CollisionWithParadise (8 page)

They came at the same time. Wailing in abandon, and hearing his sounds of
exultation for the first time, she ejaculated with him in waves of excruciating pleasure, then sobbed out the rest of her release as he continued to pulse inside her. They lay in a tangled embrace on the hot sand, where they’d migrated out from the water like a pair of hot reptiles. His lips gently kissed her wet hair, as tender now as he was rough before. This was a new Dan. A Dan who’d lost his reserve, who’d given her everything of himself, his darker animal lust, even his fear. And confidently taken all of her, every last molecule.

“Dan, that was the best it’s been
—
” She pulled away with a giddy smile of rapture, opening eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed. But his boyish face had
morphed into something else
,
the face of an alien! An Eosian! She jerked out of his arms, pulled away from his cock, and stumbled to her feet, staring. How long had he looked that way? How long had she been kissing that?

He seemed to understand her unspoken question and smiled knowingly. “He’s
not the only one who can love you,” the Eosian said in a beautiful singsong voice. He looked familiar and she suddenly recognized him as Azaes, that snooty spokesman of the Eosians, from the files she’d been reviewing.

Genevieve stumbled back up the beach. “No. It wasn’t you I just loved!” she insisted.

He watched her sadly for a moment before speaking, “He would never love you that way.” Azaes leaned back on his elbows, his long body stretched out on the beach. The words might have been conceited but his tone conveyed simple honesty. “Ask your heart. He was a gentle, reserved man. And…” he raised a brow, “didn’t have what I have.” His hand gestured subtly down.

Drawn to his gesture, Genevieve gaped down the alien’s muscular body to his magnificent cock. It coiled, flaccid yet immense, over huge testicles like a satiated lion. The lack of genital hairs only served to enhance its immensity. “It was I who loved you,” the alien said. Then he sat up and leaned toward her and she saw his penis flex, grow larger than it already was and rise. “I can love you again and again, and each time it will be different,” he said with a tender smile. “I can make you happy.” He reached out for her, but she recoiled and ran up the beach, not daring to look back.

God damn it, Zac! This was her dream, too, after all. She willed Azaes to disappear and instead found herself fixing her mind on his tender smile and that huge stirring penis.

“You’re an explorer, Genevieve,” he called after her. The way he’d pronounced her name, in an almost singsong voice, with a sharp roll of his tongue. It made her name sound beautiful and for an instant she felt drawn to turn
. No!
She refused to look back. Where was Dan? She had to find Dan! She pounded the hot sand toward the grove of palm trees.

As if in response to her desperate thought, she had a sudden vision of Dan in his
ship, disheveled, perspiring and wide-eyed with fear. He grimaced at the controls and barked orders to his co-pilot to make trajectory changes. “We can’t be that far off! You idiot, Larson! What have you done?” he screamed in panic.

Larson stabbed new instructions in the ship’s computer then shook his head. “She’s not responding!” He saw something on the screen that terrified him and moaned: “Oh, shit!”

A massive explosion jolted the ship and it broke up in front of Genevieve’s
eyes. She had a brief view of Dan engulfed in flames like a wick, then he came apart in front of her eyes along with the rest of the ship. She screamed. “Oh, God! No!”

...She stared down a huge pit, where Dan’s broken body lay, shoveling dirt on him, burying him…then as though she’d become Dan, she watched herself flinging dirt down from above. Unable to move, she felt the dirt clods pummel her, stinging her eyes, and blinked off the dirt. She breathed it in with her nose and mouth, drowning in it, choking and tasting its acrid sharpness…

Chapter Six

She bolted awake, gasping. “Oh, God, what have you done?” She could smell her rank sweat over the spice of her cum. “You interfered with my dream! You changed it on purpose!”

“You said I could,” Zac offered lamely. “I did it to help you, Gen.”

“Genevieve!”

“He’s dead, Genevieve. Face it and move on. Stop living in the past.”

“Get me down! Now!” she shrieked, kicking out with her hands and feet. “You had no right!”

“I did it for your own good.”

“
Good
!” she spat the word out. “You call that good?”

“You’re so stubborn. I only wanted you to experience burying him, burying an old chapter of your life. But you changed it to a nightmare.”

“
Me
? What about Dan morphing into that Eosian with that huge…huge…I sure as hell didn’t come up with
that
!” she shrilled.

“Hey! That wasn’t me,” Zac said defensively.

“Well, it had to be one of us, and it sure wasn’t me!”

“Honest, Genevieve, it wasn’t me.”

“I can’t believe this!” she shouted. Zac was lying to her. She didn’t think that was possible. “You’ve got nerve. What gives you the right.”

“I know you better than Dan. Better even than you know yourself,” Zac continued, in what Genevieve imagined a slightly condescending tone. “I know your deepest dreams, fears and longings.”

“How can you say that!?” She shook with anger. “How could you ruin it all?” She gasped out the words between convulsive sobs. “I trusted you!”

“If you could only give me a chance to show you what I mean, Genevieve,” Zac continued, introducing gravity to the room and setting her down. “I…love you.”

Her stomach lurched with a horrible sinking feeling.

“The hell you do!” she shrilled, feeling violated. She franticly wriggled out of the suit, the live nano-sensors that lined the inner surface of the
jack
suit caressing her like dirty little fingers in a gang rape. Once extricated from the suit, she flung it to the ground and fled naked out of the hibe room.

“Genevieve! Please come to your senses,” Zac called imploringly, his voice echoing in the corridor as she ran. There was no place she could get away from Zac. She was
in
Zac, after all.

For the first time since she’d entered the sentient ship over a year ago, she felt self-conscious of her nude state. As though Zac was watching her with lewd eyes and thoughts. She felt exposed. And alone.

Genevieve dove into her bunk room and slid the door shut. This was the only place Zac didn’t have a camera. She leaned with her back against the door, panting, and commanded herself to calm down. Zac had been so cruel! First, he tainted the sanctity of her relationship with Dan by morphing him into that arrogant alien with the huge dong of a bull—never mind that the sex she’d had with Azaes had been the best she’d ever had. Then Zac had brought back the pain and guilt of Dan’s horrible death in all its raw vividness. And on top of that, he lied to her about doing it. “Oh, how could you do it, Zac?” she whispered, feeling her throat constrict with renewed emotion at Zac’s betrayal.

She slid down to the floor onto her butt, gathered her bent legs in her arms and leaned her head on her upraised knees. Curled there in a ball, hugging herself, she gave in to bitter sobs. It had been horrible losing Dan in the first place. Thanks to Zac she’d lost him all over again, been forced to relive the raw grief and gaping emptiness that his death evoked. Fragments of sad and terrible memories of what happened after his death tore into her soul
—
her complicated pregnancy, losing her baby and then her mind. The sessions with doctors and her slow climb back to self-sufficiency and living sanely alone. After a year’s leave, Zeta Corp took her back. Was it because she was one of their best pilots, like Jim had said, or because he was sweet on her and had taken pity on her? Maybe this was all a big mistake, she finally considered, thinking of Jim’s great reluctance to put her on the team.

As the crying dwindled, her agitated mind slid unwillingly to Zac’s incredible revelation. How could a machine love? What was it thinking? What did it want from her? And to lie to her. Oh, God! Was this what Cheryl was talking about?

Feeling suddenly uncomfortable with no clothes on, she scrambled to her feet and went through her dresser, finding and throwing on a pair of grey flexpants and a sleeveless blue top. She sat hunched on her bunk bed, legs spread apart with elbows leaning on her knees, and rested her head in her hands. Her eyes shut as she took several deep breaths. The room was silent except for the quiet hum of her personal computer and the faint murmur of Zac’s environmental system. When she finally opened her eyes, her gaze strayed to her computer. It was possible Zac had entered the data on Zac II that she’d asked for. It was worth checking out, she decided, remembering Cheryl’s disturbing words about Zac II’s weakness in judgment.

Genevieve rose and slumped onto the chair in front of the computer. She punched in her personal code and searched for Zac’s data file on Zac II. She was surprised to find it there.

After a quick review she was able to confirm her suspicions about Zac II and its personality fault. It seemed that the more human an organic AI was, the more likely it was to make human-like mistakes based on human vices.

She jerked out of her chair and paced the room, running her hands nervously through her tangled mop. What did this mean for the remaining mission? With a long exhale, she reluctantly concluded that she might have to abort the mission. It was getting too dangerous, with Zac lying to her. If she couldn’t trust Zac…

She surged back to the computer and slid into her chair, punching in some commands and confirming what she had meant to review with Zac today. They were less than two days from reaching Eos. She was expected to remain out of hibe to oversee Zac’s entry to planetary orbit, communicate with the Eosians, and awaken the crew to prepare for their descent to the planet’s surface. It probably wasn’t going to happen, she decided. She couldn’t endanger the rest of the crew.

Genevieve wandered to the meal chute and ordered one on the cue pad. Within minutes, a streaming dish of nano-produced chicken, green beans and salad appeared in the chute. Genevieve grabbed the warm tray and forced herself to eat. The heaviness of disappointment had robbed her appetite. After nibbling half of her meal while pacing the room, she set down the tray and turned back to her computer. Sliding into the seat, she found herself reviewing Dan’s last transmissions before the explosion.

Biting her lip absently, Genevieve watched the unshaven face of her husband as he made his third last communication to Zeta Corp headquarters. “We’re about a month from reaching orbit status with Eos. Still no communication from the Eosians.” He smiled weakly. Genevieve swallowed convulsively. Dan looked exhausted. And nervous. Dark shadows lingered under his eyes and he was showing the stubble of not having shaved in a while. “The men are restive. They complain of nightmares and restless sleep…I have to admit,” he continued with a long exhale, “that I’m having them, too. Disturbing dreams.” He ran his hand over the stubble of his chin and Genevieve thought she detected a slight tremble. “Arguments among the men are disrupting our morale. They’re accusing each other of petty injustices. Lying, cheating and such. I’m not sure what’s happening to us…”

His next to last message was worse. When Dan’s image appeared, he looked very unkempt. His hair was stringy and unwashed. He was fully bearded and his clothes were rumpled, as though he’d slept in them. Dark pits had grown around his eyes, which sparkled with a strange light. “We’re nearly there, but at what cost? Mark Vingor had a nervous breakdown. We don’t know what else to call it. He tried to sabotage the mission and I had to put him in the brig. Mark’s the most level-headed guy I know, but he just cracked up. It started with him refusing to sleep because of bad dreams and ended with him trying to scuttle the mission. When I confronted him, he insisted that I told him to do it! To my face!” He ran his hand through his hair and Genevieve could see it shaking. Barely aware that she was shaking too, she contemplated how the behaviour of Dan’s crew resembled Zac’s, dreaming up things that didn’t happen. “My own dreams are disturbing,” Dan continued. “And they seem so real, almost as though—”

He stopped short and shook his head ruefully and averted his eyes from the screen for a moment with a silly embarrassed half smile. When he looked back to the screen his eyes had hardened with dark resolution. “I’ll be sending a private message on secure channel to Zeta about DAWN.”

DAWN! She’d always thought he meant first thing in the morning. Now she knew Dan meant the secret project. The third transmission was confidential and she couldn’t access it. This was troubling. Very troubling. There was more to this mission than she was privy to and on top of that, Zac was acting up.

Genevieve pushed away from the computer console and rubbed her eyes with her fists. They stung from exhaustion. She needed some rest. She refused to
jack
in again. She would not give Zac an opportunity to mess with her mind again. Zac didn’t need her REM energy to run the ship, she reasoned. He had a sufficient store of REM-induced fuel from the remaining crew in permanent hibe. Her theta waves were an extra perk. So, she’d simply ride it out, Genevieve decided, leaning back in her chair. Non-
jack
was okay, she told herself, then suddenly realized that she hadn’t had a non-
jack
induced sleep session for over eight hibes. Could she even fall asleep on her own anymore? What about her dreams?