CollisionWithParadise (5 page)

“He’s a weirdo,” Zac said darkly. “He’s into kinky, nasty stuff. Not nice.”

Genevieve realized that Zac wasn’t going to elaborate and she insisted out of morbid curiosity against her better judgment: “Well? What’s he doing?” It didn’t look nasty―

“Killing someone,” Zac said. After a pause Zac added, “Slowly. He’s torturing her. She’s sucking his cock in anguish while he’s using his knife to cut his name on her back.”

“Oh, God,” she breathed and backed away.

Despite herself, she stopped at the next portal. Inside, Irena Wagner, the stocky archeologist/mythologist, was jerking in obvious spasms of erotic pleasure. This one seemed normal enough.

“She’s with Tukok, her blue alien-friend,” Zac said more cheerfully.

“Tukok? An alien?”

“Yeah, we imagined him bright blue and with two cocks.”

“What?” Genevieve leaned forward, narrowing her eyes for a sharper look.

“Tukok has a cock for a tongue as well as his normal penis, so she can suck and fuck at the same time. Forget sixty-nine. Two is all you need!”

Genevieve shook her head and backed away. Irena had appeared so conservative when Genevieve had met her. She had a husband back home on Earth, yet she’d chosen to fantasize about an alien stud with two dicks. Then again, Genevieve reflected, that was what a fantasy was, yearning for what you didn’t have. Irena had a normal relationship and dreamed of the extraordinary. Maybe Genevieve dreamed of a normal relationship because she didn’t have one.

She found herself at the next portal, peering in a daze at Howard Bragg, their poster-boy mission commander. Average height and muscular, the beach-boy blond was extremely handsome and knew how to turn on the charm. But, he didn’t fool her for a moment. She’d seen him use it to manipulate people and she didn’t appreciate his racist humour. They didn’t get along and the fact that she’d repulsed a seduction attempt by him hadn’t helped. If it had been up to him, she wouldn’t be on this mission. But it wasn’t, she thought with a faint smile.

Bragg was bent over in the doggy position, undulating energetically, hands clasping some imaginary body. No doubt he imagined his penis pounding into some poor female.

“He fancies himself a fierce caveman, wandering the edge of a watering hole and accosting naked cave women, bent over to gather water, butts facing him in invitation.”

“Then he sticks himself into them before they know what’s coming,” she finished for Zac.

“Yeah! Good pun! But instead of struggling, she always lets him fuck her and then the appreciative girl feeds him like a slave with grapes or whatever bounty she’d harvested earlier.”

Somehow that fit Bragg, the arrogance of it all. Only he could imagine raping a girl as a pleasurable experience and have her willingly submit to his incredible machismo by making him offerings in return. God! No wonder he'd picked Porter on his team.

Disgusted, Genevieve practically staggered to where Ricardo Sanchez, the swarthy dark-haired crystal physicist jerked off energetically in coital excitement with his hands and legs spread out and kicking. Sanchez was a lean wiry man with cruel eyes who always managed to look scruffy, even in a suit.

He looked pretty normal. But she knew better by now.

“He’s a tit and orifice man. He’s being assaulted and mutually assaulting four big woman with very large breasts,” Zac said cheerfully. “One is smothering his face in her huge breasts, another is whipping his bottom and goosing him at the same time…another is sucking his cock and—”

“Okay! I get the picture, Zac. Loud and clear.”

“And he’s returning the favor by biting and chewing off her nipples. That’s his favourite.”

“Ugh! Enough S&M!” Genevieve snapped. She skipped the rest and dashed down the hall to the systems console for her QA check. “I get it, Zac. I get it.”

Was she the only one with thoughts of a
normal
relationship? Dan was the love of her life. But the truth was, they’d argued frequently. Through the many years that they’d been together, professional jealousy and the tension of trying for years to have a child had taken its toll. Blame, frustrations and insecurities had rent their relationship into less than a blissful loving affair. That relationship had already come apart at the seams when she’d miraculously become pregnant.

She hastily passed the remaining portals, but Zac forced her to stop at the last one, where Drummond Heller, the lean sandy-haired nano-biologist was gently rolling in blissful ecstasy.

“He’s doing a sixty-nine with a certain lady. Guess who?” Zac trailed suggestively.

“Oh, God,” Genevieve moaned. “You don’t mean…”

“Yes, you!” Zac said cheerfully.

She hastened to the control panel with an exasperated groan. That was all she needed, to know that a fellow crewer had the hots for her. Zac had no sense of logical discretion. She would rather not have known that little fact about Heller.

As Genevieve punched in the customary code on the control panel, Zac said, “Okay, so what would you call having sex with an accountant? Boregasms.”

Genevieve barked out a laugh, her breath hitching as a sob surged out alongside. She swallowed hard, chalking up her volatile outburst to the residual effects of
jack
time. Her emotional instability usually wore out by this time, though.

As if to verify her thoughts, Zac said in a quiet voice, “You okay?”

Despite the foul mood she was in, she couldn’t help a slanted smile of wry amusement at the thought of Zac’s strange logic that a good dirty joke would cheer her up. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just excited and a little edgy about this last leg of the trip, Zac,” she said.

“Understandable,” Zac replied.

Try as she might, she couldn’t shrug off the oppressive feeling. Was it that she lacked imagination or was she just another cyber dream junkie stuck on one drug?

Genevieve took the mid-ship corridor toward the port-side pontoon on her way to the exercise room, rec-center and dining area. This corridor took her first through the berth of the
Chimera
, the shuttle that would eventually take the hibernating crew to the planet’s surface.

As she entered the large chamber, Genevieve scanned the shuttle with the same admiration she'd felt the first time she’d seen it. It was a beautiful ship. Basically a smaller version of Zac, the
Chimera
was also organic, run by an AI that kept in constant communication with Zac. It was no coincidence that its berth was located in the safest place, here, in Zac’s belly. Housed with an automatic escape tripping device and escape tube through which it could launch, the
Chimera
was specifically designed to come out in one piece from an explosion and bring itself down to the planet’s surface on its own, if need be. It also served as a backup for at least part of the crew. Equipped with stream-jump capability, the
Chimera
was capable of making it all the way back to Earth, but it had only enough reserves of food and air to take five crewers. Nevertheless, thought Genevieve as she sauntered to port-side, it provided a little contingency, considering the less than favourable history of the Eos missions. Explosions had been their undoing.

Genevieve threw a last glance at the gleaming metalloid ship before leaving its berth and felt a small tug of…what was it? Disappointment? Was she disappointed that she was being left behind? She’d considered earlier that it was relief she felt from having to deal with some potentially tense negotiations, considering their uninvited status. Now she wasn’t so sure. It seemed almost anticlimactic to stay behind after making the long voyage, she thought as she headed aft along the portside corridor. But then again, there was Dr. Howard Bragg, the mission commander, to consider. She’d already had one run-in with his super-inflated ego, autocratic manner and less than favourable attitude toward aliens. She’d marveled at Zeta Corp’s wisdom in choosing a man who had obvious negative feelings toward the Eosians. Perhaps they had their own good reasons, she concluded. Anyway, considering that Bragg was in charge, she’d just as soon be quietly left in the background while history made itself stridently loud and clear. And there was the rest of the crew, most of whom she honestly didn’t care for. They all seemed, well, self-centred and some even had a cruel streak. God! What a reprehensible thing to think of her crew-mates.

She recalled Cheryl’s lecture when she’d admitted her feelings about them: “Good Earth, Gen! How senseless! Why did you sign on? You have to work with them!”

“Actually, I don’t really have to,” Genevieve had rejoined defensively. “I’ll be alone most of the time, while they’re in hibe.” She knew what Cheryl thought, that she was a recluse. Most everyone at Zeta Corp, including her own boss, thought her a hopeless loner, incapable of making friends. Not a team player. God, maybe they were right.

When she reached the exercise room, Genevieve approached the stationary exercise bicycle and straddled it. She made a few quick adjustments, and her favourite holographic program engulfed her in a natural scene from Earth. She was on a path in a northern British heath. The mixed smells of soil, sweet clover and broom invaded her senses. A warbler trilled over the constant buzz of insects. She pedaled furiously toward the horizon, feeling every bump and hill of her virtual heath’s rough terrain. The sun was setting in front of her, firing the heath with blushing colors. The visceral rhythm of
echo
music boomed in her ears as her bike sailed over a small hill. She felt the jar and turned to see the dust she’d kicked up. She cycled steadfastly toward the horizon. Her heart and breaths matched the fast pace of the music as she threw her thoughts into neutral. She soon felt the warm glow of effort infuse her already glistening body. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped into her eyes. She wiped it away onto her wet hair and pushed herself harder, biting down on her lower lip with the exertion. The vegetation swept past her in a swift series of watercolor blurs. She never seemed to get any closer to the horizon. The sun trembled over the darkening hills, then touched and seemed to melt into them. It sank, then disappeared, leaving the sky ablaze in deep ochre under pewter clouds.

She turned up the music and drove herself harder until it hurt. Until every muscle ached. Panting, she felt the pain and focused on it, keeping herself there for as long as she could. It occurred to her, as she rode her bike into the oblivion of an imaginary horizon, that this was all one big drug
—
this ship and her journey toward an uneasy destiny, spiced with dreams of a man who never really existed, not the way Zac portrayed him anyway. Was she betraying Dan somehow? She had to admit that she had blurred the two, what Dan had been in reality and what Zac had enhanced him into. Was there even anything left of his real self in her memories now?

An hour passed before Genevieve stopped peddling and collapsed over the handlebars, hardly aware that she’d been crying. She barely listened to the music that thundered to the pulse of her pounding heart. Her head leaned against the handlebars and she felt the cold tickle of sweat trail down her forehead and jaw. She watched it drop like tears from her chin onto her bike and the floor. Blinking the sweat from her eyes, she stepped off the bike and the music stopped. Blood pounded in her ears in the silence of the room. She felt her breathing return to its normal rhythm as she made her way to the showers, her mind involuntarily summoning Trip’s challenge…
are you still chasing ghosts?

Chapter Four

Genevieve stepped into the mirrored shower room. In response to her presence, the water ran. She leaned in with her palms against the wall to steady herself and let the hot water cascade over her bowed head and back. As the water pelted over her sweaty body and seduced her into relaxation, her skin began to tingle with a wild painful ecstasy
—
an ecstasy of lonely anticipation, a yearning to be touched and sweetly embraced. It travelled from her sensitized flesh into the core of her being, where she craved to be filled, and brought a memory of when she and Dan had made love in the rain of a Tahitian jungle. Or had she dreamt it? It didn’t matter. Instantly, her belly flamed and she felt the pulse of her heart in her crotch, hungry like a feral wolf for Dan’s hard cock. Gasping with dumb want, she pressed her eyes shut and dropped to lie face down in the shower, water spattering her back and buttocks in a torrential downpour.

Fingers slid inside her very slimy other mouth and frantically stroked her labia, dragging out a long throaty moan. She continued her relentless stroking, now teasing her clit and resisting the painful urge to plunge in deeper to satisfy that greater need, and felt a spicy pain throb inside her like trapped steam. The yearning grew unbearable, drawing out an agonized wail. She clamped her eyes shut, then gave in to the feral urge. Fingers dove in and she thrashed, imagining Dan’s throbbing dick inside her, pumping and filling her. Her hand slid and rocked in a repetition of rising excitement. Eyes flashed open, jaw snapping wide, and she cried out several times as a delicious agony welled up and gushed out in waves of come. The screams ebbed into sobbing spasms on the jungle floor—no, shower floor, she amended, panting out her spent breaths. No, she was
here
, alone and masturbating in the belly of a metalloid organic ship in deep space. Four hundred light years from home. Travelling to an alien planet on a perilous mission of dubious portent…
Chasing ghosts
.