27 ::: The Island

The night was quiet.

Kithrup's many small moons stirred low tides against the metal cliffs a hundred meters away. The ever-present winds, driven without brake across the planet ocean, tugged at the trees and ruled the foliage.

Still, compared to what they had known for months, the silence was heavy. There were none of the ubiquitous machine sounds which had followed them everywhere from Earth, the unceasing whirrs and clicks of mechanical function, or the occasional smoking crackle of failure.

The squeaking, groaning drone of dolphin conversation was gone, too. Even Keepiru and Sah'ot were absent. At night the two dolphins accompanied the Kithrup aboriginals in their nocturnal sea hunt.

The surface of the metal-mound was almost too quiet. The few sounds seemed to carry forever. The sea, the distant rumble of a faraway volcano…

There was a gentle moan in the night, followed by a very quiet gasping cry.

"They're at it again," Dennie sighed, not particularly caring if Toshio heard her.

The sounds came from the clearing at the southern point of the island. The third and fourth humans on the island had tried to find their privacy as far from the abo village and the tunnel pool as possible. Dennie wished they could have gone even farther away.

There was laughter, faint but clear.

"I've never heard anything like it," she sighed.

Toshio blushed and fed another stick to the fire. The couple in the next clearing deserved their privacy. He considered pointing this out to Dennie.

"I swear, they're like minks!" Dennie said, intending to sound sardonic and mock-envious. But it came out just a little bitter.

Toshio noticed. Against his better judgment, he said, "Dennie, we all know that humans are among the sexual athletes of the galaxy, though some of our clients give us a run for it."

Toshio poked a stick into the fire. That had been a pretty brash thing to say. He felt a trifle emboldened by the night, and the desire to break the tension by the fire.

"What do you mean by that?" Dennie looked at him sharply.

Toshio played with the stick. "We-ell, there's a line in an old play,… 'Why, your dolphin was not lustier!' Shakespeare wasn't the first to compare the two horniest of the brainy mammals; y'know I don't suppose anyone's come up with a scale to measure it, but I'd have to wonder if it weren't a prerequisite for intelligence.

"Of course, that's only one of the possibilities. If you take what the Galactics say about uplift into account…"

He rambled on, slowly drawing away from incitement, noticing how Dennie came this close to blowing her cool, before she turned and looked away.

He'd done it! He had played a round and won it! It was a minor victory in a game he had wondered if he would ever get to play.

The art of teasing had always been a one-sided affair to Toshio, and he'd always had the short end. To get the best of an attractive older woman by dint of clever conversation and character insight was a coup.

He didn't think he was being cruel, though a genteel cruelty did seem to be part of the game. All he knew for certain was that this was one way to get Dennie Sudman to treat him less like a child. If some of the easy mutual liking they'd had before had to suffer for it, that was too bad.

Much as he didn't care for Sah'ot, Toshio was glad the fin had provided the lever he needed to pry a chink in Dennie's armor.

He was about to try out another bon mot when Dennie cut in.

"I'm sorry, Tosh. I'd love to hear the rest, but I'm going to bed. We've a busy day tomorrow, launching Tom's glider, showing Gillian the Kiqui, and experimenting with that damned robot for Charlie. I suggest you get some sleep too."

She turned to wrap herself in her sleeping bag at the far end of the camp, near the watch-wards.

"Yeah," Toshio said, perhaps a bit too heartily. "I'll do that in a bit, Dennie. Good night. Pleasant dreams."

She was silent, with her back to the tiny glow from the fire. Toshio couldn't tell if she was asleep or awake.

I wish we humans were better at psi, he thought. They say telepathy has its drawbacks, but it would sure be nice to know what's going on in another person's head sometimes.

It'd take away a lot of the anxiety if I knew what she was thinking… even if I found out she just thought I was a nervy kid.

He looked up at the patchy sky overhead. Through long ragged openings in the clouds he could see stars.

In two places, there were nebiculae in the sky that hadn't been there the night before, signs of a battle still raging. The tiny false nebulae glowed in every visible color, and probably in other bands than light.

Toshio let a fistful of metallo-silicate dirt sift through his fingers onto the coals. Falling sparkles of metal winked at him like incandescent confetti, like winking stars.

He dusted off his hands and turned to crawl into his own sleeping roll. He lay there, eyes closed, reluctant to watch the stars, or to dissect the pros and cons of his behavior.

Instead, he listened to the wind-and-surf sounds of the night. They were rhythmic and calming, like a lullaby, like the seas of home.

Except once in a while he thought he could pick up, on the edge of hearing, sighs and soft laughter coming from the south. They were sounds of complex happiness that filled him with a sad longing.

"They're at it again," he sighed to himself. "I swear, I've never heard of anything like it."

The humid air kept their perspiration slick upon them. Gillian licked a moustache of tear-like salt off her upper lip. The same way, Tom cleaned some of the sheen off her breasts. The wetness of his mouth cooled on her aureoles and nipples when he took his mouth away.

She gasped and grabbed the wavy hair at the back of his head, where his slightly balding vanity feared no tugging. He responded with mock biting that sent shivers to her calves, thighs, and lower back.

Gillian locked her heel behind his knee and levered her pelvis up against his. Her breath whistled softly as he lifted his head and met her eyes.

"I thought what I was doing was afterplay," he whispered a little hoarsely. He made a show of wiping his forehead. "You should warn me when I cross over the line, and start promising what I can't deliver." He took her hand and kissed its palm and the inside of her wrist.

Gillian ran her fingers along his cheek, to touch, feather light, his jaw, throat and shoulder. She took sparse clumps of chest hair and pulled playfully.

She purred — not like a housecat, but with the feral rumble of a leopardess. "Whenever you're ready, love. I can wait. You may be the illegitimate son of a fecund test-tube, but I know you better than your planners ever did. You have resources they never imagined."

Tom was about to say that, planners or no planners, he was the quite legitimate son of May and Bruce Orley of Minnesota State, Confederacy of Earth… but then he noticed the slight liquid welling in her eyes. Her words were rough, light and teasing, but her grip on his chest hair only tightened as she looked up at his face, eyes roaming, as if she were memorizing every feature.

Tom felt suddenly confused. He wanted to be close to Gillian on their last night together. How could they be any closer than they were right now? His body pressed against hers, and her warm breath filled his nostrils. He looked away, feeling somehow he was letting her down.

Then he felt it, a tender stroking that seemed to strive against a locked and heavy feeling inside his own head. It was a soft pressure that would not go away. He realized that the thing fighting it was himself.

I'm leaving tomorrow, he thought.

They had argued over who would be the one to go, and he had won. But it was bitter to have to go.