Free Superluminal by Vonda N. McIntyre Page B

sights?”
    “Is that what you really want? To stay with me?”
    “Yes. Very much.”
    o0o
    Laenea led Radu through the vast apartment to the lowest
floor. There, flagstones surrounded a swimming pool formed of intricate mosaic
that shimmered in the dim light. This was a grotto, more than a place for
athletic events or children’s noisy beachball games.
    Radu sighed; Laenea brushed her hand across the top of his
shoulder, questioning.
    “Someone spent a great deal of time and care
here,” he said.
    “That’s true.” Laenea had never thought of
it as the work of someone’s hands, individual and painstaking, though of
course it was exactly that. But the economic structure of her world was based
on service, not production, and she had always taken the results for granted.
    They took off their caftans and waded down the steps into
body-warm water. It rose smooth and soothing around the persistent soreness of
Laenea’s ribs.
    “I’m going to soak for a while.” She lay
back and floated, her hair drifting out, a strand occasionally curling back to
brush her shoulder, the top of her spine. Radu’s voice rumbled through
the water, incomprehensible, but she glanced over and saw him waving toward the
dim end of the pool. He flopped down in the water and thrashed energetically away,
retreating to a constant background noise. All sounds faded, gaining the same
faraway quality, like audio slow motion. She urged the tension out of her body
through her shoulders, down her outstretched arms, out the tips of spread
fingers.
    Radu finished his circumnavigation of the pool; he dove
under her and the turbulence stroked her back. Laenea let her feet sink to the
pool’s bottom. She stood up as Radu burst out of the water, a very
amateur dolphin, laughing, hair dripping in his eyes. They waded toward each
other through the chest-deep water, and embraced. Radu kissed Laenea’s
throat just at the corner of her jaw. She threw her head back like a cat
stretching to prolong the pleasure, moving her hands up and down his sides.
    “We’re lucky to be here so early,” he said
softly, “alone before anyone else comes.”
    “I don’t think anyone else is staying at
Kathell’s right now,” Laenea said. “We have the pool to
ourselves all the time.”
    “No one else at all lives here?”
    “No, of course not. Kathell doesn’t even live
here most of the time. She just has it kept ready for when she wants it.”
    He said nothing, embarrassed by his error.
    “Never mind,” Laenea said. “It’s a
natural mistake to make.” But it was not, of course, on earth.
    o0o
    Laenea had visited enough new worlds to understand how Radu
might be uncomfortable in the midst of the private possessions and personal
services available on earth. What impressed him was expenditure of time, for
time was the valuable commodity in his frame of reference. On Twilight everyone
would have two or three necessary jobs, and none would consist of piecing
together intricate mosaics. Everything was different on earth.
    They paddled in the shallow end of the pool, reclined on the
steps, flicked shining spray at each other. Laenea wanted Radu again. She was
completely free of pain for the first time since the operation. That fact began
to overcome a certain reluctance she felt, an ambivalence toward her own
reactions. The violent change in her sexual responses disturbed her more than she
wanted to admit.
    And she wondered if Radu felt the same way; she discovered
she was afraid he might.
    As they lay on the warm flagstones edging the pool, Laenea
moved closer and kissed him. He put his arm around her and she slid her hand
across his stomach and down to his genitals, somehow less afraid of a physical
indication of reluctance than a verbal one. But he responded to her, hardening,
drawing circles on her breast with his fingertips, caressing her lips with his
tongue. Laenea stroked him from the back of his knee to his shoulder. His body
had a thousand textures, muted