John Barnes - Directive 51

Lenny rolled forward. Fuss yowled as if his tail were on fire, shot at least five vertical feet, and vanished into Heather’s bedroom in a single gray-brown streak. “Well, that was easy,” Lenny said. “I didn’t know they could levitate.”

“I have to keep the windows closed so he doesn’t fly to the moon every time the neighbors turn on their blender. Can I interest you in a beer?”

“I bet you can.”

As she returned from the kitchen, a cold Corona in each hand, she saw that Lenny had transferred himself to the left end of the couch. Giving me the choice of next to him or at the other end. Maybe this guy’s a little too much of a gentleman.

To avoid towering over him, which she knew annoyed the hell out of her father, she slid onto the couch next to him. As she handed him the beer she brushed her head against his shoulder.

He slipped an arm around her. She kissed him, warmly, slowly, without tongue, or gripping and pulling, or any of the big-production ways of saying, Dude, you are so in .

Though you so are. I just don’t want to send you that message. Yet . She was just hoping that a plain old I like you kiss was what he was in the mood for.

Christ, I bet he’s thinking something just as complicated. This is what happens when you spend your whole life monitoring communications.

After the kiss, he said, “Well, that took care of most of my worries about misreading each other’s intentions. Um, is this the place where I tell you that although we have to be careful about my left arm and my right foot is hypersensitive, most of me moves, and the parts that—”

“We can skip all that till the issue comes up, Lenny.”

“We can?”

She grinned. “Well, if I put you through the full explanation of the mechanics before we got going, I’d have to admit that I did that to you to my dad, and then he’d beat me. And I’d deserve it. He gets so tired of having to do all that talking just to explain to whoever his latest is that he’s capable of having sex and it feels good. Look, I know that no sane man who was incapable would humiliate himself by starting a fire he couldn’t put out.”

“What if I’m not sane?”

“I’ve run into that a few times. Married it once, too. I recognize it when I see it, and you’re not crazy that way. So…” she kissed him again slowly, “as I said, we can discuss any special issues when they come up. Or when anything else comes up. Now relax, forget whatever happened with other women, and give me a chance to misunderstand you for myself.”

This time he kissed back, and she thought the question was settled until he said, “I’m hoping to break whole new territory in miscommunication before you decide you never want to see me again.”

“Are you this smooth with all the girls?”

“Only with the ones who are way too hot and interesting to be in my league.”

“Flattery may not get you everywhere, but it’ll probably get you more than far enough.”

He finally gave her the kiss she’d been trying for, definitely as the guy in charge this time. “And how would you know what my idea of ‘enough’ is?”

“Research,” she said, “starting now.”

“How are we doing for collision avoidance? We’re outside the shipping lanes now, right?” Tracy asked.

She always worried like this, quite unnecessarily, when they were both below and trusting to automated systems, but Grady knew it was no use arguing. “Roll off me, fire us up some more herb, and I’ll see what the satellite says. Have to admit I’m going to miss this.” Grady gave one of Tracy’s fine, firm breasts an extra squeeze—he liked being crass with her because, despite her protests, it turned her on.

She got up—he liked how sticky her thighs were as they brushed over his—and padded over to the table to reload the bong.

Grady sat up, pulled the laptop over, and dialed up his GoogleNavReal-Time, setting it for CENTERHERE, 150 KM, and ALLBANDS so that anything registering infrared, visible light, or radar from any public satellite overhead, anywhere within 150 kilometers, would show up in the composite picture it generated; projected current position was shown in bright green, with the actual positions back along the track shown in progressively paler green as they came from longer ago.

“No danger of collision, no weather to worry about, still good,” he said, “and autowarning is active and working fine. We can sleep whenever you want to.”

“In that case,” she said, “how about I have the oven make us a fresh pizza, with lots of extra cheese, and we switch to a nice mellow red wine and some Gatorade so we don’t get dehydrated, and we start drifting off to sleep? I’m excited about Daybreak too, but it’s been a long day.”

Grady had been thinking about one more good blow job from his pretty wife, but sleeping without having to set a watch was a pleasure that would be gone soon; might as well enjoy it while they could. He stretched and yawned. “We’ll go with your plan. It was still warm last time I checked; want to go up on the deck and look at the stars?”

In sweaters and caps, they held hands, sipped warm green Gatorade from nice heavy china mugs, and savored the taste of the sweet/salty fluid and the cool, moist sea air. They admired the bright lights in the sky, picked out constellations, and even allowed the satellites to be sort of pretty too, before the automatic gizmo down in the galley summoned them to go back below for pizza.

“I won’t miss a lot of things,” Grady said, holding out his glass for her to refill, and pulling over another piece of pizza, “but sailing like this, with the machines to keep us safe and take care of us… well, even that. Yeah. Even that.”

“Even that what?” Tracy got all weird and puzzled sometimes like he wasn’t speaking English.

He let that go. “Even that will be better after Daybreak, ’cause we’ll be able to afford a crew, and they’ll be family —like your nanny or the maid was family when you were a kid. And, and, you know, like, it won’t be like the machines, because they’ll actually care about us. Besides, right now any schmuck with money can have the machines, and too many schmucks have too much money, so it’s like, it’s not special. Like it will be special when we’ve got crew that’s like family.”

“So pro fucking found , baby.”

“Daybreak is like Christmas, you know? You know you can’t really but wouldn’t it be great to have it every day?”

“Not if Daybreak was on Christmas. We’d miss the big dinner with my family.”

“Silly girl.”

At last they curled up like little animals in a burrow. The automated system was silent all night; the few ships in the area had people on watch and collision-avoidance systems of their own.

Ysabel’s coverall, plainly worn by many people before her, felt dirty, but not as soiled as she felt knowing that she was guilty as shit of helping to assassinate the vice president. She’d even liked Samuelson.

She’d been more a part of Aaron’s infiltration than of Daybreak itself; she’d been totally duped and she was totally bogus, and she hadn’t really been acting for the planet and for the peasants and for her real values; she’d just been a tool for goddam Aaron. If his name was Aaron. Probably that was as phony as his commune and the sympathy she thought she’d seen in his big soft Latin-poet eyes.