Alien Sex полностью

We had a wonderful time. “Helluva season!” the erudite crabseller crowed, and we took the crabs home for a delicious salad under amplified stars.

The baby is in bed with me tonight. I know what it is, but it doesn’t matter.

August is with me, too, though I cannot see him.

And Jory is wherever he wishes to be.

It has been another day of magic. Jory and I went to a mixer in Fort Bragg this evening, for the first time in years. He was all wit, wisdom, and charisma, free with his engaging tales of Climago and the exciting chases of interplanetary Business.

When we got back to the house, he stopped me and put his hands on my shoulders. I could feel their weight. “I’ve been insensitive as hell, Dorothea,” he said. “I know that. This time, no pheromas!” He laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile. “And no damned sling field or son y lumière either!” Face in a mocking leer, he added, “Unless, of course, you’d like to try some Everslip oil, just to keep things from being too easy.”

“No, no, not the oil!” I cried in mock horror. Then, softly, I said, “I’ve always wanted it easy, always.”

And it was. We made love—miracle of miracles!—in our very own unadorned hoverbed, the opaque ceiling above us wonderfully boring, the unsynched music quaint, the steady lamplight charming, and no stencils to frustrate us.

The new Jory sleeps beside me, and I lie awake, happy. I can hear the sounds, yes. The footsteps, the chairs slithering, the sighs. I hear them in the den, in the distant kitchen—but they do not bother me. A faint voice within me whispers, “That is the real Jory; those are his sounds.” But I answer: “It is only a stranger, a stranger in our house. He does not bother us, we do not bother him. He is really no more than a memory, a dim figure from a fading past, a man who once said to you, ‘My son is coming to live with us,’ when he didn’t mean that at all, when he meant instead, ‘It is my lover who is coming….’”

In the morning, the tiny holes on my chest and arms will ooze for the briefest time. I will touch them lovingly. They are a small price to pay.

In a house like this one, but in a universe far far away, a stranger once said as he wept, “In the end, Dorothea, in the end all of our windows are mirrors, and we see only ourselves.”

Or did he say, “In the end, Dorothea, all that matters to mankind is mankind, world without end, amen”?

Or perhaps he said nothing at all.

Perhaps I was the one who said it.

Or perhaps neither of us said a thing, and no lie was ever spoken.