“You’d do that?”
“I will if you don’t help me.”
“Oh, well then. Okay, I raped you. I’ll just go turn myself in.” He stood up, began walking at a quick pace toward the node.
“Greg, come back here.”
“No, no, I’ve got to turn myself in for raping you. It’s the only decent thing to do.”
“Greg!” She stood up, trotted after him. “Greg, I wouldn’t do that! I wouldn’t.”
“No, get away from me, I’m a rapist! I might do it again. Get away from me.”
“Greg, stop.”
“Get away from me!” he shouted at her. “Go away!”
“Greg!”
He stopped only long enough to backhand her hard across the face. She fell to the grass with the impact, and sat in shock watching him walking away across the park. In the background the lively beat-feet music continued, wumpata-wumpata-wumpata, punctuated by whoops and howls and dangerous laughter. Savina leaned forward and hugged her knees, crying.
10. SEX TOYS
Vicky agreed with Mirro, Saul Kalman’s wife, that it would be tasteful to keep it discrete. Saul knew what was going on between the two of them but was doing his best to ignore it. They didn’t hide it from him, didn’t try to keep the affair secret – but they didn’t flaunt it in front of his face. Saul was Vicky’s superior at Travels, after all. There was no reason to aggravate their already turbulent relationship.
Vicky waited, therefor, for Saul to leave the house before she went up and rang the doorbell. She stood on the porch, scratching at her ribs and shifting her weight from one leg to the other, half-expecting Saul to come wandering back for some forgotten item, but the door opened and Mirro ushered her inside.
“How long is he going to be gone?” Vicky asked, touching the door switch. It closed behind her.
“He’s gone off to get some Mataphin,” Mirro said. “He usually takes about three hours … I don’t know why. I think he takes some as soon as he gets it and goes on a long walk.”
“You sure he’ll be gone that long?”
“Yes.” Mirro kissed Vicky, a tender touching of lips, then backed away. “Go get ready while I feed my kid. I’ll be in there in a few minutes.”
Vicky stifled a shudder at the mention of the poor monster Mirro and Saul had created. She hid her feelings, kept her face from showing it as Mirro turned and hurried off into the main part of the house. The child gave Vicky nightmares. It looked like a giant bloated baby with a tiny head and no obvious sign of gender.
Totally useless, no hope for improving, the child was a mutant in every sense of the word. How Mirro could love it so was beyond her.
Vicky found her way to the large master bedroom with its sauna and love pool and began removing her clothes. Each article she folded as she took it off, stacked it nice and orderly on Mirro’s dresser. Mirro’s daughter made some horrendous squeal that rattled the walls, and Vicky thanked the lord that her one child was normal. It was a gift, she thought, that her son Greg was so healthy and perfect. It tore her up that the courts had given him to her ex-husband. Sleazy bastard, she thought automatically. She regretted having a child with a man. It would have been wonderful if she could have had Greg with Mirro, but then of course it wouldn’t have been Greg. It could have ended up like Mirro’s daughter – but no, that must have come from Saul’s genes. It couldn’t have come from Mirro. No way! Vicky slipped out of her tight, see-through black panties, removed the Soft-Scent pad, and eased herself daintily into the warm, vibrating love pool.
Such a waste, she thought. All that progeny tax money! And for what, a thing that should have been miscarried. Saul and Mirro should be entitled to a refund. The government doesn’t do that, though. Vicky remembered how much money her and her ex-husband had shelled out to have Greg. A half-million dollars. Now it was even more than that, unless of course you were one of the so-called genetically gifted. Then they’d pay you to have children.
Mirro appeared, carrying a black leather case in which she kept what she termed her “love tools.” She set it down beside the pool, opening it up like hardware display. “What should we use? I put all the water and shock-proof ones on this side.”
“I don’t like the vibros in the pool – it’s redundant.”
“True. Here’s this, it’s kind of old-fashioned, but it holds memories …” Mirro held up a strap-on latex penis with life-like throbbing action.
Vicky shrugged and half-smiled. “Then one of us has to be the man.”
“I’ll do it,” Mirro offered.
“How about the Pushme-Pullyou?”
“Again?”
“I like it.” Vicky smiled, self-consciously seductive, widening her eyes and then letting half her face sinking into the water as she drifted.
Mirro dropped the latex penis back into the case, picking out another item. “How about the Two-Headed Snake?”
Vicky put on a mock pout.
“It’s the same thing,” Mirro said. “It just moves more.”
“But it’s not you moving. I want it to be just us doing the moving.”
Mirro turned on the Two-Headed Snake, held it squirming and throbbing against her torso. She smiled, rubbing the lower end across her pubes. “You sure?”
“I’m sure. The Snake is too … it’s got too much life of its own.”
“Okay, the Pushme-Pullyou it is.” Mirro put the tools aside and began tugging at her blouse buttons.
As Mirro undressed, Vicky clutched at her own breasts, squeezing as she watched, tickling her nipples and sliding her left hand down between her legs … warming herself up, as she thought of it. Mirro was gorgeous, full-bodied, a classically beautiful woman. So motherly, so self-assured. Vicky was out-of-control head-over-heals in love with this person, far more attached than she would let herself admit. Proclamations of undying love-worship, she knew from experience, always led to disaster. That’s what she felt toward Mirro whether she would admit it to herself or not: undying love-worship. To Vicky, Mirro was the mother-god of all womanhood, and Vicky wanted every bit of her, for now and ever.
Naked, descending step after slow step into the water, holding the knobbed, erect latex device like a scepter, she slipped into the water with half-closed eyes, and Vicky reached out to her, eager, her tongue already out of her mouth. Together they slipped under the surface, embracing.
#
Saul Kalman reached the drugstore after walking the entire distance – four kilometers – only to find, while at the counter with everybody waiting behind him, that he’d forgotten his Mataphin license. The pharmacist waiting on him was new; he’d never seen Saul before even though Saul had been buying at that drugstore off and on for over five years. “Look,” Saul told him, “check your computer. I have a license. I’m an exec at Travels.”
The pharmacist’s eyes flared at that. “Travels huh? Big deal.
Working for the devil doesn’t impress me.”
Saul blinked. He took a slow step back from the counter. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered, staring at the man. He couldn’t believe his rotten luck.
The pharmacist’s thin, sharply detailed face darkened even further. His eyebrows were thick and black, and they arched over sunken eyes like storm clouds. “Don’t say the name of our Lord in vain. It is written: ‘Cry not in anger to the Lord. Speak not in fury to He whose Love has put the spark in your parent’s seed; it is He to Whom you owe all, Who holds the scales where your soul will be judged, will be weighed amongst–-”
“Are you going to sell me my fucking drugs or not?”
“You are required by law to have a drug license on your person before any restricted drug or remedy is dispensed.”
“You mean I have to go all the way back home just to get my goddamn Mataphin license? It’s just a goddamn Mataphin license, it’s not like I’m buying narcotics!”
“I’m not dispensing any Mataphin without seeing a current Mataphin license,” the young pharmacist said frostily. “Especially to a heathen of deceit such as yourself.”
“You jerk,” Saul said. “You Jesus-freak moron.”
“Hey,” a voice said from behind him; it was deep and dangerous-sounding. Saul turned to find that the people behind him in line were all glaring at him. One particularly big man, with ape-shoulders and a titanic brass United Church cross hanging from his neck on a chain, said to Saul: “You’d better shut your mouth, fool, before you really put your foot in it.”
Saul turned back to the pharmacist. “I’m never bringing my business back here again,” he said. The pharmacist smirked, but Saul had already turned his back and was walking to the door.
Across the street he found a phone booth and with an angry finger jabbed at the keys, dialing an autocab number. Stupid stupid lost people, he thought. They don’t have a fucking clue. He reached the autocab company, registered his request in the cue, and hung up. The cab would meet him there at the booth. He stood beside it, feeling uneasy and impatient.