She came and, after a short respite, continued moving. Lanier's hips arched once, then he fell back, and then again, higher, and he groaned against her lowered shoulder, and then her cheek, and opened his mouth in a stifled, quiet, hoarse scream. With the thrusting and release he felt everything loosen, years of tension he hadn't even consciously known about.

They lay together, silent, for long, damp minutes, listening to the grinding breakers beyond the glass doors.

"Thank you," Patricia said.

"Jesus," Lanier said, and he smiled at her. "Better?"

She nodded and burrowed her nose into his shoulder. "That was very dangerous," she said. "I apologize."

Lanier turned her face toward him and clutched her head between his shoulder and his cheek. "We're both odd birds," he said. "You know that?"

"Mm." She nestled into his shoulder, eyes shut tight. "You shouldn't sleep here tonight. I'll be okay. You should sleep with Karen tonight."

He examined her face carefully. "All right," he said.

She opened her eyes—wide and square—and stared up at him. Now she seemed less a cat than some strange inversion of the neomorphs they had seen the past few days. They were human within, with strange exteriors.

But there was something inside Patricia Luisa Vasquez—something that had perhaps been there all along—which was not precisely human.

Only gods or extraterrestrials.

"You're looking at me funny," she said.

"Sorry. Just thinking how upside down everything is."

"No regrets?" she asked, stretching, eyes reduced to slits. "No regrets."

As he left her room, he felt his skin prickle. Looking down at his arms, he realized that of all the things he had seen in the past few days, none had given him gooseflesh. . . .

Until now.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Fifty-Nine

While day had not yet come to the resort, Olmy led the five of them to a waiting bus. Carrolson called them puppy-buses, because of their large white tires. The air was still and cool, and the stars gleamed clearly and steadily in the powdery blue-blackness.

Patricia was quiet, showing no sign of what had happened between her and Lanier the night before. Nor did Farley betray any awareness; Lanier had returned to their room to find her asleep. Sleep had come with much more difficulty for him; not since his adolescence had he put himself in such a situation.

Ram Kikura ran across a stretch of blue-green grass and boarded the bus a few minutes later.

"The President is unable to join us," she said.

"How disappointing," Carrolson said, not sounding terribly sincere. "Troubles?"

"I don't know. Ser Toller, the President and the Presiding Minister's partial are meeting now. You go on ahead; I'll stay here and follow the situation."