Leo knew the kid must be bored and scared at the same time, and she was still feeling acute, unconscious pangs of separation from her family, if he was reading the signs right. He wished there was more he could do for Aubry.
And now there was Jill—this amazing creature come out of the blue. She was a gorgeous thing—all shapely muscle and bone. Her hair was black, and her eyes were a dark blue, more like deep space than like Earth’s sky. She had a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks that almost might appear to be whiskers in some light.
And there was that little tremble to Jill, as if her heart were beating much faster than a normal human’s, and that somewhere under her woman’s skin the jill ferret lurked in its den, waiting until biting was needed.
“So, you’re looking for somebody named Alethea.”
“Somebody or something.”
“Something? What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. She used to be a woman, but now she’s scattered.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I don’t know much more myself. But I’m going to find her.”
“And that’s what you’re trying to do?”
“Find her and save her.”
“Why?”
“I promised that I would.”
“Where do you think she is, then?” said Leo. “Maybe I can help.”
“That’s why I saved you. Tod said he thought you could help.”
“He told you that?”
“He wouldn’t let me take him to safety after we fought our way out of the DI sweepers. He told me to go back and find the changeling girl and the leprechaun. That they would know the answer to the question I wanted answered.”
“He did, did he?” Leo scratched his head. “I don’t know any answers.”
“Yes,” said Jill. “I asked him about that afterward.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he got the times mixed up.”
“What?”
“That was all he said. ‘Sorry, I got the times mixed up.’ What do you suppose he meant by that?”
“Maybe I will know the answer to your question someday. In the future, I mean.”
“Not much good for now.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“I need to find Alethea.”
“But what is so important about this Alethea?”
“Something bad is happening. Something maybe worse than any fighting. The rats who are my friends—sometimes they tell a horrible story. About things in the grist that hunt them and catch them. Pull them out of their bodies. The ones that get caught are being taken somewhere. I think that someone is after all the algorithms that own themselves, and I think that someone is Amés or somebody who works for him. There are stories of a camp on Mars.”
“Noctis Labyrinthus,” said Leo.
“Yes. The rats tell me tales they have heard. Experiments are being done. Torture. Mass executions of everything smart that doesn’t look like one of you Earth monkeys. I think Alethea may be there.”
“That is a bad place.”
“I have to get her out.”
“I don’t think even you can do that.”
“Maybe not me,” Jill said. She grinned her ferret smile. Her teeth were smaller and pointier than a normal woman’s. “But maybe me and an army.”
“Do you have an army?”
Jill didn’t answer. Her grin became even more unsettling.
“I think Amés wants to be a lot more than Director,” Leo said. “I think he wants to play every instrument in the orchestra, too. To tell you the truth, I’m sure he believes he can do it better than the rest of us. He doesn’t want to rule the human race, he wants to become it. Own it. Like it was his body.”
“I have seen animals act like Amés,” Jill replied. “It is usually, I think, when they realize somehow, somewhere inside them, that they are going to die.”
“Well, I’m an animal; I know that I’m going to die, and I don’t want to rule all of creation,” Leo said. Jill turned her eyes on him, and he could see them sparkling in the wan light. Talk about animals, Leo thought.
“You are a man,” Jill said. “Amés is a boy.”
“I suppose.”
“You and I will see about that,” she said. “I would like to make love to you.”
“Wha . . . what?”
“Have sex.” She scratched her head. “What is the word?”
“Fuck?” said Leo.
“Yes, fuck. But the other.”
“Make love?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you, Jill?”
“Older than you. Older than you think.”
“You don’t look it—”
“This body is two and a half e-years old, if that’s what you mean.”
“Two and a half? I don’t understand.”
“If you make love to me, I will explain.”
“I . . . I would like you to explain.” Leo was flabbergasted. He had never been so blatantly propositioned before.
“Maybe we should do it somewhere away from Aubry,” Jill said.
“That’s a damn good idea.”
“Even though I really don’t understand why.”
“Well, maybe that’s something I can explain to you one of these days,” replied Leo. “Let’s go that way.”
Leo grasped a handful of fibers and pulled himself back into the jungle of the transmitter. Jill followed behind. After they had gone a good ways in, he felt a tug on his leg. Jill was pulling his boots off, using her hold on a particularly thick rope of fibers for resistance. She seemed to move very easily in zero gee. He undressed himself, tumbling around a couple of times like a sky diver in flight, and when he looked again at Jill, she was naked.
He reached for her hands and pulled her toward him, and as they came together, Jill became a ball of fury, grasping at him and kissing his neck and shoulders. She held tight about his waist. Leo had made love in free fall before, but never like this. Before, it had always been a languid affair, with both parties feeling a bit awkward, and careful that any movement did not send them careening about.
Jill was having none of that.
She bit him gently on the ear, and Leo felt himself growing hard against her torso. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up—not too forcefully, but strongly enough. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, and she sucked on it for all she was worth.
For a moment, they came apart, and were floating there, connected only by this French kiss.
Then Leo pulled them closer together and began turning her around, her head down, in relation to him. They fit together perfectly—Leo was barely taller than Jill—and with a slight bend of her waist, her mouth was to him, and she took him between her lips. Their motion translated into a spin, and soon they were doing a slow barrel roll as they pleased one another.
They did this for a time, then Leo felt Jill’s muscles contract as she had an orgasm. She gasped, and he came out of her mouth.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. “I didn’t—”
“What was that?” Jill whispered.
“What was what?”
“The way I just felt. What was that?”
For a moment, Leo had no idea what she was talking about, and then he realized that she had never experienced an orgasm before.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It is perfectly natural. It’s what I was trying to do to you.”
“Well, you did it,” Jill said. “Do it again.”
And so he did. Finally, Leo knew he could take no more himself without coming. He gently pulled her back around to him, face-to-face. They kissed again, and Jill held tightly to him.
“Can I go inside you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I think you had better.”
There was a bit of fumbling, and Leo had to grab hold of a sticky tendril to keep himself still long enough so that he could find the right position. Then he did, and he slid inside her easily.
After that, all Leo could remember was images. Jill turned into the animal that he had suspected she still was inside. After a couple of his own thrusts, she moved herself up and down his body in a frenzy, clawing into his back to keep them from coming apart. Their motion set them moving through the dangling fibers, getting tangled among them as they went. After a while, they could not have separated if they wanted, so wrapped up were they in the pulp.
They returned quietly through the mass of fibers to join the others. They parted the last curtain to find Aubry wide-awake. But Aubry, intuitive kid that she was, said nothing. She couldn’t resist giving them a little smile. Leo fell asleep, floating beside the others. He might have imagined it, but as he drifted off, he was sure he could smell a musky odor about him, clinging to his skin. A wild-animal smell that was also, somehow, the smell of home. He liked that. Leo hadn’t had a real home for an awfully long time.