Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

Chapter Six

Cordelia pressed her face eagerly to the aircar’s canopy as Lake Serena swung into view. Serena was the smallest, shallowest, and most biologically interesting of the chain of lakes skipping sporadically down the long rift valley south of Kareenburg. The fact that it was only the third-closest to the town-and-base had preserved it from development so far, and she rather selfishly hoped would do so for a while yet. It reminded her of Sergyar as she had first seen it forty-five years ago, wide and empty and inviting, except, as it had turned out, for a few (hundred) biological booby-traps. She doubted the scattered colonists had found and sprung them all yet, though they were certainly working on it steadily. She considered a pitch for medical school grads on the neighboring Nexus worlds: Come practice in beautiful Kareenburg, where you will never be bored! Or entirely sure what you’re doing! And didn’t that go for everyone here, all the way to the top…

“This was a good idea,” she said to Oliver, likewise craning his neck beside her, and he smiled a bit smugly.

“I was very glad to find Sergeant Penney was still out here. I’d got rather out of touch with him, after I’d traded up for my second boat.”

Oliver’s second sailboat had been a larger craft, suitable for ferrying less nautically inclined—or more creakily aging—guests in comfort on the bigger lake closest to town. He’d scarcely had it out since Aral’s death, and had finally sold it off to an enthusiastic civilian shuttle pilot who had spotted it gathering dust on its storage skid at the marina. Cordelia was glad for this renewed spurt of interest—getting outdoors was good for Oliver, not to mention getting away from a workload that would swallow him alive if he let it. He’d always been a detail-man, which was good up to a point—during that whole state-funeral circus, the five-ship cortege convoy had moved like clockwork under his personal command, and she’d have been ready to kiss his feet if she hadn’t been so numb—but without someone around to order him to stop, she wasn’t sure he ever would.

As the aircar banked, the homestead on the western shore peeked through Sergyar’s version of trees, echoes of their Earth counterparts despite their distinct biochemistry. Penney’s Place had started as a plank dock floating on old barrels and a jerry-built shack on a shady bluff above the water. A couple of larger and better shacks had not so much replaced as been added to them, marching up the shoreline like a hermit crab’s abandoned shells to climax, for the moment, in a low rambling house with a wide verandah lovingly hand-built out of local materials; the latter marking the arrival of Ma Penney in the retired twenty-year-man’s life. Camp cuisine had also taken a marked turn for the better about then, as Cordelia understood it. The couple now eked out a pleasant existence on Penney’s modest pension, Ma Penney’s garden, and holiday rentals of the old shacks and Penney’s boats to unfussy Kareenburg proles willing to, mostly, do for themselves.

The man himself appeared around the side of his house as Armsman Rykov brought the aircar down for a neat landing on a graveled patch. Penney wore tattered shorts, worn sport shoes, and a deep tan scarified by a few old plague-worm marks; he waved amiably. He was a stocky man about ten years older than Oliver, and had been among the earlier settlers to make their passage by the shortcut of mustering out of the Service right from here. At the time Cordelia and Aral had first arrived thirteen years back, Penney was already an old Sergyar hand, working on his second shack, but Cordelia hadn’t met him till after Oliver had found this place as a cheap and private slip to launch his sailboat. Foremost among Penney’s many virtues, from Cordelia’s point of view, had been his unruffled willingness to treat Oliver and his occasional incognito guests just like any other Kareenburg weekenders.

“How de’ do, Adm’ral Oliver. Ma’am. Ryk. Long time no see,” he greeted them as they clambered out of the aircar. Oliver and Cordelia received a retired-soldier salutelike gesture, the armsman a handclasp; those two had always rubbed along well, being of similar ages and service histories. There would probably be beer on the verandah, later, while Rykov’s principals bobbed about on the lake, and a good long exchange of mission-critical information, bragging and lies optional.

After the necessary preliminaries including a visit to the privy and the ritual offer and refusal of food—they’d brought their own picnic—they strolled down toward the dock. Cordelia veered aside abruptly. “Good heavens, what’s this lovely thing, Penney?”

It appeared to be a flawless crystal canoe, held up on sawhorses, but a tap on the hull gave the duller thump of some unbreakable plastic.

Penney smiled in satisfaction. “M’ stepson brought it to us—latest thing, he says. Transparent hulls for see-through rides—fellow who makes them up in New Hassadar wants to branch out to different shapes, soon as he can work out the prototypes. That plastic has positive buoyancy, too, so’s you can’t sink it for trying. It’s really popular with the guests—I mean to get a couple more soon, but he’s backordered.”

“Is it available today?”

Penney squinted out over the lake. “Maybe later? It’s a mite windy for it now anyways. Good for your sail, though.”

The wind was, indeed, picking up. Cordelia enjoyed its ruffle through her hair as they stepped down onto the creaking dock. Oliver frowned a little into the west, perhaps disappointed that it wasn’t brisker; but this was nearly ideal for her, although she admitted Aral would have found it tame.

“Your old boat’s held up well, Adm’ral,” said Penney, as he and Rykov helped them into it. “It’s proved good for my rentals—very stable, so the amateurs don’t turn it turtle and make me have to go out and rescue them. I’m thinking of offering it to that New Hassadar fellow as a model for his next design, maybe get a trade.”

“You’ve taken good care of her,” said Oliver in return appreciation.

Rykov pointed sternly to the float-belts lying across the seat, and Cordelia and Oliver dutifully put them on. Part of the many little tacit deals she had worked out with her armsman over time; she would play safe, and he would stay out of her hair. Rykov at least had learned to be sensible about what was a risk and what wasn’t, unlike the hyper-keen young ImpSec fellows Vorbarr Sultana kept sending out as the Vicereine’s official security, whom she occasionally wanted to beat to death with their own rulebook. She’d had to pull rank quite firmly to keep them from tagging along today. A private life. What a concept. Well, that was coming, if she had her way. She could hardly wait.

The old moves came back to her as Oliver raised the mainsail and she tended to the jib, letting it luff till Penney and Rykov shoved them off far enough out for her to drop the centerboard. Then Oliver tightened up the boom and took the tiller, and she hitched down the jib-sail line to its cleat, and they were off, skimming over the water. “Perfect!” she called back to him as she took the front seat, facing rearward. The lake was lovely, the distant striated cliffs striking, but scenery in this direction was even better, improved still further when he slid off his shirt to bare his spacer-pale (though more, these days, just office-pale) skin to the sun. All right, so he wasn’t twenty-seven anymore, but who was? And he’d never been weedy. It was good to see him looking so relaxed and happy, squinting into the light till the crow’s-feet seemed to wink at her.

“Too bad we couldn’t lose our wristcoms,” he sighed, with a glance at his.

Cordelia held up her own. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve set mine to ‘volcanoes.’”

“What?” he laughed.

“I’ve trained my staff. I have five levels of interruptions, ranging from one, ‘If you must know,’ two, ‘Diplomatic crisis,’ then three, ‘Has to involve emergency medical teams,’ through four, ‘Only in case of erupting volcanoes.’”

“What in the world is Level Five, then?”

“‘Family,’” Cordelia intoned. “Although, since they are all quite a number of wormhole jumps away, I’m usually safe there.”

“What level would you use for Emperor Gregor, then?”

“Oh, he’s family, too.”

“Ah. Yes. He would be.”

As the wind heeled the boat over and they picked up speed, she grinned back at him, exhilarated, and moved her weight to the side for balance, secure in the knowledge that Oliver would not make her hang bodily out on some stupid little rope, toes curled around the thwart and spine rigid, with the black water skidding under her butt like racing pavement. There were a few things in these Sergyaran lakes one did not want to swim with.

Oliver made the hand-signal warning, Coming about, and together they shifted everything to take them on a heading out past the opposite promontory and into the widest section of the lake. Clear sailing, indeed. He offered her a turn on the tiller, which she took, while he stretched out in the prow and smiled sleepily at her, then stared up at the sail and the sky as if trying to read the future there. Or maybe he was just reverting to worrying about his billion tons of assorted troubles in orbit, which would not be so fine. Counterproductive, even.

After a while she glanced to the west and frowned, not liking the future she was seeing edging up over the kilometers-distant rift wall. “Those clouds look pretty dark. Was this predicted?”

“There’s no front due. I checked.” He roused himself to follow her glance. “Local pop-up thunderstorm, I think.”

“Maybe it’ll pass to the south.”

“Eh…”

By mutual, unspoken assent, they switched to a course that would head them back past the peninsula toward Penney’s Place. This involved a lot more tacking and scrambling about, as the breeze shifted unfavorably. They weren’t quite back to shore when the wind whipped the water to whitecaps, the sky turned dark, and the cold rain began to pelt down in sheets. Oliver still brought the old boat into the dock under jib alone, perfectly aligned and without undue crashing. Penney and Rykov waited anxiously to receive the painter and tie ropes, and to help hoist the hooting Cordelia onto the slippery boards.

“We’ll put ’em to dry in the sun later!” Penney yelled over the wind’s bluster, helping Oliver wrestle down the sails. “This blow won’t last. Sorry for the timing, though!”

“Aye!”

Boat secured, they scrambled up the flat stepping stones on the bank to the somewhat alarming shelter of the lashing trees, and then, more prudently as the next sheet of rain hit them, to the front porch of old Shack One.

Cordelia shivered, and Oliver glanced at her in concern. “Cold, Cordelia? You shouldn’t be standing around wet.”

“You could come up to the house,” said Penney. Another sheet of rain blasted past, droplets ricocheting up onto the porch to brush their faces. He pursed his lips. “Or there’s a fire laid on in the shack—it might warm up quicker.”

“That sounds good,” said Cordelia, thinking about how the influx of wet guests might discombobulate Ma Penney, who, as she recalled from their prior meetings, did not share her spouse’s class-unconsciousness.

Oliver raised his brows and rubbed rainwater from his face. “Good thinking!” he said, and promptly took over, bundling her inside, starting the fire in the fieldstone fireplace, and dispatching the already sodden Rykov for their picnic cooler. Even after all these years, it gave Cordelia a Betan frisson to be burning wood for warmth, but the orange flames flickered up cheerily in the damp shadows, and she edged near and held her chilled hands to the radiant heat.

Penney’s first shack reminded Cordelia of many old cabins she had seen up in the Dendarii Mountains back in Aral’s district, though its one room was, if possible, even smaller. In the architectural progression up the shoreline from primitive to rustic to backcountry-comfortable, it possibly qualified as primordial, its plank door secured with a rope latch, its windows made of old bottles stuck in frames. But its roof, thickly shingled with random sheets of scrap plastic and metal, kept the rain out. It was furnished, at the moment, only with a lone bed, a table doubling as a washstand, and a few rickety chairs. A line was coiled on one wall, obviously Penney’s old clothes dryer. Oliver collected it and played it out past the fireplace to hook to the wall opposite, then put it to its intended use by flopping his wet shirt over it.

“You…?” he said, glancing at Cordelia.

Cordelia decided her sports bra qualified as a top by camping standards, and followed suit, or unsuit. She took off her squeaky wet deck shoes and sodden socks, as well, setting the first on the hearth and the latter over the line. Oliver nodded approval and imitated her.

A knock at the door heralded the return of Rykov with the cooler, and dry towels protected in plastic. He handed it all in, declining to stay; apparently the blow had interrupted his lunch up at the main house. Cordelia sent him back to his beer and company, and with luck some more dry towels from Ma Penney.

They pulled up the table and chairs in front of the fire and laid out sandwiches and fruit; a couple of thermoses even yielded a choice of hot coffee or tea. Oliver stretched his damp pale feet to the fire with a sigh of satisfaction. “This isn’t so bad.” He glanced across at her with a crooked smile. “Though not what I’d pictured, quite.”

“The mandate for today is Get away from Kareenburg,” said Cordelia. “Anything after that is gravy.”

Thoughtfully, Oliver extended her another sandwich, which she took. He said, “Good to see you getting your appetite back. I thought you’d lost too much weight. After.”

“Well…yes.” Cordelia chomped. Oliver drummed his fingers on the table and cast her another thin smile. An unusual silence fell. He sighed again, though this one sounded less satisfied than tentative. Cordelia sipped tea, sluicing out her mouth with its pleasant astringency, and studied him. Always an aesthetic pleasure. But he seemed a trifle on edge, opening his mouth as if to speak, then closing it again. Cordelia tried to imagine anything whatsoever that Oliver couldn’t say to her, after all these years, and came up blank. She essayed curiously, “What’s on your mind, Oliver?”

He made a little throwaway gesture. “Well…to tell you the truth…you.”

Her brows rose. “What have I done?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh? Should I have?” Her mental review of tasks she might have left unaddressed was derailed by his firm headshake.

“Not at all.”

She stared at him, nonplussed. He twisted uncomfortably in his wooden chair. She drank more tea. He drank more tea.

He rose to throw another log onto the fire, sat, and started again: “You haven’t found anyone, after. I mean, on the personal side. For yourself. Lately, I mean. I know not earlier, you don’t have to explain that to me.”

I haven’t what? It took her a moment to unravel this one. He meant a…lover, partner, bed-friend, spouse? Something in that general direction, anyway. “Oh. Good heavens, no. Never even thought about it. It’s just not…never made it to my to-do list, no. And where would I find time?”

“There is that.” He gave a conceding head-duck.

She blinked at him. “Yourself?”

“What? No!” He hesitated. “That is to say…not. Not been looking.”

She frowned. “Would you like to?”

“I’d thought not. At first, you know.” She nodded. He went on, “But lately…I’ve been thinking. New thoughts. You know.”

She didn’t know, but she was willing to try to catch up. After all, this was Oliver, whose happiness she certainly valued, possibly more than anyone’s outside her own family. She ran a quick mental review, but she couldn’t think of anyone that she’d noticed, young officers or diplomatic fellows or any worthy-enough man he’d be likely to run across in Kareenburg, who’d been doing the old flag-down-Oliver dance around him. Lately. Not that she’d been noticing a whole lot, lately. “That sounds good. That sounds like…recovery, actually.” The real kind.

The head-tilt this time suggested this was a fresh thought, and not an entirely comfortable one. “Eh…maybe.” His stare at her was becoming beseeching.

Sorry, my telepathy is on the fritz today, kiddo. Wait. Could it be that he feared she would think less of him for this desire to move on?

“Have you found someone who looks likely? Oliver, I think that would be a fine thing for you. But you don’t have to ask me for permission, you know!” She sat up straight, considering. “And certainly, Aral—and if you have any such silly qualms, I’m telling you flat out right now—Aral would have wanted you to find happiness, too. He always did.”

Among the many secret doubts Barrayar’s Great Man had confided to her over the years, as he’d confided to no one else—because after a certain point of history, nobody’d wanted to let him down off the bloody pedestal they’d erected under him and allow him to be so scarily human as to admit doubts—was a fear that their intense and abiding relationship might have been impeding Oliver in some way, professionally or personally. That Aral had diverted him from some more proper or better destiny. Well, better, anyway. Almost anything would have been more proper, by Barrayaran standards. And many others, she admitted ruefully. Betans generally wouldn’t have blinked at the gender thing, but the age and rank disparity would have made them choke sand. She’d been pretty alarmed herself, at first.

A not-disagreeing head-jerk from Oliver; good, she wouldn’t have to pound that bit of sense into him. But it was followed by another ambiguous hand wave that indicated she hadn’t got to whatever was eating him even yet. There were many less entertaining ways to beguile a rainy hour than to play guessing games with Oliver about his emotions—and what was it about Barrayaran males that made them so, so, so…Barrayaran about such things?—but it would make it a lot easier if he would just be more frank.

So what was he trying to say? That he’d spotted a potential heartthrob, but it wasn’t going well? How could it possibly not go well? Unless he’d set his eye on someone especially difficult, and he’d certainly experienced at least one life-model about how to manage the difficult. This was baffling.

She sat back, crossed her arms, pursed her lips, and studied him. His chin came up in unconscious response to the challenge, and what a fine chin it had always been. “You know, it occurs to me—belatedly—have you actually had any practice at seducing people?”

His eyes widened, then narrowed back down. “Certainly! I’m hardly asexual, Cordelia!”

“I didn’t suggest that! You have to be one of the least asexual people I’ve ever met. Much to the puzzlement, I have no doubt, of those who have flung themselves so futilely at you over the years, poor sods. And odds.” Definitely both odds and sods. “But I was thinking, rather—as opposed to just triaging people trying to seduce you?”

His mouth opened indignantly. Then closed. Then pressed closed. Then opened a cautious mite to murmur, “That’s…an alternate view. I suppose it might, ah—did it look like that to you?”

“I saw one success, many misfires, and for the rest of the time, you were out of range on your trade-fleet convoy tours. Where I gather you were not needlessly monogamous?”

“Uh, no, but…I don’t think I’m picky, but there were also many work considerations. Especially after I acquired my captaincy.”

He would have been very conscientious about those, likely. And the shifting fleet duty did not lend itself to anything long term. “So—what is it that you’d like to have?”

He sat back and crossed his own arms. And rather bit out: “Vorkosigans. Apparently. Although it seems too narrow a taste to be evolutionarily likely.”

She sighed. I miss Aral bitterly, too. “Can’t fault you for that one. But what is it you would like that you can have? Or can you say?”

“I seem surprisingly unable to articulate it, today.”

She waved a hand. “Well, then, let’s try tackling the problem from the other end for a bit. Try imagining your ideal partner. Or fling, even. A fellow, I presume? Age, physical type, emotional style, anything? Name, rank, serial number…? I mean—this could be mission-critical information, you know.”

He was beginning to be balefully amused by her, judging by the expression on his face, but he just shook his head as if in disbelief. Although he added, “You know…after Aral, I did think it was men, but I’d had girlfriends before that. Not many, but there were one or two I’d imagined might be my end-game. Other things happened instead. And then there was that herm. Remarkable person in its own right, Captain Thorne, but do you know—the best thing about that fling was that for one whole week, I could stop worrying about my damned categories.” He blinked and frowned, as if this were a sudden new realization.

“Do you think you’re really bi, then? Like Aral?”

“I…it would make more sense than a kink for herms. It’s not as if I went out looking for more, after that.”

She tried another tack. “So…who was your first crush?”

This surprised a bark of laughter from him. “My what?”

“You mentioned kinks. Most people who have them, I mean really have them hardwired into their psyches, not just mild preferences, can identify their roots way back before puberty.”

He made a hair-clutching gesture, though he was still laughing. “Oh, God. This is turning into another one of those Betan conversations, isn’t it? Although I have to say, the herm was not so bad, as Betans went. Had the most endless fund of bizarre questions about Barrayar and Barrayarans, though.”

“But I want to help you, Oliver! If I can,” she amended. She couldn’t help adding aside, “Although I really want to hear more about that herm, sometime.”

“You just like salacious gossip.”

She smiled sunnily at being so profoundly understood. “Yes, but there are so very few people I can have it with.”

“I see.” He swallowed his tilted grin, and more tea.

“First crush,” she reminded him firmly.

“Aren’t there dogs with grips on a subject like this? Terriers, wasn’t it? What makes you think a man can even remember back that”—a slight hitch in his breath, a sudden weird look crossing his face—“far…”

“Do tell,” she prodded, settling back and preparing to be entertained.

“Mugged in Memory Lane. How did you know? Yes. Back in my district primary school, when all the other boys in my classes were giggling in excruciating puppy love over the pretty girl in the third row, I always suffered—and I use that word with some precision—the most devastating crushes on my teachers.” And added under his breath, “God, Oliver—who knew…?”

“Ah!” said Cordelia, feeling pleased. “I think I know about that one! An authority kink, Oliver. Or possibly a power kink.” Good grief, no wonder he went for Aral. “That…makes all kinds of sense, in retrospect.”

“To you, maybe.”

“Male or female teachers?”

“Uh…both. Actually. Now I think on it. Which I haven’t done. For years.” He gave her an accusing look, as if it were her fault.

“Well, many kinks are orthogonal to gender. You do realize there are more than three categories, all on one axis, for human sexual preferences, don’t you? I think you may just be suffering from a shortage of categories.”

“And here I thought I was plagued with too damned many. More than one axis? How do your Betans chart that—with imaginary numbers?”

“Probably. I mean, I don’t know that much about the professional sexuality therapists, but I do know they use some pretty complicated math. Anyway, I quite see that it gives you a built-in structural problem, as you rise in age and rank. At least with the kind of social and age pyramids Barrayar is running at present. You have fewer and fewer potentials in the shrinking pool of authorities above you. And if you aren’t moved by subordinates…?”

He shook his head quite firmly, though whether in agreement or disbelief she wasn’t just sure.

“Then that pretty much leaves you with the uninteresting, the unavailable, and the unappetizing. I mean, just passing the current General Staff, Council of Counts, and Council of Ministers under mental review, for example. Not to mention their dowager dragons.” She made a face, thinking of some of the more repellent derelicts of time in that opinionated crew.

His eyes crinkled in amused horror, evidently envisioning some of the same strong personalities. “Nightmarish! I agree with you there.”

She waved a didactic finger, growing firmer in her hypothesis and pleased with her own insight. She hadn’t lost her touch, eh? “There is nothing whatsoever wrong with you, Oliver. You just happen to find yourself in a target-poor environment at the moment, is all.”

“And yet the range is so short.”

“What?”

He set down his cup firmly on the plank tabletop. He then stood up, walked around the table to her side, grasped her chin, turned her face up, and bent to kiss her.

“Blurf…?” said Cordelia, her eyes springing wide. At this distance, he was blurred and double, and anyway, as he deepened the kiss his blue eyes closed. She felt her own lids squeezing shut in response, as her lips parted. He tasted like sun and rain and tea and Oliver. He tasted really good…

When they broke for breath after a minute…or two…or three, he murmured, “Ah, so this is how Aral diverted all those Betan data-spates.”

“I won’t say you’re wrong,” she muttered back into his smile, and then there followed a few moments of reshuffling that somehow ended up with her on his lap, the rickety chair creaking ominously under its doubled load, and a better angle for exploration that did not risk doing anything bad to his back.

A few…some…more minutes of this, and her eye was drawn as if by magnetism to the tidy bed, made up just a couple of meters away. Oliver followed her glance.

“There happens to be a bed here, I see,” Cordelia remarked.

“I see it, too. Noticed it first thing when we came in. Because an Imperial officer should always be observant.”

“It would probably be more comfortable than this chair. Which is making strange squeaky noises.” As was she, Cordelia supposed. “Not very wide, I admit.”

“Wider than the bottom of the boat, though.”

“Than what?”

“Never mind…”

The personnel transfer between vessels was accomplished without mishap, as Cordelia would have expected under Oliver’s command. The old bed also made squeaky noises, as they settled on its edge, but did not wobble so precariously.

On his next breath-break, Oliver hesitated and said, “God, I am so out of practice. Shouldn’t there be, like…three dates or something? For proper respect? Used to be. They keep changing the rules all the time. Damned kids.”

Cordelia blinked blurrily. “There was the docking bay welcome. And the garden party. And dinner at the officers’ mess. And sailing makes four, actually. Yeah, we’re good. More than good.”

“Ah. Very true.” Brightening, he closed in once more.

“And besides, all my ImpSec duennas are a hundred kilometers away in Kareenburg. How often does that happen?”

“Never waste,” wheezed Oliver, his mouth trailing down her neck, “a tactical opportunity.”

“Damn straight.”

But just before they abandoned the vertical for a better axis, Cordelia held up her hand and tapped her wristcom. Oliver gave her a dismayed look, but she shook her head.

“Rykov? Vorkosigan here. I’m diverting all my incoming calls to your wristcom.” She waved out the recode on the little holographic display. “Got it?”

“Yes, milady,” Rykov’s surprised voice came back.

“If anyone below the level of Volcano wants me, tell them I will be in conference with Admiral Jole for, for some unspecified period of time. No interruptions, please.”

“Right, milady. Understood.”

She wondered if he did. An observant man, Rykov, like all of Aral’s old sworn liegemen, but, like his brothers-in-arms, deeply discreet. They might need to have a long gossip later. Much later.

“Vorkosigan out,” Cordelia gasped, as Oliver did something shivery to her ear with his endlessly talented lips. The kiss that followed this up was as delicious as ever.

“Oh, Oliver,” she murmured when she had her breath back, a little while later. “My body thinks this is the best idea ever. My brain…is not so sure.”

He nuzzled down the other side of her neck, and lower. “Is this to be a Betan ballot? My body votes with yours. My wits…well, call it two against one with one abstaining.”

“Are you asking for a vicereinal veto?”

“You have the power, Your Excellentness.” He hesitated, then rolled up on one elbow to search her face, his lips curved up, his eyes serious. “Though if this goes much further I’ll have to step out to the back for a minute or two.”

“Dark out there, in the rain. Cold.”

“That’s the idea, rather.”

“And lonely.”

“That, too.”

“I’m talking myself into this, aren’t I?”

“Mm.”

“Mm what?”

“That was me not interrupting you.”

She forced her smile back straight and declared, “I’m a grownup. We both are. We can do this.”

“Memorably, yes.”

She went still, and held a finger to his warm lips. “No. No memories. A new start.”

He considered this a moment, nodded, drew breath, and said forthrightly, “How do you do, Cordelia? My name is Oliver. I should like very much to make love to you for the very first time right now, please.”

Her lips twitched up. Big goof—who knew? She considered the bones of his face, the arch of his nose, those amazing sapphire eyes looking back at her in fathomless curiosity, the absolutely centered Oliverness of him, now, at this age, in this place. Where neither of them had ever been before.

“Yes,” she breathed, and, “yes…”

The physicalities were as awkward and absurd as ever, but the touch, oh, she’d so missed touch, and why did, and, oh, “Oh…do more of that…”

“Aye-aye, ma’am,” he mumbled around a mouthful of surprisingly sensitized breast.

And why, “…did we evolve all this bizarre behavior just to swap DNA? Or did the DNA evolve us? Sly molecule. But we hijack the program. Biological pirates.” His mouth found a lower harbor; she…made a rather undignified noise, she was afraid. Dignity need not apply, no, no position open for you here, move along. “Ah! Ship ahoy, Admiral…”

He raised his head and eyed her. “Cordelia…you’re thinking sideways again.”

“Can’t help it,” she gasped. “You’re doing a pretty good job of scrambling my neurons, you know.”

The smile dipped out of sight. “Good,” he said smugly. “I think I need more sideways in my life.”

“Can supply.”

“Right…”

The sun, sliding below the scattering clouds, had touched the horizon outside before they found need for any more words.