by Steve Perry
She pretended to pout. “That’s better. Not good enough, but better.”
He carried her from the nursery to their bedroom.
Love wasn’t about technique, Bork knew that, but if you did love somebody, them knowing pretty much everything there was to know about the physical aspects of it made it real interesting.
“Lie back,” Veate commanded.
Bork did so.
“Lume control, one-quarter on the overheads.”
The computer brought the lights up obediently.
“Lume control, pink spot, centered on the bed.”
Her white hair and skin turned to rose quartz.
“It’s better for you when you can see me, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Bork said.
She straddled him, but sat on his belly, her fine pubic hair, now shaded pink, tickling his navel. She put her hands on the thick muscles of his upper chest, leaned into them and massaged him, squeezing hard.
He enjoyed the feel of her fingers digging into him. After a moment, she slid her hands up to his neck and worked the bands of muscle under his ears.
“Mmm.”
She slid back a little. He felt wetness on his belly, smelled her pungent musk. The lightest touch of warmth pressed against the base of his erect penis.
“And you like to smell me, too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back a little more.
“Mmmmm.”
He raised his hands and pressed them lightly against her hips, urging her to move yet farther back.
“No, you don’t. Not yet. You aren’t ready yet.”
“Hell I’m not.”
“Hey, who’s the albino in this bed?”
He chuckled. “Got me. I can’t even remember who I am.” “Hah! You don’t get off that easy. I’m going to make you suffer.”
But she didn’t. Instead she raised herself up, touched him at the tip of his very much erect penis, then slid down slowly until she ensheathed him completely to the base. Without lifting herself again, she massaged him with internal muscles, clamping and relaxing, over and over again, until she brought forth from him a powerful orgasm.
“Oh!”
Veate laughed. “You still don’t get off that easy, you thug.”
His laughter joined hers.
Through some acoustical trick, Taz heard her brother laugh, even though she was on the opposite end of the house. Cooling duct or something, she figured.
She sat up and swung her bare legs over the side of the bed. She hadn’t been able to sleep. Might as well do something useful.
She slipped a robe on and padded down the hall to the gym. Saval had a good set-up, as complete as many small public gyms. Even though he favored free weights over machines, he had, along with the couple tons of flexsteel plates and bars, a full ROM unit, a state-of-the-art computer-controlled SSA LS-21. Gym rats around the galaxy liked to joke that the initials for the Strength Success Associates Corporation who made the machine really stood for “Suffer, stupid asshole.” The unit could measure tonus and nerve conduction close enough so that when programmed properly it would take a user exactly as far as she could go, no more, no less. It wouldn’t let you overextend yourself; on the other hand, you couldn’t slack your way past it.
The gym lights blinked on as Taz stepped inside. The far wall was mirrored, and she watched herself as she slipped out of the robe and stood naked in front of the LS-21. She was in good shape, she knew.
Most mues of her kind were; it seemed a waste not to be, given the potential. HG engineering had given her great-grandparents thicker and heavier bone structure, a slight advantage in tendon leverage, and attachments, and more muscle-building hormones than standard humans, as well as a faster metabolism.
Great-grandfather and -mother had been designed for planets with a gee-and-a-half or better. Maybe the desire to use her body hard was built into her gene structure, she didn’t know, but she did muchly enjoy working up a good sweat.
Saval was a bug about free weights, called them more “organic,” but Taz preferred the machines. They were less risky than the heavy bars, even with the safety fields. The machines wouldn’t let you go past your limits; the flexsteel didn’t know what those limits were, didn’t care.
The SSA stood there like a larger version of a child’s girder construction set, a tall rectangle with cams, bearings, bars and handles that moved into place or pivoted out of the way depending on the exercises.
She stepped into the machine. “On,” she said. “Ten percent warm-up. Squats.”
The machine weighed and measured her with its bioelectronic sensors, calculated and computed its results, and increased the field strength to respond to her movements at one-tenth of her capacity for the exercise ordered.
The crossbar came down and rested across her shoulders. Felt like about twenty-two, twenty-three kilos.
That’d be about right; she could squat two-twenty, two-thirty for a triple. She took a couple of breaths and began to squat, facing the mirror, watching her doppelganger flash nudely back at her. Gods, her pubic hair was thick. Looked like some animal’s furry black pelt down there. She grinned. At least there wasn’t any gray in it yet, like there was on her head. A few strands at the temples shined through the blue-black. She had it pulled back in a low braid; she usually wore it tied or plaited short when she was working, but she sometimes liked being able to let it hang to her shoulders on her own time. Saval had more gray in his hair than she did, but then her da had gone gray before her ma.
-Two. Three. Four—
Her thighs warmed as she moved up and down, back kept straight, knees bending, upper legs going to parallel.
-nine, ten.
Her legs weren’t quite ready yet, she decided. “Lunges,” she told the machine. Obediently, it lightened the amount of weight. She followed the lunges with exercises for her hamstrings and calves.
When her legs were sufficiently heated, Taz moved to work her back, then her chest, shoulders and arms. After ten minutes with the light weights, she had a thin sheen of sweat and was ready for some serious work.
“Squats,” she told the machine. “Maximum intensity, three reps.”
The bar across her shoulders grew heavy, gradually increasing until it was almost three times her own body weight. She felt the strain in her low back, and going down was a lot easier than coming back up.
Muscles in her thighs and buttocks tensed, bulged and strained under the machine’s heavy hand as she rose, barely able to fight her way through the rep. Now the sweat poured from her and the burn was painful, a deep, hot ache that went to the bone.
She grunted at the bottom of the second rep, almost didn’t get past the sticking point as she trembled upward, and yelled her way through it.
One more. She could do it, the machine wouldn’t let her try otherwise, but gods, she was tired! The sweat seeped past her eyebrows and ran into her eyes. She blinked it away. Should have worn a headband.
Down. Don’t bounce at the bottom! Come on, up, up, up, goddammit! You can do this!
She came up, a plant growing slowly toward the sun, a glacier oozing over virgin winter ground.
Christo, this was hard, it was impossible! Fuck the machine, what did a machine know? She couldn’t make it
Yes, she could. Move, move, move, dammit-!
Her bent knees straightened. She rose, reached the top. Locked her legs.
“Jesu Damn! Off!”
The SSA turned the many kilos on the bar into air.
Taz stretched. Grinned. Well. So much for squats.
Time to do her back. “Rows,” she said. “Eight reps at maximum…”
Thirty minutes later she stood under the pulse of her shower, letting the hot water wash away the sweat and some of the fatigue. She ached all over, but it was a good feeling. She’d been to her limits, and that was always a satisfying trip. She knew what she could do if she had to, and that was better than not knowing. She was a strong woman, stronger than most ord
inary men, and it felt good to take the muscles out for a brisk walk. Now she could sleep. Saval was going to help her figure out what to do about the mystery back on her own planet; she was in good health, powerful, ready. How much better off could she be?
What about Ruul?
Fuck Ruul.
You wish. That’s the problem, isn’t it?
Fuck you, too.
Her inner voice just laughed, high and girlish, a leftover from the days when she was eighteen and just finding out about real sex and love and first heartbreak.
So long ago, that seemed. Back when the galaxy was hers to take, and any road was possible. Ah, if she had it to do over again …
You’d do it the same way, wouldn’t you?
She sighed. Yeah. Probably would. What the hell. She hadn’t made that much of a mess of it. Besides, if you liked who you were, you had to honor how you got there. Looking back over your shoulder too much was apt to make you trip over something in today’s path. You couldn’t do anything about the stupid mistakes you made anyhow, so why let them drag you down?
Still, some memories were hard to shake. Taz climbed into bed, fell into sleep, and some of the past seeped into her dreams.
Chapter THREE
IT WAS A large chamber, nearly empty. In it the man Ndugu Kifo; before him, a silk cushion with a small object upon it; behind him, a suitcase-sized Ultralux vouch tuned to his brainwaves, perched alertly upon its built-in tractor. Kifo sat with his legs knotted in lotus, the bare wooden floor cool under his naked buttocks and heels. Inside the Temple of Despair it would seem still to someone not paying attention, but when a man achieved a certain level of true stillness, his senses opened. Sent the smells, feels, sights, sounds along their pathways into an open mind, a mind that noted, catalogued, then dismissed, unless the input had some … relevance.
The beams overhead ticked, wood obeying the laws of thermodynamics and physics, expanding from the hot sunshine beating down upon the city of Leijona, contracting from the coolers within the temple. Not important.
Traffic rumbled past, noises muted by the thick walls, but still producing subtle vibrations. No matter.
The vouch hummed electronically to itself, constantly monitoring Kifu’s physical and mental telemetry.
A small matter.
In the hall outside the closed meditation chamber a student sweated, bacteria thriving in the altered salts of his perspiration, their microscopic life and tiny works making him smell sour with nervousness. A faint remnant of incense lingered, clinging to the fine-grained black walnut planks, wood that had a hundred years of careful hand polishing and honing so it was almost thincris-smooth. Kifo identified the stink of sweat and the more pleasant incense, noting the bitter-but-sweet tang of muste, a local inkwood the poets liked to claim was dark as original sin.
Neither did these things matter.
When he opened his eyes, his vision matched in its clarity his other senses. On a cushion of diamond-grade ghostsilk from Rangi ya majani Mwezi lay the Sacred Glyph. It was a flat gunmetal blue-black against the pale material, a cloth ranked as the finest ever done by the best weaver the Green Moon had yet produced. The covering of the cushion had cost more than a rich man’s home, yet the silk, too, was nothing.
But the Glyph. Ah. The Glyph mattered.
It was the holiest of all relics in any religion, made by the Gods Themselves, and outside of the Few, no one knew it existed. In the eighty years since its discovery, no member of the Few had ever revealed his or her knowledge of the Sacred Glyph to any outside the order. To even speak the name aloud anywhere save the electronically shielded and regularly swept meditation room was worth instant death, administered by any within earshot. To fail to strike down such a transgression was itself worth death.
Only those initiated into the Very Few-never more than nine, never less than six-were considered trustworthy enough to learn of the existence of the Sacred Glyph, and only the Unique, the Leader of the Few, knew more than that.
The previous Unique, Ndugu Maumivu-Brother Pain-had taught Kifo all he knew of the mysteries even as he lay dying, kept alive by money-powered medical machines only just long enough to finish his instructions. Kifo was the sole man living who knew the secrets; more, he had himself added to them, divining greater depths, and his death, did it come suddenly and unexpected, would put an end to the knowledge. The Unique must take care that such a thing did not happen. Thus the vouch, standing vigilant, ready to defend Kifo’s body from illness or injury at any instant.
Kifo smiled at that thought. For a man whose holy-nom meant “Brother Death” to be protected by the acme of galactic civilization carried with it a certain irony he appreciated.
The smile faded. No time for such thoughts, not when he was about to take in hand the Sacred Glyph.
He banished the humor from his mind, composed himself, took a deep breath and allowed most of it to escape. Reached for the Glyph.
It didn’t look particularly impressive, though some of the more sensitive among the Very Few had said they could feel the Glyph’s power from across the room. It looked something like a human foot sheared off cleanly below where an ankle would join with it, the toes fused into a smooth plane. True, the ball and arch were somewhat more pronounced than real ones would be; there were indentations along the sides, the butt was thicker than a heel would be in proper proportion; the top was smooth, a flat plane with a slight incline from the back to the front. The Glyph was half a centimeter longer, perhaps, than Kifo’s thumb, and as big around at the widest as his large toe. Hardly an impressive relic, as these things went. It would be virtually invisible if viewed against the Burning Bishop’s pectoral jewelry; would hardly turn anyone’s gaze away from the Trimenagist’s Gold Triangle; would certainly get lost in the least of the glittering detritus from Tut’s Tomb.
Ah, but even so, the Sacred Glyph was unlike any of these ornaments, unlike any talisman or focus for any other religion in all the galaxy. Because the Sacred Glyph worked. Kifo himself had discovered after years of meditations the final key.
Kifo reached forth, took the Glyph into his hand, felt it slide into proper position as if on its own. It had been designed for the hands of the Gods, of course, but a human’s grasp found it grippable enough. His index finger curled under the plane of the toes, his middle finger in the arch, his ring finger wrapped itself around the indented heel. His thumb naturally lay upon the smoothness of the top.
It was like holding a carved chunk of ice. It sucked energy from his fingers. No matter what the temperature in the roomand the Very Few over the years had tested it through a range a hardy man could barely survive-the Sacred Glyph was always this way. It felt cold at twenty below, it felt cold at forty above. Always.
Now that he held it, he was ready.
“Brother Mkono,” he said. He did not raise his voice, but the student outside was listening, waiting.
Before the word finished echoing in the corridor, the student would already be running to fetch Mkono, appointed Third among the Nine.
The door opened a moment later and Mkono entered.
He was big, Brother Mkono, two meters tall, a hundred and fifty kilos, spawned by parents created for heavy-gravity worlds. He wore the loose, draped robe of the order, but under it he was a physically perfect specimen and even the voluminous folds could not hide the power when he moved. He was a mountain of a mue, and perhaps he should have been named something that reflected it, but his holy-nom spoke to his function and not his form. Mkono meant “hand.”
Among the Few it was the Hand who went forth to deal justice. Among the Few-and among the enemies of the Few.
“I have a mission for you,” Kifo said.
Brother Mkono closed his eyes and nodded, once.
In his own hand, the Sacred Glyph seemed almost to pulse. Cold it was. Cold as death.
Customs was embarrassed. The woman in charge of the peace sealer unit kept shaking her head and looking away, unable to meet Taz’s gaze.
When Taz had arrived on the planet, they’d called her “Po,” the more common and somewhat less than respectful designation used on the streets for cools. That was before they fucked up and lost her pistol, of course. Now they were falling all over themselves to be polite. Now the customs agent used the honorific, addressing Taz as “peace officer.” In their shoes, she would be real polite, too.
“No one entered or left the vault after lockdown, and the seals were clean when the computer threw the bolts. The seal alarm beeped at 2306, but the simadam monitoring assumed it was a computer glitch-he was at the door station, it was closed, and it’s the only way in or out. The vault door is a quarter-meter squashed-steel-sandwich plate with stun gas inserts and full electronics. It never moved, according to every alarm system we have and a guard’s sworn and verified visual. The walls, floor and ceiling are all made of ten-centimeter-thick carbonex and there are no signs of tampering with any of them; we’ve had them inspected with an electron deepscan. It’s impossible that anybody got in there.”
Taz pulled her pistol from under her jacket, where it rode comfortably in her orthoflex holster. Held the weapon pointed up at the ceiling. Waved it a little.
The customs agent colored. Shook her head again, spread her hands and fingers. She had to be thinking that Taz thought her people were fools or liars. And she wouldn’t have been wrong, had not the cools on Tembo recently found themselves making similar explanations.
Taz holstered the weapon. Whoever this guy was, he was involved with the stuff going on back on Tembo, she was certain of that. The mysterious deaths, getting past locked doors and alert guards, it had to tie in.
So far, the local cools hadn’t gotten anything out of the guy, either. Hadn’t spoken a word.
Galactic regulations made it possible to get a scan, if all the proper legal niceties were observed.
Electropophy and related invasive techniques were easy to abuse, so after the Confed went down, Republic laws concerning such machineries had been tightened. Careless brain-drain could leave somebody a mindless husk, and the public should be protected from such things. Taz thought it was a good idea in principle, but she also wanted whatever this guy knew pried out of him any way it took.
