Free The Coming by Joe Haldeman Page B

agree."
    "Sounds difficult." She stroked him slowly, studying his progress. "This is the only instrument I ever learned how to play. Skin flute."
    "'Duet for skin flute and honey pot.'"
    "Honey pot, yeah. Marry me and take me away from all this."
    Harry rolled the lights and holo cameras in around them.
    Harry explained the narrative, such as it was. They were in a rowboat near the shore of a small lake. Nine minutes into the sequence, another boat was going to approach. They'd try to get down and hide, but would keep fucking, and be caught at the last minute.
    He turned on a flatscreen that showed what the actors on the actual boat were doing, so they could mimic the postures and timing. They didn't have to be too precise. The actors on the boat wore skinspray that conducted the feeling of rough wood and water splash. The somatic input from Gab and Louis would be edited in, combined into the main male and female tracks.
    "Gabby, get on your knees and back up here." He unmounted the stirrups and pushed a button that lowered the platform a foot.
    "Oh, goodie," she said, rolling over. "Arf, arf."
    "We still have a little panty line."
    "Oh, bullshit, Harry," Louis said. "You can make this look like we're in the middle of a rowboat, and you can't edit out a little panty line?"
    "Just extra work. Take a couple of dips before we put the harness on."
    They worked together well. Louis stood still behind her and let her control how deep, how fast. The external cameras caught it in every detail. He slid out of her and was so erect his penis slapped against his abdomen.
    "Good, we got that," Harry said, and handed him the harness. Louis rolled it over his organ, a loose transparent condom covered with tiny wires. He tightened a collar at the base of his penis and pulled the lower part of the arrangement over his testicles. Harry lubricated a pair of sensors and Louis eased one into his own anus and one into Gab.
    She sighed. "Well, let's move it." Louis inserted his decorated dick and they proceeded.
    The virtual-reality recording equipment had been bought as part of a legitimate grant for the study of orgasmic dysfunction. Harry was not a scientist, of course; he was an artiste. The scientist whose department owned the equipment was willing to let it be used for artistic purposes twice a week, for an amount of money roughly equal to his IISR salary, before taxes.
    Gab and Louis had the talent of being able to make their bodies ignore all the hardware. The customers on the receiving end were not so encumbered, of course; they just wore the neural inductor hats.
    A lot of customers went to the same feelie twice, male and female, to see how the other half felt. Gab had tried it once, fucking herself, but partway through she took off the cap and left the theater, anxious and confused. That had been the semester she first did cadaver dissection, and although she hadn't been too squeamish about the woman's body, cutting it up didn't put her in much of a mood to look inside her own.
    This was going to be a 2X deep feelie: two orgasms and the internal sensors. With only two climaxes, it might even have a plot, though the audience wasn't demanding. It would be called Love Boat II.
    A commercial feelie wasn't exactly like "being there," perfect virtual reality, which was dangerous and illegal because of the drugs involved. People participating in Love Boat II would taste and smell and feel a simulacrum of what the four actors did, and some of them would experience orgasms along with Gab and Louis. The "deep" feelie part enhanced that; they could see what was going on inside the vagina, and for most people that made it work better. Other people went to the regular feelies, which were less anatomical but had more dialogue.
    There was a countdown clock on the flatscreen that told them how many seconds to orgasm. Gab was looking at it in a mirror; they were facing each other now, lying in the bottom of the boat. At sixty seconds she squeezed his