When he came, he felt as though his entire body were gushing out through his penis. His back arched, and he cried out, pulling her down on him, his fingers digging so hard into her shoulders that they left vivid bruises for days. Krysty collapsed on him, kissing him tenderly around the face, her lips brushing him with the softness of a moth’s wings.
“That was good, lover,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “It was.”
They made love twice more during that long night. They did it the second time with infinite slowness during the quiet hours of early morning when normally the blood flows at its most sluggish and the elderly and ailing are nearest to death.
The third time was around D in the red. Ryan woke, nestled against Krysty, and he was immediately possessed of a desperate need for her body. He rolled on her and took her quickly, almost brutally, while she was still barely awake.
Afterward, they held each other tightly, slipping back into sleep until they’d had their fill of sleep and were ready for another day.
RYAN WENT ALONE to visit Jak Lauren.
The corridors were patrolled by the helmeted sec men, marching in clumsy unison in pairs, none of them even turning to watch the stranger walk by. Ryan tucked his scarf into the neck of his coveralls, pausing at a corner with an attack of painful gas from the turgid food they’d been given. There had been no word from any of the scientists on what they should do that day.
“Go where you can and find out what you can,” he’d told the others.
The security units were at the end of one of the corridors farthest away from the center of the Wizard Island complex. Once upon a time they might have been considered unbreakable, but now some of the comp bolts and locks had ceased to work, and there were ordinary bolts rusting on a couple of the doors. One single guard stood outside the main cell where the albino was being kept.
Ryan stopped in front of the sec mutie. “Can I go on through?”
The vid camera above their heads turned and whirred. After a delay of several seconds, Ryan heard a human voice answering him.
“Permission granted, visitwise.”
But the sec man didn’t move. He stood foursquare, blocking the doorway. Ryan looked up at the camera again, hoping for intervention, but nothing happened. He took a half step forward, and the sec man’s blaster shifted, its narrow muzzle centering on his stomach.
“Fireblast! Move out of the fucking way, you stupe bastard!”
The speaker crackled again. “Regret signals not being received. Please go away and return in one-half letter. May the peace of Central go with you.”
“Thanks,” Ryan muttered.
When he returned, he found Dr. Ethel Tardy waiting for him, pacing up and down the narrow passage outside the security section.
“Apologies for delay,” she snapped. “We are most busy and normal operational repairs have been put on the back burners for too many years. Soon, it will all change. You and your companions may work with us, involvementwise, and share Central’s rewards.”
“Sure. Can I see the kid?”
The tiny woman nodded, waving her withered arm in a sort of salute. The sec man had disappeared, and all Ryan had to do was slide the bolt at the top and bottom of the door and pull it open. Jak was sitting on a narrow bunk bed. As the door opened, he stood up, his body tensing, but he relaxed as soon as he saw Ryan.
“Hi,” he said.
Ryan glanced around and saw Dr. Tardy waddling off. But the dark figure of the sec man had mysteriously reappeared and now stood with his back to them. Ryan pushed the door closed and glanced around the cell. Then he looked closely at the boy’s face for any sign of ill treatment. But Jak looked just as he always dida narrow foxy face devoid of color, the eyes like distant rubies in sockets of wind-scoured bone, the familiar scar across the left cheek that tugged the mouth up into a simulacrum of a smile.
“How ya doing?” he asked.