“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Cossont said, feeling oddly guilty. “Shit. When do we get there?” She’d just remembered, alarmingly, that when she’d taken a clipper to get out to Ospin, on the occasion she’d gone there to deposit the glittering grey cube holding QiRia’s mind-state, the voyage had lasted weeks. If it took that long this time the Subliming would already have happened by the time they got there.

“In about eighty-five hours. Less if we hurry.”

“Why don’t we hurry?”

“Because to do so will damage my engines. They are still repairing themselves after my dash to Izenion.”

“So how are you going to lose the ship that might be following us?”

“With difficulty, possibly.”

“So what was the other alternative?”

“Employ some method to obscure your exact destination. That should be easier. The android Eglyle Parinherm might be useful at that point. I’d like to wake it.”

“Fine by me. See if you can convince it it’s not all a sim.”

xLOU Caconym

oMSV Pressure Drop

So, our little group has grown with the inclusion of the You Call This Clean? as well as the Empiricist. And something called the Smile Tolerantly is another accomplice of the long-lived Mr Q. Only, looking at my edition of the relevant ship lists, the Smile Tolerantly disappeared up its own wazoo some 140 years before the Warm, Considering was even built, and was itself only brought into being just under four thousand years ago, so leaving open the question of who else might have been aiding and abetting the elusive geezer in the various meantimes. Any ideas?

∞

None. Further research is required.

∞

Wait. I want to write that down.

Fourteen

(S -14)

“Does she touch you … like this?”

“Ah … ah yes, very much like that. Just … like that.”

“And kiss you, like this?”

“… Somewhat like that. Only a little like that.”

“Only a little?”

“She kisses me differently. Oh, this is not … I shouldn’t … I really shouldn’t be telling you any of this. This is so … You are the most terrible man.”

“I know, I know. I hate myself. Am I not just the most terrible, terrible man?”

“You are, I don’t know … Oh, now what?”

“Let me see … does she kiss you like that?”

“No. Again, no, not quite like that.”

“In some other way?”

“In some other way.”

“How many ways are there, to kiss? I … I really have no idea. I am not so well versed as you might … let’s see …”

“… Well, then. Now. She kisses, let me see … more lightly, just as … passionately, but with less, less … less intensity, less muscularity.”

“Muscularity?”

“I think that is the word.”

“And, with the touching, is it like this …?”

“Oh, ah, yes, sometimes, though …”

“Yes?”

“Her hands, her fingers.”

“Like this?”

“No, not … something like … her hands, see, are more slender, the fingers are longer, they are more delicate. Yours are … fuller, more …”

“Filling?”