Justin (8 page)

“That’s why I’m under the cold shower, idiot,” Justin said. “Trying to deflate.”

Jeanne sent him a smile. “We can help you, you know.” She wriggled her tongue to let him know her mouth was available, as long as Eland was there to watch her use it.

But Justin wanted
Deanna’s
mouth. Her red-lipped, soft mouth that turned up into such a cute smile.

Shit, why did he have to think of that? She wouldn’t come to him tonight, and he’d have this erection forever.

“Thanks, but I’ll swim it off.” Justin tried to sound nonchalant, but his voice cracked.

Jeanne laughed at him. “I’m the wrong lady, am I? Uh-oh.”

Justin snaked his hand under the water and squeezed his cock.
Calm down, dry up, go on vacation, he told it.

It wasn’t listening. Okay, change the subject.

He swam over to Eland and Jeanne, who watched him approach without much curiosity. When Justin was close enough that his words wouldn’t carry to anyone who happened to be behind the mirrors, he asked, “Jeanne, any word?”

Jeanne glanced at the wall and also lowered her voice. “I might know someone who used to know her. A friend of mine said she knew a woman named Lillian who she
thinks
once worked at DNAmo.”

Justin’s heart beat faster. “Is this friend still in touch with her?”

“She hasn’t seen Lillian for years now, she says. They’d been close friends, but Lillian moved from Pas City and never kept in touch.”

Too much to hope for. “Can I talk to this friend?” Maybe she’d know enough about Lillian to give Justin a lead on where she might have gone.

“Sure,” Jeanne said. “I’ll set it up.” She cocked Justin a look. “Sure you’re not up for a little threesome action?”

“Not today, honey. I have a cock-ache.”

Jeanne only shrugged. Eland gave Justin a look of sympathy, but one that told him he was an idiot for passing up the chance for sex.

Last week, Justin might have taken them up on it and gotten some heat out of his system. After meeting Deanna—not as appealing. Sex with friends was not what he wanted right now.

I have to be crazy. I’m looking for something deeper with a patroller.

Justin took himself out of the pool and hit the showers, setting the water temperature to freezing. He still needed his hand to finally release, so he could walk home without a big stick hanging between his legs.

He really needed a better life.

*** *** ***

Deanna was home an hour before she stopped shaking. She hadn’t even been able to enjoy the ride in the luxurious car, something she’d probably never have the chance to do again.

She still felt Justin’s mouth on hers, robbing her of breath, his big body pressing her into the seat. He’d been heavy, too strong to fight, not that she’d wanted to fight.

Mouth on her nipple, tongue bringing it to life, making it his, as he’d stroked between her legs with his thigh. He’d been hard and ready, the ridge of his cock against her unbelievable huge.

To feel that going into her would be . . . Deanna had no idea. She had no context.

Her shaking finally stopped when her mother’s companion, Reda, brought her mother home from the rehab center. Reda shook her head when Deanna looked a question, which told Deanna that her mother was having one of her bad days.

Deanna hugged her mother though the woman sat straight and unresponsive in her chair. Her eyes were focused on nothing as Reda combed out her silver and black hair.

The disorder that had afflicted Deanna’s mother was technological, not physiological. Kayla Surrell had been on a layover in a space station and wandered by accident into an area that had been closed off for radiation leak repairs. She’d gotten dosed with some complicated chemical that Deanna still didn’t understand, which had at first paralyzed her.

Kayla had survived by good luck alone—someone spotted her and dragged her out into good air—but she’d never spoken again. The chemicals had tangled up her nervous system, and now, though she still had most of her motor functions, she did not respond to stimulus much of the time.

Some days, Kayla would almost respond, and Deanna would grow hopeful that her mother was getting better. Then she’d relapse into nothingness and have to have her every bodily need met by Reda and Deanna.

Deanna kissed her mother good night and let Reda put her to bed, though it was still early afternoon.

Justin had asked Deanna to return tonight, to be with him.

So, so tempting. Deanna would love one evening to forget everything, to feast her senses in a man like Justin, to
feel
something.

But she couldn’t afford to let him bamboozle her. Her mother was why Deanna couldn’t lose her job.

Deanna fixed a bite of late lunch in the kitchen and shut herself into her room with her computer. She had a pretty high clearance in the computer databases of Bor Narga, even on a leave of absence, and she was going to learn everything she could about Justin.

Not long later, Justin’s case files from DNAmo opened like flowers under her fingertips. These records had been sealed, but now that more than twenty years had passed, access had been granted to those with the right clearance. A Patroller First Class, the highest level of the uniformed patrollers, had the right clearance.

Deanna went through the records, reading every word.

The notes on Justin indicated he hadn’t given the researchers at DNAmo too much trouble. He’d stoically taken the researchers’ experiments every day, experiments that had involved a lot of sex.

The first mention of any trouble was about a worker called K-48.

K
-designated workers, colloquially referred to as “guinea pigs,” were women hired by DNAmo to participate in sex experiments with the Shareem. The experiments were designed to find out what Shareem would do and how much they could be controlled under certain sets of circumstances—basically discovering what a level one would do, how far a level two would go, how rough a level three might get before his programming stopped him.

Justin performed as a perfect level two, the notes said, but his behavior toward K-48 was troubling.

Justin and K-48 talk to each other during the experiments, but we can’t hear what they say. When asked what he is telling her, Justin refuses to answer, even when he is punished. We have no means of compelling K-48 to speak because of the privacy clause in her contract.

A later note said:
K-48 and the subject Justin were confined alone together for a seven-day period. During that time, Justin used every method he’d been taught on her and never seemed to run out of stamina. He let K-48 rest when she needed to, but he has a most unusual ability to work continuously.

More entries about Justin’s progress, much of it in medical-speak, with no mention of K-48, followed. Finally Deanna found another reference.

Justin’s obsession with K-48 has reached an alarming level. He refused to participate in the day’s experiments and demanded to know where she was and what happened to her. When told we couldn’t convey that information, he turned violent and had to be confined.

The director agreed we could bring back K-48 to see what effect it had on him. K-48 appeared to be quite pleased to see Justin, and when left alone, they held on to each other for a long time. We became aware then that they were speaking rapidly, but we couldn’t hear what was said, and we removed her.

I and the director conclude that the Shareem has formed an attachment to K-48. Because Shareem are to be programmed to form no attachments to their clients whatsoever, recommend immediate transfer of K-48 to another section.

A final note on K-48 said,
The Shareem Justin reacted violently when he was told that K-48 had been transferred and he’d not be allowed to see her again. He demanded assurances that she was all right and not harmed. Even after we gave him that, he was surly and uncooperative and had to be injected to calm him down.

End of references to K-48. Apparently, Justin had gone back to being a compliant Shareem—either that or the researchers hadn’t bothered bother to record any more of his reaction to the absence of K-48.

A few weeks later, Justin was sold to an off-world woman, packed up, and transported to Sirius, never to be seen on Bor Narga until a month ago.

What about K-48? Deanna skimmed through the database until she found her.

Her records had been sealed for privacy, but again, Deanna’s clearance and the requisite time having passed opened them.

K-48’s image popped up on Deanna’s holoscreen. A pretty young woman, sturdy of build, typical of the lower-class women of Pas City.

Her records contained a statement from her that she’d signed up for the program because of the high payment offered. She’d been paired only with Justin for the experiments, because she’d requested that she not be put with more than one Shareem at a time.

No details about the experiments were listed in her records, but a note said she’d been transferred to the level-one section the morning after the suggestion that she be moved had been put into Justin’s file.

The day after K-48 was transferred, she terminated her contract and quit the program. Interesting.

K-48’s name was Lillian Passan, a working-class woman from a working-class family in Pas City. She’d worked at DNAmo for a total of six months.

Deanna moved the DNAmo records to the background and did a general search on Lillian Passan. She easily found Lillian’s birth records, her school records, her job history, and the record of her signing up for DNAmo. DNAmo had done background checks on their test subjects, so Lillian’s entire life was now open to Deanna.

Not much to it. After Lillian had quit DNAmo, she’d moved back in with her parents. There, the information ended. No more jobs, no moves, no trips off planet. Nothing. She’d stayed home with her parents, and that was it.

Deanna keyed in the address of Lillian’s family’s apartment. No Passans living there now. A Rose Passan and a Samuel Passan who’d leased the apartment fifteen years ago were listed as deceased—Lillian’s parents.

But no Lillian. Deanna did more searches on Lillian but found nothing.

She sat back, staring at the small holographic woman turning slowly on her console. If Deanna wanted an explanation of why Justin had returned to Bor Narga, this was it. His lifemate on Sirius had died, and he’d returned to find Lillian.

A little pain burned in Deanna’s heart. She thought of Justin’s lips on hers, he pushing her back onto the seat, his kiss one of desperate hunger. She thought of what he’d whispered to her in his apartment,
You are beautiful, and I’m lonely.

He wanted her to go to him tonight.

But he’d returned to Bor Narga to find the woman with whom he’d formed an attachment at DNAmo.

Puzzling that Lillian had simply disappeared. No one on Bor Narga could do anything without a string of records following them.

And why had Justin been looking for her on the Vistara? His frequent trips there, despite all the warnings, made sense in the context of a continuous search for Lillian.

Deanna looked through records for the Vistara—for all of Bor Narga—and found no one named Lillian living on the Vistara or working for someone there.

Lillian could have changed her name, but there should be a record of that too. Such a thing could be done secretly, of course, in theory. Perhaps Lillian had known someone who could help her disappear.

But why? By all accounts, Lillian had been a hard worker, a decent student, and a law-abiding citizen who was fond of her parents. She’d never been arrested, warned, or even looked at by the patrollers.

Deanna fanned out her search to cover the few years between Lillian quitting DNAmo to shortly after her parents’ deaths. She broadened the search to include any new person popping up from nowhere during that time, or any incident involving an unknown woman of the right age.

Three deaths of unidentified persons had been recorded in that window of time, but two of those had been off-world human males and one an alien. It was unusual when even DNA couldn’t identify a body, but it was known to happen if off-world records were spotty.

There were a few births with “mother unknown” attached, which Deanna at first ignored, until a date caught her attention.

She’d seen a similar date somewhere on her search. After a moment’s thought, she keyed open Justin’s DNAmo records again.

There it was, the date of Lillian’s transfer. No, it was not the same date as the birth—same day, same year, but different month.

Deanna’s breath caught, her entire body squeezing until she thought she’d choke.

Lillian Passan had finished her seven-day confinement experiment with Justin almost nine months to the day that a girl had been born to an anonymous mother in a backstreet clinic.

It could mean nothing. Coincidence. Bor Narga had a large population, and many children had been born that day, even in backstreet clinics in Pas City.

But only one had been born to an unknown woman of the same age as Lillian. A daughter. The girl who’d been born that day would now be about twenty-four years old.

Deanna’s thoughts flashed back to Justin standing in the alley on the Vistara, gazing across the street with longing at the group of four young women in the coffeehouse. Each of the girls had been about that age.

No. No. It was impossible. Shareem couldn’t father children. All the science in the DNAmo records said so. They were programmed not to, that programming backed up with sterility injections.

But the evidence was there for anyone who wanted to take time to look and think.

Justin had grown too fond of a test subject, Lillian had quit right after DNAmo removed her from Justin’s reach, and she’d gone home to live quietly with her parents. Justin had returned to Bor Narga after his lifemate passed. He went to the Vistara and continued going even when he knew such an action could get him terminated. He went there to stand and gaze across the street at a young woman in a coffeehouse.