He took a quick bite of noodles, then a sip of wino, then stole a glance at Tracy-Ace. It wasn’t as if it had been love, or even lust, at first sight. And yet… he was aware now, almost hungrily aware, of her physical attractiveness: her lanky grace and energy, the almost elfin delicacy of her face. The vulnerability. Funny, that a woman who controlled so many lethal weapons should seem vulnerable.
And then there was the connecting touch they had shared, not just once but several times. As he gazed at her—no longer a stolen glance, but a steady gaze—he had the dizzying feeling that he had known her for years.
She smiled, and the effect was electrifying. Putting her fork down, she stretched out a hand. He watched the gesture in detached silence for a moment, then took her hand in his. He knew at once that this was something more than a handshake. “Pleased to know you, Tracy-Ace/Alfa,” he said in a husky voice.
“Pleased to know you, Renwald Legroeder.”
The tingle this time started not at the juncture of their hands, but at his toes. It moved up his body in a languid wave, more a physical sensation than a joining of minds. He felt a brief flash of fear—but a quick glance inward at his implants showed only a faint sparkling against darkness where he expected to see an active connection. This felt less like an uplink/downlink than like lowering himself into a tub of hot water, the heat flowing up his body. It wasn’t exactly sexual; it was more like a rising awareness on multiple sensory levels. It was as if his connectors were being tuned, enhanced, made ready for a heightened response. But a response to what?
The wave moved up through his loins with a fleeting tingle, then into his torso. He gasped as it passed his diaphragm; Tracy-Ace let out a little sigh at the same time. He blinked and focused on her. She seemed to be staring at nothing, at space, through him or past him. Is she who she seems? She noticed his gaze then—and her eyes sharpened. Her lips turned up, in a smile that took his breath away.
The final rush came quickly, like a vapor filling his skull. He felt a sudden, euphoric clarity, as though he had breathed in a lungful of clear mountain air.
He peered down at their clasped hands and found he wanted to squeeze her hand tighter, to renew the sensation of physical touch. Her eyes brightened as he squeezed, and he felt a second wave pass through him. This time it came from his hand and went straight up his arm. It was accompanied by a strange itch.
It took him a moment to realize that the itch was a tremendous spike of uplink/downlink. They were exchanging knowledge in a great exhilarating rush…
Snippets of his childhood play, on the long rolling beaches of Claire Marie—pleasure darkened by a certain melancholy, and by his unease with the water. Flashes of the joy and release of an unrestrained dash through the streams of the Flux…
Entwined with his flashes were hers—early memories of a farmhouse and grandparents, then coming of age in an utterly alien place, a culture in hiding. Achieving at an early age, mastering the inner life of the intelnet, of the implants and the knowledge systems…
Legroeder was filling like a vessel with her challenges and fears, and also her excursions into hopefulness. And against that, his own joys and friendships blazed into relief—Janofer and Gev and Skan—and hints of bitterly dark times…
Legroeder was teetering on the edge of a complete surrender to the exchange. He felt a sharp pang of fear; this is stupid, I’m going to betray everything! Or his implants would; or hers would somehow find everything he was hiding. But she already knew that he wanted to meet the underground; the only question was whether she was lying to him. His fear was countered by a silent reassurance from his implants: You’re not an open book if you don’t want to be. But his implants had slipped up before.
He was more aware of outward signals now, as he peered at her through half-closed eyes: the body language that he might otherwise have missed, or misread: her eye movements, beckoning, the pressure of her hand, the angling of her legs toward him, a certain openness, a readiness.
I don’t think she’s lying about this.
She wanted him. And he wanted her. He hadn’t been sure before, but now he was. There was not yet a feeling of urgency, but something was happening between them, and quickly. In an extraordinary way, it did not feel rushed at all, but a naturally flowing development. In this strange communion, all of the courtship and wondering and mutual exploration were passing in a blur, a blending of pigments on a living canvas, colors glowing and shifting and fusing. And through it all a slowly rising breath of desire…
“Renwald,” he heard, and wondered for a moment if he had heard the sound through the air, or through the joining. My name is Legroeder, he murmured with mock indignation, the thought slipping out through their joined hands.
“I know,” she whispered, “I know.” But I like Renwald, I like the way it rolls off my tongue, I like the way I feel when I say it, the way I’ll feel when I hold you in my… And suddenly she broke off with an embarrassed inner laugh, as though she had not meant to let all of that slip.
You can call me Renwald, any time you want, he murmured, intending to speak it aloud… but no, it was another thought slipping through the link. There in front of him now was his hand, almost like a separate entity, moving up her arm; it paused, squeezing her shoulder, before sliding back down to clasp her hand with a tingle. Out of the blue, before he could stop it, the thought floated up out of his mind and into the connection: Are you the face of the enemy?
For an instant he feared that she had heard, and would be furious; and indeed she had heard, but her response was a soft laugh: Do you think I’m your enemy? And before he could even think that through, her other hand was running up his arm, and then kneading the back of his neck; and he wasn’t really even sure how he got to this point, but they were kissing, and he was tasting her lips and shuddering a little from her tongue darting here, and there, and now his breath and hers were both coming faster.
The stream flowing through them was more than just knowledge now; it was like a song, its notes and phrases echoing round as if they had been leading up to this for a year, perfecting this song. And yet he also knew now of the three men and one woman she had made love to before, and of her desire for him; and she knew of the scattering of women he had known, only one with genuine love; and the next time he was aware of his left hand, it was stroking her bare right breast (how had it become bare?), caressing and squeezing the swollen red nipple, and feeling a tingle there between the tip of her nipple and the palm of his hand. Another pathway opened, and a memory came to him through her nipple, an image of a bright red sun breaking through a bank of clouds on the only planetary world she had ever known, as a young girl, a world called Carrie’s Dream… and he squeezed again, and a new image came, this time a memory of her first trembling orgasm… and he felt slipping out through his fingers, into the firmness of her breast a memory of his own, the first time he had slipped into the warmth of a woman, a woman three years older than his nineteen years, and his own shuddering…
She sighed into his neck and pressed his head down, and he took her hard nipple in his mouth, and for an instant felt as if he were inside her skin looking out, and he reached out and touched himself, her, himself… momentarily confused as to which body he was in.