Subtle Redundancy

The corner of her eye showed a man staring blankly at her, tentative, his hand schlup-schlupping toward a stop; he had no idea whether he should continue, clearly. So Rielle just went serenely about her business, as though he wasn't even there, her mind willing him to just keep on going, barreling toward the teeth-gritted orgasm he'd been headed for when she entered. The sound of his sliding flesh slowed, but she was relieved that it never quite stopped. She felt his eyes on her as almost a physical presence, darting along her bare shoulders, down her back where the tanktop showed her protruding spine, and along her ass and thighs.

So? She let him look.

Planting her feet slightly apart, she craned her neck toward the clotter bin and reached high, her calves straining; he'd be able to see every muscle, outlined sharply against her top and leggings. She held the pose a beat, listening, willing the sounds to come faster, to regain their rhythm, and after a hesitant few moments she was delighted that they did.

His breathing was fast, his hand faster. Rielle stretched higher, thinking of the semen in his body, the interior muscles tensing to push it to his urethra, the pudendal nerve waiting patiently to send its signal. She was rummaging in the bin now, and she knew she'd already succeeded; he was getting ready to cum, staring squarely at her butt, and he wouldn't forget.

So she withdrew a couple of clotters and relaxed, getting ready to leave, still trying to decide whether to say anything more. He was back up to speed, and from the sound of things it wouldn't be long now. So Rielle turned her head slowly toward him, making good contact with his wide and red-rimmed eyes, making sure he registered her looking at his face before she looked at his cock. Erno shook, his whole face vibrating with the urgency of his coming orgasm, and she gave him a shy half-smile when she glanced at his penis, purpled and straining, his left hand cupping at his big balls.

Time to speak.

"Watch your aim, Erno," she told him softly, her face glowing for him, and she gestured toward the sterisack resting on the arm of the chair. "Waste not, want not." She was already walking then, the parting shot a gentle reminder that she knew he was about to get there, that she'd be right in the next room when it happened. So she sauntered out with none of the detachment she'd entered with, and when the curtain fell back behind her she made sure it left a gap on one side. Erno would see the gap, and it would remind him that she was on the far side, listening, when his cock erupted.

And she was; no sooner had her chair creaked as it took her weight than she heard the guttural grunting sigh of a man in bliss within the storeroom. Rielle leaned back, the sun already disappearing behind a cloud, her eyes closing while Erno slashed his sperm into the sterisack. "Fuck," he bit out quietly. She pictured it, idly, the milky whiteness surging into the bag, the strong contractions of the man's penis, and in his mind's eye the porn shoved aside by the memory of her bare shoulders and her stretched thighs.

Rielle shivered.

She swept the journal back up, reminding herself of the many ways in which the medial plantar nerve could become fucked up, and no sooner had she started furrowing her brow at the diagrams than the curtain slid aside, hesitant like a rat sensing a trap. Pushing aside an internal smile, she willed her eyes toward the journal; she'd let him make the first move.

"So. Uh, I'm done."

Her short lashes swept up as Rielle raised her head, lazily, as though men handed her spermbags every day. "I hope you enjoyed it," she replied quietly, waiting a moment before she held out her hand. She arched an eyebrow. "Looked like it, Erno."

"Well." He blushed, that shyness coming back out, and stepped toward her. "I mean, it's always, uh, interesting to have an audience."

Fuck. He even flirted awkwardly. Rielle curved her thin lips into a smile. "Whatever help I could offer was purely accidental," she lied, feeling the weight of the sack as he handed it over. "Sorry about that. I totally forgot you were in there."

"Oh, it's fine," he came back, too quickly, his eyes flickering toward the window. Rain was spotting it once more.

"We'll test it and let you know about any potential morliosis risk." She held his gaze. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

"Sure." He hesitated. "So, like, I'm done?"

Rielle knew what he meant and wondered whether she should wink, then decided she'd be overdoing it. Instead, she substituted a brisk nod. "You can go right back to masturbating when you wish, Erno." She sat back realizing only then that she hadn't put her robe back on. Like it mattered now. "Thanks again."

"See you." He passed back toward the front door, his muttered goodbye drowned completely out by Bexler's Come back and see us anytime! When the doctor came back to see Rielle, she grimaced at what she saw.

"I'm not sure what you're hoping to gain," she pursed her lips. "It's just going to taste like the sterisack." Rielle had just pulled out a semen-glazed finger, bringing it to her lips.

"Come on now, Chonn." She did wink, this time. "You told me yourself that taste is an important part of diagnosis." She plunged her finger into her mouth, feeling the slick starchy sweetness of the cum. She let it rest on her tongue, then nodded. "Seems to be completely free of morliosis," she pronounced, smacking her lips. She grinned quickly up at Bexler and sent her finger in for another sample.

Mmm. Six days without a dick? No way. She thought about the Cottage and got a message ready to send.

* * *

"I never knew the citizens slept around so much," Rielle admitted that night, lying exhausted in her own sweat and Roni's cum. "It's just incredible, how often you get laid."

Roni shrugged against the pillow, still regaining his breath. "Oh, shut up. You know better." He eyed her slight, naked body in the starlight trickling through the tall windows of the Cottage. "We're pioneers. We're here to fuck and work, and then fuck some more. Spawn a baby or two, then fuck. Then work. Then fuck and work." He chuckled, a rolling noise that made his whole chest vibrate against her cheek. "If you think this is impressive, just wait a few years." He yawned. "Once the permanent colonists get here? Shit."

"Pussy for days," she mused, her fingers lightly stroking his sticky cock.

"No," he replied absently, "for weeks." Roni thought about it. "I'll be 43," he mused. "Weeks."

Rielle nodded against his chest, listening to his lungs. "Still with plenty of sperm."

"If you say so." He seemed not to care. "By that time, most of our kids will be ready to fuck, too. You know the sequence. Native breeding stock is the reason we pioneers are here. First-gen mutations, all safely locked in for the newcomers." He considered. "You ever think of having a baby, Rielle? I know you're exempt, but I'll bet you've got some kick-ass genes."

She debated whether to tell him about Erno, then decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea. "We'll just wait and see what happens," she replied evasively, already thinking about the spermicide she'd be taking in the morning to counteract what Roni had pumped into her body. She felt slightly bloated; it had been a marathon evening. Three times, she'd gotten him hard. She'd thought about asking him to spurt it on her tits, but she knew that would make him ask questions. She sighed. "You're being obtuse," she drawled. "It's not just fucking and spawning. You're doing important work, too."

He smiled. "Yes." He was playing with her hair; she'd heard often enough from the other women that this was something he liked to do. "It's weird," he confessed. "I think we're all confused."

"Confused?"

He shrugged again. "I'm an architect. The others are engineers, biologists, zoologists. Climatologists. But we're all trained. Conditioned by other humans on another planet. Here?" He looked around at the very Terran design of the Cottage; it had been one of the first structures built, and already it was showing wear. "Bad design, this place. Good for life back home, but not right here in the Wad. We're all having to adapt our training to the needs of this place." He yawned, more deeply this time. "It can be confusing."

"Yeah. We don't have to worry about that shit, really." Surgery was the same everywhere. "But the local animals are giving us fits."

"I heard. Chonn talks about it a lot." There were experiments, the usual ones, in prosthetics and implantation. "Nothing suitable?"

"Well, I wouldn't say 'nothing.'" She thought about the slorks, the bisches. "There are a lot of possibilities. But until we can publish, Chonn and I tend to keep quiet."

"Sure." Roni, incredibly, was spasming again under her fingers. "I know how it is." She heard the burr in his voice, felt him warm beside her cheek, and figured there was no harm in a fourth time.

* * *

"Is this right, Miss Fourbee?" The kid was cute, one of the Tikva/Roni crosses, and with genes like that cuteness had been a certainty. She smiled down at the girl, holding up her first-aid kit. "Did I pack it right?"

The trick, as every colonist child had to learn early, was to have a first-aid kit everywhere you went, which meant it had to be small enough that people wouldn't purposely forget it, which meant it needed to be packed a certain way: sterilizers, chemical tourniquets, downer syrettes, bandages, glue, all of it stuffed into the little bags they made for export up at the Plant. Rielle nodded.

"Good job, girl! High five!" She didn't like kids, really, but it didn't pay to let the kids know that. "You're going to be taking my job soon." The little girl, with no concept of jobs, just grinned. "Okay!" Rielle raised her voice. "Settle. Let's talk about lacerations!"

The colony had seven school-age children, and Rielle had been teaching them basic first aid for years. In the back of the room at the crèche stood Meron, the indent who ran the place, just six months or so from applying for citizenship and almost visibly chomping at the bit. Beside her, Jitsuko kicked one of Marianne's boys back to attention. "Focus!" she snapped, just as she'd snapped at Rielle and the other Domestics back on the ship. Rielle made eye contact with the kid, a sullen little fucker called Beck. She pointed.

"You. Come on up. I need a demonstrator." He got warily up, no doubt guessing what was coming; he was the first person born on this planet, destined to go down in the history books, and he knew it. It had always made him a bit of an asshole. He schlumped to the front of the room, and Rielle smiled. "Perfect." She glanced over at Jitsuko's bright little daughter and arched an eyebrow. "Kiwi? What do we do with, say, a centimeter-deep laceration? Transverse. Upper thigh." The boy stood with his head cocked.

"Well," Kiwi frowned; such a lisp! "You stop the blood, then cau-cau-causterize?"

"Cauterize. No S." Rielle nodded. "And you do it with the Number Three head on the beam? Right? To minimize scarring?" The girl had her aid kit on the carpeted floor before her, so Rielle pulled out her knife, leaned down, and slashed deeply into Beck's left thigh, the cut cruel and gaping and already pumping blood onto the boy's sandals. He gave a choked grunt and went totally still. "Go for it, kiddo! He's all yours."

Kiwi, smiling merrily, skipped up to the front and shoved Beck straight to the ground, the shocked boy going over like a felled tree. He was already white as a sheet. "You start with the sterilizers," Rielle intoned for the rest of the children, narrating while Kiwi's little fingers swabbed and burrowed. She was doing well, just like she'd been taught yesterday. "See how the vessels are already exposed..."

Meron, in the back, was already pursing her lips at the amount of blood. She'd need to replace the carpet, and Rielle reflected that maybe she'd gone a little too deep. She caught the eye of little Lena, the other indent in the crèche. "Go to the infirmary and grab some blood." She flicked her gaze down at the waxy Beck, judging. "Say, two units." The indent skedaddled, and Rielle beamed at the class. "Kids? Wanna learn about transfusions?"

Later, as they worked on their crafts, Rielle leaned against the wall with Meron and thought about how long of a nap she'd be able to take this afternoon. A kid was eyeing her, that familiar look of trepidation and determination that said she had a question. "Yes?"

"Miss Fourbee, why do we call this place a Wad?"

"The Wad," she corrected automatically. She traded a veiled glance with Jitsuko, nothing more than a flicker, but enough to tell her the teacher wasn't telling the kids the whole story. No problem. She'd play along. "So, a wad is a collection. An agglomeration of things, of different pieces all coming together into one big mass." She squatted down to smile into the little one's dessert-plate eyes. "See? Like all of us, coming together and working as a team."

"Wow!"

"Yeah, huh? Such a nice thing, all the teamwork. Working together." Beck, still pale nearby, glared over. He clearly didn't agree. "We're a nice, big wad."

"Liar," Meron whispered as she stood back up. "You know better." Rielle winked back. Yes, she did know better, but it wasn't a story for children: how the very first crew of terraformers had named this sodden place after the word in their language that described the crime that had gotten them sentenced here, "Wadlwengula." Captain Weathers had tried to get them to change the name to New Promise, then when that didn't work he'd tried to get them into Wengula, but The Wad had stuck. It offered endless punning opportunities for all ages, whether talking about gum or cum. "What's it mean again? Wadlwengula?"

Reille leaned over and whispered back. "Anal rape."

"Ah. That's right." They caught a stern glance from Jitsuko Swope and shut their mouths; she'd been their teacher too, and old habits died hard: stern glances from old teachers carried a deep sense of guilt. Even, as Rielle was discovering, after you'd eaten them to orgasm.

* * *

She noted, with some satisfaction, that Erno was starting to look surreptitiously at her during meals and when strolling around outside. Rielle picked at her meal one evening a couple days after she'd seen him masturbate, and watched as he brooded over his plate of cevapi. She waited quietly, enduring some inane commentary from Mikhail while they chased the last cube of pekmezli around on the plate, biding her time until she was sure he was watching her. Then she surrendered the last of the food to Mikka, contenting herself with a glossy dab of grape molasses on the tip of her middle finger.

Her hand drifted daintily to her mouth, and she was sure Erno was still watching when she sucked her shiny finger deliberately between her lips, leaving it in there long enough for him to see what she looked like with hollowed cheeks.

Enough.

"Night, Mikka," she smiled quickly at her morliotic companion, getting lithely to her feet. She had another plan, an impromptu one, and it required her to get to the Dorm before Erno did. "Sleep tight."

"Rielle," he nodded back, and she noted in her detached way the flicker of his eyes across her body when she rose. "See you in the morning."

"Yup." She drifted from the mess with her straight-backed grace, her sandals slapping softly over the flagstones. A quick glance through to the open kitchen reminded her for a helpful moment of the solid feel of Niall Bar-Shaughnessy's penis twisting inside her body, and as always she felt the quick tickling rush as her vagina woke up; that had been a powerful orgasm, that time with the cook.

Good. The more fluids, the merrier.

Erno lived down the west hallway off the lobby, across from Captain Weathers. She moved quickly, catlike, passing the mail slots and the commandant's coding table, stopping short at Erno's door.

For a moment, the thought was a simple one: sneak inside and glide through Erno's suite, leaving her clothes as she went, until her returning quarry got back from dinner or cards or a movie or reading about spacecraft design or wherever he spent his time, and followed her sartorial trail to find Rielle naked and willing in his bed. He'd be awkward, shy, even embarrassed, and she'd need to take more of a lead than she felt like taking tonight.

No. The original plan was better, the long game, with Erno marinating in his desire for her. She pulled up her dress and reached quickly down into her underwear, dipping her precise finger up into herself. There was the usual pulse, the stab of desire whenever she touched herself, but she shunted aside the craving for deeper touch and concentrated: this was a job. Twice, three times, four times she carved her finger through her slit, deep and fast, and when she pulled her hand carefully from between her legs it wasn't molasses that glossed her fingernail.

With a decisive swipe, she smeared her pussy juice across the palm reader, knowing he'd lay his hand there. He'd wonder after that why he was smelling cunt every time he went to scratch his nose.

The cameras would show what she'd done, and the quick retreat of her slim fiure back toward the lobby, but only the commandant ever saw the footage. And he already knew what she was up to.

* * *

"Got it!" Bexler sounded ebullient, but that was nothing new: she was an expressive woman. Still, given the direction of her recent research, Rielle knew what this was about. She stilled the music in her aud implants and leaned back from her own microscope.

"Yes, Doctor?" she said quietly, almost mockingly, stretching her neck. "Did you find our enzymes?"

"I sure as fuck did." Bexler was peering back into her lenses, her fingers fast on the tabslate beside her. "Just another pass, to confirm..." She squinted, totally focused, so Rielle sighed and leaned over herself to switch the repeater on. The image came flashing to life on the ceiling monitor, the scrolling of Chonn Bexler's field of view as her scope sorted out the tangled chemical bonds, the electrons color-coded across the image, and there it was. "That, my dear Ms Fourbee," Bexler cackled, "is lesmerase."

And it was, clear as a rainless day among the crowded, bumping haematocytes in the lumpy drop of bisch blood. "You're sure it's not a mutation?" Rielle murmured.

"No," Bexler shrugged, "but it doesn't really matter. Mutant or not, the animal from this sample can probably sustain a human embryo transplant." She nodded happily. "Where there's lesmerase, there's transplantability," she shrugged. "Simple. So. This afternoon, I'll send Janicka to gather samples from the rest of the herd. Now that I know which stain to use? If those fuckers are lesmeric, I'll find it now." She giggled. "See? You should be happy. Now you won't have to haul your own embryo around once you get around to getting Erno Taconic to knock you up." She glanced over. "How's that going?"

"Fine," Rielle shot right back. "Perfectly." She needed two more things: a chance for him to see her naked and nasty, and about half an hour alone with him, preferably with two or three days in between to give his mind plenty of time to work. "That trip over to Plastic Harbor still on for next week, do you know?"

"As far as I know." Bexler was tapping in the code to summon Janicka Netanya. "Ahhh," she nodded. "I see your plan."

"Erno's an agronomist. He always goes along to inspect the algae." Rielle buffed her nails against the front of her dress. "I mean, it's always a good idea for a medical person to be present. If possible, that is."

"Mmm." Bexler grinned. "I think I can spare you for a trip like that."

"Cool." Naked and nasty. Rielle nodded, then picked up the vox box to call Juukko at the Plant. There were plans to make.