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It was as if everything were made of glass, including the motor, assuming it had one. Then Jack realized with a start that the four of them were transparent, too, and almost invisible against the backdrop of the central core of the ship. Once again galactic science had surprised him. "Thank you," he said inadequately.
He took Tappy's hand and led her to the curving wall. They looked out. There was the city, already drifting away below them.
From this vantage it looked like a giant globe. He had thought of it as a blinking dome, back on the honkers' planet. Perhaps half of it had been under the ground.
"The host must eat," Candy said. "The preservation unit is no longer sustaining her."
"The food's all the same, isn't it?" Jack asked. "I mean, nutritionally, regardless what it looks, tastes, and feels like? So bring us candy bars."
"This is a confection in my present image?" Candy asked, perplexed.
Jack laughed. "Close, but no cigar."
"I do not understand."
Even Tappy smiled then. Jack explained about candy bars. Soon an approximation was produced. It looked a b't like something left behind by a sick dog, and tasted somewhat like oysters steeped in chocolate, and it squished suggestively as they bit into it, but it would do.
Tappy nudged him. "Let's find a bed," she indicated.
"Yes, so you can rest," he agreed. "In the nornal ma
"So we can make love." She smiled. "In the normal ma
There were those five years of sexual relations again. implanted in her memory. What was he going to do? He didn't dare tell her the truth, because that might not only hurt her feelings deeply, it might cause the Imago to retreat, if that was possible. Would Garth Gaol then revert to his nonempathy state, and do what was best for the empire? It couldn't be risked.
He hated lying, or even evading the truth, with Tappy. But he knew he shouldn't do what she so i
The worst of it was that he did feel the stirring of desire. His emotional state was in flux, somewhere between fancy and love, and her new ability to see and talk increased his feeling for her.
So did his heightened empathy. It now seemed natural to follow through with sexual expression. But he knew it was not.
He had to stall. "You've been through so much, Tappy. Thethe ecg hatched, and it drew substance from you, which you have to restore. Then you were confined in the Gaol's box. We feared it was for life, but with the help of the hatchling we managed to change Garth Gaol's mind. You've been in and out of something like suspended animation. You need to rest, and recover your equilibrium."
"Yes, and that is always so much easier in your arms. after we have made love."
The was getting nowhere! But maybe he could avoid it another way. This was a tiny spaceship. There shouldn't be anything like a double bed on it. "Candy," he called. "Can you fix us up with a wide, soft bed?"
"Of course, Jack." She did something, and the glassy 'nterior of the ship convoluted. Now there was a glassy mattress behind them.
Tappy sat on it with a muted squeal of delight, drawing him down with her. Jack's crisis of conscience intensified. Tappy had gone without resistance into the coffin, in the belief that this would save Jack and cause him to be well treated. She had been ready to suffer her most terrible fate, and to let him go to the arms of a pseudowoman-because of her generous love for him.
And how had he returned that love? By deceiving her, by having her drugged and by doctoring her memories-and by denying her what she most wanted.
"Oh, Tappy," he said, turning his face to her. She remained glassy; he could see right through her head. But this startling effect did not change her outline, or his burgeoning feelings. "J wish-"
He was cut off by her kiss. And suddenly it was as it had been back on Earth, the first time, when he had tried to comfort her and been swept into sex with her. He did love her, and what else mattered?
They broke the kiss. Her hands went to his clothing. She showed experience in this-the experience of five years.
Something caught his eye. "Tappy-look!"
They looked. The spherical city was flying apart. In a moment the major fragments separated, and separated again, until there was nothing but an outward-flying sphere of debris. It reminded him of the remnant of a supernova, only this was on a far smaller scale. Then that sphere became smoky, and then it faded. Soon nothing remained but haze, and finally-nothing.
The AI station was no more.
Now, belatedly, Jack realized that they were hardly safe yet.
They were alive instead of dead, and Tappy was free and conscious instead of in a comalike state. But this ship was supposed to remain isolated in this stellar system, with no visitors, and there was a Gaol warship or equivalent standing guard. How were they going to get to anywhere where the Imago could do any good?
Now there were tears on Tappy's face. "The Agents of the Imago-they were good to me," she said. "I never saw them, except for Candy just now, I only heard them and felt them, but they did so much for me. It was long ago, yet still-" Then her brow furrowed. "It was seven years ago. I remember! I was blind, and lame, but they helped me to see and walk without limping.
Then you and I went to a nice planet, with a wonderful little house and garden, and oh, it's as if we just made love all the time! After the first two years, when you said I was too Young.
But I broke you down finally, when I was fifteen, and proved I was old enough. Then we just did it and did it, and it was always so perfect. I hardly remember anything else! But then, suddenly, we were back in the AI city in space, and I don't remember how that happened. And the egg-Jack, there was no egg before! I was stung by the ho er, and it helped save us from the but then the swelling faded away. Did another-"
Now Jack appreciated the monstrous gaps they, had left in her memory of those fictional seven years. No mention of the egg at all! How could they have forgotten to account for !hat? And the seemin, return to the AI station-there should have been a rationale for that, too. They had thrust her unprepared into a situation both old and new. No wonder she was confused!
He had to patch over it somehow. So he started talking, extemporaneously, hoping to satisfy her. Because her doubt could be the destruction of them all. He had to convince the Ima(yo, too, if it had any sentience of its own. The fate of the galaxy might depend on that!
"Tappy, you're right. There's been a lot of confusion. We did go to that garden planet, and it was great, and we thought it Would last forever, but the Gaol had never given up searching for us. We were there to give the Imago time to mature, and to give you time to get to know me really well, so that when the Imago manifested, you and it would work with me for the good of the galaxy. The AI said that otherwise-the Imago is so powerful a force that great evil could come, if things were not right when it matured. So we weren't really doing what we thought. I mean, we weren't there just to have fun. We knew it would have to end when the Imago came."
He paused to take a breath and to gauge her reaction. She was gazing raptly at him. He was giving her a perspective that helped to shape her scattered memories and impressions. And actually, he wasn't lying; he was just interpreting. Because the basic purpose was as he was saying. Only the time span differed and in her mind, that time was all there.