7

She did not lose consciousness. Nikanj did not want to cheat itself of sensation. Even Joseph was conscious, though utterly controlled, unafraid because Nikanj kept him tranquil. Lilith was not controlled. She could lift a free hand across Nikanj to take Joseph’s cool, seemingly lifeless hand.

“No,” Nikanj said softly into her ear—or perhaps it stimulated the auditory nerve directly. It could do that—stimulate her senses individually or in any combination to make perfect hallucinations. “Only through me,” its voice insisted.

Lilith’s hand tingled. She released Joseph’s hand and immediately received Joseph as a blanket of warmth and security, a compelling, steadying presence.

She never knew whether she was receiving Nikanj’s approximation of Joseph, a true transmission of what Joseph was feeling, some combination of truth and approximation, or just a pleasant fiction.

What was Joseph feeling from her?

It seemed to her that she had always been with him. She had no sensation of shifting gears, no “time alone” to contrast with the present “time together.” He had always been there, part of her, essential.

Nikanj focused on the intensity of their attraction, their union. It left Lilith no other sensation. It seemed, itself, to vanish. She sensed only Joseph, felt that he was aware only of her.

Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down slowly, gradually, savoring a few more moments wholly together.

Noon, evening, dusk, darkness.

Her throat hurt. Her first solitary sensation was pain—as though she had been shouting, screaming. She swallowed painfully and raised her hand to her throat, but Nikanj’s sensory arm was there ahead of her and brushed her hand away. It laid its exposed sensory hand across her throat. She felt it anchor itself, sensory fingers stretching, clasping. She did not feel the tendrils of its substance penetrate her flesh, but in a moment the pain in her throat was gone.

“All that and you only screamed once,” it told her.

“How’d you let me do even that?” she asked.

“You surprised me. I’ve never made you scream before.”

She let it withdraw from her throat, then moved languidly to stroke it. “How much of that experience was Joseph’s and mine?” she asked. “How much did you make up?”

“I’ve never made up an experience for you,” it said. “I won’t have to for him either. You both have memories filled with experiences.”

“That was a new one.”

“A combination. You had your own experiences and his. He had his and yours. You both had me to keep it going much longer than it would have otherwise. The whole was … overwhelming. “

She looked around. “Joseph?”

“Asleep. Very deeply asleep. I didn’t induce it. He’s tired. He’s all right, though.”

“He … felt everything I felt?”

“On a sensory level. Intellectually, he made his interpretations and you made yours.”

“I wouldn’t call them intellectual.”

“You understand me.”

“Yes.” She moved her hand over its chest, taking a perverse pleasure in feeling its tentacles squirm, then flatten under her hand.

“Why do you do that?” it asked.

“Does it bother you?” she asked stilling her hand.

“No.”

“Let me do it, then. I didn’t used to be able to.”

“I have to go. You should wash, then feed your people. Seal your mate in. Be certain you’re the first to talk to him when he wakes.”

She watched it climb over her, joints bending all wrong, and lower itself to the floor. She caught its hand before it could head for a wall. Its head tentacles pointed at her loosely in unspoken question.

“Do you like him?” she asked.

The point focused briefly on Joseph. “Ahajas and Dichaan are mystified,” it said. “They thought you would choose one of the big dark ones because they’re like you. I said you would choose this one—because he’s like you.”

“What?”

“During his testing, his responses were closer to yours than anyone else I’m aware of. He doesn’t look like you but he’s like you.”

“He might …” She forced herself to voice the thought. “He might not want anything more to do with me when he realizes what I helped you do with him.”

“He’ll be angry—and frightened and eager for the next time and determined to see that there won’t be a next time. I’ve told you, I know this one.”

“How do you know him so well? What have you had to do with him before?”

Its head and body smoothed so that even with its sensory arms, it resembled a slender, hairless, sexless human.

“He was the subject of one of my first acts of adult responsibility,” it said. “I knew you by then, and I set out to find someone for you. Not another Paul Titus, but someone you would want. Someone who would want you. I examined memory records of thousands of males. This one might have been taught to parent a group himself, but when I showed other ooloi the match, they agreed that the two of you should be together.”

“You … You chose him for me?”

“I offered you to one another. The two of you did your own choosing.” It opened a wall and left her.