Sequela (17 page)

'OK – enough,' Farrell said. 'I want it.'

There was a moment of silence. Kester could see the models looking at one another.

'OK,' Gerald said, bringing the lights up. 'Kester?'

'Kester, I think you should have it too,' Alexis said, 'or you, Gerald. One of you. I want to show this at the next strategy meeting.'

'What good is a designer who won't wear his own clothes?' asked Gerald, smiling at Kester. 'I'd love to try it, but I really don't want to go to the strategy meeting.'

Kester was surprised by his forthrightness.

'Gerald has been burned by previous board level experience,' Alexis said. 'But don't worry. He's a coward. They don't bite.'

'They bite,' Gerald said in a stage whisper.

'Kester will be joining us at the next strategy meeting regardless,' Alexis said. 'What does the next stage of the trials involve?' she asked Gerald.

'Vector and virulence testing,' Kester replied before Gerald could, 'human-to-human transference and the rate of spread.'

'Perfect,' she said, stepping forwards with intent. 'We can get started.'

'Before I go,' Gerald said, turning his attention to the models, 'I need you all to record your non-disclosure statements before you go on shore leave. You'll be wiped at the weekend and you can go out as soon as the symptoms have cleared, but you won't be going anywhere if you haven't made your statements.' He turned back to Alexis. 'That's all.'

'Some privacy please, Gerald?' she said.

In a moment, the security cameras were retreating behind their shutters. Gerald left, a wry smile on his face, hitting the lights behind him.

'Long time no see, Rio.' Alexis spoke into the darkness.

Kester could hear the rustle of her clothing falling to the floor.

'You don't come to the Stud Farm any more,' said one of the male subjects.

Kester barely had time to be disgusted. Hera's mouth was on his, her lymph nodes glowing at the corners of his vision. Her hands were on his chest, unbuttoning his labcoat – no, they were at his belt – no, those were someone else's. When he escaped her kiss, there were three glowing bodies around him. Across the room, he could see a writhing mass of glowing nodes suspended in the air where the couch must be. Suddenly there was a hot mouth around his cock.

'Get off!' Hera exclaimed.

There was a mumble and then the velvet-voiced youth replied.

'You insult the man, then you expect him to let you serve him?'

The caressing continued.

Shocked, Kester tensed, but the overwhelming feeling of six hands and three mouths all at his service, of the surreal dark, dispelled any reservations. He was up in the air, suspended. They carried him to the couch, weightless, and laid him down like a treasure chest. He saw an insistent head pushing its way towards him. Hera was muscling past the others to climb on top of him. His eyes flicked over to the other couch. He couldn't see Alexis, except where the glow of a group of nodes lit her hip-bone, then her arched neck for a moment.

'Doctor Lowe.' Kester heard Alexis' voice through the muffle of kissing noise.

'Yes.' Kester pushed himself up on to his elbows, eliciting a shriek from Hera as he unsettled her. She righted herself and pulled her knees in close to his sides.

'Careful,' Hera growled in his ear, 'or I'll let Leon have his way. He may talk smooth, but he's rough.' She gave a little bark.

There was a soft growl and a giggle from the youth. The third mouth, belonging to another woman, though Kester had no idea which one, continued wordlessly to work its way down his right leg. Kester groaned as she bit the back of his ankle gently.

'You will be attending the next strategy meeting,' Alexis said.

'This is really –' Kester dodged Hera's mouth as she tried to get in the way of the conversation and her toothed kiss bumped off his jaw. 'Really not the time to be talking about this.'

'This is exactly the time.'

Distracted, Kester fell into self-focus, forgetting to wonder whose hands were whose, exactly what they were doing, only feeling heat, buzzing pleasure. He let his hands wander. He felt the four of them knot like a mural, a Celtic fertility charm, each beginning and ending inside another, snakes swallowing one another's tails. The ritual sensation lifted him.

'What's the infection rate like?' Alexis' voice invaded Kester's fantasy, snapping everything back into context.

'Should be 60, 70 per cent, higher for anal,' he said, this time his lips dodging an insistent nipple, 'if the models are right.'

'Mmm?' a voice came to attention.

'Not you,' Kester said, giggling. 'The statistical models.'

'You –' he heard Alexis say, 'let's up my chances.'

Kester couldn't help but look over. They were standing now and the girl was sitting on the sofa, watching, it seemed, from the angle of her head. Face to face, side on, the patterns of glowing nodes from the standing bodies were almost symmetrical. Alexis' form was lost in the middle, a dark no-man's land, every man's land. Kester lay watching. He imagined himself into one of their skins as Hera moved on top of him. He put out his hands and guided her hips so that she moved in time with the figures across the room.

When it was all over and the lights came up, everything looked hyper-real. The models were pottering about as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Perhaps it hadn't.

'How long?' Alexis asked, as she pulled her culottes up and knotted them beneath her navel.

'48 hours until full potency,' Kester said.

'Promise me you won't upload.' It was more of an order than a request.

'What is the "Stud Farm"?' Kester asked under his breath, straightening the pens in his labcoat pocket.

'Oh.' Alexis laughed. 'It's an old exchange venue down near Rimfords. We used to go there when I first joined the division. Rio was one of the only boys worth going for, but mine wasn't the only eye he caught. He's been modelling for five years now. Hasn't changed a bit.'

'Really.' Kester tried to sound disinterested, though Rio was back at a terminal, engrossed. He looked up at Alexis. 'Let's get into my office. I want to do some early indicator tests on you.'

Alexis smirked and then, seeing that his face was straight, swung on her jacket.

'OK,' she said, 'but I have a meeting at three and I want to shower.'

-o-

'That was an excuse about the Strategy meeting, right?' Kester asked once the doors to his suite were closed. 'We can take the subjects in.'

Alexis wandered across the room to the leather couch by the window and flung herself down, letting her legs swing up casually beside her. Her flushed cheeks made her look younger.

'I haven't decided yet.'

Kester was still wary of Alexis. She flicked like a machine between cold businessperson, shamelessly oversexed woman and playful child. He still had no idea who else she carried on like this with and, so far, he had been too afraid to ask. She might see it as him being too forward and back off. She might prefer that her sex toys play it cool. He remembered how after his interview he had been concerned about her, how he had treated her like a fragile goddess until the moment he left. But it seemed though she had everyone, she needed no-one. Even though it wasn't just sex any more – they talked, they went to the PlayPen – every encounter was at her instigation.

'Do you really have a meeting at three?' Kester asked.

'No,' Alexis replied after a few moments staring out of the window.

Kester walked to his fridge and opened the door.

'And later?' He poked around the shelves, peered about a bit. 'What are you doing later?'

'Working.'

'Is that all?' Kester asked, to no reply. 'All night?'

Alexis stayed still on the couch in her relaxed posture but she looked curiously stiff, like a posed mannequin. She didn't reply.

Jealousy, Kester thought. Should he have felt jealousy? Why did she insist on getting the virus from the models like that – to please him? To please herself? To annoy him? Had he said something stupid the last time he saw her? He had been drunk, he remembered, and had been surprised to hear her in the shower when he woke on the couch the next morning. He needed to grow some balls.

'Go back to your office, then come back up by the outside entrance at seven. Don't have any dinner,' Kester said.

He held his breath, staring into the fridge again, trying to stand in a relaxed way. Just how long could he stare into the fridge without becoming ridiculous? Soon his trousers would start to hoop around his waist, his nose would grow red, his shoes would become bulbous, and fat make-up tears would rise to the skin on his face.

'We'll see,' Alexis said.

-o-

Kester's apartment was bright, like his office, with floor to ceiling windows all down one side. Though the next building was only a few feet away, the angled mirrors that sat at the foot of the windows stole plenty light and sent it his way. The top third of the wall which faced onto his personal office could be demisted to let light through from the front of the building.

He'd had the room decked out to make it feel as little like the office as possible. The designers had managed to find him an old oak carved four-poster, which sat in the middle of one wall, draped ostentatiously in silk blankets and velvet throws. It was a nod to the creative in him, he liked to think.

The bathroom he had left as it was, though he was considering extending it and adding a sunken bath the next time he was allowed budget to redecorate, or when he saved up enough money. The wet room was wonderful, but he liked to soak and think once in a while.

To balance out the decadence of the bedroom side of his suite, he'd had the other side made super-modern, with long low apple-green Bauhaus couches in a c-shape and a projector facing onto the window. When he misted it out it made the perfect screen. At the foot of the window was a long low integral unit comprising his connect box and his airtricity transmitter.

He had been confident it was all cool until now. Alexis had been in there a few times during work conversations, but the prospect of entertaining her there was rather different.

Kester frantically got everything ready for seven, calling the cleaners, arranging dinner with catering, getting the lighting right, arranging the programmes casually on his big screen, making a playlist. Of course she wouldn't come at seven, but he needed to be ready. He booked dinner at nine to give them time for whatever, for her being late.

At eight o'clock, she arrived. He was lying on the couch, music blaring into his ears, when she came in.

'Oh,' he said, as she slunk across the room towards him, 'you came.'

'I got hungry,' she said.

Kester looked her up and down. He wasn't going to be afraid of her tonight. He was going to show a bit of what she would call 'ambition'. She had changed into the same red catsuit she'd had on that night in the champagne bar.

'Had to make an appearance at a champagne reception for the Science Ambassador for China,' she said. 'We were there representing the big business end of science in the British Isles.'

Perhaps it was an excuse. Perhaps she too had been reminded of the champagne bar and that was why it was the first word to her lips. She hadn't mentioned any reception earlier.

'Fair enough,' Kester said, 'but I wouldn't have minded if you'd dressed up just for me. Can I get you a drink?'

He pushed himself up and reached over to the cooler bucket at the end of the couch. She didn't bother to answer, so he poured her a glass of champagne and brought it over.

'Who needs to give an answer when the question is champagne?' She smiled, taking the glass from him.

Kester laughed.

'I've ordered dinner for nine,' he said. 'You didn't eat, did you?'

'Just canapés,' Alexis said. 'For nine? I thought it was just going to be the two of us.'

She took a seat on the couch opposite, looking pleased with her deliberate misunderstanding.

Kester had pulled the curtains down on his four-poster to conceal it and make the place look less like a bedsit. However, it just made the thing more solid, more present, and it was constantly in the corner of his eye. Its presence swallowed up her joke.