“Goodness, that’s the Zemplar cross formation.” Dudley rolled off the bed and padded over to the window. He pushed it open and stuck his head out. The fresh breeze coming in off the Trine’ba made Mellanie shiver on top of the bed.
“You never told me we were here,” Dudley said.
“Where? Randtown? Yes I did.”
“No, Elan. This has to be Elan. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes, my love, this is Elan.” She was impressed; the memory transfer had obviously worked flawlessly, it was just his personality that hadn’t survived the procedure intact. “Now please close the window. It’s freezing.”
“This is about as close as you can get to Dyson Alpha, apart from Far Away.” His head was still outside, muffling his voice.
“Yes.”
“That’s where the Guardians come from, you know.”
“I know.” She searched around for the quilt, then stopped. “Do you know about the Guardians?”
“A bit. It was only the once.”
“What was?”
He turned from the window and looked down bashfully. “We were burgled. Eventually, we found out it could have been the Guardians. The Chief Investigator reckoned the whore I was married to had met Bradley Johansson himself.”
“Which Chief Investigator?” Mellanie asked, trying to suppress her trepidation.
“The strange one from the Hive, Paula Myo.”
Mellanie flopped down onto her back, and raised both fists triumphantly in the air. “Yes!”
“What is it?” he asked nervously.
“Come here.”
She fucked him. As always he was supremely easy for her to control. If she let him he would climax in seconds, so she was strict, drawing him out, provoking and denying in equal amounts so that it would last as long as she wanted. This time it was different for one thing, this time she allowed herself to come as well. There was no faking it, no sound effects. It became her selfish celebration, he was there for her pleasure.
He must have known something had altered, sensed some change in her. His gaze as he lay there on the bed afterward was worshipful. “Don’t leave me,” he pleaded. “Please, don’t ever leave me. I couldn’t take that. I couldn’t.”
“Don’t worry, my love,” she told him. “I haven’t finished with you yet. Now be good, and take one of your sleeping pills.”
He nodded, anxious to please, and washed one down with the remnants of the champagne. Mellanie plumped up the pillows and sank back, smiling at the ceiling. For the first time in four days she fell into a deep contented sleep.
Mark was out in the vineyard with one of the autopickers that was stalled; Barry and Sandy were with him, keen to help the repair operation. Their assistance came in the form of charging up and down the rows, with the dog barking excitedly as it dodged between them. The big gangling machine had come to a halt halfway down its third row when its control software realized that the grencham berries weren’t sliding through the central hopper. Its octopuslike picking arms had frozen in various stages of removing clusters from the vines.
This was only the third day of picking the crop. Already he’d had two breakdowns in his own vineyard. Calls from neighbors to help out with mechanical problems were coming in with increasing frequency and desperation. He slithered into the gap between the leafy vines and the side of the machine, unclipping the loader mechanism inspection panel. Just like before, lengths of the vine had gone down the hopper to wind themselves around various cogs and rollers. It was the clippers on the end of the picker arms that were hauling them in. Same as everything in life when you got down to it: a software problem. He’d have to write a discrimination fix in time for next year. In the meantime, it was a simple pair of secateurs that had to chop at the stringy vines, then human hands that pulled them out. Mashed grencham berries made the whole process slow and gooey.
“Look at that, Dad,” Barry called.
Mark pulled the last few shreds of vine from the feeder mechanism, and looked up. Someone was driving along the valley’s packed stone road at a ridiculous speed, a low gray vehicle producing a long swirling contrail of dust behind it.
“Idiot,” he grunted. The inspection panel clipped back into place; he gave the locking pins a few thumps with the top of his medium pliers to secure them. His e-butler gave the autopicker array a resume operations order, and the arms slowly stretched out again. Clippers snicked at the top of clusters. The movements began to speed up. Mark nodded in satisfaction, and pulled his sunglasses out of his overalls pocket.
“They’re coming here, Dada,” Sandy yelled out.
The car had slowed to turn up the drive into the Vernons’ vineyard. It didn’t look like anything a Randtown inhabitant would own.
“Come on then,” he told his kids. “Let’s go meet them.”
They ducked between vines as they ran toward the drive, calling for Panda who was off chasing wobes, the local fieldmice-equivalents. Mark reached the end of the row, where he got a good look at the fancy car as it neared the house. Its sleek shape clued him in on who was visiting.
The MG came to a halt beside the Ables pickup; and the suspension lowered itself back down from the extended rough-ride position so that the wheels fitted back into the chassis again. A gull-wing door opened in the side, and Carys Panther got out. She was wearing a chic paneled suede skirt and expensive hand-tooled cowboy boots, with a simple white blouse. Her dove-gray Stetson was carried in one hand.
Barry gave a welcoming whoop and rushed forward. Sandy was smiling happily, it was always exciting when Aunty Carys visited.
“Nice metalware,” Mark said sardonically.
“Oh, that?” Carys gave a dismissive wave toward the MG. “It’s my boyfriend’s wife’s car.”
Mark made an exaggerated appeal to the heavens. She always had to make an entrance.
Neither of the two housemaids who brought breakfast to the room at eleven o’clock would meet Mellanie’s gaze. They put the big trays down on the table and walked out.
“Screw you,” Mellanie told them after the door had shut behind them. She started lifting the silver lids off the plates. Room service might be crap, but the kitchen was certainly four-star. “Tuck in,” she told Dudley.
He sat opposite her, as nervous as a school kid facing the principal. She could remember that sensation well enough.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
“Your story.”
“Is that all I am, a story?”
“We are all stories, ultimately. I want to help you, Dudley, I really do. If you can come to terms with what’s happened, you’ll be so much happier. I think I can do that for you. I really do.”
“And us? What about us?”
She smiled cheekily, picking up a strawberry and licking it in a suitably wicked fashion. “You don’t think I give myself like that to anyone I don’t care about, do you?”
His answering smile was one of cautious relief. She pulled her chair around the table until she was pressed up beside him. With him watching in silent fascination she picked up another strawberry and held it delicately in her teeth. Very slowly she undid her bathrobe and pulled it open, then leaned in toward him, guiding the strawberry into his mouth. He bit into it, their lips touching.
“Oh, God.” He was trembling, his eyes damp.
“Now you feed me something.”
Dudley held up a slim slice of pancake dripping with maple syrup. She laughed as the drops fell on her breasts, then nibbled her way up the pancake slice. Dudley leaped at her, knocking the breakfast trays across the table. She was amazed he’d shown that much restraint, and laughed again as her chair went flying backward. They both tumbled onto the floor, with Dudley tugging frantically at his own bathrobe.
He fucked her there and then on the expensive moozaki rug with orange juice leaking down on top of them from the overturned glasses on the table. Then she was pulled over to the bed and fucked again.