilometres wide, and two hundred metres deep at the centre; more sea than lake. Both coastlines
were a mix of sandy coves and high cliffs. An archipelago of islands and atolls ran all the way around it.
Joshua realized the apartment must be at the foot of one of the coastal cliffs. He could see sand stretching into dark blue
distance, half-buried boulders smothered beneath crustaceans, long ribbons of red and green fronds waving idly. Shoals of
small colourful fish were darting about; caught in the vast spill of light from the window they looked like jewelled ornaments.
He thought he saw something large and dark swimming around the boundary of light.
The breath came out of him in an amazed rush. “How did you get this place?”
There was no immediate answer.
He turned to see Ione standing behind him, eyes closed, head tilted back slightly, as if in deep contemplation. She took a
deep breath, and slowly opened her eyes to show the deepest ocean-blue irises, an enigmatic smile on her lips. “It’s the one
Tranquillity assigned me,” she said simply.
“I never knew there were any here that you could ask for. And these furnishings—”
Her smile turned mischievous. And she was suddenly all little girlish again. It was her hair, he thought, all the girls he
knew in Tranquillity had long, perfectly arranged hair. With her short, shaggy style she looked almost elfin, and supremely
sexy.
“I told you I was an heiress,” she said.
“Yes, but
this
…” “You like it?”
“I’m afraid of it. I think I’ve been scavenging in the wrong place.”
“Come on.” She held out her hand.
He took her proffered fingers in a light grip. “Where are we going?”
“To get what you came for.”
“What’s that?”
She grinned, pulling him away from the stairs, along the reception area to the wall at the end. Another muscle membrane in
one of the alcoves parted.
“Me,” she said.
It was a bedroom, circular, with a curving window band looking into the sea, its polyp ceiling hidden by drapes of dark red
fabric. In the middle of the floor was a crater filled with perfectly clear jelly and covered by a thin rubbery sheet, silk
pillows lining the rim. And Ione was standing very close. They kissed. He could feel her shiver slightly as his arms went
round her. Heat began to seep into his body.
“Do you know why I wanted you?” she said.
“No.” He was kissing her throat, hands sliding across her blouse to cup her breasts.
“I’ve watched you,” Ione whispered.
“Er—” Joshua broke off fondling her breasts, and stared at her, the dreamy expression.
“You and all those beautiful rich girls. You’re an excellent lover, Joshua. Did you know that?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Jesus. She’s watched me? When? The night before last had been pretty wild, but he didn’t remember anyone else
joining them. Although knowing Dominique it was highly possible. Hell, but I must have been smashed out of my skull.
Ione tugged at his jacket’s sash, opening the front. “You wait for the girls to climax, you want them to enjoy it. You make
them enjoy it.” She kissed his sternum, tongue licking the ridges of his pectoral muscles. “That’s very rare, very bold.”
Her words and deeds were acting like the devil’s own stimulant program, sending a sparkling phantom fire shooting down his
nerves to invade his groin and send his heart racing. He felt his cock growing incredibly hard as his breathing turned harsh.
Ione’s blouse came open easily under his impatient hands, and he pushed it off her shoulders. Her breasts were high and nicely
rounded, with large areolae only a shade darker than her tan. He sucked on a nipple, fingers tracing the sleek muscle tone
of her abdomen, eliciting indrawn hisses. Hands clutched and clawed at the back of his neck. He heard his name being called,
the delight in her voice.
They fell onto the bed together, the jelly-substance under the sheet undulating wildly. The two of them rode the turbulent
waves which their own threshing limbs whipped up.
Entering her was sheer perfection. She was delectably responsive, and strong, sinuous. He had to use his neural nanonics to
restrain his body, making sure he remained in control. His secret glee. That way he could wait despite her furious pleading
shouts. Wait as she strained and twisted sensually against him. Wait, and provoke, and prolong… Until the orgasm convulsed
her, and a jubilant screech burst out of her mouth. Then he cancelled the artificial prohibitions, allowing his body to spend
itself in frenzied bliss, gloating at her wide-eyed incredulity as his semen surged into her in a long exultant consummation.
They watched each other in silence as the bed slowly calmed. There was a moment’s silent contemplation, then they were both
grinning lazily. “Was I as good as all the others, Joshua?”
He nodded fervently.
“Good enough to make you stay in Tranquillity, knowing I’m available whenever you want?”
“Er—” He rolled onto his side, disquieted by the gleam in her eye. “That’s unfair, and you know it.”