“As you wish, of course. You’ve been gracious and generous hosts,” Paul said, still hoping to defuse any social faux pas he may have made.
The two men waved away his thanks in identical fashion. “To business. I must ask, are you impressed with the genetic menagerie we have created here?” Serpyter fixed him with a deliberate gaze.
Surprised to find his hosts apparently fishing for compliments, Paul replied, “Of course. How could I not be? It’s nothing short of miraculous, what you’ve done here. The beach alone is a marvel. The forest, the animals, all of it. Truly remarkable.”
Serpyter and Gojn beamed like rewarded children on Halloween. “So, you’re prepared to concede that DNA engineering and enhancement are acceptable tools in our work? That they are a reasonable solution to the problem of genetic narrowness?”
“That they are,” Gojn added, “a commendable alternative to the centuries of wasted time such a process might take under ‘natural’ conditions?” He almost spat the word ‘natural’ as if it were a curse.
Paul folded his hands and thought hard. What had these two done, truly? If inventiveness was to be applauded, they were due a standing ovation. Their little insects had solved metal resource problems, their sea creatures provided food (even without the effort of cooking) and their giant forest was both beautiful and a peaceful home. What did it matter that every single element had been cooked up in a lab?
He plainly addressed the biggest issue, determined to receive a straight answer. “Would you apply such genetic alterations to more complex life?”
They nodded. “When it serves the furtherment of the species, of course we would.”
Here we go. “Who would, in the case of Takanli for instance, be the arbiter of whether an enhancement was in the species’ interests or not?”
“Such work,” Gojn said slowly, “is so important that the Takanli Council were asked to vote, and did so overwhelmingly in the affirmative.”
Paul brought to mind what he knew of the council, and their fateful decision to permit wholesale genetic changes. Were they boldly tackling an eternal problem, the greed and selfishness of beings, with the only weapon at hand? Or had they foisted these emotional shackles on an unwitting, scared populace who desperately sought protection from their own inevitable flaws? Why, if the ‘enhanced’ Takanlians had become so perfect, had the Ministry given the green light to a project which brought a human there? There was a strong current in Takanlian society, he knew, which opposed the narrowing of their emotional boundaries. He decided to start there.
“You know what happened, the first time I came to Takanli? On my very first day?” The two men exchanged a glance and beckoned for him to continue. “Fucking.”
“Beg your pardon?” Serpyter spluttered.
“I fucked almost every woman I met.” Gojn was aghast also. “I fucked a scientist in the examination room of the transport nexus, before I’d even formally arrived in Takanli. It rocked her world.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with...”
“Then I fucked two more science girls, at the same time, in a hotel suite in which I was supposed to be resting after my journey.”
“Clearly, you’re a very attractive man,” began Gojn.
“After that I fucked a really amazing, staggeringly pretty woman named Falik while we waited for some test results. It changed her life.” It felt liberating to utter such smut in front of these high-minded men. Paul wasn’t unaware that they were naked, though what could be wrong with talking about sex, when they were happily sitting there, au naturelle?
“Do you intend to recount your complete sexual history, or is there a point to this bravura performance?” asked Serpyter, less angry than simply confused.
“Oh, boy, is there a point. The point is the whole point of living. The whole reason we are born, live and die. The Answer.”
“And that is?” Gojn smirked. “Please, don’t hold back. Educate us.”
He looked Gojn straight in the eye, then Serpyter. “Happiness.”
“I’ll drink to that!” It was a female voice from behind him. Turning swiftly in surprise, Paul saw the tall, elegant form of Eliria walking along the beach. “I’ll drink to happiness. I’ll drink to fucking as well too, come to think of it.” She reached the three stunned, immobile men. “I’ll drink to feelings. What do you say?”
No-one said anything for a while. Then Serpyter stood and clasped her hands. “Dear lady, forgive our surprise, but you are several hours early.”
“Garlidan likes surprises,” was all she said on the matter. “I hope you do too, Paul. It’s been too long.”
Within moments, the stunned Welshman was relieved that he was clothed, unlike the others, lest his sudden, bursting erection offend the company. “Too long,” he managed. “How have you been?” Good God, Lockman, how fucking lame can you get? It sounds like you’re greeting an old college buddy you bumped into at the gym. Get it together.
“Have these two rogues been treating you with the respect and admiration you deserve?” she wanted to know, seating herself with her back to the ocean, facing the others. “They haven’t been pulling any of Garlidan’s tricks?”
“Tricks?!” Gojn asked, pained at the suggestion.
“Yes, oh man of great mind but no clothes. Tricks like, oh I don’t know, cobbling together a planet out of nothing, then furnishing it with an impressively lavish ecosystem of your own design. That kind of thing.”
Serpyter demanded, “How can such mastery of the elements be conceived of merely as an illusion? We have expanded the...”
“Oh spare me the speech, Serpyter. I come straight from the horny old goat himself, and let me tell you, his bullshit could fertilize a whole planet full of meadows. He’s a rebel,” she counted on her fingers, “a charlatan, a thief, a self-interested interlocutor, a conniving rascal, a sexual time bomb and... did I mention, a thief?” She motioned over her shoulder to where the Phoenix stood on the level grassland above the beach. Paul was absolutely certain that no such area had been there, the day before. “Not exactly bought and paid for, was it?”
Gojn and Serpyter, perhaps unwilling to debate with a demi-goddess blunderbuss while stark naked, called for clothes and hurriedly dressed. “Garlidan is a dear friend, and a man of true vision.”
“No doubting that,” Eliria agreed. “Indeed, it is through the rapier-sharp application of that vision that I am here today. Although Hal was kind enough to give me a ride to the surface,” Eliria explained, “my journey from Serona was in a rather less unconventional transport.” She motioned to the sky, where a small, dark dot was passing across the face of their sun. “Garlidan has the vision to conjure a spacecraft from a moonlet, all while interrupting my serene meditation retreat with his usual self-serving bluster.”
“You may be the first visitor we’ve had whose ship was also a giant rock,” Gojn quipped. “I trust the journey was comfortable?”
“How comfortable do you think I was in hypersleep for a few decades, Gojn? I knew nothing until woken a few hours ago, since when I’ve been eating and drinking like a village of the starved.” Serpyter motioned almost imperceptibly to the servant and he reappeared, moments later, with a tray of food. “I’m here for a single purpose, after which I intend to return to Serona and stay there for a very long time.”
Paul, who had observed in mystified silence thus far, asked, “For what purpose, Eliria? I’m so surprised to see you, particularly as our hosts didn’t deem your visit important enough to inform me,” he said with a wink. “I’m intensely curious as to why you’re here. And where is Serona?”
“Oh you’d love it. Not a lot of nightlife, but plenty of latitude for... reflection,” she said after a meaningful pause. “As to why I’m here, that’s for us to discuss as you leave. I’m in a position, like no-one else in the universe, to help you.”
They spent the morning in keen debate, as Paul had predicted. He kept to the periphery, liaising with Hal and receiving reassuring u
pdates as to the wellbeing of Haley and Kiri. “They’re going to love it here,” the machine said. “Serpyter has great plans for them both.”
“Nothing weird, right?” Paul wanted to confirm.
“Not even slightly. And if they ever wanted to leave, we would arrange it. They’d be free to travel wherever they wanted to go.”
“Even to Earth?” Paul asked.
“Absolutely.”
The debate was fierce, as ever, but Eliria gave as good as she got. Serpyter and Gojn resolutely defended the use of genetic manipulation while Eliria steadfastly denounced such work as a path only to, as she put it, “Cheap, existential shortcuts”. Both sides bristled, both sides harangued, and neither would back down. It wasn’t until three hours of nuanced argument had already flowed by that Paul said anything. But what he said would change the course of events in a way which, ultimately, would make him the most influential force in the galaxy.
“Look at me,” he requested. “I’m a typical Earth man. Not too tall, not too smart, not in the top percentile of any measurement.” Except possibly miles traveled and number of aliens seduced. “I’ve had some physical enhancements done, mostly without entirely realizing they were happening and certainly without knowing their ramifications. But none of these changes required any kind of tweak to my DNA. I’m carrying around the same flaws and promise and diseases and potential that I was born with. Right?”
All three nodded. “And we love you just the way you are,” Eliria said.
“Precisely. I don’t lack anything. My genes aren’t perfect, but that’s the point,” he gestured firmly. “Each of us has to struggle with an unhelpful set of predispositions, or a physical disability, or a propensity for mental illness. That’s our lot in life, our path to follow. It’s highly individual, as unique as our fingerprints. I wouldn’t want anyone else’s, and I wouldn’t wish mine on anyone else. My faults make me who I am. And I happen to think I’m pretty cool.”
The message sank in for a moment. Then Gojn said, “But can you extrude platinum from your skin pores?”
“No, and I wouldn’t want to.”
“Or cook yourself for your master when he sings the proper tune?” Serpyter asked pointedly.
“Seems like a lazy way to cook, if you ask me.”
“Or live forever, or cure your own diseases, or...”
Paul waved them to silence. “I don’t want to live forever. I’m going to be killed by something one day, and that’s my destiny. Nothing can change that. I’ve accepted it.”
A new voice rose up. “Then you’ve accepted permanent ownership of a fundamental weakness.” It was Hal, speaking loud and clear over Paul’s comm-link. “You’ve abrogated your responsibility as member of the human family. It’s a pointless surrender which damages the community of the living.”
“Then let it be seen as such,” Paul barked, “and I’ll be judged for it.” His blood was up. Paul knew this was the moment he had to hammer the message home. He was relentless. “Dying makes way for others. It sweeps away the old to accommodate the new. You wouldn’t know the first thing about mortality, Hal.”
“I wouldn’t? Am I not finite, like you?”
“Finite?“ he almost screamed. “You’d been waiting around for six billion years by the time I arrived through the Vortex in Earth orbit. One day you might finally break, or send yourself insane, but you can’t begin to call yourself mortal!”
“I think I understand death. I see it as a coward’s way out.” Paul was brought back to the slanging match he and Hal had endured over whether Anne’s husband and son should be reanimated on Triton. “We exist to contribute, to work, to learn.”
“I’ll decide why I exist!” Paul yelled. “I’m a sentient being. I’m aware of my own consciousness, aware of my own mortality, and am prepared one day to give up – yes, give up if you must call it that – and die. But I’ll live, and die, in my own way, not according to some high-handed insistence from a machine, or a God, or anyone else.”
A long silence descended on the beach. Waves lapped and bat-like birds circled, fishing in the shallows. It was Eliria who spoke, as was only right. Her argument – theirs – had prevailed, at least for this round. “Paul will never secrete platinum,” she explained quietly, “because his environment does not require it. It is through interaction, over millennia, with our natural surroundings that we are defined and shaped. We must not skip the work of centuries. We must be patient.”
With that, she led Paul away from the marquee, where Gojn and Serpyter remained in silence, and up the beach to the landing site. Phoenix stood, incredibly beautiful under a bright, midday sun and an azure blue sky. The ramp opened.
“I suspect you know where I’m going, even if I don’t,” Paul speculated as they boarded the Phoenix together. “You guys sure know how to mess with a man’s head.”
Eliria smiled and embraced him. “You don’t look too messed up to me.” They kissed for a long, lingering moment. “It’s a shame I can’t come all the way with you.”
“I’ll miss having passengers along for the ride.” The image of the girls dropping, laughing, into the surf was a reminder of those responsibilities. He motioned Eliria into the co-pilot’s seat and made sure she was properly strapped in.
“Oh, they’ll be in the safest possible hands,” she told him.
Paul made to protest. “I made a promise to their mother. I told her I’d take them to the Earth with me.”
But a slender index finger reached his mouth. “Please, don’t worry about them. You’ve done more than enough already, and others will now ensure their safety. Their path lies elsewhere now. Trust me.”
Paul struggled with this, but Eliria was firm. “Hal, are you in touch with the Rubicon?”
“Yes, Miss Eliria. It’s good to see you again. Ready for lift-off.”
Paul hurriedly buckled in as he heard the ship’s engines warming up. “What does he mean, again?” he asked, flabbergasted. Was there no end to this machine’s connivances?
The door closed, without his command, and Phoenix surged vertically into the sky, leaving behind the white sand and the gleaming beach, then the dense greens and browns of the upland forests. Paul pictured the two strange philosophers on their perfect, sunlit beach, enjoying their own superiority, the artificial zoo they’d created, and their impossible wave-forms. “So long, fellas. And think about what I said, will you?”
Once in orbit, enjoying the view of the giant continent-sized islands, Eliria let Paul feel a woman’s hands on him for the first time in… He’d lost track. By some estimates, it had been centuries. It certainly felt that way to him. “We have a little time,” Eliria told him as Phoenix glided toward its rendezvous with Eliria’s ship, the Rubicon. “I only wish it could be longer.”
The ship spun to provide 0.6G, allowing them to be together on the floor of the cabin. They were quickly naked, their clothes spinning away in graceful arcs. He found her so readily open for him, and already so very wet, that delay was unthinkable. Pressing quickly, deliberately inside her, Paul reached under to cup and fondle her bottom as they began a mutually delicious rhythm. She whispered to him, encouraged him deeper. “Don’t hold back,” he heard her say, and the words themselves were almost enough, but then she massaged him with her inner muscles, stroking his cock in a sudden redoubling of his pleasure, and he cried out as it happened.
He came as if he hadn’t in months, a huge wave, welcomed by Eliria with more of her delicious whispers.
“Good boy,” she said, stroking his back. He slipped out of her, but she was nimble and before even seconds had passed, her mouth was on him. “I love,” she said between licks, “your taste.” Then a deep, encouraging suck. She was impatient for a new hardness. “And I love my taste, on you.”
They kissed, and the cocktail of aromas and tastes from her tongue was enough to bring him to full stand. She straddled him and took his cock into her soaking pussy, riding him until she reached her own magnificent peak, shrieking
her joy as he found her more sensitive, most intimate secrets. She span around, light and easy in the low-G, and devoured him again while allowing him to tongue her wetness. Hands active on his shaft, mouth loving his tip, she knew that he would soon be close, and so span around once more to accept him back into her womanhood. And it was there that he exploded, hot and wet, giving her uncountable spurts of his sticky seed.
“Docking will take place in ten minutes,” Hal announced discretely.
Eight of them were spent making love, each more delirious than the last. “Again,” Eliria demanded, a little breathless and with the signs of love already smearing her thighs. She knelt up and presented her shaved mound to him, inviting him to kiss, but not for too long, for it was his cock she most desired. Grasping her hips, he mounted her and impaled her, again and again, until those gifted muscles pulled the pleasure from him and he filled her with sperm, yet again, in a hot wave.
And then they relaxed, and she merely fondled him with teasing hands, enjoying every minute of this precious window, stroking a final hardness from him and taking him deeply into her mouth. As the two ships began their own, more mechanical intimacy, he was above her again, and then inside her again, and filling her with love and cum as they kissed and laughed.
Behind them, as they gasped and giggled together, the airlock fizzed open. “The Rubicon is ready for you, Lady Eliria,” Hal said. “I do hope you have a safe trip back to Serona.”
“Thank you, Hal.” She gathered her clothes and, loathing this necessary parting, quickly kissed Paul, even as he made to protest. “Fly straight and true, my dearest. Much depends on your journey.” And then she was gone down the access tunnel, and into her own ship. The airlock closed, again without command, and Paul felt the ship shudder slightly as it disengaged from the moonlet’s docking system. Moments later, they were alone in orbit around Araj Kitel.
He was thunderstruck, exhausted, smeared in various ways.
And intensely happy.
***
Chapter 21: The Orion Lounge
Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels) Page 27
