At last they all collapsed on the bed, falling apart. "That was interesting," she said. "It was like simultaneous sex with two men, except that you are not exactly that."
"True," Osp said.
"It is as interesting for us too," Pso said, "because we have not before done it with a whole woman. Not before Marionette, and now you. There is a certain intriguing oddity."
"Let's do it again," Gale said. "Then we must travel."
This time she lay supine on the bed, and they juxtaposed over her, entering and climaxing in due course. It was strange to see the two faces above her, and feel the four hands on her. But fun.
Then they organized for the search. "We have relations with a number of other cultures in this sector," Osp said. "Some of them may have spare planets, though we are doubtful."
"If we find the right planet, I'll try to make a deal," Gale said.
"For this, a spacecraft seems best," Pso said.
"It is programmed with the destinations we know," Osp said. "Trading routes."
"Trading is what I have in mind," Gale said.
They conjured her to the craft. It was a small space boat with seats for four people and limited cargo. They needed to be seated and strapped in, because acceleration and maneuvering could be strenuous. They took three of the seats, Gale between the two men.
They set it for the nearest culture. This required some travel to a wormhole, the passage through it, and travel to the contact station of the culture. During the tedious interstices Pso fondled Gale's breasts under her shirt from the right side and Osp felt her legs under her skirt from the left side. She reached out with her two hands and took hold of their erect half-penises within their trousers. Their half-genital novelty still intrigued her. This was mere incidental diversion, but they all enjoyed it. Glamors understood about Glamor sexuality, and reveled in it. Gale did not constantly seek it the way Havoc did, but when the occasion warranted she could be just as enthusiastic. These were exceedingly handsome males, and they fully appreciated her beauty. She liked that.
"Something we have wondered about," Pso said. "The Glamors," Osp said.
"I have noticed that we have different clienteles in the different cultures," Gale said. "Even among humans: on Charm we have different living constituencies, while on Earth there is only one, or perhaps two that alternate. They lack the ikons we have, also; instead they have a thousand subordinate representatives that are equivalent to ikons.
Marionette is one. I can't explain the difference, except to conjecture that somehow the Glamor initiative is shaped by the mores of the society in which it manifests."
"This seems to be the case," Pso said, stroking her nipples so that they swelled exuberantly "There seems to be no fixed rule of manifestation. Just that there be a clientele of some kind, and an ikon of some kind, to shape and transmit the power we utilize."
"But our concern is of another nature," Osp said, sliding one wet finger into her vagina and another into her anus.
Glamors liked variety as well as volume. "Our knowledge of galactic cultures is fairly recent, but we note that Glamors seem to be universally spread through them. But what about that third of the galaxy the machines have already conquered, exploited, and destroyed? Were there Glamors there too?"
Gale was surprised, because this had never occurred to her before. "There must have been," she said, massaging the two half members. "Except that the machines couldn't have destroyed the Glamors. So what happened to them?"
"We conjecture that either the Glamors were destroyed," Pso said, his attention to her nipples arousing her sexual desire. "Perhaps indirectly, by destroying their clienteles so that they lost their power bases. Or that there were no Glamors in those cultures, which made them relatively easy prey to the machines."
"In which case our present coalition of living cultures, led by the Glamors, represents the first serious resistance the machines have encountered," Gale said. "Perhaps we have more of a chance than we think."
"The question remains, why should there be such a pattern?" Osp said, sending trace sensual currents from his fingers into her core. "Can it be coincidence that we happen to exist just outside the machines demesnes?"
"Can we park for a few minutes?" Gale asked. "You boys are driving me crazy with desire."
"Apology," Pso said insincerely.
"You are simply so sexy we can't hold back," Osp said. Which was a correct response.
They parked, the two men overlapped in one chair, and Gale sat on them, taking in their merged member. They jetted instantly copiously, and she writhed with her own orgasm, wringing more from their member.
"Conjecture," she said amidst it. "It is not coincidence. The Glamors were enabled in all cultures, but developed too late in the one conquered by the machines. So they never had a chance to manifest there. Had the machines invaded us five hundred years ago, there would have been no Glamors to oppose them."
"That answers our question," Pso said, still holding her breasts. "The Glamors were there in potential, but destroyed before they achieved reality. They both existed and never existed."
"Which somehow is not reassuring," Osp said, squeezing her buttocks around the member.
"And begs the question of the origin of the Glamors," Gale said. "There is evidence on our home planet of Charm that someone or something set up sites that helped enable Glamors at a later date. And what determined the device of the ikons? This could not be natural evolution."
"And why would any entity with the power to craft such devices, or Glamors themselves, be satisfied to do it and depart?" Pso said, kissing her right ear from behind.
"Why not simply fight the machines directly, if that was the object?" Osp asked, kissing her left ear.
"It seems to make little or no sense," Gale said, clenching hard around their member to milk it of its final juices.
"Yet I suspect we are simply too dull to discover the sense it does make."
They agreed. They wrapped up, separated, and resumed individual seats, well satisfied with their physical and intellectual dialogues.
The first cultural station they stopped at was polite and swift: definitely no free planets. This was a sapient plant culture, so Gale was inclined to accept it, though she made a note for future reference.
They resumed the tour, entertaining themselves in increasingly novel ways while idle. With Glamors, sex was only the basis; imaginative sex was the fulfillment.
The second culture was, in Gale's closest approximation, elephantine. It had nothing either. Neither did the third. But the fourth did.
These were fishlike creatures, dependent on water; only their Glamors were able to thrive outside the sea. They were nevertheless spacefaring; their ships were filled with nutrient fluids. There was a planet in one of their systems that had plenty of water and exploitable resources, but that they could not use because it was infected by substances that were poisonous to them.
"But if we could arrange for a fungus culture to colonize it, handling those poisons and exporting those resources to your other planets?" Gale inquired.
"We would consider it to be a significant favor."
They took the coordinates and looked at the planet. It was lush and green, with copious seas. It looked ideal.
"I think we can head for Fungus," she said, exhilarated.
They looped once more around the planet—and spied another space boat. "Did the Fish follow us?" Gale asked, surprised.
"Negation," Pso said. "That is not a Fish boat."
"In fact it is like no culture we know of," Osp said.
"Then what in expletive is it?"
"Surely an intruder," Pso said. "We had better challenge it." They sent the boat a message in a common intercultural dialect. It did not respond. Instead it oriented on them.