Chapter 49
Su’ama had missed her mark, arrived months too late for that critical meeting, and when the ‘corder came by, she shook her head and let it pass. Nothing to report. Unless she wanted to shock and horrify the Flip-project committee heads with a detailed report of dinner, mating, and the subsequent rape and murder of her subject.
She shivered. No one mated, not these days. If you had those urges, you went to the Stuprarium and jacked in. Jack in to jerk off, her friend had once called it. The program there would attend your needs, clean up after whatever messily bodily fluid was produced, save and scan your gene code for future generations. If there were ever going to be any, Su’ama thought. Too risky, right now. The population was strictly controlled. Five must pass before one is born. Maybe, someday, there would be allowances for mating and birthing as it had been done in her subject’s day.
Her thighs twitched again. Bad cook, he might have been, but Danny-Allen Tate was a grand maestro of female pleasure. He had done such things to her that Su’ama had not thought possible, drawn such responses from that primitive body as to make everything else forgettable, mere chaff.
It was, perhaps, against the rules. Flippers weren’t supposed to interfere, just watch, observe, figure out what the hell had gone wrong. So they were sent back in time, back along the path, to the dim and forgotten past. Centuries ago, something, something had happened. When they found the event, the point at which civilization had descended into the barbaric reaches, then the committee would decide, would choose to act. It would be nice, Su’ama thought, if we could ever wake up our sisters.
But there was not enough; not air enough, nor water enough, nor food enough for those who remained, and so they slumbered in the vast catacombs beneath the planet’s wasteland, waiting for the day when they could awaken, move and be free. For whatever that freedom would cost them.
The doctor, her subject, Marilyn Tate, had not, perhaps, been thinking of copulating with her hus that night. She’d been deep in research, almost five days straight at the lab, sleeping in the small break room when absolutely necessary and taking birdbaths in the sink. That, too, was luxury for Su’ama. To use water like that? To waste it, splashing it on tired skin and over weary eyelids. Funny how it was also quite helpful.
She’d finally gone home; the teleportation device would work. It would! It did work. Just, it took insane amounts of energy to transfer an item from one platform to the other. If they could solve the energy problem, then the solution would be right there; move everyone off the planet before…well, before. Su’ama had not been able to cudgel that information from Marilyn’s exhausted brain. Armageddon, the end of days, the end, sayonara. Marilyn pushed it from her conscious mind. It wasn’t important, the doctor told herself, what was going to happen. Because she and her team were going to save the greatest number of humans possible.
If they could just solve the energy problem…
Whatever that was.
Danny-Allen had helped, unexpectedly. He’d fed his wife without asking questions. She was able to relax as he prompted food into her—real food, with texture and taste, not just a soycaf and a waxcup of ginger-noodles drawn from the vendateria. And wine. Su’ama hadn’t cared for that flavor, not at all. Why would anyone allow perfectly good grapes to rot and spoil and then drink the crushings with such relish? But the effects! How had she not known of this, delicious floating, receding, the worry flittered and then was gone after Danny-Allen plied her with a glass, then two.
He rubbed her tired feet, tracing gentle fingers up her legs, spread her thighs, rubbed at the big muscles there, kneaded and loosened them. By that time, she was already feeling a little warm and slippery between her legs. She watched him, kneeling in front of her, as he massaged one hand, then the other, up her arms, across her breastbone, just under full breasts, and across her belly until she was panting with need, wanting him to touch those places that he was scrupulously avoiding with a sly smirk. He knew—knew—that she wanted, needed, and he was waiting for her, waiting for her to ask, to admit what she needed so badly, and she didn’t want to, but how she wanted it.
Finally, whimpering, she’d asked him, submitted to him, to her own desire, and they’d made love there on the floor like randy teenagers, instead of like a dignified politician and a brainiac scientist, rolled around on the carpet, and her knees and elbows ached from the resulting rug burn, but oh, gods, it had been good, it had been satisfying, and that was good, good, just like that. Oh, more, can you do more, wait, like yes, there, there, slick and hard and hot, gods she was hot, sweating, her sticky hair in maniac curls plastered across her face. She drove herself onto him, impaled herself on his cock, finally, yes, like that. Her muscles spasmed around him and she fell forward, collapsing on his body, his breath warm in her ear, hands tight across the small of her back as he rocked her down.