When her fingertips, spit-moistened and gentle, slid inside me, my mind went as it always did to Aphrodite Terra. I’d never been there, of course, not personally. But the reconfigurative subdivision of the biotechnological wing of the great Venusian pharma-state ran every cyberdoc and geneshack corewards of Neptune.
I closed my eyes tight and tried to justbe. And in some ways that was easy because with an instinct that made me feel weirdly, uncomfortably seen, Q was sending ripples of sensation through me that even Aphrodite Pharma State couldn’t distract me from.
“Good?”she asked.
And this time I just nodded.
“More?”
I nodded again.
Getting to where I was, to the body I was in, had cost me. Like, literally cost. I’d run up debts that I’d never be free of to a pharmaceutical conglomerate that would track me down and render me into seed-base if I missed a repayment. It was moments like these that made it worth it, that made me feel…mine.
Still, I didn’t dare reach out to Q to touch her. Because I was selfish and afraid and given over to a moment I didn’t want to end. Instead, I made myself an altar for her, murmuredyesandpleaseandyesagain to her every touch.
In the light of her markings—which I was beginning to think shifted with her mood and which were fading now through colors I’d never seen them take on before—I could see Q’s deep, unending eyes focused on me. And for some cold, inexplicable reason I felt more naked than I ever had in my life as she touched me, then watched for my reaction, then touched me again just a little differently—harder or softer or justslightlyto the left. I wasn’t sure if I felt cared for or studied, adored or dissected, and I wasn’t sure which I wanted to feel.
All the while her lips stayed curled into a little half smile, and I was seized by a barbed desire to please her. Worse, that desire was tinged with the knowledge that little would please her more than being myself, and that was something I hated to do. But I tried to be a kind of honest, to let myself cry if I had to and to only beg if I really meant it.
And I did, in the end, really mean it. Because she had an instinct for withholding that was the best kind of agony, and though we shared few common words there are other languages.
I let her dance her will across me as I lay ever more breathless and ever more desperate and when I did, at last, reach out for her she took me by the wrist, kissed my fingertips exactly once, then guided my hand back to my side. Which left me with a faint sense that I’d lost, and that I wouldn’t mind losing again.
And all the while, I listened to her whispering in a language I didn’t understand and, when I came, I bit my tongue so hard that I tasted blood.
Afterwards, I lay in her arms feeling restless and more unsatisfied than I had any right to be. I was still naked, she still fully clothed, and I shrank into her feeling a sudden, inexplicable urge to break. To curl up into a ball and start weeping.
“Thank you,” I told her, my voice on the edge of cracking. “AndI’m— Thankyou.”
She made a quiet shushing noise and kissed the back of my neck. “Dormi.”
A hot wad of undifferentiated emotion was gathering in my stomach, a crucible mix of guilt and gratitude all smelted together with a shame I should have put aside long ago.
When I was barely more than a child, I had asked a preacher why so few people seemed to be happy. He’d smiled with white, perfect, extremely expensive teeth and told me that only one answer made sense: that very few people deserved to be.
Of all the lessons I’d been taught by the faith, that was the one I’d found it hardest to stop believing.
CHAPTER
NINEGetting Laid
Q woke before me next morning bright, early, and upbeat. While I lay wrapped in the blanket trying to work out if the previous night had changed anything.
Normally it wouldn’t, because normally I wouldn’t have seen her again. She’d have been moving on, or I’d have been moving on, or at the very least we’d have had a conversation where we made it clear that no, this was just a sex thing, that no, there’d be no repeat performances, and that yes, we were both cool with that.
With Q, though, we barely shared a language, and if we stuck to our deal we’d be living shipboard together for three years. She didn’t seem the clingy sort, but though I hated to admit it, she wasn’t the one I was worried about. I hesitate to use the phrasecatching feelingsbecause even though I once worked gutting dust-spiders at a factory in Huygens Crater I still have some dignity. Still, I can sometimes get… invested in people. Especially people who seem to have things sorted out in ways I don’t or to live in ways I can’t.
Q finished her devotions to the little glass idol, tucked it into her bag, stood, and smiled at me. “Ship,” she said. “Ibimus?”
I nodded. “Ibimus,” I replied. I had no idea what it meant but it felt positive.
As I guided Q through the streets of Cthonius Linea to thePequod’s docking tower, we talked casually of everything except for the fact that we’d fucked. I told her instead about the time I’d jumped ship on a remote asteroid and got swept up in a feud between two mining colonies, and she told me what she could of life on Earth.
Here, more than ever, words were against us. She told me ofcaelum, which I thought meantsky, but the way she spoke about it was strange, as though it was something you could just see, always, without having to walk out of an airlock or into a viewing dome.SilvaI could not even begin to translate.
“Silva,” she tried again. “Arbores.”
I shook my head.
