So what do I start with?That stupid thing. Like I had all kinds of time.
"Is it all right, sera?" Catlin was worried.
"It's all right." She shoved away from the doorframe and came to put napkins down. The oven timer was running down, a flicker of green readout. "I can handle it. I will handle it. Maybe he's even right: I've got a lot to go through. And it's not like I was losing the school." She leaned on a chair back. The timer went. "I'll miss the kids, though."
"Will we meet with them?" Florian asked.
"Oh, sure. Not that we won't." She grabbed her plate and held it out as Florian used the tongs to get the heated dinner from the oven. She took hers and sat down as Florian and Catlin served themselves and joined her.
Dinner. A little talk. Retreat to their rooms to study. It was the way it always had been—except she had her own office and they had their computer terminals and their House accesses through the Minder.
She went to her room to change. And sat down on the bed, wishing she had left the cabinet alone and knowing she was in trouble.
Bad trouble. Because she was good at saying no to herself when she saw a reason for it... but it got harder and harder to think of the reasons not to do what she wanted, because when she did refuse she got mad, and when she got mad that feeling was there.
She went and read Base One . . . long, long stretches of the trivial housekeeping records Ari senior had generated, just the way they themselves were doing, until she ran them past faster and faster. Who caredwhether Ari senior had wanted an order of tomatoes on the 28th September?
She thought about the tape library, about pulling up one of the Recommendeds and getting started with it. And finally thought that was probably the thing to do.
"Sera." It was Florian's voice through the Minder. "Excuse me. I'm doing the list. Do you want anything from Housekeeping?"
Bother and damnation.
"Just send it." A thought came, warm and tingly, and very, very dangerous. Then she said, deliberately, knowing it was stupid: "And come here a minute. My office."
"Yes, sera."
Stupid,she said to herself. And cruel. It'smean to do, dammit. Make up something else. Send him off on a job.
God. . . .
She thought about Ollie. The way she had thought about him all afternoon. Ollie with maman. Ollie when he had looked young and maman had. Maman had never had to be lonely. . . while Ollie was there. And Ollie never minded.
"Sera?" Florian said, a real voice, from the doorway.
"Log-off," she told Base One, and turned her chair around, and got up. "Come on in, Florian. —What's Catlin doing?"
"Studying. We have a manual to do. Just light tape. It—isn't something you need to Super, —is it? Should I stop her?"
"No. It's all right. Is it something really urgent?"
"No."
"Even if you were late? Even if you didn't get to it?"
"No, sera. They said—when we could. I think it would be all right. What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to come to my room a minute," she said, and took him by the hand and walked him down the hall to her bedroom.
And shut the door once they were inside and locked it.
He looked at that and at her, concerned. "Is there some trouble, sera?"
"I don't know." She put her hands on his shoulders. Carefully. He twitched, hands moved, just a little defensive reaction, even if he knew she was going to do it. Uneasiness at being touched, the way he had reacted with Maddy once. "Is that all right? Do you mind that?"
"No, sera. I don't mind." He was still disturbed. His breathing got faster and deeper as she ran her hands down to his sides, and walked around behind him, and around again. Maybe he thought it was some kind of test. Maybe he understood. Another twitch, when she touched his chest.
She knew better. That was the awful thing. She was ashamed of herself all the way. She was afraid for Catlin and for him and none of it mattered, not for a moment.
She took a hard grip on his shoulder, friend-like. "Florian. Do you know about sex?"
He nodded. Once and emphatically.
"If you did it with me, would Catlin be upset?"
A shake of his head. A deep breath. "Not if you said it was right."
"Would yoube upset?"
Another shake of his head. "No, sera."
"Are you sure?"
A deep nod. Another breath. "Yes, sera." Another. "Can I go tell Catlin?"
"Now?"
"If it's going to be a while. She'll worry. I think I ought to tell her."
That was fair. There were complications in everything. "All right," she said. "Come right back."
v
He left sera to sleep, finally—he had slept a little while, but sera was restless. Sera said she was a little uncomfortable, and he could go back and sleep in his own bed, she was fine, she just wanted to sleep now and she wasn't used to company.
So he put his pants on, but he was only going to bed, so he carried the rest, and slipped out and shut the door.
But Catlin's room had the light on, and Catlin came out into the hall.
He stopped dead still. He wished he had finished dressing.
She just stood there a moment. So he walked on down as far as her room, past his own.
"All right?" she asked.
"I think so," he said. Sera was in a little discomfort, he had hurt sera, necessarily, because sera was built that way: sera said go on, and she had been happy with him, overall. He hoped. He truly hoped. "Sera said she wanted to sleep, I should go to bed. I'll do the manual tomorrow."
Catlin just looked at him, the way she did sometimes when she was confused, gut-deep open. He did not know what to say to her. He did not know what she wanted from him.
"How did it feel?"
"Good," he said on an irregular breath. Knowing then what he was telling her and how her mind had been running and was running then. Partners. For a lot of years. Catlin was curious. Some things went past her and she paid no attention. But if Catlin was interested this far, Catlin wanted to figure it out, the same way she would take a thing apart to understand it.
She said finally—he knew she was going to say—: "Can you show me? You think sera would mind?"
It was not wrong. He would have felt a tape-jolt about it if it were. He was tired. But if his partner wanted something, his partner got it, always, forever.
"All right," he said, trying to wake himself up and find the energy. And came into her room with her.
He undressed. So did she—which felt strange, because they had always been so modest, as much as they could, even in the field, and just not looked, if there was no cover.
But he was mostly the one who was embarrassed, because he had always had sex-feelings, he understood that now—while Catlin, who was so much more capable than he was in a lot of ways, missed so much that involved what sera called flux-values.
"Bed," he said, and turned back the covers and got under, because it was a little cold; and because bed was a comfortable, resting kind of place, and he knew Catlin would feel more comfortable about being up against him skin against skin in that context.
So she got in and lay on her side facing him, and got up against him when he told her she should, and relaxed when he told her to, even when he put his hand on her side and his knee between hers. "You let me do everything first," he said, and told her there was a little pain involved, but that was no more than a don't-react where Catlin was concerned. You didn't surprise her in things like that.
"All right," she said.
She couldreact, he found that out very fast, with his fingers.
He stopped. "It gets stronger. You want to keep going with this? Does that feel all right?"