"Now the other," she said.
So he went down on one knee and touched her foot. The snake's tail started on the small toe. It made S-turns along the top of her foot, coiled around her ankle and looped twice around her calf. He traced it out, going slowly, feeling the firm, clever muscles beneath the skin, which was absolutely smooth. Her other leg, he noticed, had very fine hairs.
The snake swelled around her thigh. He traced it faithfully, reaching around her when it was out of sight. Then she turned again, and his hand went over her hip, across a buttock, and up her back once more. She lifted her arm and he reached under it and cupped her other breast from behind. He held it for a moment, then let go.
She turned and smiled sadly at him. Then she took his hand, lacing her fingers through his, and they walked side-by-side up the beach. For a long time he felt strangely content not to say anything. But the feeling couldn't last forever.
"Why?" he finally asked.
"I've been asking myself that question. I wonder if you've found a better answer than I did."
"Is it ... was it a sex thing?" Conal, he told himself, you are the soul of subtlety. Just take all your little problems to Conal, girls. He'll stomp through them with his hob-nail boots.
"Maybe. Maybe not as simple as that. I think I just wanted to be touched. Deliberately. You've touched me while you teach me to swim, and it wasn't the same ... but it disturbed me, how good it felt."
Conal thought it over.
"I'll rub your back for you. I know how."
She smiled at him. Her eyes were bright with tears, but she didn't look at all like she was about to cry. It was odd.
"Would you? I'd like that."
Again there was a time of silence. Conal could see the stairs leading up to the Junction, and was sorry they were there. He wished the beach were longer. He liked holding her hand.
"I've been ... very unhappy most of my life," she said, quietly. He glanced at her. She was watching her own bare feet pad through the sand.
"I haven't had a lover for about two years now. When I was a girl I had a new lover every week, like girls do. But none of them could stand me for long. After I came back from Gaea, I wanted one woman to live my life with. I found three of them, and the longest one lasted a year. So I decided I just wasn't cut out for pair-bonding. In the last five years I didn't make love because it felt good-it felt awful, once the sweaty part was over-but because it felt so bad not to make love. I finally gave that up and just went without sex entirely."
"It sounds ... awful," Conal said.
They were at the foot of the stairs. Conal started to go up, but Robin stopped, still holding his hand. He turned.
"Awful?" A tear went down her cheek, and she wiped it away with her free hand. "I don't miss the sex that much. What I miss is being touched. Being hugged. Holding somebody in my arms. Since Adam's been gone ... there hasn't been anyone to touch me."
She kept looking up at him, and he felt more nervous than he had felt since his first month on the weights. Conal was not awkward around women, but this one and her daughter were different, and it went beyond the fact that they were lesbians.
She squeezed his hand tightly, so he thought what the hell, and put his arms around her and turned his head slightly to kiss her. He saw her lips parting, then she turned her head away so he started to let go of her, but she had her arms around him by then, so he put his hands on her back in what he hoped was a fatherly way, and she started to move her hips against him, slowly, and press dry lips to his neck. All in all, it was about as gracefully done as two ten-year-olds paying forfeits on a game of spin-the-bottle, but when all the adjustments were made they were pressed close together from knees to shoulders, and Conal could feel her tears trickling over his chest. She was holding him tightly, and he nuzzled the top of her head while running his hands up and down the smooth curves of her back.
Several times he tried to gently break away, but she kept holding him. After a while he didn't try anymore, and was beginning to entertain some wild notions. That was just in his mind; the rest of him was far ahead, to his consternation and embarrassment.
At last she wiped her eyes and moved a few inches away, keeping her hands lightly on his hips.
"Uh ... Robin, I don't know how much you know-"
"Enough," she said, glancing down between them. "You don't need to apologize for him. I know your friend down there leads his own life, and that a touch is enough to excite him. And that he may respond in spite of your own feelings in the matter."
"Ah ... actually, he and I are usually in pretty good agreement."
She laughed, and hugged him again, then looked up solemnly.
"You know it couldn't work, of course."
"Yeah. I know that."
"We're too different. I'm too old."
"You're not too old."
"Believe me, I am. Perhaps you shouldn't give me that back rub. It might be too difficult for you."
"Maybe I shouldn't."
She looked at him wistfully, then started up the stairs. She stopped, stood very still for a moment, then came back to stand on the last step. It put her on his level. She put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. Her tongue darted around his lips, then she moved back and slowly dropped her hands.
"I'll be in my room for about an hour," she said. "If you're smart, you'll probably stay down here." She turned, and he watched the snakes play over her bare back as she mounted the steps, until she was out of sight. He turned and sat on the steps.
He spent a maddening ten minutes, getting up and sitting down again. No matter what, he couldn't go into the house in this condition. Rational thought was what was called for.
It was a situation that demanded cooling off. She was completely right. It could never work out. And once would be silly, she said that herself. Once wasn't enough with her, and once was all it could ever be with him. An experiment, and bound to turn out badly.
He looked up the stairs again. He could still see her trim backside.
"Well," he sighed, "it's been a long time since anybody accused me of being smart." He looked down at his lap.
"You knew it all along, didn't you?"
THREE
Valiha sat atop the hill overlooking Tuxedo Junction, near the wide scorch on the ground. Already, plants were sprouting in the ashes, growing around the white bones. Soon the place would be hard to find.
There were several human skulls. One was much smaller than the others.
Her hands were busy. She had begun with a broad, weathered plank and an assortment of carving tools. The thing was almost finished now, but she was only peripherally aware of it. Her hands worked, unguided. Her mind was far away. Titanides did not sleep except as infants, but they did go into a state of lessened awareness for periods of two or three revs. It was a dreamtime, a time when the mind could rove far and wide, into the past, into places it did not really want to go.
She relived her time with Chris. She tasted again the bitterness of him, the alien craving so deep in his soul that would deny her sharing her own body with those others she loved, the awful, extended goodbye-time when he had turned from wonderful-crazy to worms-in-the-head-crazy, the slow regaining of trust and the knowledge that it would probably never be the way it was. She touched once more her deep love for him, unchanged and unchangeable.
She thought of Bellinzona. The humans were sterilizing their home planet. To do this, they used weapons beyond her comprehension, weapons that could turn Hyperion into glowing glass. She had a thought she would not have entertained while awake. If she had one of those weapons, she would use it to sterilize Bellinzona. Many worthy people would die and that would be a shameful thing. But surely the good of such a deed would outweigh the evil. The wheel was her home. These visitors were a cancer eating out the heart of the wheel. There were good humans, certainly. But it seemed that if you got enough together in one place, an evil thing grew.