Spacemaid

"Don't be sad," she told me in a soft, caressing voice. "You must live your life as fully as you can as a human, knowing we are all about you, knowing you."

"What about the other men and women out on this test-quest," I wondered. "Have you been having sex with them, too?"

"With some, yes, in whatever ways they wished, but with others we have rather smoothed their path by other means to knowledge or understanding. With one we had a long debate about free will and pre-determination."

"That would be Smarthia," I said, and she did not comment.

Smarthia was a small, rather pale girl, with a lopsided smile and a scar across her left eyebrow. In figure she was a little plump, but neat and well proportioned, a good woman to have as a friend I often thought, though I did nothing about it.

"What about Zulinda?" I asked, eager to know what had happened to the woman I secretly desired, a woman big in breast and bottom, richly hued and all the more voluptuous for her resistance. "She was determined to stay virgin and join one of the Alpha Centauri communities," I remarked bitterly.

"She is still a virgin, or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, again a virgin."

"So, she wanted sex, too, despite herself."

There was no answer, and after a few minutes this new woman said, "Once more, yet once more, and then I must go. So you must choose: how I am to be and what will we do."

It came to me slowly what I would choose, and I bent my face to kiss her. Our mouths opened to each other and our tongues played together but there were no special liquids or alterations. And then I sucked at her quite normal, but beautiful because normal, nipples and they erected a few millimetres and we enjoyed them. After that I nuzzled into her labia and tongued her little clit, which hardened a trifle, and she stroked my tool until it was hard.

Then she kneeled up and I stroked her shapely but not especially impressive bottom, and eventually, from the rear, glided up into her and moved steadily in and out, relishing her cheeks against my stomach and wanting nothing more than the delicious slippery fud-warmth. After a while I felt that warm, tingling, anticipatory buzz at the base of my cock. "It's coming," I said. "Come with me." And she did, gasping and gripping.

She did not bid me farewell or offer any final wisdom. She simply dematerialised, faded into air, thin air, and, I presume, passed out into space through the molecules of the hull, which, being merely matter, itself consisted mostly of space.

Was it all a hallucination, induced by solitude or some drug in the rations? Did I really have sex with a phantom, a will-o'-the-cosmic dust? I certainly felt as if I had, and there were damp patches on the bunk coverlet as if I had ejaculated. Perhaps I had done so, imagining myself to be deep in cunt. And, whether or not the space mermaid or siren had been real, what was the message of the manifestations? In myths, legends, fairy tales, a vital part of our undergraduate studies, everything came in threes: fates, wishes, witches, furies, rings, caskets.

Shortly afterwards the craft powered up again and took me home. I slept much of the journey. When we postdocs, all returned, reconvened I noticed that most looked calmer, more assured. Those that appeared agitated, and one or two were even distressed, were escorted away by some of the tutors. I took special note of Smarthia, who gave me a smile and appeared confident, even replete from her discussion of free will and determinism. I resolved to ask what conclusion she had reached about whether or not she, or anyone, was really free to choose, moment to moment how to behave, how to live.

The other tutors sat down those remaining, with our slimscreens and bade us answer the instruction which came up, taking as much time as we needed.

We were expecting to write or record exhaustive accounts of our adventures and our conclusions, but the instruction on my slimmie, and I presume all the others, was simply: "In the light of your recent voyage comment in not more than fifty words on the following:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep."

We all answered within two minutes, and, if like me, in less than the allowed wordage. Smarthia finished first.

Zulinda was confirmed in her aspiration and joined a community on Alpha Centauri I4/9/5. Smarthia and I came to this orbiting station above planet Five of the Procyion 9/13 system, where we are learning the symbols in which the planetary beings express their beliefs, marvelling at their scope and subtlety. She is not a virgin now, because we were married according to the ritual those planetary beings use when spiritually allying two or more individuals into a permanent nexus. The consummation was tender and joyful. We are happy.