0 comments/ 10459 views/ 0 favorites The Web of Sin Ch. 01 By: kozmonaut_x ©2003 The invitation came in the form of a nude pseudo-girl made of blue perspex and brushed aluminum. She shimmered into existence while Govinda was having a late breakfast on the balcony of his hundredth-floor apartment. One moment, he was busy peeling a blood orange, then the next moment he was looking up into the large pale eyes of his unexpected guest. She didn't speak or make any gestures, she simply stood there on the edge of the balcony, her black hair flying up in the wind from passing traffic. Govinda said, "Something you want?," and the girl smiled, very slightly, then reached down to her crotch. She spread her feet apart and fingered open her bare translucent vulva. Pulling out a memory stick, she tossed it in the air above the breakfast table, then laughed softly and fell backward into the abyss. Govinda jumped up from his chair, snatched the memory stick before it could fall into his tea, then leapt to the low railing and looked down. The girl was falling slower than she would've fallen if she'd been real. As Govinda watched, her body changed, becoming first a blob of quicksilver, then becoming a mass of blue butterflies, which after a few seconds flew off in every direction, dispersing the girl's pattern into thin air. Govinda shook his head, then studied the memory stick, scanning it with his deepsense. Finding it to be perfectly normal and harmless, he popped the stick into the slot behind his jaw. A message formed in the middle of his vision, blue type on a black velvet background: msg id: 80947036x.180101.003770100x5269; ex: GevattaHyperstation by c+ metawave; sndr: 081jvx-IMChandamurtha; rcvd: 10.34.10101(PBlocal); begins: so, govinda, i'm giving you the place and time: a haradza hab, 48 standard hours from now. generous of me, don't you think? attached is the destination code (don't share it, you bastard, or i'll be cross). find the lock and join the party. then perhaps you can pay me back for that nine-day orgasm on polachuk's slowboat. or perhaps i'll pay you back for choosing atsuko the day after. either way, it'll be fun. oh, and, remember niamey? she's returned from hiryanna space with a brand new toy. curious? well, too bad. you'll just have to wait until you're inside, if you get inside. your faithful enemy, indhira att: codeblock.readonly>temp.fax# :ends Govinda sat back down and finished his breakfast. Then he spent the rest of the day doing enough netcrime to pay for a full-body fax to Indhira's latest rave. *** Two days later, Govinda stepped out of a fax booth to find himself in the huge empty lobby of an old-style hotel. Glancing about the place to get his bearings, he recognized certain details: the moss-carpet floor, the scattered groups of fat orange pillows, the black-and-white mosaics of scenes from alien myths along the walls, everything just like the Metropole on Faraway. Except, this couldn't be the real Metropole, because the gravity was lighter and there were stars and black space outside the picture windows instead of lavender sky and platinum clouds. Govinda turned to look back at the booth and saw that it was a retrofit, set back in a shadowed alcove. When he walked backward a couple more paces, a soligram made of hundreds of puzzle-pieces formed over the face of the booth and hid it from sight. Govinda nodded, then turned around and headed across the lobby toward the reception desk. No one was on duty, of course, but Govinda figured that was where he might find a working terminal he could ask for directions. But, the wide glass surface of the desk was empty, save for a square piece of cleverpaper the color of an aroused vagina. Govinda touched a fingertip to a corner of the square, and an arrow made of thick black brushstrokes appeared on the paper's surface. Govinda picked up the paper and held it in front of him, and the arrow spun about like a compass needle, pointing him toward a window at one end of the lobby. Slightly impatient by now, Govinda slapped the stud on the hip of his cybskin that activated a repeller field, then he opened the jet vents all along his spine and flew across the lobby to take a look outside. What he saw when he reached the window was a star pattern his cybskin couldn't identify. It looked rather crowded to one side, thin on the other, which probably meant he was on the edge of a globular cluster. Then, when he swept his gaze upward, he noticed the backlit limb of a gas giant hovering above a pair of small bright moons. Govinda looked at the square of cleverpaper in his hand, which was now flashing green and yellow. The arrow had changed into the pictograph for "magnify". So Govinda asked his cybskin to scan for a habitat, which it found within seconds. The hab showed up in his metavision, an ovoid mass about the size of a minor asteroid, following a high orbit above the smaller moon. Enhancing the image, Govinda took note of the myriad vanes and spines standing out from the hab's mottled dark skin. Definitely a Haradza design, one they'd built maybe a hundred thousand standard years ago, then abandoned a few millenia later, when the whole species left realspace for good. Govinda also noticed that local space was full of c+ ships, hundreds of them spread out across his entire field of view, transportation for Indhira's many guests. The problem for Govinda was, he'd arrived by fax, and his cybskin wasn't made for space (after all, it could be massively expensive to fax heavy equipment across the Galaxy). So, what to do? He knew there was no way Indhira would've invited him here without a way to get across to the hab. But, he also knew she wouldn't make it easy for him. They had a long and complicated history, and Govinda knew how almost better than anyone how much she liked to play games. He decided that this ship he'd faxed into must belong to one of Indhira's lovers. Apparently, an extremely wealthy lover. Not that this bothered Govinda, for he had been rich before and would undoubtedly be rich again, someday, if he lived long enough, which wasn't a problem. Of course, the version of Govinda who was floating before a window in replica hotel lobby was a copy of the original, and would be dusted as soon as he'd uploaded his experiences back into the "real" Govinda, who was right now asleep in his apartment on the world called Pale Blue. But, these days, everyone was used to thinking of themselves as sometimes singular, sometimes multiple, and the faxed person always felt completely authentic. So, if the Govinda at the window felt a spark of optimism about his future, it didn't matter much that the future he looked forward to actually belonged to another body. Breaking off his reverie, Govinda decided all he could do was search the ship for a way across to the hab. Once there, he'd have the problem Indhira had mentioned in her message, the one of trying to open the Haradza lock on the Haradza hatch. Without help, it wouldn't be easy, but he figured, one problem at a time. He didn't once consider it might not be worth the trouble, for, no matter how thorny his relationship with Indhira, her raves were never dull. And, besides, many of her friends were his friends, too, and he hadn't seen some of them in a long long time. Jetting back across the lobby, Govinda passed the hidden fax booth and the empty reception desk and headed for the bank of lifts at the other end of the room. In the real Metropole hotel, the lifts took guests to and from rooms all up and down the tower block, but these lifts presumably allowed access to the rest of the ship. Govinda suspected there might be a few decks turned into faux-hotel suites, but he doubted the whole ship had been redecorated to match the lobby. Even if the owner would've liked to convert the whole ship, the artificial minds that controlled the soligram assemblers would've almost certainly vetoed such a waste of energy. There was only so much human folly they could stand, after all. Arriving at the lifts, Govinda looked one last time at the square of cleverpaper in his hand and saw that it had gone dark. He crumpled it up and tossed it into a trash slot, then reached out to press the Up arrow beside one of the lift tubes. A bell chimed and the Up arrow turned pink, a color that meant the same on Faraway as green meant on other worlds. Govinda entered the lift and was immediately whisked up into the center of the ship. If he could get into the Commons, he could scan the whole ship without having to personally visit every deck. *** An hour later, Govinda found what he'd been looking for. His cybskin told him there was a working spacesuit in a locker down in the foreward hangar. But, when he'd jetted down the ship's axis and into the wide-open space of the hangar, he'd discovered the second of Indhira's little jokes. The spacesuit was behind a barrier field, and the control for the field was nowhere to be seen. That was merely annoying. However, in front of the rippling dark curtain of the barrier field, there was a wooden table, and upon the wooden table was the nude figure of his ex-lover Atsuko, tied down with silk cords at her ankles and wrists. That was worse than annoying; Govinda was beginning to get mad at Indhira, although he well knew he should police his emotions, since anger was exactly what Indhira wanted him to feel. When Govinda had floated closer to the table, he turned off his cybskin's repellers and landed gently on the moss-covered deck. He noticed the red metal ball of a remote hovering overhead, but he ignored it as he bent down to take a closer look at Atsuko. She was awake, but drugged, possibly with chaft, since her eyes were black and her lips were blue, the classic signs of a deep chaft trance. Still, she was lovely as ever, with dark olive skin that Govinda had kissed thousands of times in thousands of places, and gorgeous small breasts tipped with nearly-black nipples, each one pierced with a thick silver ring. Her pudenda was bare as ever, except for the tattooed red flame emerging from the folds of her sex. Govinda stroked her short magenta hair and whispered in her ear, asking for some sign that she recognized him. But, all Atsuko could manage was a low moan, the same sound she had often made in the past, when recovering from a huge orgasm. The thing was, Govinda knew that her senses would be somewhat suppressed from the chaft in her system, and that therefore she probably couldn't feel his lips on her earlobe or his hand cupping her breast. Some drugs enhanced the senses, but this drug, made from the venom of a semi-sentient male of the Tiktik species, was designed, in fact, to isolate the user, to make her numb on the outside. Meanwhile, on the inside, it performed subtle manipulations on the cybvirus in the brain of a neo-human, and allowed her to experience incredibly detailed, extremely intense waking dreams. You could still have orgasms that way, but they were entirely in your head. Govinda had tried chaft once himself, a few hundred years before, and hadn't liked it much. He'd dreamed of being fucked in the ass by a giant elephant with porcupine skin, which wasn't among the usual array of Govinda's fantasies. But, Atsuko had enjoyed it, now and then, since her dreams usually involved much more imaginative scenarios. Even so, Govinda doubted she'd volunteered to get left behind on this ship while the rest of the in-crowd flew on over to the Haradza hab. She certainly wouldn't want to be tied up if there wasn't anyone else around to play with. So, Indhira was playing rough, which was not an uncommon thing with his first love. Well, Govinda thought, time enough to deal with that later. For now, he had to get Atsuko out of her restraints and perhaps inject her with some antidote from his cybskin's medkit. He reached down to untie the complicated knot at Atsuko's right wrist, then stopped when he heard someone laughing behind him. Turning around, he saw a holo shimmering a few meters away, an image of Indhira in a lacy black simsuit and a hairdo that was like a dark waterfall running uphill. She stopped laughing, but kept a mischievous smile on her lips, then said, "Oh, Govinda, don't you get it? I want to watch you make her come. I want to see what it is you enjoy about her goddamn cunt so much." Govinda glanced up at the remote, which was Indhira's eye, and said, "You know she's fucking hardcore dreaming. I could screw her for days and she'd never feel it. So, let me release her now, and I'll maybe forget to invite you to a battle arena." Indhira's holo shivered a moment or two, then glowed a little brighter than before. She said, "Please don't forget that part, Govinda, because I might enjoy kicking your ass. Gods, though, I wonder why I'm being so generous while you're being so rude. It's simple: show me how you make her come and I'll let you have the suit. Otherwise, go fax yourself back home with your tail between your legs." Govinda looked down at Atsuko and, for one brief moment, considered leaving her there, bound and drugged. Indhira would let her up, eventually, if he decided to return home. But then, a hot spark of anger rose up his throat, and he resolved he would somehow play Indhira's game, at least for the time being. Not that he'd follow all her rules... *** Letting his cybskin slough off his body and ball itself up into a pillow for his knees, Govinda sank down between Atsuko's spread-open thighs and placed his mouth over the mouth of her sex. He already knew he wouldn't get away with something as unsubtle as shooting her full of antivenin (the remote, hovering lower now, was closely watching his every move with thousands of tiny spider-eyes), but he thought he might know another way to arouse Atsuko out of her trance. He was a professional crime-artist, after all, and had learned a few tricks, here and there, over the centuries. Just tasting his ex-lover made him hard, even if her scent wasn't quite the scent of arousal. Govinda smiled a hidden smile to himself, knowing Indhira would be distracted some by the sight of his erection. He let it grow, but didn't reach down to touch it, not just yet. Instead, he slipped his hands under Atsuko's ass and lifted her up from the table. Then he stroked the cool skin of her labia with his tongue, knowing he'd never open her up this way. It didn't matter, though. Soon enough, his cybskin would send a tendril up into his leg, and inject him with a small dose of chaft, then his tongue would close a circuit with Atsuko's nervenet, and he might then be able to see what she was seeing in her dream. If he was really lucky, she might even see him, and they could finally communicate, despite the drug. He doubted Indhira knew this was even possible; he'd learned about it on an artifact planet out past the Mourning Veil, long before he'd come across the Galaxy to Pale Blue. It was the kind of information you picked up and filed away, never knowing if it would ever be useful. And, for all Govinda knew, it still might not work. But, having decided to stay, he had little choice but to try. So, he licked Atsuko the way she'd liked in the old days, and hoped for the best. He traced the outlines of her flame tattoo with the pointed tip of his tongue, then he made his tongue leaf-shaped and lapped at her smooth vulva. Keeping one hand under her ass, he freed the other and reached up to her soft breast, and kneaded her nipple as he kissed the hollows of her hips. His erection was pulsing by now, and dripping precome all over the moss-carpeted deck. Out of the corner of his eye, Govinda could see Indhira's holo looking at him with a mixture of lust and envy and quiet rage playing across her face. Out of the corner of his other eye, he watched the remote hover even lower, so it could show Indhira an up-close view of his hardon. It occurred to Govinda that he could probably reach out and swat the remote down before it could react. But, part of him took perverse pleasure in being watched by one ex-lover while he ate out another. If it made Indhira squirm, so much the better. Anyway, it was her game, not his. After several minutes, Govinda at last felt the first wave of ice-cold numbness rush up his thigh. He'd mentally ordered his cybskin to give him only a small dose of chaft, nowhere near enough to put him into a trance. Still, it was enough drug to make him feel a little distanced from his own body. Once the drug reached the cybvirus in his head, it would help him set up an empathic link with Atsuko, but wouldn't make him start dreaming dreams of his own. Or, at least, that was the plan. He just needed to get near where she was, not dive in the deep end. Meanwhile, he continued to caress her sleeping pussy with his lips and tongue and nose. He found that it wasn't as unpleasant as he might have thought, attempting to wake her up this way. Atsuko's dark skin tasted of honey and vanilla, her navel smelled like a flowering morningstar, her nipples were satin-soft. If she had been truly asleep and not in a trance, she might even have started to warm up a little by now, her cunt swelling, her cleft opening out under Govinda's encouraging tongue. But, as it was, his foreplay was supremely unsuccessful, although his own body was responding to Atsuko's beauty as if it somehow thought there was a chance he might get inside her...which, he might just do, after all. Govinda rolled his tongue around his mouth to cover it with saliva, then he lapped at Atsuko's still-hidden clitoris, hoping to make his connection there. He mentally opened up the access ports in his nervenet, and began sending out molecular greeting codes, trying to get Atsuko's attention, or at minimum the attention of one of her sub-systems. Meanwhile, he put on a show for Indhira's remote, reaching down with both hands to stroke his erection. He would have preferred to play with Atsuko's ass and tits, but, right now he wanted to distract Indhira as much as he could. He knew that, even though she was as thoroughly bisexual as any other neo-human, she was a little more fond of watching cocks than pussies. Indeed, the remote was now below the table, hovering near the engorged tip of his manhood, while Indhira's holo had one hand down the open front of her simsuit. She wasn't exactly masturbating, yet...but her eyelids were heavy and her nipples were fully erect, so it wouldn't be long before she pulled the hood back from her clit and went to work in a serious way. Of course, Govinda meant to deny her any satisfaction. When he at last felt Atsuko's nervenet respond to his hails, he quickly established a link and uploaded a ghost of himself into her inner awareness. Then he dropped the link, which had at most lasted seven or eight picoseconds. The ghost could operate autonomously while the flesh-and-blood Govinda continued kissing Atsuko's crotch and thighs and belly. Which he did, with growing enthusiasm. To be continued. The Web of Sin Ch. 02 ©2003 Inside Atsuko's dream, Govinda found that it was a little difficult to keep his mind on his goal. He stood on an immense plain made of pink and red tiles, under a giant sun which hung at the zenith of a ruddy sky. Scattered all around him, there were hundreds of wrecked spaceships, or pieces of wrecks, each one sitting in a fractured circle of broken tile. And it wasn't old debris, either, for there were several bright embers trailing smoke as they fell from the high thin clouds to the ground. Govinda ran to his left to avoid one big chunk of burning metal as it came roaring down, then ran forward several meters to avoid another. In ghost form, he wasn't wearing a cybskin, which would've come in handy about now, but, he could run without getting tired, and that was maybe enough. The problem was, where would he find Atsuko? He ran in a great circle, scanning the distant horizon as he did so, looking for some sign of life. He thought he could see a few scattered houses, here and there, but the distances between them were great and he didn't want to stay here forever, running about, searching each dwelling. So he closed his eyes and slowed down his thoughts, and relied on his intuitive sense to present him with one choice more likely than the rest. He mused: Atsuko was an architect, or at least had once been an architect for a long stretch of her early life...and she liked the kinds of designs they did on Edge worlds like Hollow Star and Yalla and Yedyevo...so, perhaps look for a house in that style...something off the ground...something amorphous...something using odd materials in unusual ways.... Govinda looked around once more and noted that there was in fact a Yedyevo-style floathouse about five kilometers away. All the other houses that close were more in the style of Kunyunese flowfoam architecture, definitely not Atsuko's thing. Plus, a lot of the houses had in any case been crushed by falling debris, and wouldn't have anyone alive in them. So, might as well start at the floathouse. There were a few others, much farther away, and he could check those next if the first one didn't pan out. When he arrived at the bright green plastic-and-fur-covered floathouse, he didn't find Atsuko, but he did find evidence he was on the right track. Climbing up the cable that kept the house anchored to the ground, he poked his head up past the sphincter that served as a door, and discovered a huge spherical chamber enclosed by a rubbery red membrane, with a collection of exotic sex toys drifting about weightless in the middle space. One of the toys was a double-headed phallus made of cleverjelly, a gift Govinda had given Atsuko after their first encounter. He leapt up out of the sphincter and let the house's lifting field carry him toward the toy. Grabbing it, he kicked off the membrane wall and swam down the slope of the field, then pushed his way back out of the house. Walking down the cable, he looked for and found the next nearest house. Running toward it with the phallus flopping about in his hand, he felt slightly ridiculous. But, having to dodge the occasional piece of falling wreckage preoccupied him and kept him from feeling too self-conscious. Finally, after he had taken a look inside two other houses, he arrived at a floating home that was the shape and color of an enormous drop of blood. Small patches of black quills formed a random pattern all over its surface, while big round windows formed a ring around its equator. The house was rocking a little in a nonexistant breeze, so Govinda guessed it might be occupied. Before he went up the tether, he glanced around to see if there was anything falling from the sky in the immediate area. But, for the moment, the sky looked clear. In fact, he noticed there wasn't any debris within about a kilometer of the house, which he took as another sign things were going his way. At the top of the cable, he pushed his head and shoulders past the sphincter. Once inside, the first thing he saw was a round room with walls upholstered in faux albino sealskin. Light from the ring of windows filled the space with a pinkish glow, and washed out the shadows from any place where shadows might normally form. If there was a lifting field generator, it was turned off, and nothing floated around loose the way the sex toys had done in the first house. Govinda pulled his torso and legs up and out of the sphincter, and stood there a moment to steady himself against the gentle swaying motion of the house. Then, he heard a voice behind him. "God, Govinda, bring that cock of yours over here and fuck me good." Turning around, he saw that Atsuko was spread out on a pile of pillows, her cunt wide-open and glistening with excitement, her nipples hard as stones, her spiky hair sticking up in every direction. Beside her lay a large man, a native of Yedyevo from the looks of his barbed orange cock and yellow-furred skin. The man had his hand on the swell of Atsuko's belly, his mouth on her neck, his foot against the inside of her calf. He was busy enough that he didn't pay Govinda any attention. Atsuko, though, looked at him hard through slitted eyelids, her gaze a magnet for his libido. As it had ever been. Govinda sank to his knees, set the dildo down, then crawled on all fours toward the harbor of Atsuko's thighs. He lowered his face into the dripping cleft of her sex, and inhaled the sweet thick aroma of her arousal. He licked her up and down for a few long moments, then began kissing a trail up her body, going around the other man's hand, then over the top of each breast, then ending in the space beneath her collarbone. Finally, he raised himself off of Atsuko and looked down at her face. The tip of his revived erection was pressing ever-so-slightly upon the gate of her womb. He didn't want to slip all the way inside just yet, and so, when Atsuko shifted her ass to slide down on him, Govinda backed away, frustrating her, making her look up at him and grunt her disapproval. "Goddamn it, Govinda, fuck me." Govinda said, "Atsuko, do you know where you are?" "Who cares. Come on, just fucking fuck me, you bastard." Govinda bent down for a kiss, sucking on Atsuko's tongue as he did so. She reached down and grabbed his erection and pulled it roughly toward her snatch. He felt himself almost give into her, felt the shared chaft trance as it threatened to envelop him in an ocean of mindless lust. But, his ghost program reasserted itself, and he jerked up off of her sweaty body. He said, "Atsuko? Indhira's got you in a trap. Do you know that? That bitch is fucking with us both." "Goddamn fucking shit, if you're not going to screw me, move over, let Ezret do it." Then she turned her head to her other lover and let him kiss her long and deep. But Govinda didn't yield his position between Atsuko's legs. Instead, he sat up and bent back to reach the dildo he'd brought with him from the first house. Squeezing it rhythmically in his hand, he activated its small but extremely creative nanomech mind. Then he tapped out the code for "solosex, male". The dildo's celeverjelly body morphed into a new shape, one with a buttplug at one end and a come cup at the other. Govinda then tossed the toy at Ezret's crotch, where it quickly buried its self-lubricating plug end in his asshole, while taking his formidable erection into the loving care of its sucker end. Ezret rolled away from Atsuko and and looked down at what was happening to his cock, but didn't seem too displeased. Atsuko tried unsuccessfully to get his attention for another kiss, then she turned and glared at Govinda, saying, "What the fuck are you even doing here?" This was closer to the reaction he wanted. Sitting back on his heels, Govinda said, "I told you. You're trapped. You were invited to a rave, remember? You came out on a ship...and, someone, probably Indhira, drugged you with chaft, a big dose. So, you're dreaming. Anyway, they left you for me to find, and now I have to get you to purge the drug." Atsuko had reached down to her pussy with both hands, and was frigging her erect clit hard with the pads of her fingers. She stared down at Govinda's cock as she masturbated, watching as it wept sugarwater tears of precome. Between clenched teeth, she said, "Fuck that shit. Fuck you. I'm not dreaming." "Yes," Govinda said, "yes, this is a trance. I need you to focus. I need you to purge your system. Then, if you do that, I'll fuck you as much as you want. Just, you've got to purge for me." Atsuko shook her head, then bit her lower lip as she began to glide down the path toward a crashing orgasm. With one hand and arm she mashed flat both her breasts, while, with the other, she fucked herself hard and fast until her cunt was sodden with juice. Govinda had a very strong urge to take his erection in hand and stroke it until it erupted with sperm, but he resisted the temptation, knowing he could come for real soon enough, if only he could get Atsuko to listen to him. Govinda reached down and grabbed Atsuko's wrist, and yanked her hand from out of her vagina. Then he lay forward and pinned both her arms up over her head. Atsuko screamed her frustration into his ear, and he let her scream and kick and bite until she at last ran out of energy. Then, she fell back into the pillows, shaking her head as if to clear it. "Fucking Indhira," she said, "fucking bitch." Then she turned to look across at Ezret, who was lost in bliss, his cock covered by the pulsing membrane of the toy, his ass spasming around the plug up his tailhole. Atsuko shouted at him, "Fucking idiot!," and Ezret melted away into countless motes of golden dust. Govinda said, "I want to fuck you, but I want to do it for real, not in a dream. So, purge. I'm with you outside of the trance. The real me is eating your pussy as we speak. Purge, and you'll feel me down there. I swear I'm telling you the truth. Purge and join me." Atsuko looked defiant for a moment, but she had a submissive side, and, now broken, she could do nothing else but obey Govinda. She closed her eyes and started to hum a mantra. Govinda, meanwhile, kept her arms pinned down, not fully trusting that she'd follow through. But, before long, the room in the floathouse began to break apart into tumbling puzzle pieces, and the giant sun grew dim, then went dark, and Govinda's ghost collapsed into a packet message, which was the encoded memory of all that had just happened. The packet flowed down Atsuko's nervenet and jumped across her skin to her ex-lover's tongue, which had only three realtime seconds before inserted the ghost into the hood of her clitoris. *** On the table in the hangar of the ship she'd ridden into the system, Atsuko's eyes went from black to their normal chocolate color, and her lips went from blue to brown. She gasped, then pulled her limbs back and forth against their restraints. Her head flopped from one side to the other, and that's when she saw Indhira's holo standing a few paces away. Indhira looked back at her with a hint of surprise on her face, which she quickly hid under a mask of distant amusement. She'd been masturbating, but had stopped, and now pulled her hand out of the slit in her simsuit. Licking her fingers clean, she turned her attention to Govinda, who was still sucking on Atsuko's netherlips while jerking himself off down below the table. Indhira said, "Hey, asshole, you cheated." Govinda didn't look up. Instead, he pushed his tongue as hard as he could into Atsuko's cunt. At first, nothing happened, but, as she began to recover her senses, Atsuko mentally directed blood to flow especially fast toward her sex. Govinda licked and massaged and caressed her with his lips and tongue, until at last, her labia swelled and started to spread apart. The trickle of sweetness that emerged from her aroused vagina fell on Govinda's chin, making it slick enough that he could use it to stimulate the flesh just above her anus. Atsuko looked down at Govinda's dark hair spread out on her belly. She moaned, "Please...fuck me now, don't wait. I'm wet enough. I need you so bad." But Govinda wanted Indhira to watch him run his tongue slowly, lovingly up and down the edges of Atsuko's labia. He wanted her to watch him as he slipped first one finger, then two, then three into Atsuko's wet red hole. He wanted her to see how much he enjoyed tongueing the hood back from her swollen clit, to let it pop out into the light. Indhira, meanwhile, could have terminated the link at any time. But, she didn't. She stood there and accepted every insult Govinda meant to imply with his slow foreplay. She made the remote hover beside him as he finally stood up, his erection dripping a steady stream of syrup. Govinda ignored her, or pretended to, but he meant for her to notice how long he took sliding his cock into Atsuko's welcoming pussy. Inch by deliberate inch, he slid deep into the velvet heaven of her sex, then slowly pulled out almost all the way, then plunged forward again, this time a little faster, a little harder. Atsuko writhed within her bonds, throwing her head back so that the tendons stood out sharp in her neck. Her rock-hard nipples made pointed mountains out of her lovely breasts, and as Govinda fucked her, he imagined himself a small traveler across the landscape of her flat stomach. He could sleep in her bellybutton, then spend days exploring the slopes and summits of her tits. For, even though they hadn't been lovers in years, Govinda still thought Atsuko was among the most beautiful women he'd ever had the pleasure to know. Just as he started to thrust his cock faster against the quivering walls of Atsuko's vagina, Govinda saw the remote move to hover just above the junction of cock and cunt. It split open and dumped a key onto Atsuko's belly, then rushed away into a dark recess of the hangar. He heard Indhira say, "Fuck this, you're boring me." Then her holo image shuddered and disappeared. Govinda was a little disappointed, but his disappointment didn't last long. For soon, despite being tied down, Atsuko was fucking him back with the well-toned muscles of her cunt, milking his cock until he stood at the knife-edge of a gigantic orgasm. He held back as long as he could, until the moment when Atsuko's cunt twitched around the shaft of his hardon. She yelled and laughed as she came, and Govinda let his semen rush out in spasm after spasm of warm joy. Afterwards, when his cock had slipped out of Atsuko, their mingled come dripped out and down onto the hangar deck. Govinda plucked the vitrex disc of the barrier field key from off Atsuko's sticky belly, then untied her bonds, throwing the cords far from the table. She sat up, massaging her wrists while Govinda massaged her ankles. "Gods," she said. "Yeah," Govinda replied, grinning. A few minutes later, Atsuko scooted her ass off the edge of the table and stood up, rather unsteadily at first, her breasts bouncing in the low gravity, her thighs slick with all the moisture leaking out of her slit. Then, when she'd regained her composure, she turned to face Govinda and asked, "So, what's the thing with the key?" Govinda said, "All the shuttles are gone. There's only one spacesuit. I got here by fax, so the suit's the only way across to the hab. But, of course, you're stranded, too...so, you can take the suit first. Then, just send it back here on autopilot." Atsuko shook her head, saying, "No, fuck Indhira. I faxed, too, a couple of weeks ago, but, now I don't feel like being anywhere near this goddamn place. So, I'm going home. Hey, though, you know what, Govinda? You ought to fucking call me some time." Govinda smiled at her and said, "Yeah, okay. I will. Sorry it's been so long. Are you still on Yalla?" "No. Yalla System, but not the world. I'm out on Esme Torus." "Good, got it. So, you'll be all right?" "Yeah, I guess. Fuck it, you know? But, kick that bitch's ass for me. And don't tell her I liked the sex." Govinda let his cybskin crawl back up onto his body, then he took Atsuko into his arms and flew them both down the ship's axis and back to the central lifts. When he'd seen her off into the fax booth in the fake hotel lobby, he returned as fast as he could to the locker in the hangar. The key worked and the barrier field turned to vapor. Govinda touched the point on the armored chest of the spacesuit that activated its cybsystems. The suit opened up, Govinda stepped in, and the suit closed around him. Two minutes later, he was flying out the shuttle lock and heading across hard vacuum toward the alien hab half a million kilometers away. To be continued. The Web of Sin Ch. 03 ©2003, k.x. As he crossed raw space on his way to the Haradza hab, Govinda watched the ship he'd just left dwindle into a minor star in his hindsight. He'd recognized the design as soon as he was outside: a converted Kunyunese Heavy Cruiser, pointed at both ends, with a massive hypertorus around its middle. There were no markings, though, so he couldn't tell anything about the owner. He thought of asking the suit, but it was the kind without a ghost. And, the interface for the ship's mind had been offline since he'd faxed on board. All of this was Indhira's doing, of course; she'd locked him out of the usual sources of information, so that he couldn't be sure where he was in the Galaxy, or who all might be helping her play her game. Not that it actually mattered much. Ultimately, the game was between the two of them alone, even if other people might get drawn in, here and there, as obstacles or traps or reminders of past injuries. Like the way Indhira had used Atsuko against him. Or, at least, how she'd tried to use her. Still, as angry as she made him sometimes, Indhira was right, he could learn to enjoy this. Living the last few years on an Ethical world like Pale Blue, Govinda had missed having enemies. Netcrime was a decent enough way to make a living, but doing it didn't make you feel alive, partly because it was so easy for someone with his skills, partly because Ethical governments were so impersonal. Of course, Indhira's style of crime could get out of hand, which was one of the reason's he'd been laying low for the last few years. That last job, especially, had scared him a little more than he liked, and had almost cost him his life. Or, he should say, the life of his original self, the one who was at this moment somewhere far across the lens of the Galaxy. He flew on through the hard dark night, a journey of many long, silent hours before him. His destination was a tiny pewter bead in the far distance, a guttering spark ignited by the still-hidden parent star of the system. Unable to sleep, and with nothing better to do, Govinda closed his eyes and replayed old memories, letting his mind fill with scenes and images from the time when he began to hate Indhira almost as much as he'd loved her... *** He'd been on Maravore for a week, and was still not completely recovered from a bad case of the new world blues. Usually, he adjusted to planetside life much faster than this. But, Maravore was an odd place, a construct built by gods-knew-who millions of years before, for some purpose long-forgotten. It had variable gravity, and orbited on the extreme inside of the habitable zone of its parent star. So, the heat and the strange shifting feeling of walking around with changing weight made most newcomers more than a little ill. Even in a cybskin, which kept the wearer perpetually fed and healthy and in touch with the local and Galactic nets, there was still an adjustment period. So, Govinda had been spending his days going slow, until he felt well enough to pursue a more active schedule. He'd made his home base in the old city of Sikhazovot, which was in Maravore's southern hemisphere, a congenial, sleepy place mostly occupied by neo-humans, with a few different kinds of outworlders thrown in for variety. His rooms overlooked a dry canal and the plaza of a Shouter temple. The neighborhood was a quiet one, though, since the temple was in disuse, its worshippers having mostly committed ritual suicide years before (their religion had been based around a supposedly "holy" message beamed out of alien Tsunkatsa space; but, it was finally determined that the message was really just the noisy signal from an erratic pulsar). Govinda had been spending his nights alone, laying sleepless in his oversized bed in his oversized apartment, with only the muted rhythmic ticking of the city's ancient prayer machines to keep him company. At first, he'd enjoyed the solitude, especially the part where he could for once finish a dream, instead of being awakened by Indhira and one of her other lovers for yet more complicated fuck-play. (They were good dreams, too; he'd bought them off an avant-garde artist from Iron Angel.) But, a week into his time on Maravore, he was starting to feel vaguely lonesome, perhaps even a little hungry in the old-fashioned predatory way. And so, although he was still a little unsteady on his feet, he decided to celebrate the one-week anniversary of his planetfall with a drink or two in the marketplace. It wasn't far, and was anyhow about the only place the locals went to socialize. After wandering around a while, he found an open-air cafe and ordered red tea from the vending drone. Then he settled in for some serious people-watching at a small table by the wide dusty road. As he sipped his tea, he thought briefly about the recent past. His last argument with Indhira had been a bad one, but he liked to think he wasn't running from her. Instead, he told himself he'd simply decided to take a break, a sort of a sabbatical away from all her schemes and demands and subtle, clever threats. If he took a new lover, he or she might help wash Indhira's taste out of his mouth. Of course, he'd probably go back to her, eventually, just as she'd come back to him after all of their many fights. They were bound together in some deep way that defied logic or common sense. But, for the length of this one small space he'd carved out in his life, he thought he would simply pretend that she didn't exist, however hard a task that might prove to be. Of course, he could have chosen a paradise world, and had a proper vacation, instead of being stuck with a case of the blues on a backwater oddball like Maravore. But, Govinda had never liked to make it easy for people to find him. Sighing, he made a serious effort to pay attention to the passing crowds. Not that crowds in Sikhazovot were all that heavy; at most the city's population was only about a hundred thousand. The natives who were strolling through the marketplace stopped now and then and haggled with various merchants, but seldom bought anything. The outworlders, on the other hand, often purchased little objects or pieces of fruit without haggling at all. The merchants seemed disappointed if they got their first price, even though they made almost all their profit that way. Govinda smiled a small, inward smile, thinking of all the different ways he could commit crimes in an old-fashioned economy like this one. It might be a nice diversion after spending so many years doing cutting-edge netcrime for Indhira's crew... Just then, a shadow crossed his vision, and a tall outworld woman sat down at his table. She planted her elbows on the tabletop and leaned in, looking sideways at Govinda as she pulled the blackened husk off a grilled sukkao. Taking a big bite of the fruit's bright green flesh, she turned to face Govinda full-on, and smiled at him with her large dark eyes. "So," she said, talking around the food in her mouth, "you know a place we could go?" Govinda was accustomed to forward women, but, even so, this one surprised him. He liked her long red hair and her pale milk skin, and the way she wore her cybskin, which was currently matte black with a subtle rippling pattern all over, like water covered with a film of charcoal dust. So, he was definitely interested. Still, at the same time, he wasn't completely himself yet, and so tried to slow her down some, even if only for a minute or two. He said, "Yes. I know a place. But...maybe you want to talk first or something? Let me buy you tea." She took one more bite of the sukkao and tossed the remains in the hole in the table's center. Then she wiped her chin with her hand, and said, "No, don't want to talk first. Later might be okay...we'll see. But, anyway, if you don't want to do anything, you don't have to." She made as if to leave him, half-rising from her chair, but Govinda reached out and grabbed her hand. They stood up together, and, giving in, Govinda led her away from the marketplace and back to his rooms near the vacant Shouter temple. *** Her cybskin was set to allow a basic hand-off ID, but nothing else. So, Govinda knew her name was Sabine as soon as he'd touched her the first time. He did not know the usual list of other things, such as origin or sub-species or last planet visited. Of course, Govinda's skin was set on highest privacy, and Sabine wouldn't know his name unless he told her himself. Which, he might do eventually...just, not yet. They stood at the foot of his wide bed and let their cybskins melt off their bodies, each one rolling into a little ball which they kicked away with their feet. Govinda stepped back to admire Sabine's body, then held out a fingertip to trace a line from her ear to her shoulder to the sharp edge of her hip. In an age when it wasn't difficult to be perfect, beauty depended on imperfection, and Sabine had designed herself to be extremely pleasing to the discerning eye. She had a spray of faded freckles across the tops of her small breasts, a ragged scar along the inside of her left bicep, a wine-colored birthmark under the shadow of her collarbone. Her pubic hair was full, and surrounded her sex like a halo made of flame. Below that, she had thick rings tattooed in black around her thighs, and narrow rings tattooed in brown around her ankles. Standing there with his palm now massaging her hard little nipple, Govinda thought she was the loveliest woman he'd been with in a long, long time. Sabine reached out and played with the soft black hair on Govinda's chest, then let her fingers walk down his body until they found his growing erection. She grinned at him and wrapped her hand around his penis, jerking on it until it was rock-hard. Then she sank to her knees and put out her pointed tongue, the better to taste the precome that was flowing in great clear beads of dew down onto her hand and wrist. Govinda watched her take his manhood into her mouth, watched as shadows filled the hollows of her cheeks, and recorded the memory of the way her lips rode up and over the ridge of his glans. He ached to be inside her cunt, and was tempted to grab her shoulders and drag her up onto the bed. Or, perhaps he could simply stand her up against the wall and fuck her like that. But, then again, the feeling he got when Sabine used her warm soft tongue to tease open the slit in the tip of his cock was the kind of feeling that could make all other desires melt clean away. She worked on him with hand and mouth until his balls tightened and sparks of pleasure ran up his shaft. Sabine reached around and grabbed his ass, pulling him deeper down the length of her tongue. Then she sent an adventurous finger southward along his cleft. When her self-lubricated finger arrived at his asshole, she began to rub it around the margins, making his already unsteady knees even more weak. Much as he might've wanted to fuck her, Govinda was now so close to an orgasm, especially after having gone without sex for longer than usual, he decided to just let it flow. In a rough-edged, whispery voice, he said, "I want to come in your mouth." Sabine nodded around his cock and made an agreeable noise in her throat, then pushed her fingertip up his hole and massaged his balls with her palm. When she sucked him, it felt like being enveloped in the rippling muscles of a highly adept vagina. Govinda threw his head back and his hips forward, and fell deep into the vast blue sea of his own personal heaven. Time slowed for him, and all his senses but touch went dull. He savored every discrete moment of Sabine's loving attention to his penis. He especially savored the sensations spreading out from his finger-full netherhole. He rode her hand, and on every downstroke, he felt a little warmer, a little more ready to surrender his seed. He waited for just the right moment, then allowed his nervenet to open up and out. When his orgasm came, it was like an ocean wave, starting slow in the deep water, then rushing ever faster to lick then crash on the shore. His sperm boiled up from his balls and flooded his shaft, then came spasming out of his cockhead in thick streamers of cream. Govinda opened his eyes and looked down to watch as Sabine caught his jism all over her lips and chin and nose. Then, still trembling from his extended O, he pulled his cock away from her and knelt down to kiss the come off her skin. Sabine laughed and hugged him close, and she let him taste himself on her playful tongue. Govinda's erection did not recede, but pressed hard against Sabine's thatch, nestled there like it had found the perfect bed to sleep in. Govinda placed his hands under Sabine's ass, and was about to lift her onto the edge of the bed, where he planned to eat her out for at least an hour, when she sucked his earlobe into her mouth, then whispered his name. And that was when he knew for certain what he should have known already: there are no accidents in this world. Sabine had been sent to find him. Which meant, Indhira knew where he was. *** He gave up on Maravore and left with Sabine on the next outbound lifting pod. They fucked each other to exhaustion in the crossing ship, then fucked each other far beyond exhaustion in the c+ cruiser that took them to Onlo. After all, Govinda didn't feel any resentment toward Sabine. If anything, he was almost glad he'd been found. It saved him the tedious trouble of having to try and outwit his lover, boss, and sometime enemy. He could run ahead of her for a while...but, he was nearly ready to submit that he couldn't escape her forever. At Guindy Port, an old Haradza artifact in geosynchronous orbit above Onlo's main city of Omkot, Govinda parted company with Sabine, then went to see Indhira in her hotel room. She acted as if nothing had happened, and greeted Govinda at the door with a long, deep kiss. "I have a job for us," she said, "a big new job I think you'll like." As he followed her into her room, Govinda felt something go dark in his heart, because any time Indhira suggested to him that he'd like something, it always meant trouble... *** Meanwhile, in the present, Govinda was pushing himself across space at the highest acceleration he could endure. Even so, when he checked the suit's chronometer, he saw that it would be at least a day until reached the hab, which was still a dot orbiting a mote of a moon in his foresight. He felt warm, and had his cybskin run cold plasma through its veins while he checked the sensornet. An orange icon in the shape of a stylized lightning bolt told him that local space was full of radiation. A block of code that appeared when the icon was on-focus told him the source: the primary, a gas planet wrapped 'round with countless giant storms. The radiation wouldn't affect him permanently, neo-humans could take all kinds of abuse from the universe. Like with the new world blues, he'd get over it, in time. And the Haradza hab would be safe, since its skin was impervious to just about anything. But, just knowing the radio signature of the planet was information, even if only a small amount. He'd file it away, in hopes that, one way or another, he might yet figure out where in the hell he was... To be continued. The Web of Sin Ch. 04 ©2003, k.x. Halfway to the alien habitat, Govinda contacted the spacesuit through the interface net in his cybskin. He thought a series of commands: reverse thrust, line us up for a matching orbit, make sure to bring us in aft of the hab, scan for threats. The suit's non-sentient brain made a course calculation in two picoseconds, then swung the stalks of its thruster pods around to face the slow-growing disc of the bright silver moon. The reactionless motors hidden inside the pods began to push hard against the direction of motion. Govinda, meanwhile, went back to repeating the mantra for remembrance that he'd been saying since leaving the Kunyunese ship. Soon enough, the memories he'd wanted to revisit started to flow again, fragments flowing past his awareness like dead leaves carried on the braided surface of a rushing mountain stream... *** Indhira's client didn't have a name. But, he or she or it had a face, in the form of an alt.human avatar called gunra-Ciforex. Govinda met the rep in a xanadu in Omkot, and the first thing he thought upon seeing him was, poor godscrewed fatherfucker. Of course, alt.humans, like their cousins the neo-humans, came in all shapes and sizes, everyone was used to that. But gunra-Ciforex was an unusual example of an already adventurous subspecies. Although he had the standard body plan, it was somewhat distorted, with much longer limbs than average, giving him a rather spidery aspect. The outsides of his arms and legs were covered with hundreds of thorny projections, each one dark glossy black against flourescent blue skin. His long, narrow head was topped by a mane of fire-colored hair that waved about the way a diver's hair does underwater. His birth-eyes had been replaced by a pair of metasensory clusters which were like the crowns of pink dandelions. On his forehead, he bore a row of radar-emitters, small hard beads that glistened even in the muted roomlight. On his back, he sported a pair of organic jet tubes which hung down below his knees like enormous, misplaced phalluses. Meanwhile, there was nothing hanging down from his crotch; the only thing he had down there was a ring of red clevermetal sewn with wire thread to his puckered, mottled skin. A terminal, most likely...or perhaps a weapon. In essence, though, gunra-Ciforex wasn't exactly frightening; instead, he was unsettling, disturbing, a mixed-up collection of odd phenotypes that didn't make much adaptive sense, but which definitely communicated a message. Govinda thought the message was: my Boss is crazy; don't cross him (or her, or it). The usual "or else" part was clearly implied as well. The problem was, although Govinda had no intention of crossing anyone, he didn't see how exactly he was supposed to seal his contract with gunra-Ciforex's boss. He had come here from Guindy Port high above the city, flown down with Indhira after she'd told him his part in the plan for the job (and after they'd had an afternoon of intense make-up sex in an orbital airpod). The job had sounded difficult, maybe too difficult, but he'd agreed, reluctantly, to do the thing he'd been asked to do. It would cost him a lot...but, it would earn him a lot, too, if at least one of his selves lived to come out the other end. But, usually, when you said "yes" to a contract, you signed it by fucking your client. This time, though...how the hell was he supposed to do that? gunra-Ciforex didn't have anyplace fuckable on him, and Govinda was extremely hopeful that the rep (or whoever was controlling the rep by remote) didn't intend to put one of his jet tubes up his backside. That was a deal-breaker, for sure...unless he could make the tips smaller... He and Indhira had been standing at one end of an oval soft-hollow, waiting while gunra-Ciforex stood at the other, his head cocked to one side as he listened to an internal voice give him instructions. After a while, he spoke to Indhira in tradertongue, saying, "We have hired a surrogate. She will be here soon. Please, have a drink while we wait." Then gunra-Ciforex waved his large, eight-fingered hand and a serving golem appeared from out of a nearby alcove. Govinda took a cup of orange xiaolao tea off the golem's tray. Indhira took nothing, but instead shared the occasional sip of tea out of Govinda's mouth. He could tell she was getting in a mood to play, which was an infectious mood, despite his recent misgivings about bedding the avatar. Now that he knew a surrogate was coming, he was feeling a little more relaxed. Then, a few minutes later, when he saw the alt.human surrogate, he wondered once again if he'd made the right decision... *** A thousand kilometers above Onlo's single great octopus-shaped ocean, in an airpod with transparent walls and circular gravity beds at each axis, Indhira held Govinda close and whispered in his ear. He was still buried balls-deep in her lovely, velvety snatch; their mingled come was still flowing down his shaft and onto her thigh. In-between the aftershocks of her last orgasm, she told him what he needed to know about her "big new job". His target was a block of code buried inside a secure cache on an artifact planet called Ghoveshet. You don't need to know what the code's for, she said, you just need to copy it and deliver the copy to the client's rep in Omkot. She linked with his cybskin, which was balled up in the small of his back. A holomap sprang open in his dataview: Ghoveshet, marked with a blue-green X, was in a system in an open cluster four thousand lightyears west by northwest of where they were now. A text box near the X unfolded like origami in reverse when he focused on it: Ghoveshet, terrestrial, near-standard gravity, inhabitants mostly retro-humans, politically non-aligned, primary business: datahaven services. Its system server had large sections walled off, all of them doubleplus private, owners unknowable. A few big clients possibly true-alien, not some species of human. You could tell from the usage data, the traffic pattern going in and out, much of it indicating a flow between Ghoveshet and a Haradza habitat far outside the Settlement. The clients wouldn't be Haradza, of course, since they were all long gone, maybe to otherspace, maybe beyond. But, habs could be taken over and used by just about anybody. And that far out on the edge of The Edge, the squatters were more likely alien than anyone from inside human space. The only thing was, no one knew of any non-human species in that direction. The closest were the enigmatic Tsunkatsa, and they weren't close at all. Govinda was curious, but he knew not to ask any questions about Indhira's client's interest in the code. Even though his cock was still filling up his boss's cunt, intimacy didn't imply liberty; in fact, it implied just the opposite. Many months later, on board a slowboat on the other side of the Galaxy, he would learn by accident what it was he'd helped steal away from Ghoveshet. Then, feeling something akin to guilt for the first time in his life, he would leave Indhira for Atsuko, then would leave Atsuko to drift far and wide, ending up at last on Pale Blue, his head a mess from knowing too much. And there he would stay, keeping himself apart from all his old friends for a long, long time...until the morning when a nude pseudo-girl would bring him an invitation to an encrypted fax address. But, all of that was in the future, and in the airpod in orbit above Onlo, when Indhira told him how the plan would work, he wasn't thinking about much of anything else but how good she felt wrapped around his hardon... *** The first part was simple: he stepped into a fax booth at Omkot Rapid Transit, then, several minutes later, five freshly-minted Govindas stepped out of fax booths on five distant worlds. At each destination, Govinda sought out and found an out-of-the-way hotel in a big city. Then he settled in and waited, doing the usual touristy things to make himself blend into the background. On Gevorah, he attended staged reenactments of Torture Cult rituals; on Idoko, he wandered for long hours through the diverse entertainments of the Perpetual Carnival; in Kirhadoun on Pirchakty, he played complicated sexgames with the adepts of the Mysteries; in the orbital city called Chalice, high above the hellworld of Vorn, he visited art galleries and museums full of alien biotech; on Kest, he fought in the battle arena against all manner of golems and machines and alien beasts. Meanwhile, back on Onlo, the original Govinda slept for days in a big bed in a shielded xanadu far beneath Omkot. And in his sleep, he dreamt long and hard about Ghoveshet and how best to get inside and back out again. For he knew, the second part wouldn't be simple at all... *** The surrogate was, if anything, more odd-looking than gunra-Ciforex. But, this time, it was the good kind of oddity, even if it took a little while for Govinda's libido to adjust to her appearance. Tall and well-muscled, she had bright red skin everywhere except on her face, which was mint green under fine white fur. At the moment, she wore her cybskin rolled up into a thick collar around her long, slender neck, and Govinda admired the way subtle shadows played all about the furrows and curves of her nude body. Her glossy black hair was waxed and sculpted into a complex style that Govinda knew was popular on Yedovazra, the sister planet to Yedyevo a hundred lightyears south of Onlo. But, unlike the other natives of that system, she didn't have hedgehog quills growing out of the mound of her sex. Or, at least, she'd resorbed them, or plucked them out, just for tonight. Govinda thought, lucky me. gunra-Ciforex said, "Kivrin will be my agent in this matter. I will observe and record. Please enjoy her. And, if you need anything, let me know." Indhira stepped down into the soft-hollow, pulling Govinda down beside her. Kivrin smiled at them both, then joined them on the scattered fat cushions at the bottom of the pit... *** After he'd been asleep long enough to devise a strategy for invading Ghoveshet, Govinda woke himself and sent burst-messages by very fast radio to his other selves. As soon as they assimilated the messages, they would know what to do and when. Govinda then asked a house golem to send for a jumpjet, which arrived topside a few minutes later. The self-piloting 'jet flew up and out of Omkot, and took him across grassland and marsh and ocean to an island in the middle of nowhere. There was an old house on the island, built in the style of Onlo's first human settlers. Made mostly of milk jade vitrex and hexagons of terra-cotta tile, it was shaped like a squat obelisk with boxy wings on two sides. The house belonged to gunra-Ciforex's boss/controller, and was mantrapped from its foundation to the sharp apex of its roof. But, the house's ghost had been instructed to let Govinda inside, which it did, after a quick deepscan at the clevermetal door. If anyone else approached the door, it would dust them with its nano-gun. Govinda sat on a crescent-shaped sofa in the huge living room and pulled a key out of the thigh pouch of his cybskin. He touched the slender rod of the key to his tongue, to confirm his identity. Then he held the key out and squeezed it hard three times. The rippling disc of a semi-permeable barrier field appeared in the air before him: the portal to an otherspace pigeonhole. Govinda reached in and pulled out his customized 'net terminal. Then he closed the portal and put the key away. He rolled the terminal around in the palm of his outstretched hand. It was a matte black marble, outwardly the same as any other terminal made in the last year by the fashionable tech house of Alesso on Pirenne. But, Govinda had massively reorganized its inner workings, and the designers at Alesso wouldn't have recognized anything of their handiwork in the chaotic tangle of hypercircuits, metawave boosters and quantum effect devices that now filled the little sphere. Govinda closed his fingers around the terminal, then threw it toward the far wall. It arced up then stopped in midair. Govinda spoke a command, and the terminal turned translucent. After a second command, the terminal grew until it was a large see-through globe that filled the middle of the room. Govinda rose up off the sofa, walked toward the terminal, then pushed against its event horizon and slipped inside... *** Kivrin's cunt was warmer and deeper and wetter than any cunt Govinda had known in years. He very much enjoyed sliding around inside her, and liked especially the way her vaginal muscles trembled in sympathy with his every stroke. And, because Kivrin was so tall, he could lay his head down between her firm, pointed breasts as he fucked her. A nice place to be, her hard dark nipples within easy reach of his questing tongue, her sweaty red skin filling his nose with a subtle/unsubtle scent that was like seawater and hot metal and mourning orchid, all mixed together. He also enjoyed having Indhira's cleverjelly phallus up his ass. She fucked him with it by remote, while she sat astride Kivrin's face. The phallus felt amazing as it pulsed against the back of his ballsack and the nerve-rich muscles of his netherhole. His breath came hard now, his cock was nearly ready to erupt with hot semen. Even so, despite the urgent red tide of lust that was flooding his mind and body, he slowed himself down some, to draw out the moments until his come. He glanced up occasionally to watch Kivrin's tongue draw circles around and beneath Indhira's engorged clitoris. He watched as Indhira clutched at her own breasts, then squeezed them hard enough that they would show bruises later. Bruises which Govinda would kiss, long and slow, each one tasting of wine and old blood. Behind Indhira, gunra-Ciforex stood motionless and silent, his puffball eyes blind windows into whatever soul he might've possessed. Still, he smiled just a little, which Govinda recognized as the tell of a fellow voyeur. He didn't know what satisfaction gunra-Ciforex could get with that cockless body of his, but perhaps he had the kind of libido that could be satisfied in other ways. Perhaps he was wired up and infected with a cybvirus that could give him orgasms whenever he wanted or needed them. Govinda had lived like that for a while, but the novelty wore off for some people. To him, in the end, there was nothing in the universe better than pressing hard against another warm, sweat-slick body...or two...or ten. After a few more minutes of attention from Kivrin's artful, relentless tongue, Indhira gave voice to a loud, drawn-out moan, and pressed her body down hard on Kivrin's busy mouth. Govinda watched as her pussy twitched then gushed honey all over Kivrin's chin and neck. At nearly the same moment, he felt Kivrin tighten her embrace around his pumping cock. He pushed against her, and the phallus in his ass swelled and throbbed until he couldn't hold back any longer. The moment he felt the first shockwave of Kivrin's orgasm rush through her cunt, he dove into her deep as he could, and emptied his balls of their heavy burden of cream... *** Govinda's avatar was floating in the middle of a vast sphere, with no direction up or down or sideways. This nexus was one of the quadrillion that were scattered all throughout middlespace, the artificial dimension where most of the infrastructure of the 'net resided. Every nanosecond, there were millions of data packets passing this way or that, all of them represented in his graphical interface as points of flickering blue light. On the distant white walls of the sphere, he could make out countless black lines, some of them like tangled threads, others laid out in delicate patterns like the webs of spiders. He scanned the lines until he found the route he wanted, then he poured himself into the network and made his way toward the heavily-defended datahaven of the Ghoveshet system. Meanwhile, his other selves did the same, from several different directions. Along the way, they morphed and split up into various kinds of 'net maintenance tools, shedding all but tiny hidden grains of ghost-identity. If they were tricky enough and also very lucky, at least one of them ought to survive to penetrate the secure cache long enough to find and copy the target code. *** He knelt between Kivrin's spread thighs and ate his come out of the cleft of her sex. He kissed her labia, sucked her hot-button clit, tongued her relaxed, welcoming asshole. He cleaned out her vagina with his mouth, teasing every drop of their mingled wetness from every delectable hiding place. Meanwhile, up above, Indhira laid down next to Kivrin and kissed her forehead and eyes and ears and chin, then tasted herself off of Kivrin's down-covered lips. The three of them lay together like that for a long time, while gunra-Ciforex looked down on their entwined bodies and very subtly nodded his head in approval... *** In the last picosecond, he had woven his way around dozens of obstacles, broken through several maze-like layers of defense systems, jumped over and crawled under various kinds of detector, outrun several semi-sentient softweapons, all to arrive here, at the inner wall of the datahaven's vault. He had many seconds ago lost contact with his other selves; some of them had fallen under anti-hacker fire, some had been weeded out by clippers, some had simply run up against dead ends. All of which almost certainly meant he was the lone survivor (in real life as well as in the 'net; the contract had specified immediate termination of any flesh-and-blood copy of Govinda whose avatar failed the mission). For the moment, things were quiet, but that wouldn't last. He scanned the wall, then worked quickly, before a guard dog could spot him and turned him into cyberdust. He threw out a slipknife virus and held onto its tail as it burrowed into the body of the vault... *** gunra-Ciforex clapped his enormous hands together and called for a serving golem to bring towels and bowls of hot water. When the golem arrived, it handed round the warm damp towels, and Govinda, Kivrin and Indhira washed themselves and each other, thus performing the last step of their shared ritual. Once they were clean, they stepped up and out of the soft-hollow, and joined gunra-Ciforex by the side of a table where a pot of tea was brewing. Kivrin prepared the tea, then poured a small amount into four shallow cups. gunra-Ciforex lifted his cup with surprising delicacy and took a sip, saying afterwards, "Indhira Chandamurtha, we are pleased to be in business with you. Let us now speak no more of business, and when our business is concluded, let us each forget the other exists." Indhira sipped at her tea, and said, "We are agreed." Govinda followed and gave his assent. The tea tasted like insect blood and spoiled honey, but Govinda didn't mind. He still had the rich druggy scent of Kivrin's aroused pussy in his nose and mouth... *** He was inside. Below him: a vast placid ocean. Above: an enormous empty sky. Kilometers away in the distance: a cloud hovering low over its own shadow, which was a dark stain on the dimpled skin of the water. To Govinda, the VR environment looked a little old-fashioned, and reminded him of the work of designers from First Wave worlds like Novy Zvezda and Tannhauser Gate. Fortunately, Govinda had studied ancient designs in his long-ago youth, so he knew what to do. He willed himself forward, and the cloud grew until it became a soft white wall across his path. He sank into the mist, and felt for the structure that would be hidden inside. He didn't have to go far, and was soon knocking at a door of the cloud-house. A curator-golem appeared and asked for Govinda's ID. He showed the golem his expensively-faked credentials: V.S. Hoxa, a researcher from Tsilkoy, one of the haven's larger clients. The golem allowed him in after checking nine times with policeware and various ghost authorities. Govinda got a quick tour: the interior of the cloud-house was laid out like an old-style library, with cubical data cabinets set in rows across a wide, fur-tiled floor. The whole space was illuminated by lightpipes hanging down from the low ceiling. Govinda looked around and noticed that there were a few other researchers moving about the library, all of them accompanied by golems. None seemed interested in him. The Web of Sin Ch. 04 Govinda presented his request to his golem: limited access to an archive related to Tsilkoy agriculture. He was shown to an open port, where he placed his hand on an interface plate and ran a decoy search for data on weather trends, the fluctuating prices of dhakka tea and warfare among tea-growing families. Meanwhile, under the golem's nose, he deployed a sniffer that began looking for the target code. Security was light here on the inside of the vault, so it didn't take more than a few short fractions of a second to find the file he needed, copy it, and then perform the sleight-of-hand required to piggyback it on the decoy search results. These were sent in a burst-packet to a receiver on Tsilkoy, then routed through thousands of nodes from one end of the Galaxy to the other, to arrive several seconds later in a dead-letter drop on Chauttakinda. From there, the stolen code disappeared into the client's hands. As soon as that happened, Indhira was paid through third parties via instant transfer from a bank on Hallow to a bank on Sundhakir. By that time, Govinda's last avatar was gone from the 'net, and his dead facsimiles on Pirchakty, Chalice, Idoko, Onlo and Kest were dusted and vacuumed up by housekeeper 'bots. The one remaining copy of Govinda, and therefore the Govinda who would from now on be "the original", left Gevorah by a crossing ship bound for intergalactic space, where he'd been invited to attend a party on his friend Polachuk's slowboat. He'd been on the crossing ship several days before he realized there might be trouble reaching the slowboat. For, it was becoming clear to him that an assasin eas hiding among his fellow passengers... *** gunra-Ciforex turned to Kivrin and said, "As promised, your original will be thanked for your services here." Kivrin smiled, then bowed her head and said, "Thank you. It is, as always, our pleasure to serve you." She kissed Govinda and Indhira lightly on their foreheads. Then she touched a place just below her breast and fell into a pile of red dust on the moss-carpet floor. gunra-Ciforex turned to Indhira and said, "I will leave you now. The golems will show you the way out." Then he touched a complex design tattooed into the palm of his hand and stepped backward into the rippling black membrane of an otherspace portal. After he vanished from sight, the portal sucked closed with a soft electric snap. Indhira took Govinda by the hand and they both followed a golem through a series of long, winding corridors until they reached a topside landing pad. The glossy red teardrop of a private lifting pod took them back up to Guindy Port, where they fucked away the days until Govinda's scheduled return to the xanadu far beneath the city of Omkot. *** By now, the Haradza hab was a moon of a moon. It loomed large in his dataview, its spines and vanes and mottled green skin rimmed in backlight from the system's parent star. He checked the suit's chronometer: he'd arrive in less than an hour. The suit hadn't reported any threats, but Govinda was still wary. He suspected Indhira had a long game in mind, but, on the off chance she didn't, he wanted to be ready. Of course, he thought to himself, if anything happens to me, I'm still alive on Pale Blue. But, most of the time, the end of a facsimile's life happend in a fax booth, when its memories were uploaded to the 'net for transfer back to the original. If the Govinda who was on his way to the hab died before he could return to the booth on the Kunyunese ship, the Govinda on Pale Blue would never know what had happened out here. So, the faxed Govinda took every precaution he could manage. After all, even if Indhira wanted him alive for a while, she'd at least once before tried to erase him from the universe forever... To be continued...