Free Georgia on My Mind and Other Places by Charles Sheffield

sat up and laid his hand gently on her bare belly. “Are you telling me that you are pregnant now? That there’s a baby in here?”
    “Yes. I’m at nearly two and a half months. I hope the morning sickness is all finished.”
    “Good.”
    He turned toward her, and she saw the last thing that she had expected. He was physically aroused.
    All the tension in her body melted away. She lay back and closed her eyes. “The second time will be much better, Arrin, I promise you—for both of us.”
    * * *
    The first lovemaking with Derli had been agony for Gilden of an unusual and terrible kind. He liked her, more than he had ever liked any woman; but when she moved above him and took control of his body she became all the Harpies of childhood, playing with him, mocking him, tormenting him, using him for their own ends without any regard for his needs or wants.
    His body had brought him rapidly to a climax, divorced from his anguish, and he had pretended to a satisfaction he did not feel. As he drifted toward sleep he was convinced that this was the only form of physical sexual experience he could ever know.
    But then Derli had spoken of her pregnancy. That both soothed and excited him. His mind pictured her again with Valmar; and he had an answer.
    He distanced himself mentally from their new union, even as he moved on top of her and entered her waiting body. Once again he became the voyeur, the involved but remote participant. The difference was that he functioned now as both observer and player, embarked on a dizzying self-referential exercise that sent him spinning down an endless regression of sexual congress. He was watcher and actor. He knew the right moves, he had seen them a thousand times over. And when his climax arrived, moments after hers, his dual selves coalesced with a force as painful as torture. His shudders were both physical and mental; this time they signaled a pleasure almost too much to bear.
    It was Derli who drifted off to sleep, while Gilden lay wide awake and tried to understand what had just happened. In the dim overhead lights he studied her body. She lay flat, legs still spread wide. She was breathing slowly and her mouth was slightly open. She would probably not wake until morning.
    It occurred to him that he might never have a better opportunity. He also realized that his workload had just increased again.
    He had to create yet another voyeur, of unmatched sensitivity and operating lifetime.
    She did not move as he leaned over to plant a delicate moth’s kiss on her navel, dressed in silence, and left the bedroom.
    * * *
    Derli had said what information she needed. She had not suggested any way to obtain it. As soon as Valmar Krieg returned from Montmorin, Gilden moved his base of operations into the mobile experiment station next to the Sigil ship and went into round-the-clock surveillance.
    He was trying to be cautious, but he suspected that he was pushing the limit. It would require minimal effort by one of the Sigil to learn that their privacy had been violated and the computer system subverted.
    He began to confine his intrusion into the ship to microscopic time slices, just enough for a spot check of events. It was during one of these flashes, occurring close to the middle of the Lucidar night, that the crucial event began.
    Gilden came fully awake. The ship’s monitors were showing him the Sigil sleeping area. He had caught a glimpse of the big one crouched on the floor. Above it hovered the small one, clinging on to its partner’s body with all its limbs.
    If there was ever a time to take risks, this was it. Gilden set the ship’s computer to provide and export to him continuous observations.
    The massive body of the lower Sigil was wriggling uneasily as though she was not satisfied with her position. The smaller one clung on resolutely. A long, tapered member was emerging slowly from the rounded boss on the front lower part of its body. The new organ was pale yellow, glistening, and