Subtle Redundancy

"He's pinking up," Rielle agreed shortly. She disliked praise. She slid a finger toward Morrisen's ankle, feeling the distal pulse. "Scoot over. I'll close."

"Don't you want to wake him up?" Bexler glanced over. "That's the best part. The look in their eyes."

"Nah." Rielle was wiping her hands. "That part doesn't really do it for me. I like the sewing."

Bexler gave a short, barking laugh. "Fine." She took the patient's hand in both of hers, bending low. "What's his name again?"

"Chirk."

"He's cute." He was beginning to sweat, his body slowly turning back on, becoming functional. "Nice big balls, too."

Rielle scowled and spoke into the auto-log, the sarcasm sharp. "Testes normal and well-formed."

"Ha!" Bexler was stroking his fingers, gentle but insistent, her mouth close to his ear. "Wake up, Chirk," she whispered softly, motherly, her eyes focusing on his. "It's okay. You can come back to us." Rielle, busy fusing his leg closed, looked impassively on as his eyes darted under his lids, fluttering open. "There you are," Bexler murmured, her hands never stopping on his. Everyone pretended not to smell the cautery. "Hi, friend," she purred.

His eyes came open, flapped in alarm, and then focused. "What the fuck?" His voice was low, hoarse. "What..."

"You're fine." Rielle shrugged. "Bad dream, Chirk. Might want to watch out for those type three printer heads. They can really do a number on you."

Morrisen frowned, searching his body for pain, and his eyes went wide again as he started to remember. "No."

"Yes." Rielle took her hand off his ankle, performed a Furman test at the wound site, and shook her head. "You were almost compost."

Bexler looked sidelong at Rielle, the way a man looks at a pair of boots he wants to buy. "I've talked to you before, Rielle, about your bedside manner." She smiled. "Caring neutrality. Work on it."

Rielle paused, considered, looked critically down at her panting patient and her perfect treatment, and turned her thin smile on the surgeon. "No thank you."

The older woman's eyebrow shot upward. "Sorry?"

Rielle shrugged. "I like my bedside manner." Bexler had been trying for years to get Rielle to be just slightly more empathetic, and it had always bothered her. "Look at this shit, Chonn," she urged, slapping at the healed leg, ignoring her patient's flinch. "I'd rather develop my clinical skills, thanks."

Bexler was frowning now, a situation so rare it deserved to be entered into the commandant's log. "We should talk about this another time," she pointed out, glancing down at the sweating man.

"No," Rielle pressed, "I don't agree, Doctor Bexler. You and I are the sole medical practitioners in this galaxy. In two more years I'll be a fully qualified surgeon." She nodded, an acknowledgement of Bexler's teaching. "Actuarially, I'll outlast you." She blinked. "I'm not sure my bedside manner will matter much once that happens."

"Well," Bexler sighed, "we're fourteen years out from the Second Wave settlers, Rielle. They'll bring doctors, real ones, physicians like me. Many of them. You'll be thirty-three, a colony-trained journeyman surgeon." She paused, letting the words sink in. "Might want to begin thinking about how you'll compete once the pioneer phase is over. That's all I'm saying, Rielle."

The patient was watching them, amused, like a man at a sporting event. Rielle gazed into his eyes. "I saved your life just now, sir," she observed gravely. "When does your indent expire?"

The man was wiggling his toes. He licked his lips now. "Two more years, Ms Fourbee." He was, sturdy, a builder. He'd never want for work.

Rielle nodded. "Good. Then, in twelve more after that, you'll be a prosperous citizen?" She didn't wait for an answer. "You'll take me into your household and provide for me. You can be my Plan B." She nodded briskly and slid her eyes over to Bexler. "There. Problem solved." Dr Bexler was just rolling her eyes, but the smile crept back as it always did.

She shook her head. "You're one of a kind, Rielle," she sighed softly. "Fortunately."

* * *

Reille had lied to Dr Bexler, though, and she suspected Bexler knew it.

It wasn't just about the sewing, not really. Always after a successful procedure Rielle had felt euphoric, even ecstatic, and when she forced her face to its usual controlled smirk the ecstasy came out in flushed skin, dilated pupils, increased nasal congestion, and a slight tremor in her legs; these were symptoms she'd catalogued for herself, brutally honest and relentlessly observant, from the earliest days of her apprenticeship.

But now, as she washed her hands after saving Morrisen, there was something else.

She frowned at herself in the digital mirror while she tried to figure it out: a dull, tight abdominal warmth she hadn't experienced before, and when she looked inward and applied her clinical mind to try to explain it, an accompanying thought gave her the diagnosis at once.

She was horny.

The accompanying thought was of Roni above her, thrusting into her body, that moment halfway through their night together as Rielle had realized how much she was enjoying sex.

She forced herself to calm, choppy deliberation, the disinfectant, the blower, the change of clothes, before she risked another inner exam of the sensation. It was even clearer than before: the euphoria she'd always felt at a job well done had morphed, now, into a punishing need to get fucked.

Rielle leaned on the sink, staring hard at herself in the mirror, noting at last the spread of the vasocongestion; slowly up out of the neckline of her clean new top, a pinkness so slight it was almost indistinguishable at first. She sighed. "Chonn?"

"Yeah?" It sounded like she was still in the exam room.

"Look, you're okay with Chirk, right? I need some fresh air, maybe a nap."

"Sure." Bexler's head poked into view down the short hallway. "He's totally stable, but you already knew that."

"Yes," Rielle agreed absently. She nodded at herself in the mirror, wondering who'd be in the Hall at this time of day. Wondering whether she could decently pull Roni out of the Plant. Wondering whether those fine, quick fingers that Bexler had noticed on the voyage out, looking for an apprentice, would do as well on her own clitoris as they did on other people's wounds.

No. Masturbation? How could that work, now that she'd had the real thing?

Quickly she threw on the shawl; even if she hadn't been able to hear the rain smashing on the roof, the odds were that it would have been a wet day anyway. It just made more sense to wear the shawl all the time, pretty much. This one was nice, with neophan woven into it, the first neophan the colony had been able to produce; April 78-F had made the shawl for Dr Bexler after her boy's birth, the really difficult one. Clones were known to have rough first pregnancies, but even so, this one had taxed Bexler and her young apprentice over three nights. April had been profoundly grateful.

Nobody had been all that shocked when the boy had ended up with purple eyes.

But Bexler preferred hats, so April had gotten to watch little Rielle parade around the colony in that fine waterproof shawl, way too big for her back then. Now it shed the sluicing rain as Rielle crept into the Hall, using the side entrance. She stepped lightly out of the boots, threw the shawl over the hooks, and swept back her hair into its usual loose ponytail.

Off in the northeast corner of the vast room, Marianne Fwentes sat reading one of her agronomy texts on a dusty tabslate. They made companionable eye contact, but Rielle hadn't really gotten along with Marianne when she'd been a Domestic and the agronomist hadn't talked to her much since she'd become a citizen. But she was recovering now from a difficult birth, and that had mellowed her. Rielle paused a moment, considering; most of the colony was happily bisexual, and Rielle supposed Marianne was sexy enough, but she'd never felt any twinge of attraction to the woman.

There had to be another option, preferably one with a penis.

The rest of the space, as she'd expected, was an echoing emptiness, the silence broken by a vague rattle from the kitchen. No time; Rielle's flush had reached her face by now, and Morrisen was due for a supplementary exam in forty minutes. She took a deep breath and headed straight back toward the kitchen.

"The fuck!" came a disgusted snarl as Rielle appeared in the doorway. Bar squinted through the steam coming from the clave. "Need something? I'm busy."

Yes. Niall Bar-Shaughnessy, the cook. He'd do.

For an instant Rielle wasn't sure quite what to say, but all at once she realized it didn't really matter: she was a planetary citizen, eighteen and fetching, almost a qualified surgeon, and he was merely a stayback from the ship that had brought them all from the Core, a freeloader who'd decided on the spur of a five-years-gone moment to leave a promising career reheating meals on space vessels and trade it for a life of uncertainty and hardship on a distant ball of not-quite-terraformed rock out on the Perimeter. She could just as well be speaking Dutch for all he'd care.

"Hi," Rielle called, her voice loud without the clatter of Bar's pans. She drew herself up, her confidence driving her into a strut as she entered the kitchen. "Got a few minutes? Take a break with me."

Now he nodded knowingly and pulled a stim-stick out of his mouth. There were rumors about the staybacks, but since no respectable citizen could ever admit to fucking them, they'd need to remain rumors. But Rielle worked in the sickhouse; she heard more than just rumors. "A break." He flicked his gaze up and down her body. "I'm not allowed to mate, Ms Fourbee," he warned flatly.

"So nice of you to say so," Rielle snickered. "I'm not required to, Bar." She passed into the kitchen, the steam already fading. "I'm just, you know... bored." She was already untying the stays on her tunic, her body screaming at her. "I'm at loose ends, honestly." The tunic slipped to the tiles. "So." She shrugged, feeling her bare little tits bounce over her hammering heart. Mild tachycardia, her brain noted. No clinical significance. She propped her arm on a counter. "Do you have a few minutes?"

Bar's eyes glittered. "I'm poaching fish," he explained coolly, pulling his sweaty shirt over his head. Lean, muscled skin, normal build; a healthy man, she noted absently. Scarification, the type you sometimes saw on long-haul space sailors with nothing better to do than mark themselves. "That shellfish they found down in the upper lake? You cook it long enough, it takes care of the toxins."

"That's reassuring." Rielle felt her mouth tighten, her smirk going feral as she whipped off her underwear. "I don't like toxins."

"Yeah, nobody really does." He glanced out into the Hall, undoing his waist string. "Might want to draw the curtain, Ms Fourbee."

"Your kitchen, your rules." She was feeling light on her feet and wild in her brain as she whirled around and sauntered back toward the doorway, swinging her ass, with no very serious thought about what she was doing, on the verge of fucking a filthy stayback cook over a kitchen sink. But if she had been thinking about it, she knew she'd just have gotten more aroused. Already, she knew, the air around the clave was rich with pheromones. "Like I said, Bar, just a few minutes."

"Yeah, we'll see about that," he replied, tall and haughty, naked among his hot pans. "So," he went on, staring at her nipples, "are you going to report me if I call you 'Rielle?'"

She laughed, knowing it was too loud and not caring in the slightest. There was little point in keeping quiet. Marianne would know, which meant everyone else would too. Her own confidence amazed her as she strode toward him, eyeing the cock thick in his hand. Her whole being trembled inside like she'd been plugged into a drive module, like the bored kids sometimes did to get high back in the Core. Gods! She felt a heaviness between her thighs and reached crudely down, scooping out a thick sloppy fingerful of her own vaginal muck. Fucking glands, she told herself distantly, were already working overtime. She knew her airway would be constricting, and had to clear her throat twice before she trusted herself to speak. "How shall we do this, Bar?"

"As a wise young woman recently pointed out, Rielle," he said hoarsely, "my kitchen, my rules." He wiped his mouth on the back of a hairy wrist. "Bend over the counter. I enjoy seeing asses shake when I fuck my women." She heard herself laugh again in reply, and everything was joy and excitement and the red cloud of her lust firing out of her limbic system.

She had no idea where all this had come from; something about taking Roni's dick had done this to her, but it wasn't her way to question things like this. Emotional things. Briefly she looked at the thick cock jutting from the man's brownish bush of coarse, wiry pubic hair, wondering whether she should offer to suck it. "I'm sort of in a hurry, Bar," she murmured, closing the distance. She had no idea what to do with a dick in her mouth, though how hard could it be? Still. It wasn't what she'd come in there for. She watched as his eyes studied her nude body.

"I won't take very long." He was standing loose and ready, giving off an air of confidence that Rielle suspected she matched. "Been awhile."

"Mmm." As a rule, most of the staybacks and freeloaders lived by themselves out on the fringes of the settlement. Bar Shaughnessy undoubtedly spent most of his time with his hand, what with the citizens fucking each other as if the health of the colony depended on it. Which it did. Rielle turned to face the sink, gripping the cold stone edges with her cool, sharp little fingers. She saw traces of Chirk Morrisen's blood still clinging underneath the nails; she must have been in a hurry. "Enjoy yourself, then."

"Oh, I will." Bar stepped up behind her, the heat off his body reminding her what was coming, and she dipped her head down toward the sink with her mind on fire. She felt his strong, scarred fingers on her ass, squeezing like she'd seen him squeeze breadfruit to test its ripeness. "I forgot to congratulate you on becoming a citizen, Rielle." She liked how he said her name, mockingly; so dirty. He licked his other hand and ran it straight across her pussy, then laughed roughly. "Fuck. You don't need any of my help," he growled. "Wet little slut. Move your feet apart a little."

"Like this?" She slid her sandals off and stepped outside them, feeling his fingers tighten further on her cheek. She'd check later for contusions, five of them spread across half her ass; his thumb was close to her asshole, and Rielle was shocked to find that excited her. "Come on, Bar," she urged. "Put it in."

"Oh, I will." She shuddered when he stirred at her labia with the blunt head of his penis, painting it with her fluids, before stepping into her. "Nice and tight," he groaned hungrily while he split her, his cock inching inside with slow, patient experience. "You're not a virgin, are you?"

"No." She arched her back and strained her hamstrings, knowing he was too thick for her and that it would open her up more fully. "You're number two, I'm afraid." She heard her voice catch, the gasping excitement there; this felt so much more wickedly passionate than it had with Roni. She wagged her butt from side to side. "Come on. Don't be gentle."

He chuckled. "Sure thing." There was no more ceremony, then, his cock plugging her fully, the force driving her thighs into the stone sink. It felt like he was pushing a cannon barrel into there. She gasped. "You asked for it," he hissed, his nails digging into her. She wondered whether he'd spank her, and then wondered whether she'd enjoy it if he did. She eased her pelvic muscles frantically, trying to make room, and then all at once everything felt great; he still filled her as tightly as he had, but now the fullness was pleasant instead of uncomfortable. He felt it, too. "That's it. Pulse for me."

Rielle closed her her eyelids for a moment, and then the smirk was growing as she looked over her shoulder, flexing and relaxing, flexing and relaxing. Her head pictured the gross anatomy down in her cunt, the muscles; she was flexing what felt like the levator ani. Soon she gained control, setting off fluttering spasms along both sides of her vagina, getting the hang of how they rippled. Her whole body glowed with satisfaction when she saw in his face what she was doing to him. "Like that?"

"Love it." He finally relaxed his hand on her flesh, resting both of them easily, proprietorially, on the sides of her hips. "A man could get used to this."

She giggled. "No, he couldn't." She was looking to scratch an itch, nothing more. The sooner he realized that, the better. Abruptly she stopped, slackening her pelvic floor, watching him feel it. "Don't take this for granted, motherfucker."

"Understood," he husked, "Rielle." He pushed gently on her, forcing her harder into the sink as he backed out, the feeling profoundly satisfying. Roni, she recalled, had already been jackhammering into her like a motor.

She liked this better.

He was smiling grimly, his beady eyes shifting constantly between her face and her pussy, watching himself pull out of her. He sighed. "There's nothing like seeing your dick come out of a fresh young cunt," he whispered reverently. "Nothing at all."

Twisted around, every muscle etched on her skin in the steamy light of the kitchen, Rielle stared back at him in mock astonishment. "Why, Bar! So vulgar." It came out as a grunted squeak, his body jarring hers hard when he shoved back into her. "More."

"You got it." He was heaving easily now, not fast but strongly, each thrust starting with his ass pushed way, way back. Their legs met in a series of brisk, sharp slaps. "You feel good." She meant to reply, her mind seeking the right words, but all at once she felt liquid heat pooling down at her clit, intensifying exponentially each time the cook dragged his shaft across it, so she closed her eyes and groaned into the sink, biting her lip for Marianne Fwentes in the next room. She hoped dully that the clave was drowning them out, then ceased to hope about anything at all.

It had felt superb with Roni, but she'd been so busy taking it all in that she'd lost something vital in the process. She hadn't realized that until now, though, the orgasm destroying her senses. "Yeah," she heard Bar hiss, as if through a cloud of anaesthesia, his voice nothing but satisfaction. "Cum, bitch." The wickedness, the degradation as she bent over for this man, had her quaking with excitement. His fingers were tightening again, holding her brutally hard as his rhythm fell apart, the cock stabbing into her spastic cunt, and then all at once she heard a strangled gasp from behind her and his weight was a solid wall pinning her to the sink.

His cock was all the way in, impossibly deep now, twitching like a caught eel. She knew on many levels what was happening inside there: the mechanics were clear from Dr Bexler's lessons and diagrams, and Roni had been something like this through the tangles of her own experimental uncertainty, but this was different. She'd made this happen herself, through her own aching need, and she crumbled loose against the warm, heaped pans while Bar Shaughnessy emptied himself inside her body. "Yes," he panted, his voice exultant. "So sexy."

"Give me all of it," she heard herself blurt, shocked at the needy whine that came from her own throat; she wasn't surprised at the nails digging again into her hips, the dick giving another twitch in response. She knew she'd be flooded when she pulled her underwear back on. Like it mattered now.

He took his time disengaging, pulling his hands and penis almost apologetically from her flushed young body. Rielle still sought the words, aware that it was her place to end this as she'd started it, but as trembling arms pushed her upright once more there seemed so little to say. She stumbled around to face him, her butt perched on the edge of the sink as both of them panted. Bar was a sweaty mess, his cock still mostly engorged (she noticed, clinically, that it was straighter than Roni's had been) and sticky now with both their discharges. "Wow," she sighed, the breath gusting out of her. "Thank you, Bar."