Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (8 page)

When it was over he drifted off into sleep without a word. She lay beside him, studying the tight mouth and hollow cheeks. She leaned over and kissed the fading red circle of scar tissue on his muscular right arm. Physical union had changed everything. She had realized that it would—even counted on it. Now she had to tell him.

She patted his shoulder and his chest, not roughly but hard enough to bring him back to wakefulness. When his eyes opened she waited patiently until at last he turned to look at her.

“That was wonderful.” But he did not look happy.

“Yes.”

“But not for you.”

“That was my fault.” There was no point in her putting it off. “I couldn’t get into the right mood, because of what I kept thinking.”

“About the Sigil?”

“
No.
Damn the Sigil.” The residual effect of the drugs made her want to giggle when there was nothing funny. “I kept thinking about you, and about Valmar. And my condition.”

It was as bad as she had feared. He was staring at her in mystification. She would have to spell out everything for him.

“You knew I was throwing up on the ship coming here. And you knew I was sick when I got here. Wasn’t it obvious to you that I was pregnant? Pregnant with Valmar’s child.”

He gazed at her with no expression that she could read. “He forced himself on you, made you do whatever he wanted?”

So easy, to agree to that lie.
Derli sighed. “No. I was quite willing. I can say now that I wish I hadn’t done it, but I did.”

He sat up and laid his hand gently on her bare belly. “Are you telling me that you are pregnant now? That there’s a baby in here?”

“Yes. I’m at nearly two and a half months. I hope the morning sickness is all finished.”

“Good.”

He turned toward her, and she saw the last thing that she had expected. He was physically aroused.

All the tension in her body melted away. She lay back and closed her eyes. “The second time will be much better, Arrin, I promise you—for both of us.”

* * *

The first lovemaking with Derli had been agony for Gilden of an unusual and terrible kind. He liked her, more than he had ever liked any woman; but when she moved above him and took control of his body she became all the Harpies of childhood, playing with him, mocking him, tormenting him, using him for their own ends without any regard for his needs or wants.

His body had brought him rapidly to a climax, divorced from his anguish, and he had pretended to a satisfaction he did not feel. As he drifted toward sleep he was convinced that this was the only form of physical sexual experience he could ever know.

But then Derli had spoken of her pregnancy. That both soothed and excited him. His mind pictured her again with Valmar; and he had an answer.

He distanced himself mentally from their new union, even as he moved on top of her and entered her waiting body. Once again he became the voyeur, the involved but remote participant. The difference was that he functioned now as both observer and player, embarked on a dizzying self-referential exercise that sent him spinning down an endless regression of sexual congress. He was watcher and actor. He knew the right moves, he had seen them a thousand times over. And when his climax arrived, moments after hers, his dual selves coalesced with a force as painful as torture. His shudders were both physical and mental; this time they signaled a pleasure almost too much to bear.

It was Derli who drifted off to sleep, while Gilden lay wide awake and tried to understand what had just happened. In the dim overhead lights he studied her body. She lay flat, legs still spread wide. She was breathing slowly and her mouth was slightly open. She would probably not wake until morning.

It occurred to him that he might never have a better opportunity. He also realized that his workload had just increased again.

He had to create yet another voyeur, of unmatched sensitivity and operating lifetime.

She did not move as he leaned over to plant a delicate moth’s kiss on her navel, dressed in silence, and left the bedroom.

* * *

Derli had said what information she needed. She had not suggested any way to obtain it. As soon as Valmar Krieg returned from Montmorin, Gilden moved his base of operations into the mobile experiment station next to the Sigil ship and went into round-the-clock surveillance.

He was trying to be cautious, but he suspected that he was pushing the limit. It would require minimal effort by one of the Sigil to learn that their privacy had been violated and the computer system subverted.

He began to confine his intrusion into the ship to microscopic time slices, just enough for a spot check of events. It was during one of these flashes, occurring close to the middle of the Lucidar night, that the crucial event began.

Gilden came fully awake. The ship’s monitors were showing him the Sigil sleeping area. He had caught a glimpse of the big one crouched on the floor. Above it hovered the small one, clinging on to its partner’s body with all its limbs.

If there was ever a time to take risks, this was it. Gilden set the ship’s computer to provide and export to him continuous observations.

The massive body of the lower Sigil was wriggling uneasily as though she was not satisfied with her position. The smaller one clung on resolutely. A long, tapered member was emerging slowly from the rounded boss on the front lower part of its body. The new organ was pale yellow, glistening, and slightly corrugated along its upper side, as though another ribbed tube ran along it. After a preliminary probing the member’s pointed tip stabbed into an invisible entry point in the rounded bulk of the other’s lower back. The restless movement of the female ceased at once. The Sigil pair became motionless except for a steady pulsing within the thin pipe that coupled them. Waves of contraction passed along it, running in ripples from male to female.

The act went on for nearly forty minutes, until a shudder racked the whole body of the upper Sigil. As soon as the long spasm was over the creature began to withdraw and loosen its hold. The lower partner did not react to the decoupling. Its splayed body remained immobile, apparently asleep on the floor of the chamber.

Gilden had been lost in the scene that came to him through the monitors. He was dismayed when he finally thought to glance at the time. He had obtained exactly what Derli had asked for—but at a price. It was hard to believe that an intrusion of such duration and intensity would not raise alarms within the ship’s security systems. Now that he checked he saw that for the past fifteen minutes there had been a flurry of activity on the ship’s computer. Introspection routines that he had never before encountered were coming into operation.

An unfamiliar signal sounded through the ship’s interior. The smaller Sigil, all its lethargy gone, came scuttling across to inspect the contoured control bank.

Gilden cut off interaction with the ship, made extra copies of the new records, and hurried with them toward Derli’s apartment. Even though it was the middle of the night she would want to see what he had found.

He entered her bedroom reluctantly, afraid that he would find Valmar Krieg with her. But she was sleeping alone, covered to the neck by a thin sheet. When he woke her she sat up, sighed, and put her arms around him.

“No.” Gilden resisted as she tried to draw him down beside her. “It’s not that. Please.”

She released him at once and pulled the sheet up to cover her body. “You’ve been avoiding me. Hiding from me.”

“Not true. I’ve been working, all the time—to get you this.” Gilden held out a copy of the new data record.

“What is it?” She dropped the sheet and reached out for the little box, ignoring, as Gilden could not, the bare shoulders and breasts that were revealed.

“The Sigil. Mating. The images show everything, with more body detail than anything I’ve given you earlier.”

“Ooh! At last.” She cupped her hands around the data block and held it to her chest. “Arrin, I must see this. Right now.”

She scrambled out of bed and into shirt and shorts. Gilden fancied that he could see a slight additional swell in her belly.

He looked away. “I hope this gives you what you need. I went much too far to get it. I think the Sigil realize that we have been observing inside their ship.”

Derli was hardly listening. Although she reached out to give him a token squeeze as she passed by, her attention was on the data block. She went to the waiting computer and inserted the new record. Gilden watched over her shoulder until the first frames of data appeared, showing the smaller Sigil clinging to the back of its partner. Then he went in search of Valmar Krieg.

He found the red-bearded guardian where he was supposed to be, in his assigned living quarters and bedroom. Krieg was not alone. Asleep at his side lay a huge Lucidar woman, blond, big-bosomed, and thick-limbed. Gilden thought at once of the Sigil, with its far larger partner.

“This had better be important.” Either Krieg had been awake or he slept so lightly that he awoke at Gilden’s first touch. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night.”

“I have new information about the Sigil. I passed a copy on to Derli Margrave.”

“So what?” Valmar Krieg was sitting up while the woman at his side snored on. “Derli doesn’t need me to help her analyze it. I can find out what it tells tomorrow.”

“I suspect I went beyond prudence in obtaining the new information. The Sigil are aware that I have tapped their ship’s monitors.”

“That’s another matter—and bad news for you if it’s true.” Krieg swung out of bed and moved toward the door, ignoring the sleeping woman. “You were supposed to operate
invisibly
, for God’s sake. Not blunder around and announce your presence.”

He went to the upper floor and stared out of the window. The Sigil ship was visible, sitting at the center of a permanent circle of lights.

Krieg grunted. “All quiet so far.” But even as he spoke the ship began to lift, drifting upward from the smooth spaceport surface. As it rose higher its six support legs retracted into the pearly white body. A few moments later the personal monitor at Krieg’s belt called for attention.

“Emergency!” It was Bravtz’ig, by the sound of his gravel voice still three-quarters asleep. “You there, Krieg? We just received a Sigil departure flight alert. Their ship is moving out.”

“This is Krieg. I’m watching it happen. What can we do about it?”

“Not a damn thing—unless you want to tell me to try and stop it.”

“How would you do that?”

“Good question. Destroy the ship, that’s the only way I know. And I can tell you now, our space command would refuse to do that even if you ordered it.”

“So I won’t waste time trying. Can you follow their path?”

“Until they go to subspace. Then we’ve lost them. You know that as well as I do.” Bravtz’ig’s face appeared on the tiny screen, squinting and suspicious. “Did you
cause
this, Krieg, you and your cock-up Earth friends?”

“How could we? Follow their ship as far as you can. If we lose it we’re all in trouble.”

“You’re in trouble anyway. Get off the line, Krieg, so I can talk to someone useful.”

Bravtz’ig vanished. A moment later the unit went dead. Krieg turned to Gilden.

“I suggested we didn’t cause this. But you
did
cause this, didn’t you? You stupid asshole. It was the same on Earth. Your damned voyeur urges, you couldn’t let go watching until it was too late. Now I have to go back and tell the Mentor that instead of learning more about the Sigil it was our party that drove them away from Lucidar. Come on.” Krieg grabbed Gilden roughly by the arm and dragged him back down the stairs.

“Where are we going?”

“To collect Derli. With the Sigil gone our value on Lucidar is less than zero. We have to get out before this place blows up. Better be ready for pain, Gilden. The two of you will spend the next fifty years in purgatory.”

“Derli had nothing to do with this.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You were screwing her, or more likely she was screwing you. Don’t bother to deny it. She pushed you to get the data she wanted. Well, I hope she thinks it was worth it when she finds out what’s coming to her.”

“You can’t hurt her.” They were at the entrance to Derli’s apartment. “She’s pregnant—with your baby.”

“I’ve got a hundred kids.” Krieg did not even slow down. “All my women have ’em, I make sure of that. Wise up, Gilden, that’s what they’re for. One kid more or less means nothing.”

The door was unlocked. Derli was still at the display. She turned when they entered but she hardly seemed to see them. The screen showed an enlarged view of the glistening yellow organ that coupled the small Sigil to its great partner.

“Arrin! Did you realize what you were seeing when you made this recording? We had it wrong, everything wrong.”

“That doesn’t matter now.” Krieg released his hold on Gilden and went over to Derli Margrave. He switched off the computer and left a static display. “You can stop screwing around with all that. You and Gilden fucked up big-time. The Sigil left, and now we’re leaving. We’re going to Earth.”

Still it seemed as though Derli was not listening. The screen held her attention. Gilden came to stand between her and Krieg.

“She doesn’t want to go back to Earth, can’t you see that? She loves it here on Lucidar.”

“She’s going. So are you, dead or alive. Get out of my way.”

“What happened on the Sigil ship was my fault.” Gilden moved to put his arms around Derli. “You don’t have to take her. Just take me.”

“I’ll do whatever I like. I’m taking both of you.” Krieg was reaching for his belt. “Hands off her.”

Derli at last noticed what Krieg was doing. She cried out in horror and tried to pull free of Gilden’s hold. “Do what he says, Arrin—whatever he says.”

“Take her advice, Gilden.” Krieg’s fingers were poised above his belt. “Do what I tell you. Last warning. Move!”

“I won’t.” Gilden tightened his embrace, holding Derli to him. “Try and make me. But I wouldn’t if I were you.”

“You bloody fool.” Krieg’s face was red with fury. “I’ve warned you, three times. You can’t say you didn’t ask for it.”