She glanced over at the supervisor, a thin, short man who always looked as though he
longed for the good old days, where a whip and a vat of boiling oil could help him reach his
productivity numbers. He looked at Michelle, who quickly turned away.
"Michelle!" he barked into her headset.
Smile, she thought. Just smile and nod.
"Quit that smirking and get back to work!" he whined. She had not for a moment stopped
what she had been doing. "Or I'll take it out of your lunch hour!" Michelle smiled at the
customer she'd been helping.
"Thank you and have a great day!" she said brightly. The screen flickered again, slightly.
Good, she thought. I hope someone is robbing your dumb ass blind.
Ernest was thinking of changing his name to Daniel. He would have named his child Daniel,
nice gesture that, but he'd need a wife - or a spawning partner, which more accurately
described what he thought of and, usually, called women - and in his current condition of
being slightly larger than Canada, finding a willing 'spawner' was unlikely.
Daniel was the name of The Bank's CEO, a man who had himself endured the "if I got any
fatter you'll have to take two trains and a bus to get on my good side" phase of his life, and
come through it. A great man, Daniel G. Brian III, thought Ernest. A real accomplisher.
Maybe, Ernest thought, he could name all his children Daniel, even the girls. He made a
mental note to check into that.
It made his antipathy for the vermin before him grow even stronger. So much going for him.
Smart, thin… Okay, so maybe that's all he had going for him. Still. He just won’t play along,
and that can’t be tolerated.
Ernest had never been what one would call smart. He knew this. As a programmer, on his
very best day, he was about average. He knew his limitations - software - and his strengths
- scheming and conniving. He hid his limitations with ceaseless effort, and played to his
strengths by currying favor with bosses and persistently betraying every colleague,
subordinate, friend, neighbor, pet, and stranger he had ever known. He was, he knew, a
butterball on the rise. The Bank loved him. Daniel G. Brian III himself had taken notice of
him, had taken Ernest under his wing. More like under his hangar, admittedly, but The Bank
was the one place where his Ernest's girth would not be counted against him, since Daniel G
Brian III himself had once been a great big fat old tub of lard. Ernest felt he could have a
future here.
Kor's opinion of Omlin's insanity was confirmed moments later. He repeated Omlin's
comment just to be sure his Moth Translation Device was functional.
"Did you just say," he said slowly, "that you'll take 175 of these?"
The thievery worked like this:
Every sixty seconds, a program created a completely valid, legitimate savings account.
Every 64 seconds, a subtle change was made to a program that transferred funds, so that
billions of dollars were transferred into that account. Twenty seconds later, the money
transferred into yet another account. There, another program transferred it again, and again,
until it was out of the country, off the planet, and into another galaxy. The changes to all the
transfer programs were then repaired. Twenty seconds later, the original account killed
itself, erasing all traces of its existence. Simple. Elegant. Eight billion dollars every 64
seconds, and there could be no tracking, no logging, and no de-bugging of any programs,
because all of them were in perfect working order.
Account Reconciliation and Settlement, where deposits and withdrawals are reconciled,
would not take place until late in the day for some branches, and after the overnight
processing for others. Once the discrepancies were found, supervisors would be brought in
to validate what the tellers and clerks had already reported. There would be a period in
which the tellers and clerks would be accused of wrongdoing and removed from the work,
even though it was transparently obvious that a clerk would not have anywhere near the
breadth of influence necessary to create discrepancies of that magnitude. Still, they would
be blamed and removed, thus eliminating the people most likely to spot the source of the
problems fastest. The thieves were counting on The Bank's blind mistrust of and antipathy
for its tellers. In most cases, the transfers would be able to continue for between three and
four consecutive days. And then the software people would get called in.
They would get system dumps and pore through transaction logs, print-outs, and source
code, looking for what went wrong. The transfers would show up in none of their logs.
There would be no record of the any of those transactions having taken place. If by some
miracle they were able piece together enough data to surmise that a transfer had taken
place, none of the accounts to which the transfers were made existed anymore. Money
would simply disappear from one account never be seen or heard from again. The money's
journey was impossible to trace. This was because the best trouble-shooter in The Bank
had personally designed a foolproof debugging and error logging system. He was a quiet,
unassuming man, who grew up dirt poor on a world terrorized by a violent, corrupt, and
completely unsupervised Sector Vice President for The Bank named Daniel Brian.
Omlin decided to call the ship The Whales' Belly, largely because he was is drastic need of
therapy. He insisted that it had something to do with destroying an evil enterprise from
within "the belly of the beast," but mostly it seemed to be because, like most successful
thieves, he was a little nuts.
The ship itself was an esthetic and engineering marvel. It was massive and elegant and
vaguely muscular. It was armed to the teeth with legal and illegal weapons, yet looked for all
the world like a cruise ship.
Of course, it would be one of the engineering Wonders of the Galaxy when he was through
with it - he and "the kids", Tarek and Jerry. He had to hand it to them. They said they would
come through and they had. Like clockwork, four billion credits had poured into their
account every two minutes for the past four hours. He'd actually be able to build the ship,
the ship he'd always dreamed of building.
He only hoped he could finish in time. Because once Daniel Brian and The Bank found out
what was happening, Omlin and "the kids" would need every single one of them.
Perhaps what Tarek loved most about Donna was that he could trust her. She was
astonishingly beautiful, of course, and clever, and tough, but she was trustworthy. Because
he had tested her. And she him. Any number of times, in any number of situations, they had
tested each other, and both had passed. They were, as it were, thick as thieves. In him, she
had found a man who challenged her without belittling her. He liked her. He understood
her. He trusted her.
She was awestruck when they walked onto the ship for the first time.
It was like nothing she had ever seen. A city girl, she had been inside any number of grungy
carrier ships, hauling food or metals or animals all over the galaxy. When Tarek had told her
he was getting them a new ship, she was expecting a new transport ship, one where the
grime had not yet settled into the carpet, the walls, the air, like shit on Velcro.
What she saw took her breath away.
You entered the ship via an escalator that went from the pavement up, past earth-toned
walls and exotic paintings, to a landing that looked like the receiving room of a very, very
rich man. Behind her, the ramp escalator gently swung upward and closed with a soft click.
A voice whispered "Entry Ramp Secure", in a female tone so vaguely sexy that Donna felt
a shrill inside of herself that said, in clear, precise tones, "What a wonderfully sexy voice. I'm
going to take a sledgehammer to it first chance I get." Being astonishingly beautiful doesn't
always equate to being secure.
A massive pair of spiraling staircases surrounded a hand-carved, white marble fountain. The
fountain contained a complex sculpture somehow involving water, dolphins and,
inexplicably, a 1957 Chevy Impala. Above it all hung a large crystal chandelier, glittering as
if it were made entirely of precious stones (which it was), from a ceiling that had to be thirty
feet high.
Past the fountain was a large, ornate-looking room, with an elegant grand piano to the left, a
beautiful fireplace to the right, and sofas and love seats in between that screamed "I'm
comfortable! Get naked! Sit on me! I'll enjoy it!" Donna walked into the room, running her
hand along the sofas which, she would swear, sighed happily.
Beyond these were large French doors, slightly ajar, fronted by thin, delicate white drapes,
through which a gently fragrant breeze blew.
She walked through them and onto the terrace, which faced a vast expanse of a garden
whose beauty was matched only in her dreams; lush and green-orange like the ones on her
world before the… before.
She held the cool stone railing and raised her eyes and watched the sun pour rich, warm
colors into the sky. She felt the warmth wrap itself around her and hug her. She smelled the
raw fruits and vegetables of her homeworld, heavy and tart and sweet. It was a hologram,
of course, but it didn’t matter. Tarek's attention to the details of her homeworld was
uncanny. In the background, the piano began to play an old, popular love song from her
high-school days. The breeze brought a hint of sea water in the distance to her.
She had to hold onto the railing awhile. A moment ago, she was standing in Omlin's
construction yard and now - now she was home. As close to home as she had been in a
long, long time.
She could feel him behind her. Eventually she turned. All she could say was the first thing
that came to her mind when she found her voice again.
"You did this?"
He smiled shyly.
"Yeah, kinda." She stared at him. She practically never allowed herself to unabashedly
agog, even after all this time. They both savored the moment.
"Me, and Jerry, and you."
"Me?"
He nodded. "For… for l-l-loving me," he said, shyly. "I… I've had something to die for for
a long time." She looked away. It was his obsession with The Bank, with Daniel Brian, with
taking it down forever. He moved closer, held her face in his hands. "I meet you and
everything gets all changed. I - I remembered that I have something to live for too.
Something... someone to make happy. You aren’t really alive until you have someone that
you want, with all your soul, to make happy. So thank you, Donna. Thank you."
She took his hand and, quietly, they left the terrace.
Because of her, he had pushed himself in the gym, a place of too many painful childhood
memories to be anything other than a horror chamber for him. But he trusted her, and did as
she suggested, and they both were pleased with the results. It took patience, but he loved
that he could trust her.
And she loved that he listened to her, and did what she asked without hesitation or
posturing. He was, by a star's mile, the smartest man she had even known; and yet he
listened to every word she said as if she were his equal. She realized, at some point, that he
would never fully understand how much that had meant to her, how much confidence it gave
her in her own formidable intelligence. How much she loved him for it. Plus he was
becoming seriously buff for a nerd.
They trusted and adored each other madly.
Which made the sex all the better.
It was Omlin who had insisted that Tarek and Donna "break in" the ship. He had waxed
eloquent about the mystical importance of "breaking in" a new ship.
Omlin was a thief, and a good one. He had been a thief for a very long time. He knew
things. He was keenly aware of the difference between fact and drivel, and so was very
clear on the staggering amount of pure drivel present in his eloquent speech about the
importance of "breaking in" a ship. Indisputable facts, however, were that a) Tarek and
Donna were in love with a passion that would terrify most mortals, and b) Tarek was edgier
than usual. Maybe a few hours "breaking in the ship" would cool them off.
Omlin wandered outside the ship and turned, and stared at it. It was a beauty. Sleek and
fast, large and nimble. A dream ship. And when he was finished with it, it would have the
best sensor systems of any ship anywhere ever.
He walked ten feet away and glanced backward.
The ship had disappeared.
Omlin smiled.
The ship also had the most advanced cloaking devices in the known universe. Omlin smiled
and walked away. Who knows, he thought idly. This might actually work.
Omlin's compound was housed in the dense forest of the Dilshoon world, one of the most
stunning and absurd worlds known to the human species. It had three suns, so sunsets
sometimes lasted for days. The landscape was beautiful in the way earth landscapes are
beautiful, and the weather patterns sensible in the way that San Francisco weather patterns
are sensible in other words not at all. Fog appeared for absolutely no reason. Dusk would
appear hours too soon, then disappear as suddenly as it had arrived, as if late for an
appointment. Warm, tropical afternoons gave way to inexplicable bouts of hail and freezing
rain. It was as if the weather responded to the will of some hidden, deranged, and very
bored meteorologist.
Which of course, was ridiculous.
The weather patterns actually responded to the will of a bug named Bob.
It was Tarek who first noticed it.
He and Omlin had crash-landed on Dilshoon after a nasty bit of business involving a
shipment of kangaroos that had conveniently wound up in the back of Omlin's cruiser. This
particular species of kangaroo had the unusual property of organically transforming the
foods of its native words into precious metals when they, uh, were finished with it. Exposed
to certain gases at certain pressures, the 'output' of these kangaroos could harden into ten-
ounce bars of solid gold. The animals were incredibly difficult to capture. The punishment
for being caught carrying one in the back of one's cruiser was, shall we say, substantial.
Omlin's contact had betrayed him. Omlin managed to get the animals back, but the cops
had been released, and the obligatory interstellar chase was on.
Omlin and Tarek congratulated themselves on how effectively they were eluding the police
until they realized that the cops were nudging them towards Dilshoon's solar system, and
then towards the legendary Dilshoon itself. When their badly damaged ship tore into
Dilshoon's atmosphere, the cops dispersed. No one survived Dilshoon. No one.
Dilshoon had a reputation as a barren, desolate world inhabited by massive scaly creatures.
Of course this made no sense, since a barren world could not support massive creatures;
they'd starve to death. Others felt Dilshoon was a lushly tropical planet filled with weird sea
creatures and ghostly jungle-traps. The fact was that no one knew what Dilshoon was like
because no one had ever returned from the planet. This was more than enough for space
travelers, already a notoriously superstitious lot - you don’t travel the universe and see the
things you see there without becoming at least mildly superstitious - to assume that,
whatever was on Dilshoon, they wanted no part of it. Many planets use it as a kind of penal
colony. They never actually sentenced anybody to it, but if they didn’t like you, they'd send
the cops to hound and outnumber you until you were near Dilshoon, and let the magical
planet take care of the rest.
Omlin's ship had landed near a garden and skidded to a stop at the edge of a lake. Omlin
and Tarek managed to get the ship back to land, since the kangaroos were somewhat upset
and badly destabilizing the ship.
So they had survived. The clearing, though, was a mess.
After he caught his breath, Tarek rose and walked to the edge of the lake and started to
mumble. Omlin eventually decided he would bite.
"Tarek?"
"Yes?"
"Have you lost your mind?"
Tarek considered this. "I don't think so."
"Then, uh, to whom are you speaking, exactly?"
"This lake."
"Ah. Is it talking back?"
Tarek considered this. "I don't think so."
"What are you telling it?"
"I'm apologizing. For all the damage we've done."
"Are you?"
Tarek walked closer to Omlin. "We may die here."
"Probably."
"I don’t want to die on a world that hates me."
"Suit yourself."
"And I thought that, maybe…"
"Yeah."
"It could give us some advice about… food."
"Right."
Astonishingly, it did. This was the first time Omlin had ever realized that planets were
intelligent, sentient beings that could make life very pleasant or very, very hard for its
inhabitants. It was only later that Omlin noticed Bob.
Bob was a small beetle-like creature that seemed to show up every time Tarek did the
"sorry / thank you" thing. Omlin thought the whole thing a very interesting coincidence and
nothing more until one day, a massive and completely pointless hailstorm was approaching.
On a whim, he talked to a tree with Tarek and an apple fell nearby. This was intriguing
because the nearest trees grew only mangoes. And the completely pointless hailstorm
hovering nearby had avoided them. It swerved right around them like a bad golf putt.
Tarek quietly advised Omlin glance over at Bob, who smiled, if it is possible for small,
beetle-like creatures to smile, and ambled away.
The two then made a habit of asking the planet for all sorts of the things, which the planet
promptly provided. Since the planet asked for pretty much nothing in return, Omlin and
Tarek made periodic gifts, starting with the valuable and surprisingly gregarious kangaroos.
The planet and the kangaroos hit it off splendidly. Once their ship was working again, Omlin
and Tarek re-visited the smuggler who had crossed them and made amends - and brought
back more kangaroos. The planet greatly appreciated this, and soon a bond formed
between the planet and its new inhabitants. Tarek and Omlin made the planet a base of
operations, and traveled the galaxy bringing back exotic plants and animals for the planet's
review. That was when Bob helped them learn to make requests of the weather.
When they decided that they were going to take down The Bank and would need a lot to
ships to do it, Dilshoon was the obvious candidate to house the construction yard.
Omlin had planned the yard carefully. Together with Tarek, Omlin had harvested the
necessary materials from the planet's waste products, and imported whatever else he
needed.
The collaboration had gone well. The construction yard was placed in a desert that
appeared miraculously close to a lush tropical garden. Deserts won't mind the noise and
activity, Dilshoon had said. Deserts are lonely.
Now Omlin had a sprawling complex spread over several acres. He walked past the lush,
stately trees into the yawning, gaping desert and looked with pride on his yard. They'd
already received 10 ships from Kor, bless his hearts, in six hours, cash and carry. Half were
being outfitted with the changes Tarek would need to take down The Bank.
Thought of the operation, the "thing" as they called it, changed Omlin's mood. It was a lot of
money, but… The Bank was no ordinary target, and Daniel G. Brian no ordinary enemy.
They'd better finish him, Omlin thought, or else they would spend the rest of their lives
running.
Omlin wandered out into the yard, thinking hard.
"Mr. Brian sir, we have a problem."
Daniel G. Brian III had no middle name. He just liked the sound of Daniel "G." Brian, so he
added the G. There was no Daniel G. Brian I or II; he just thought being a III would sound
more distinguished.
When he moved into his new office, he'd decided it was not big enough. So he destroyed
12 adjoining offices and fired the executives occupying them. It was a lo-o-o-o-n-g walk
from the front door to the desk of Daniel G. Brian III.
"What might that be?" Daniel G. Brian III was a tall, slender man with dark hair and a
mustache that can only be described as unfortunate. It seemed to begin somewhere deep
inside his nostrils and cascade downward, like rampaging lava, until it ended, dropping
unevenly over his upper lip like frozen mucous. It was gross, frankly, so he kept it studiously
unkempt, daring people to comment. No one did.
Derik didn’t care about Daniel G. Brian, or his mustache, or his existence. He had
someplace to be, but he had to deliver a message first, something about many hundreds of
billions of dollars disappearing from The Bank. Hopefully there would not be any questions.
"I hope it's urgent," Daniel continued. "I'm quite busy with my fish." There were no fish
anywhere in the room. Derik didn’t care.
Daniel enjoyed being outrageous with people and daring them to comment. This was partly
because he was far more intelligent than most people thought, and partly because he
enjoyed being rich and powerful enough to grind pretty much anybody into powder if they
annoyed him, so he wanted to give them ample opportunity to annoy him.
Derek said, "It seems sir, as though there have been unauthorized withdrawals from The
Bank." Daniel looked at him. He thought: Is that it? Find the culprit and, quietly, have him
burnt in oil. What’s the big deal?
But there had to be a big deal, he realized. Otherwise they would not have sent Derik to
deliver the news. There was something about Derik. Nothing intimidated him. There was a
power to him, an otherworldliness that seemed to make him utterly aloof to all things
corporate. He liked Derik. One day, when he got around to it, he would break the man's
spirit like a dried leaf in the fall, but first… It must be very bad news indeed if his top
lieutenants refused to tell him personally, sending Derik instead.
Daniel G. Brian III thought for a minute. He wanted to get to the heart of the matter as
quickly as possible. One question, he thought. The right question.
"How much?"
Derik, who had a photographic memory, thought a moment. "Don’t you know?" Daniel
said, amused.
"I'm counting the zeroes sir," Derik said placidly. A moment later he said "One thousand
eight hundred forty three trillion dollars." For the first time, it dawned upon him what he was
saying. "Sir." He hoped he wouldn’t be delayed.
Daniel was no longer amused.
He was silent. For a very, very long time, Daniel G. Brian III was silent. When he spoke it
was in a whisper so deadly that Derik was, for the first time in a very long time, not
completely bored senseless by The Bank and everything to do with it.
"How did this happen?" He spoke as if it were his personal money.
Derik cleared his throat. "No one knows sir."
That was, all they say, all she wrote. Daniel G. Brian III, serial rapist, sociopath, and
homicidal maniac, lost his temper. "WHAT? HOW CAN NO ONE KNOW? HOW DO
YOU LOSE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND NOT KNOW HOW? GET MY VICE
PRESIDENTS IN HERE! AND THEIR WIVES AND FAMILIES AND MOTHERS
AND UNCLES! BECAUSE WE BLOODY WELL WILL FIND OUT HOW WON’T
WE?" He would have killed Derik on the spot and used his entrails as a doormat except he
needed someone to convey the message.
Derik left, and Daniel G. Brian began to pace madly. Pace and think. Thinking was
something he was good at, and he relished the opportunity to think his way through this
challenge.
He thought about the amount. It was one, perhaps two percent of his cash assets. More an
embarrassment than a problem. A nuisance. A… A message.
Dear God, it was a message.
No. No, it couldn't be, he thought.
Could it?
But from whom? One of the executives? But which of them had to the guts to even conceive
of such a thing, something as bold as this? If any of them had that kind of guts, he would
have killed him long ago. A teller? Of course not. Maybe as an accomplice, but who would
trust a teller even as an accomplice? No no no. It couldn't have been withdrawals. It would
require too many people to actually show up to do the withdrawing. It would have to have
been removed in small chunks if they were to avoid suspicion, and you can't steal trillions of
credits in small chunks. It was a software job. The money left electronically.
Well, that certainly narrowed the field.
If it was a software job, who could have done it? They would have had to know enough to
steal small enough increments, a few billion here and there, so that it would not get noticed
right away. And they would have to know specific accounts; no point trying to swipe a
billion credits from granny's savings account. But how to do it?
Well, Daniel thought, how would I do it?
Transfers. I’d transfer the money to another account. And another and another, wiping the
trail as I went so that the money was untraceable.
Daniel leaned beside his desk, where he kept a very large baseball bat. His executives were
not gathered yet, so the office furniture would have to do.
He spent the next half-hour therapeutically bashing everything he laid eyes on to bits. It was
transfers. It was electronic; it simply had to be. There would be no trail. No trail, no clues,
no hope. The money was gone, forever. The money would never return.
But the thief probably would.
A long time ago:
"Why do you boys hate The Bank so?"
Jerry and Tarek were silent. They liked Omlin a great deal, and were intensely grateful he
had rescued them from the orphanage and introduced them into a nice respectable life of
crime. But nothing in life would get them to re-live that day, the day Daniel Brian destroyed
their mother, their home, their lives, their world. Daniel Brian had destroyed a lot of people,
of course. But this time, they both knew, they would make him pay.
They were in a restaurant. It was small and loud but not crowded. The kitchen was in the
back next to the bathroom, which was either comforting or disturbing, depending upon who
was cooking. The waitress had Korean ancestry and spoke no English, but she had a nice
smile and Omlin had a way with people, which was what made him such an extraordinary
thief. He made people trust him, somehow. Not the targets, the people from whom he stole.
They were easy, and not especially important. He had a way of making his teams trust him,
and it was that skill that had made him a legend, and obscenely successful, and an old man
in a notoriously young man's game. Thieves actually liked him, and had favored him with
protection and warnings on many occasions. Favors he returned slavishly and lavishly.
He scraped the grime off his fork and looked at the boys curiously. He was a tall man; big
but not heavy. He always seemed to be wearing dark clothes, and far more clothes than the
climate demanded. He had a head full of unruly black hair which cascaded downward in
large and somewhat greasy locks, and a large face obscured almost entirely with a low hair
line and high bushy eyebrows, a beard, a mustache, sideburns, a deep tan and numerous
scars. Through it all beamed glimpses of a face that could be cuddly and friendly or vicious
and terrifying, depending upon what he had in store for the target. He looked at the boys
some more while dipping his fork in a glass of water to let the remaining crud dissolve, and
decided to go with cuddly-with-just-a-hint-of-impending-menace, which he practiced in
front of a mirror.
"He's a very bad enemy to have. A very powerful man he is, and well-connected. He's
clever and vicious and will stop at nothing when feels he's been wronged."
Jerry and Tarek looked at each other, and nodded, barely, and turned to Omlin, with the
most empty, dead, murderous eyes Omlin had ever seen in twelve-year-olds. It was Tarek
who spoke.
"If Daniel is as bad as you say he is," he said slowly, evenly, "then we have something in
common." Then the look was gone. "Can I have some more of the Flan-goo?"
"Me too," said Jerry, looking for all the world like two bright, healthy young thieves again.
But Omlin knew what he'd seen, and never forgot it. So he waited and finally the kids
innocuously revealed what they had in mind.
"Tell us again," Tarek said nonchalantly, "about this ship you want to build."
Tarek felt the warmth of her left thigh against his right cheek, her right against his left, a brief
and increasingly moist bikini in front of him. Donna was surrounding him. Everywhere he
looked, there she was. Heaven, he thought, would have to get an upgrade to be as good as
this.
He leaned forward and kissed her, long and slow, right where the edge of the bikini touched
her skin. Upward, downward, slowly, appreciating the intense, wondrous beauty of her.
He gently kissed her across the top of the bikini, coming to rest on the other side. He pulled
at her hips, bringing her closer to him. He gently kissed her across the bottom of the bikini,
luxuriating in her. He caressed her thighs as they lay relaxing on his shoulders.
He looked at the center of the bikini and moved slowly, slowly, towards her, until she could
feel his breath, his heat, tantalizingly close, closer. She tried, and failed, not to wriggle her
hips. Come on Tarek. Kiss me there.
Tarek kissed her, separated from her skin by the bikini, just south of there. The kiss began
as "affectionate" but moved rapidly into "hungry". She could feel his hands on her legs,
clutching her, trying to hold back the intensity and, gradually, failing. She tried to maneuver
her hips so that he was kissing her there, and skillfully, he resisted.
She finally grabbed him by the ears and tried to move his head.
He chuckled.
"Don’t laugh", she whispered.
Muffled, he said "Until this moment, I'd always thought my ears were too damned big."
"Until this moment, I'd thought that patience was a virtue. With you, it's just torture."
"There's no rush, baby."
"None except I think my head's going to explode."
"Head is no problem, Donna. I can always give you more head."
"I don’t think you under - ooh… Uh… never mind."
Tarek had always felt the key to physical intimacy, for him, was simply to adore the person
he was with. That way there was nothing he would not do for her. Donna tended to
appreciate that attitude.
He kissed her there, which Donna appreciated intensely, except that the bikini was still
there. But the heat of him, the passion, the hunger… and it was such a thin bikini…
She floated on a cloud of nothing, with the distant, sweet smells of home, of honeysuckle
and Somali Rose filling and surrounding her, the languid warmth of the room gently caressing
her skin. In the background, a familiar, gently hypnotic percussion played; the same sounds
heard by a hundred thousand women from her homeworld as they and their lovers played
and laughed and explored and discovered and loved. It brought to her mind some of the
most pleasant memories of home; all the blue light house parties, all the gentle boys and later
men who would love you so intensely that you could not help but believe that you were
some kind of queen. It reminded her of burnt orange sunsets in the hours before forbidden
parties; of getting dressed in naughty clothes and sneaking out the back door while mom
pretended not to know; of walking nervously to somebody's basement where boys waited
respectfully, well-trained but hungry as hell. And then the music would begin and people
would, giggling, pair off, and dance and dance and dance. They would hold each other and
explore and play and love. It was an exciting and amazing time. It was the first time she saw
her mom not simply as mom, but as a woman. That was the best thing; to be, at some level,
like mom, her equal, to have that secret something that only she and mom and other girls
and their moms shared. She was never closer to her mom, or more in love with life than at
that time, when the music played and the house parties were smoking, and mom was there
for her, to explain, to demonstrate, to warn, to guard, to love. To share.
Tarek had taken the time to re-create the music, the sounds and smells, even some of the
art work, of the world at that time. And because of that, it seemed that years of pain, of
fighting a ragged, impossible fight against those who had destroyed her world, all melted
away. She remembered love, being loved, being touched. Being respected.
And respect was everywhere with Tarek, in every glance, every touch, every word, every
conversation. She had found herself together with a man who, by all accounts, genuinely
seemed to like her. These thoughts and feelings came to her in a rush, just below conscious
thought.
All that and, of course, the thrill of doing it for the first time in zero gravity.
She ran her hands through his head and thought, if there is a God, please let this guy stop
teasing me.
Tarek snapped a string of the string bikini and slowly pulled the tiny garment away from her,
and she nearly cried with relief. He pressed his lips on her thigh and kissed slowly, slowly
inward, pausing where the bikini was a moment ago, and then continuing until he was there,
finally, right where she wanted him to be.
And he stayed there until she felt, for the first time in such a long, long time, what it was like
to have your whole body constrict in anticipation, to feel waves of joy swirling slowly into a
tight knot in your stomach, only to be released in widening circles until your entire body was
engulfed with and overrun with joy and relief.
"He knows how to do things," she thought idly, because a moment later she felt it again, or
something, trilling through her body, making her thighs tremble, her hips develop a mind of
their own. She was more relaxed and more afire than she had ever been before. A hundred
thousand inhibitions suffered a total coup de tat, and then their zero gravity intimacy really
began.
And for a few hours, there was no hideous attack on her homeworld that had to be
avenged; there was no Daniel G. Brian who had to be destroyed. There were only two
people discovering something new about themselves and each other, touching a place within
themselves that each had been too afraid to visit.
Hours later, when they lay, or floated, wrapped so deeply in one another that neither was
clear where one's body stopped and the other's began, they both found themselves
wondering if their obsessions were really worth all the trouble. All they wanted in life was to
stay this close, to be loved with this intensity, this urgency, by a close friend and a good
person. For a moment, this seemed to be the most important thing in all the universe.
