"Did you drug him, or did he faint?" she asked-then wondered why she cared.
"I drugged him as soon as I grasped his arm. He had reached his breaking point, though. He might have fainted on his own. This way, he can be angry with me for drugging him, not for making him look weak in front of you."
She nodded. "Thank you."
"What is a faggot?" it asked.
She told it.
"But they know he's not that. They know he's mated with you."
"Yes. Well, there's been some doubt about me, too, I hear."
"None of them really believe it."
"Yet."
"Serve them by leading them, Lilith. Help us send as many of them borne as we can."
She stared at it for a long time, feeling frightened and empty. It sounded so sincere-not that that mattered. How could she become the leader of people who saw her as their jailer? On some level, a leader had to be trusted. Yet every act she performed that proved the truth of what she said also made her loyalties, and even her humanity suspect.
She sat down on the floor, cross-legged and at first stared at nothing. Eventually, her eyes were drawn to Nikanj holding Joseph on the bed. The pair did not move, though once she heard Joseph sigh. Was he no longer completely unconscious, then? Was he already learning the lesson all adult ooloi eventually taught? So much in only one day.
''Lilith?''
She jumped. Both Joseph and Nikanj had spoken her name, though clearly, only Nikanj was enough awake to know what it was saying. Joseph, drugged and under the influence of multiple neural links, would shadow everything Nikanj said or did unless Nikanj split its attention enough to stop him. Nikanj did not bother.
"I have adjusted him, even strengthened him a little, though he'll have to exercise to be able to use that to his best advantage. He will be more difficult to injure, faster to heal, and able to survive and recover from injuries that would have killed him before." Joseph unknowing, spoke every word exactly in unison with Nikanj.
"Stop that!" Lilith said sharply.
Nikanj altered its connection without missing a beat. "Lie here with us," it said, speaking alone. "Why should you be down there by yourself?"
She thought there could be nothing more seductive than an ooloi speaking in that particular tone, making that particular suggestion. She realized she had stood up without meaning to and taken a step toward the bed. She stopped, stared at the two of them. Joseph's breathing now became a gentle snore and he seemed to sleep comfortably against Nikanj as she had awakened to find him sleeping comfortably against her many times. She did not pretend outwardly or to herself that she would resist Nikanj's invitation-or that she wanted to resist it. Nikanj could give her an intimacy with Joseph that was beyond ordinary human experience. And what it gave, it also experienced. This was what had captured Paul Titus, she thought. This, not sorrow over his losses or fear of a primitive Earth.
She clenched her fists, holding back. "This won't help me," she said. "It will just make it harder for me when you're not around."
Nikanj freed one sensory arm from Joseph's waist and extended it toward her.
She stayed where she was for a moment longer, proving to herself that she was still in control of her behavior. Then she tore off her jacket and seized the ugly, ugly elephant's trunk of an organ, letting it coil around her as she climbed onto the bed. She sandwiched Nikanj's body between her own and Joseph's, placing it for the first time in the ooloi position between two humans. For an instant, this frightened her. This was the way she might someday be made pregnant with an other-than-human child. Not now while Nikanj wanted other work from her, but someday. Once it plugged into her central nervous system it could control her and do whatever it wanted.
She felt it tremble against her, and knew it was in.
7
She did not lose consciousness. Nikanj did not want to cheat itself of sensation. Even Joseph was conscious, though utterly controlled, unafraid because Nikanj kept him tranquil. Lilith was not controlled. She could lift a free hand across Nikanj to take Joseph's cool, seemingly lifeless hand.
"No," Nikanj said softly into her ear-or perhaps it stimulated the auditory nerve directly. It could do that- stimulate her senses individually or in any combination to make perfect hallucinations. "Only through me," its voice insisted.
Lilith's hand tingled. She released Joseph's hand and immediately received Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a compelling, steadying presence.
She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj's approximation of Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction.
What was Joseph feeling from her?
It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no sensation of shifting gears, no "time alone" to contrast with the present "time together." He had always been there, part of her, essential.
Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It left Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She sensed only Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her.
Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down slowly, gradually, savoring a few more moments wholly together.
Noon, evening, dusk, darkness.
Her throat hurt. Her first solitary sensation was pain-as though she had been shouting, screaming. She swallowed painfully and raised her hand to her throat, but Nikanj's sensory aim was there ahead of her and brushed her hand away. It laid its exposed sensory hand across her throat. She felt it anchor itself, sensory fingers stretching, clasping. She did not feel the tendrils of its substance penetrate her flesh, but in a moment the pain in her throat was gone.
"All that and you only screamed once," it told her.
"How'd you let me do even that?" she asked.
"You surprised me. I've never made you scream before." She let it withdraw from her throat, then moved languidly to stroke it. "How much of that experience was Joseph's and mine?" she asked. "How much did you make up?"
"I've never made up an experience for you," it said. "I won't have to for him either. You both have memories filled with experiences."
"That was a new one."
"A combination. You had your own experiences and his. He had his and yours. You both had me to keep it going much longer than it would have otherwise. The whole was. . . overwhelming."
She looked around. "Joseph?"
"Asleep. Very deeply asleep. I didn't induce it. He's tired. He's all right, though."
"He.. . felt everything I felt?"
"On a sensory level. Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours."
"I wouldn't call them intellectual."
"You understand me."
"Yes." She moved her hand over its chest, taking a perverse pleasure in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten under her hand.
"Why do you do that?" it asked.
"Does it bother you?" she asked stilling her hand.
"No."
"Let me do it, then. I didn't used to be able to."
"I have to go. You should wash, then feed your people. Seal your mate in. Be certain you're the first to talk to him when he wakes."
She watched it climb over her, joints bending all wrong, and lower itself to the floor. She caught its hand before it could head for a wall. Its head tentacles pointed at her loosely in unspoken question.
"Do you like him?" she asked.
The point focused briefly on Joseph. "Ahajas and Dichaan are mystified," it said. "They thought you would choose one of the big dark ones because they're like you. I said you would choose this one-because he's like you."
"What?"
"During his testing, his responses were closer to yours than anyone else I'm aware of. He doesn't look like you, but he's like you."