“My God,” he said at dinner one evening, “being plugged in like that really is better than sex—almost.”
“When you get really adept at it,” Muzorawa explained, “you can even link with each other. It’s almost like telepathy.”
“Really?” Karlstad turned toward O’Hara, leering.
“Get your mind above your beltline, Egon,” she said. “It’s all mental, not physical.”
“The brain is the most important sex organ in the body,” he countered.
She shook her head, frowning.
Muzorawa explained for Grant that the electrode implants also contain microminiaturized semiconductor lasers linked through the fiber-optic lines to connect with the ship’s systems.
“Photo-optics can carry loads more information than electronics,” said O’Hara.
“But the human nervous system is electrical, isn’t it?” Grant asked.
“Electrochemical,” Karlstad corrected.
“Then if all this photo-optical data is pumped into your nervous system—”
“It produces an overload,” Muzorawa said.
“And the wildest sensations you’ve ever experienced,” O’Hara added.
Karlstad sighed mightily.
After dinner Grant went as usual to Sheena. He was trying to get the gorilla accustomed to the neural net. She still could not fit it over her head properly, but gradually Grant got her to accept his help in placing the spiderweb of electrodes properly over her skull.
“If only we could shave her head,” Pascal said yearningly over a late-night snack in the conference room.
Pascal was pulling double duty, too: watching Grant with Sheena each evening through the surveillance cameras and working in the fish tank on the mission simulator. She looked as exhausted as Grant felt.
“She wouldn’t like being shaved,” Grant pointed out.
“We could sedate her.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Grant said as he picked at his open sandwich of simulated roast beef. “By the time she got accustomed to the fact that she’d been shaved, her hair would’ve grown back again.”
Pascal sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“If she’d let me fasten the net under her chin, then you’d get a decent contact.”
“If she’d let you.” Pascal put down her fork, frowning. “Do you realize that the laboratory animal is running this experiment? It’s infuriating.”
It surprised Grant to hear Sheena referred to as a laboratory animal. And it surprised him even more when he realized that he thought of the gorilla as a person.
Trying to soothe the neurophysiologist, Grant said, “I’ll get Sheena to wear the net and make good contact with the electrodes. Give me a few more days.”
“We’ll be launching in six days.”
“Sheena can’t be put on a schedule, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Pascal said. “Still, it’s very frustrating. Maddening.”
“I can run the console for you,” Grant said. “I’ll collect the data and have it ready for you when you come back from the mission.”
Pascal gave him a dubious look but said nothing.
The door to the corridor slid open and Red Devlin stepped into the conference room as casually as he might stroll along a city boulevard.
“Irene, luv, how are you?”
“What are you doing in here?” Grant demanded. “You’re not supposed—”
“Now, now,” Devlin chided. “Don’t get your shorts in a twist, Grant. Who d’you think brings your food and goodies in here, eh? Somebody’s gotta check on your coffee supply, mate.”
“It’s all right,” Pascal said softly. “He’s just doing his job.”
“Right you are, Irene luv. And you, Grant, how’s Sheena treatin’ you these days?”
“Fine,” Grant said, weary of jokes about him and Sheena.
Devlin pulled a plastic vial from his pocket and handed it to Pascal. “You sure you need these?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “Looks to me like you need somethin’ to help you sleep, not keep you awake.”
“I sleep very well,” Pascal replied. “I need to be alert during the day.”
“In the simulator, eh?” Devlin asked.
Pascal nodded.
“How’s it goin’? When do you push off?”
Before Pascal could answer, Grant said, “Dr. Wo doesn’t want us to discuss the mission with anyone who isn’t on the team.”
Devlin stiffened into a lampoon of a soldier’s coming to attention, clicked his heels, and snapped off a salute.
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Grant laughed despite himself.
Pascal said, “Grant is correct. We are not supposed to discuss the mission with you.”
“I understand,” Devlin said, relaxing. “No worries.”
“But in three days you will not see me for a while,” she added.
Grant felt a surge of dismay. He knew it was silly, but rules are meant to be followed, not broken. Krebs and Dr. Wo might be paranoid, but Grant thought it was better to be paranoid than the victim of some terrorist’s fiery zeal.
As Devlin headed for the coffee urn, Grant leaned toward Pascal and whispered, “Irene, you told him three days. But the mission doesn’t launch until six days from now.”
“Yes,” she agreed, nodding. “But in three days the crew goes into immersion. We do not come out once we are immersed.”
“I didn’t realize—”
“Once we begin breathing that awful liquid, we do not come into the air again until the mission is completed,” she said.
Grant thought she looked grim, like a prisoner about to be swallowed up by an inescapable jail. And she looked more than a little frightened, too.
He walked with Irene back to their quarters. Pascal’s compartment was a few dozen meters up the corridor from Grant’s. The corridor was dim, shadowy in its nighttime lighting. They saw no one else along the way except a solitary security guard pacing sleepily along his rounds; it was too late at night for casual strollers.
So it surprised Grant to see Kayla Ukara sitting on the floor next to Pascal’s door, her back propped against the wall, her head resting on her knees as if asleep.
“Oh,” Irene said in a small voice.
Ukara’s head snapped up, her eyes fully alert. Instead of her usual fierce, pantherlike expression, she actually smiled up at Irene.
As Ukara scrambled to her feet, Pascal turned to Grant, red-cheeked with embarrassment. “Thank you for walking me home,” she said in a quick, low voice.
Grant nodded, puzzled. “It’s okay. My place is just down the corridor.”
But Pascal was not paying any attention to him. Her eyes were on Ukara and no one else.
Grant muttered a good night to them both and continued down the corridor. He glanced once over his shoulder at them. Pascal was tapping out the security code on her door lock; Kayla had a long, slim arm around Irene’s waist.
They’re lovers! Grant felt shocked. He knew he shouldn’t, knew it was none of his business, that the two women were adults and had the right to their own personal lives. Yet deep in the core of his being he felt that what they were doing was wrong, deeply wrong.
It’s none of your business, Grant told himself. Forget about it.
Still, it bothered him.
The next night Grant tied the neural net he was wearing under his chin.
“See?” he said to Sheena. “It looks better.”
Sheena eyed him suspiciously.
They were sitting on the plastic-tiled floor of Sheena’s spacious pen, Grant facing the gorilla. Her bulk loomed over him like a hairy mountain.
“And it won’t fall off.” Grant shook his head vigorously. The net stayed snug around his skull.