GRYCHN MANAGED to keep the boys from asking questions until after dinner. By then there was no stopping them. They followed her into the parlor like two excited puppies. She made them sit down before she would answer their questions.
“Are we really going to get to go to space?” Craig asked.
“Yes. Tomorrow night.”
“Oh, boy!” Chris squeeled. “Where are we going to go?”
“Ceres.”
“In the asteroids?” Chris asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Where else is there a Ceres, dummy,” Craig said.
Chris ignored the taunt. “Why are we going there? What are we going to do?”
“We’ll see your father, for one thing.”
There was uncharacteristic silence from the boys. Finally Craig asked, “Do you think he’ll want to see us?”
“Of course he will.”
“Do you think he still loves us?” Chris asked.
“I’m sure he does. I’m sure he’s missed you very much.”
“Then why hasn’t he answered our letters?”
Grychn did not tell them that she had never posted their letters, but had thrown them away. She said instead, “He’s a busy man.”
“Why hasn’t he asked us to come before?”
She also did not tell them that Detrs had pleaded with her to send him the boys. “I’m sure he wants to see you.”
“How long are we going to stay?”
“We may not ever come back.”
The boys looked shocked. “What do you mean, never come back?”
Grychn looked away. “I’ve decided to move back to the Outer Moons. We have houses on every one. We can live wherever we want.”
“But why not come back to Earth?”
“War might break out anytime now. If it does, we might not be able to leave Earth then.”
“Is there a Lady Blue in space?” Chris asked.
“No, of course not.”
“Then we can’t go. Lady Blue will be coming for us any day now. We don’t want to miss her. Right, Craig?”
“That’s right. We have to be here for Lady Blue. We want to go to the center of the Earth with the other children. We want to see Alix again. We want to get away from grownups. We want to be able to sleep in peace.”
“Yeah, we don’t want to have to grow up. Who would want to grow up?”
Grychn felt like telling them the truth, that there was no never-never land in the center of the Earth, that the children Lady Blue collected were taken to hybertanks and turned into soldiers to be sent off to foreign garrisons to maintain Earth’s domination of the rest of the Solar System. She felt like telling them they would be stripped of their identities and given a standard persona with synthetic memories and artificial passions. They would not even remember their own names. She wanted to tell them that if Lady Blue came for them, they would end up dying in a cold and lonely frontier, without knowing who they really were and that their mother really loved them. Instead she said, “I want you to be able to grow up.”
“We don’t want to,” Craig said with a whine. “We want Lady Blue.”
“We want Lady Blue,” Chris chimed in.
They began chanting “We want Lady Blue,” over and over.
“Stop it!” Grychn shouted.
“The boys kept chanting. Their voices blended into a particularly annoying whine. “We want Lady Blue! We want Lady Blue! We want Lady Blue!”
“Shut up!” Grychn screamed.
The twins pranced around, holding hands, continuing their repetitious chant. “We want Lady Blue–We want Lady Blue–We want Lady Blue.”
The sound of their whining voices reverberated in Grychn’s mind. Her vision seemed to close in. “Shut up! Shut up!” she screamed.
Grychn chased them and grabbed Craig. She put her hands around his neck, squeezing his throat, shaking him, trying to get him to stop saying “Lady Blue.” Chris pummeled her back, trying to distract her. Craig scratched at her eyes, trying to break her grip. But they kept chanting. Grychn closed her eyes and squeezed harder.
Someone pulled Chris off her back. Firm hands removed her fingers from around Craig’s neck. “Have the boys been misbehaving, ma’am?”
Grychn opened her eyes. The nandroid held a boy under each arm. They kicked and squirmed but could not break its hold. They still chanted, “We want Lady Blue.”
“I’ll just take them up to their room, ma’am and put them to bed. I’ll stay with them and make sure they get to sleep. Everything will be fine in the morning.” The nandroid carried the boys out of the room.
Grychn slumped into a chair. She felt terrible. She was ashamed of herself for losing control. She could have killed Craig. No, she couldn’t have, she reminded herself. Nandroids were programmed to prevent pedicide. Before they had been so programmed, too many little Lords and Ladies had been lost. But she loved the boys. She did not want to hurt them. She wasn’t crazy like the rest of them.
Or was she?
She had to talk to someone.
Who? She did not know how to reach Damiel. She had no friend she felt close enough to trust. Saraltr. They had once been close. Saraltr would listen to her.
Grychn stumbled outside and climbed into the skimmer. She did not trust herself to drive, so she told the compilot Saraltr’s address and let the skimmer drive itself. She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
She opened them when the skimmer landed. She knew right away she had made a mistake: the pad was crowded with other skimmers. Saraltr was having another party. Grychn did not remember if she had been invited or not, not that it mattered. She had started feeling better on the ride over. Maybe a party would cheer her up even more. As long as she was here anyway, she may as well see what was going on.
She climbed out of the skimmer and went into the house.
As soon as a servbot came by she took two glasses of wine and a mnemone stick. She gulped down one glass of wine and sucked in a lungful of mnemone and began to feel even better. She circulated about the party, sipping wine, enjoying the mindless exchange of trivialties, indifferently looking for Saraltr.
She wandered past a room of dream-gamers.
The dream-game had not yet started; they were waiting for more players to arrive. Grychn went into the room and sat on the floor. Maybe she would play tonight. She looked around at the other players without speaking–it was considered impolite to converse prior to the game. She recognized some of their faces, but did not really know any of them. Dream-players formed their own fraternity and did not mingle much with nonplayers. They all had a certain gauntness to their faces and were lean enough to look malnourished. Not that bodily appearances meant anything to a dreamer. In the dream-game, only the mind mattered. Grychn tried to guess what kind of game might be played tonight–it would depend on the gestalt mood of all the dreamers. If she had known the players, she might have been able to tell. She was in the mood for a sex game. No real orgasm could compare with the duration and intensity of a dream-orgasm. In a dream-game, an orgasm was a combination of every orgasm you had ever had or imagined. Anything could happen in a dream-game. There was no sexual experience not possible. And it was completely casual–at the end of the game there were no feelings to get in the way.
Over the next half hour, players began to drift into the room and sit down. Finally there were twelve, the capacity of the dream-processor.
Each of them picked up a psihelmet and put it on.
Grychn waited for the others, watching their faces go blank and their bodies slump over as the helmet dripped neuropeptide into their bloodstreams. She held the psihelmet over her head, pausing before slipping it on.
She could not.
She dropped the helmet and ran from the room, letting the dream-game start without her. She was afraid to play. She knew she would not want to stop.
Grychn ran down a hall and out on a balcony to get some fresh air. It was the same balcony where she and Damiel had sat the other night. The pool was directly below. Naked guests frolicked and splashed in the water.
Grychn pulled off her gown and tossed it on the floor. She slipped off her shoes. She was naked, except for her jewelry. The night air felt cool on her skin. She rubbed her hands along her thighs, over her buttocks, and up to her breasts. Thinking about the dream-game aroused her. Her skin tingled with vasodilatation.
She climbed and stood on the balcony’s railing, weaving back and forth for a moment before she caught her balance. The people in the pool waved and shouted. She flexed her legs and dove into the pool, barely clearing the marble apron.
She hit the warm water cleanly and swam to the far edge under water, before breaking to the surface and treading water.
She felt fingers touch her buttocks and slide up her back. At the same time, someone’s head slid up her crotch, between her breasts, to break water in front of her nose. A bearded man grinned at her.
“Gordon,” she said, laughing, “I thought you were down-under.” “Down-under” meant the undersea colonies off the coast of Antarctica. Most of the inhabitants were nereids–humans hybridized into marine mammals–but there were a few true humans who lived and worked in underwater bubble houses.
“I was down-under until yesterday,” Gordon said, “when I decided I had to get away from the seals and back on dry land.” He laughed. “Now I’m already back in the water.”
Gordon was Lord Gordon Ronmartha-Dandarl. He was Grychn’s half-brother, having been gestated from one of Lady Ronmartha’s gametes. His paternal gamete was from the same lot as Lord George Dandarl, the interplanetary banker. Gordon was seven hundred years older than Grychn, and being half-siblings meant nothing more than that.
He kissed her, pulling her tightly against him. Her nipples pressed into his hard chest muscles. She kissed him back, slipping her tongue into his mouth. She felt his penis stiffen between her legs and she reached down and inserted it into her.
Gordon pulled his face away from hers, looking surprised. “You’re my sister,” he said. “We can’t do this sort of thing.”
Grychn laughed. “It never stopped us before.”
As he thrust against her, Grychn could not help thinking of someone else. When he sucked her nipples, she thought of other lips. When she climaxed, it was with an intensity she had not felt for a long time.
Later they lay side-by-side under a tanning lamp.
“How is Sharlyn?” Grychn asked. Sharlyn was a friend who had been hybridized into a nereid, and was the reason Gordon had gone down-under.
“She’s doing well. She is enjoying her new life.”
“And you?”
“I’m not doing as well. A true human is out of place down-under. Seals are chauvinists and go out of their way to make a human feel uncomfortable. I will have to become one of them before I am accepted.”
“Would you do that?” she asked incredulously.
“I’ve been considering it.”
Grychn thought of her twins. They would have to become hybrids. She wondered if their feelings toward her would change afterwards. “How has the change affected her personality?” she asked.
“Tremendously improved it,” Gordon said. “Sharlyn is the same basic person she was as a human, but she is no longer a borderline psychotic. The addition of xenogenes cured her of the mood swings she used to go through. She says she would have done it years ago if she had known how good it made her feel.”
“It really made that much difference?”
“She says so. She thinks we have too many recessive genes that have made us prone to going crazy. Why do you ask? Are you thinking of hybridization?”
“Maybe.” Grychn would not have, except for the twins. It might be easier on them if their mother became the same kind of hybrid. Grychn got up.
“Where are you going?” Gordon asked.
“Mingling.”
“Will I see you later?”
“Maybe.” Grychn leaned over and quickly kissed him, then walked into the house naked.
As she walked through the living room, a voice called to her. “Grychn! I’ve been looking for you.” The voice came from a sofa across the room.
Grychn walked over to the sofa. Saraltr lay naked on it with a pedimorph. The pedi was kissing her breasts. Grychn could feel its lips on her breasts in her mind.
“Grychn,” Saraltr said, “where have you been? Come lie with me and my friend.” Her speech was a little slurred, and her eyes were bright with peptide. “He’s terribly expensive, but worth every penny of it. I didn’t know what I would do with Alix gone.” Her hand stroked the pedi’s hairless penis.
“You did this with Alix?” She tried to sound shocked. She was annoyed at the envy in her voice.
“Of course. He was a talented little bugger.”
“Your own son?”
“You needn’t act so shocked. I’ve always envied you having the twins.” She pushed the pedi’s head lower, holding it between her legs. “The three of them were almost like brothers.”
Grychn had a terrible suspicion. “What did you do when the twins stayed here with Alix?” she shouted. “What did you make them do?”
“The same thing you did when they all stayed with you.” Saraltr laughed. “What else are little boys good for?”
Grychn leaped on the sofa, knocking the pedi away. She straddled Saraltr and hit her face with her fists. Blood poured out of Saraltr’s nostrils and from splits in her lips. Grychn kept beating her.
The pedi jumped on Grychn’s back. She felt its fingers go around her throat and start squeezing. That did not matter. All that mattered was that she punish Saraltr.
Grychn’s vision closed in around her. Her head began spinning. Blood roared in her ears.
Then blackness surrounded her.
When she regained consciousness, both Saraltr and the pedi were gone. Saraltr would be having a medroid repair her face, Grychn hoped. She felt her neck. It was tender, but not swollen. That figured. A pedi would know how to strangle without causing any damage. No doubt, such skills were part of their training.
Grychn got up and walked out to the skimmer pad. She did not bother to retrieve her gown and shoes. They were not worth the effort. She thought about Gordon and decided he was not worth the effort either. She climbed into her skimmer nude and told it to take her home.
As they flew over dark mountains, Grychn tried not to think about what Saraltr had said, but she did not succeed. She asked herself if the twins would have kept such a secret from her. They probably would have, she decided. She remembered when her father had been doing the same thing to her. She had been too embarrassed to tell anyone. She never had told anyone, not even Detrs. She had kept her terrible secret for over eighty years. She wondered what she should do. Should she try to get them to talk about it? Or would it be better to pretend she knew nothing? They would be leaving Earth tomorrow. She had made the right decision in that regard. The sooner they got away from Earth, the better. She would take better care of them now. Saraltr would not be able to get to them on Ceres.
The skimmer landed at home.
Grychn went into her house.
Before she went to her bedroom, she had to check on the boys. She opened their door and peeked inside. They lay sprawled on their beds asleep, with their blankets wadded up at their feet. Grychn tiptoed in and pulled the blankets over them. As she did, she admired their bodies, identical in every way. They were slender, with hands and feet a little out of proportion, prominent knees, elbows, shoulders, and ribs. Their body hair was still fine and white, not yet coarsening under their arms or at the base of their penises.
She turned to leave. At the doorway, she paused to look back. They looked so peaceful, asleep like that. No one would guess they were keeping such a grim secret.
Grychn could not help wondering what Saraltr had made them do. Would their penises stiffen? She supposed they would. Yes, of course they would. She remembered feeling one stiff against her. She remembered giving them baths herself, instead of letting the nandroid. When she washed them there, their penises had become hard in her fingers. But they would still be too tiny to give a woman pleasure. Maybe she just made them lick her. Or maybe she watched while they played with each other.
Grychn became aware that she was still naked. Sweat beaded from her skin. She felt tension in her groin, as her tissue engorged with blood.
She imagined Craig and Chris as grown men, standard humans, a way they could never be. She wished she could lie with them naked. She wished they could stroke her skin with their hands, kiss her breasts and lips with their lips. She imagined their hard penises. She would take one in her mouth, while the other entered her from behind, and both would spurt at the same time.
Soft laughter brought her out of her reverie. Her fingers were in her vagina. She jerked them out. A vague vortex of colored light hung in the air in front of her. She had recognized the laughter that had only sounded in her mind: it was the ghost of her father.
She left the room. The ghost followed her out.
“Will I have to put up with you haunting me forever?” she asked the ghost.
The ghost laughed again. “Only at night. I can haunt you only at night.”
“I‘II hire an exorcist to keep you away.”
“Psiberwarps can be circumvented.”
“Isn’t it enough that memories of you torment my dreams? Why must you haunt me as well?”
“Even in the passionless gestalt, the memory of passion lingers. Even in the ascetic limbo of cybermind, the desire for lust persists. I’ll eventually see you consummate this lust with your sons.”
“Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“I think you’re beginning to understand,” the ghost said and disappeared.
Mocking laughter lingered for a little longer.