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Subject: {ASSM} Journal Entry 052 / 0101  [ Geographic: Terminal ]  (FF (fur,fist))
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 22:10:05 -0500
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Geographic: Terminal

Noren, Sulim 03, 0101

Wolf waited at the terminal for the rest of his party to appear. He
was enjoying the feeling of weightlessness and appreciated the
opportunity to be alone. He had found it a rare and surprising
feeling, being alone. Pendorians were rarely lonely and rarely had to
be alone. He had found the attention too much at times, and had
thanked Ember profusely for giving him a few places he could get away
to. Pandora was a beautiful world, and Monastery Island, with its
impressive SDisk system, had been just the place to go. The idea that
one could leap between two worlds by taking a single step still made
him shake his head.

"Wolf!"

"Christiane!" He smiled wide as his competition for the attention of
the editors, and the ladies, floated into the view. "How are you
doing?"

"Could be better. You heard about Lisanne?"

He nodded. "Who hasn't heard about Lisanne's decision? Even the local
popular press is talking about it, although I'm really surprised about
how muted it is."

"Do Pendorians ever make a big deal about anything?" she asked.

"I imagine they do, but what that would be, exactly, I have no idea."
He grinned. "I hear we're a hit back home."

"Fame is good," she said. "Although I had a complaint from Cath that
they don't know what to do with the pictures we're sending them. We've
sent them thousands of images and, it would seem, we've all strayed
out of our usual fields of photography. Except for Xing. You shot
vistas, I shot families. That's backwards, isn't it?"

Wolf grinned. "Couldn't be helped. How's your chest?"

She touched herself on the side thoughtfully. "Fine, really. The
Pendorians healed me completely."

"No chance of relapse?"

"Not relapse, no. Recurrence, yes. The disorder that causes the cancer
is genetic. The Pendorians aren't able to fix that." She shrugged. "It
means it could happen again. That's okay. I've survived lung cancer
twice now. I can do it again, right?"

"If you say so," Wolf said with a sigh. "I would just think that of
the two of you, you would be more likely to go for the perfect body
that the Pendorian are offering, not Lisanne, who seems so strong and
lively and doesn't have pre-cancer."

Christiane shook her head. "I may be happy here, but I'm not attached
to it the way I am to Earth. I love Earth way too much. It's the world
I've spent my life documenting, in all its glory and ugliness. I'm not
ready to retire to this place, which reminds me a little too much of a
nursing home. Everything's taken care of; it's time to do arts and
crafts to fill the void." She grinned.

"I never thought of it that way." He looked out the window. "Some arts
and crafts. They build starships."

"I did think of it that way. I mean, sure, they're doing amazing
things with all that spare time they've got, but don't you find it a
little depressing that when humanity gets this, gets the kind of thing
they've always wanted, a lifetime of leisure, this is what we'll be
left with?" She gestured around. "Where is the meaning in the
Pendorian life?"

Wolf held his tongue. He had never believed that there was a meaning
to Earthly life, either; no religion had ever come across to him as
coherent enough to convey to him that there was a meaning to life,
much less what that meaning might be.

Christiane continued, "Anyway, I'm glad to be going home. I'd rather
be there, among the striving and the fighting and the loving with
meaning than here, stuck in the biggest nursing home in the galaxy."

Wolf laughed. "You sound like you're an interstellar traveler with a
thousand voyages under your belt, not just one trip to a world that
hasn't had contact with anyone else, either. How do you know this is
the biggest one?"

Christiane grinned. "I guess I wouldn't. But it's still not the kind
of place I want to live. I miss Africa."

Wolf nodded. His time on Pendor had been fun, and he had loved the
views and the people he had met, he had even had a good time
personally, but there were people to go back to, he had realized. His
letter from is sister had struck him particularly hard, with its
descriptions of her children and the good times they were having back
on Earth.

"Anyway," she said, "I'm going on board. I'll see you there."

"Right," Wolf replied.
 ________________________________________________________________

Christiane looked around the tiny cabin, already starting to feel the
itch of wide open spaces a day even before the starship left the dock
for interstellar space. She shivered when she thought of that, the
allure of being an interstellar adventurer. If there were vistas like
Africa out there, she would visit them. But they would have to have
people on them. They would have to be part of a universe that was
striving for something. She loathed the idea that anyone would ever
get to the point where striving was passe'.

As she packed her clothes into the closet, a twinge in her chest
reminded her of the cancer that the Pendorians had stopped. That was
another thing she was glad for; the limits of life. She was glad that
she was human, and mortal, and destined to die, even though she had no
desire to get there too quickly and certainly had no intention of
hurrying it along. The Pendorian idea of going on and on and on, and
committing suicide when going on became unendurable anymore, struck
her as sick and decadent. Which she thought was funny. When she had
first gotten to Pendor, she had envied her guide, Trellin, the free
choice she had to start or end her life at a time of her own choosing.

"Hi."

She whirled around and found Trellin standing in the doorway. She took
a few seconds to find her voice, finally managing to croak out a,
"Hi... Hi. I was just thinking about you."

Trellin smiled at her. "The second you got to Pendor you disappeared.
I asked the AIs where you were, and they always told me that you were
busy, or that you weren't taking calls, or that you were in the field
and away from access." She let the tentacles she used for arms slump
at her side. "I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't done anything
wrong."

Christiane shook her head. "No, not... really."

"Not really, or no?"

"No," Christiane said. She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Trellin,
but when we became lovers on the trip in I couldn't... I couldn't
really handle it anymore. I liked you. I couldn't stand to be around
you."

Trellin looked confused. Christiane could understand why. The last two
had been completely contradictory. A Terran might understand how they
were possible.

"That's ridiculous, Christiane."

"I suppose you would think so." She took a deep breath. "Trellin, I
have to tell you something. I hate Pendor. I hate everything about it.
I hate the fact that you're going to live forever. I hate the fact
that you have all this time to do what you want to do, instead of what
you have to do. I hate the fact that your lives have no meaning, but
you seem to live them meaningfully all the same. Your people have such
an attitude, like you've figured out how to do everything right that
Earth does wrong. I don't want to be around you when I like you so
much but I hate everything that you represent.

"I want to go home."

Trellin closed her eyes for a moment and Christiane wondered if she
was just thinking or if she was talking with the Pendorian AIs that
seemed to be silently and constantly directing the flow of events. She
sighed. "I take it you would rather I not be on this voyage, then?"

Christiane paused. She hadn't wanted another complication, but it was
only one complication; all the rest were over and done with. "We're
leaving Pendor. That might make it more tolerable."

"Have dinner with me then?" Trellin asked. "There's a little
restaurant on Parma that I want to take you to."

"Parma?"

"This. Here," Christiane said, pointing out the window to the rotating
station to which they were attached. "Parma. The space station."

"Oh. I didn't know it had a name." She thought for a second. "Yeah,
okay. Dinner it is."

"First hour?"

Christiane had grown used to the Pendorian time system. "Sure."

Trellin smiled. "Thank you, Christiane. See you there."
 ________________________________________________________________

The "restaurant" was small and intimate, quiet, with green, silver,
and ferns the overriding motifs. The decorations were simple silver
curls stretching the length of the soft green wallpaper. There was no
music. It was one of the things Christiane had missed from Earth. The
Pendorians were short on music, and they tended not to play it to
death the way people on Earth did, probably because they knew that if
they heard it too much it would spoil it for their lives, which would
be much longer.

It was also in about half the gravity she was used to, which meant
that eating anything liquid would be something of a challenge. The
only person in view, a human dressed in black pants, a white shirt,
and a spotless black pocketed apron, approached her. "Melli! Guareth
ti?"

"I, um, I don't speak Quen."

"Oh, you're the Terran I'm expecting! Wonderful! Come this way,
please." He led her into the long, narrow room and sat her down in a
booth with tall-backed chairs. "Please stay here. Trellin will be
along shortly. There's no menu; Daneel and I will just whip something
up for you both. Can I get you something to drink? We don't have any
wines."

"Just water."

"Coming right up." He disappeared from view. Christiane couldn't help
but wonder how much of the waiter act was affected; it didn't seem
like the kind of task that would earn a lot of respect, yet it was
clear that the waiter had gathered enough with his partner to put
together quite a lovely little establishment on what had to be an
expensive piece of real estate.

She sighed. That was part of the problem. She was a good photographer.
She was, she thought, one of the best war correspondents Geographic
had ever had. She had awards and accolades and even museum shows to
prove it. The fact that someone in a job as mundane as a waiter could
get as much or even more attention than she, she admitted to herself,
bothered her. Pendorians, she thought, had a skewed view of
priorities.

Trellin slid into the bench opposite her, startling her with the
silence of her approach. "I wondered where you were."

"I see you've men Apollonaria," Trellin said with a grin. "That's the
waiter. Don't ever shorten it. He'll just ignore you if call him
Apollo or something like that. You're obviously talking about someone
else." She grinned.

Christiane smiled back, trying to feel the amusement that Trellin
clearly felt. Instead, she felt awkward. She didn't want to tell
Trellin to go away, and her body ached with an uncomfortable
loneliness that she had learned Trellin could easily fill. But she
still wasn't sure that she wanted this beautiful fem around.

"You're not happy."

Christiane looked up. "Huh?"

"You're not happy. I can see it in you face, feel it coming off of
you. And you said so, this afternoon. You said that you hated it
here."

Christiane tried to balance what her body, her emotions, and her
common sense were all telling her, and failed. Her body wanted
Trellin; her emotions wanted to get as far away from Pendor and
Pendorians as she could, and her sense told her that the former was a
bad idea and the latter, for the next few months at least, was quite
impossible.

"I just don't like Pendor," she sighed finally, looking up as a glass
of water was placed in front of her. "It's so... I've been everywhere
on Earth, done reporting from Asia and Africa and Europe and South
America, done war reporting, peace reporting, I've even done
helicopter traffic reporting in the United States. I thought I would
like it here."

"But you don't."

Christiane was pleased to see that the woman of naivete she had known
on the voyage here had grown in sophistication. She no longer asked
'Why' or tried to explain the Pendorian Way, whatever that was, in
defense. "No. And I don't know why. It's an emotional reaction to a
lot of things-- your peace, your prosperity, your beauty. This isn't
the kind of place humans were meant to live in."

She sighed. "Maybe I'm homesick. I can't believe that I would be
homesick. I mean, I don't really have a home. I've traveled all my
life, from assignment to assignment, and my tiny apartment in Virginia
is just a place to stow my gear, including my body, between
assignments."

"But has as assignment ever gone on for two years?" Trellin asked.

"Not without leave. Oh, Hell, I don't know, Trellin. The whole thing
is very weird." She looked up into those green, featureless eyes. "I
want to say I'm sorry for dumping you when I got here. That must have
been a terrible blow to your career."

Trellin shrugged. "I'll survive, I'm sure. I miscalculated and became
too intimate with someone who was not prepared to accept the way we do
things and the intimacy with which we often do them. It's not as if I
had planned on being a Terran contact ambassador my entire life,
although it seemed like a good career choice and everyone I knew was
telling me I would be good at it. It's a learning experience. I'm
sorry if I hurt you, though, or did anything that would affect the way
you view Pendorians."

Dinner was placed in front of them. It was fish, of a sort, a flat,
white fish, breaded, with a vegetable relish and what looked like
rice. Christiane wondered where it came from and how hard it was to
get it onto the space station. Then she remembered that an SDisk had
taken her here; it had probably brought the fish here as well.
Christiane ate for a while; the fish was quite delicious, but she had
gotten used to the idea that the Pendorian who performed a given task
was doing so because he wanted to see it done right.

"You didn't miscalculate, Trellin. I did. I didn't know what my
reactions to Pendor would be, and you couldn't have guessed them
anyway. I thought that you would be another friend, another lover;
I've had so many over the years. I didn't want your career to be a
victim of my insensitivity."

Trellin reached out a mitt and covered Christiane's with it. "I
appreciate that. And I'll survive. It's not like people will remember
my failures unless I keep repeating them. It's the successes we care
about."

Christiane felt that ache in her belly again, the one that let her
know that there were some things she wanted Trellin for, even if
guidance wasn't one of them. But she held her tongue and said, "I
know. I just wanted you to have a success on this trip." She looked up
and saw Trellin staring right at her. Even with those vague,
indescriptive eyes, she could tell that Trellin was examining her face
closely. "What?"

Trellin said simply, "I missed you."

Those words shot a thrill right through Christiane. They went into her
ears, completely bypassed her brain, and dove straight for her groin.
There was something in the way Trellin said it that suggested to her
that this alien woman didn't care much about intellectual
conversation, that it was the great sex they had had on the flight
over that she had missed. "It's a long flight back to Earth."

"Will my presence on the flight back to Earth be 'tolerable?' then?"

"It won't be Pendor."

"It's an all-Pendor crew."

"It won't be Pendor," Christiane insisted, emphasizing the last word.
"It'll be tolerable." She turned her hand over, clasped Trellin's
mitten. "It'll be more than tolerable." She smiled. Some deep corner
of her mind kept insisting that she stop and think about what she was
about to do, but the rest of her insisted that this was a woman who
could deliver pleasure to her consistently and that's what she wanted.
She released Trellin's hand. "Your food's getting cold."

Trellin grinned and the two of them wolfed down the rest of the meal.
Apollinario took the plates away as efficiently as he had brought them
and disappeared. "Do we just leave?"

"We just leave," Trellin said. "Although I doubt you'll be able to pay
the chef the proper compliment." She grinned.

"Which is?"

"Come back."

"Oh," Christiane said. She had heard that before; she should have
recognized it earlier. As they walked up the narrow hallway between
tables, Apollinario and a human wearing distinct chef's clothing stood
at the doorway and bowed. "Thank you for visiting our restaurant,"
Apollinario said. "It has been an honor serving a Terran."

Christiane bowed back. She had done this several times in Japan and
understood the protocol on Pendor, or at least an analogy of it. "It
was wonderful, thank you. It has been an honor dining with you."

Both mels seemed pleased with the response as they rose, and then she
and Trellin were running for the door. "I don't suppose you have a
room?" she asked Trellin.

"I've got a family!" Trellin responded. In the low-g's of the spinning
station it was hard to maneuver, but Christiane managed until Trellin
led her to another SDisk. They hopped on.

Christiane grunted as the full force of acceleration (she had learned
not to call it gravity) hit her. When the science needed to do
transportation had been explained to her, she had become wary of the
SDisks, but everyone else used them and nobody ever got hurt on one,
so she had come to accept them as another part of life. Trellin was
shaking her head as well as her metabolism adjusted to the full force
suddenly pulling the blood out of her head. "Ouch."

"Yeah," Christiane agreed, looking around. They were in a covered
gazebo at one end of a small park fenced with white pickets. Behind
her was, well, not exactly a forest. More like a jungle. Or a swamp.
The trees grew in almost every direction, most of them making only a
half-hearted attempt to go upwards. A blue-colored moss covered many
of them in a randomesque spiderweb pattern, adding to the jarring
color scheme. Yellow shoots headed down from parasitic flowers on many
of the trees, dipping into the ground. The space between the trees was
barely enough to permit a small dog.

But the weather was warm, and comforting, and Trellin's mitts pulled
her in the other direction.

It was like something out of a Western, Christiane thought, although
the jungle setting didn't fit with the motif. The construction of the
buildings was wood frames and wood sides, long, wide porches with
overhangs, and a distinct lack of doorknobs. A large, white truck
passed them by, silently but for the road noise coming from its tires,
a Tindal in the driver's seat waving calmly at them. The back was
heaped high with black, loamy dirt. Other pedestrians walked calmly
back and forth, many in pairs, chatting. Christiane saw at least one
parasol. A Tindal with a tool belt hammered on a window frame of a
building high above. "Arif!" she shouted up.

"Trellin!" he replied, looking down. He descended the latter with
sure-footed steps and hopped down onto the ground. "So you recovered
your charge, huh?" he said, looking Christiane over. "Good!"

"Only for the afternoon. Maybe for the trip home. I just wanted to
show her my town for a few minutes." Trellin took her hand and led her
down the street to an unassuming home that might have been found
anywhere in southern Europe: pale red color, gently sloped roof,
massive front porch made with timbers several inches square. The
windows were larger than she would have expected, an acknowledgment to
the almost spiritual Pendorian affection for sunlight.

Inside, the same theme applied. The floor was bare, the frontroom
occupied by only a few pieces of furniture, including a rocking chair,
all of which where upholstered in simple, unbleached colors. It had
the look of a family that didn't know how to decorate and fortunately
did not have access to the empty kitsch with which such families often
filled their lives.

Trellin led her to a set of stairs, and Christiane couldn't help but
be impressed by the solid construction. Although she had gotten used
to it in the year she had been here, the excess of material, the
broad, impressive construction, still seemed to her as something
between wasteful and admirable. These people built things to last. She
supposed that made sense when one acknowledged that the builder, or
somebody, would be using the construction for centuries, and the
builder would still be around to hear about it if something went
wrong.

But her desire for Trellin intervened with her musings as Trellin led
her into another room, a bedroom, with a bed that was more adult than
she would have supposed. A simple blue comforter covered a large bed,
a long bed, a bed that would easily sleep three if it had to, and as
Trellin's mittens guided her to the bed she stopped worrying about
whether or not this was a wrong decision. She could leave it behind at
any time, after the trip was over.

Trellin's mouth was on hers, snapping her to the here, the now, and
her own mouth was answering back, her own cunt warming to the
suggestion that it might have its own attentions sometime soon this
afternoon. She pawed at Trellin's blue ship's jumpsuit, pressed her
hands to the small breasts through the material, felt the flat, strong
belly of a youth that would not, could not fade, although it could be
abandoned.

Trellin's own enthusiasm flowed over her like warm summertime rain is
Africa. She had danced in that kind of rain, and she wanted to dance
in Trellin's desire as well. Trellin clearly agreed, and as her mitts
went to work on the fine details of opening Christiane's shirt
buttons, Christiane fumbled with the simple blue zipper tab of
provocative shapes. The jumpsuit opened immediately and Trellin seemed
to pour out of it, soon to be standing in this sunlit room naked and
glorious.

Christiane had often fumbled with Trellin in the quiet dark of a
starship. Here, though, Trellin was clearly a different sort of
animal, and for the first time Christiane got a good look at Trellin's
body. The willowly belly, the long, ideal legs, all wrapped in two
shades bluer than a perfect summer sky. The broadened, masculine
shoulders that supported her arms, her tens, her tentacles just a bit
less than a meter long, with the mittenlike ending that nonetheless
was supple enough to undo the buttons on her shirt.

Trellin's small, black nose and lips hovered in a face just this side
of animal, and as she closed the distance between them Christiane's
heart began racing. Trellin pulled off her shirt and opened the
buttons at her waist. Christiane eased back onto the bed, shedding her
pants like the skin of a snake, bare but for a white panty that could
not possibly contain the smell of desire that steamed off of her.

Trellin kissed her again, her tongue against Christian's teeth, and
Christiane let her in, touched her own tongue to Trellin's and tasted
the texture of the alien girl's flesh against her own. A deep and
satisfied moan came from within Christiane, a needful moan, the moan
of someone who, truth be told, had been celibate for far too long.
Christiane was used to being able to get out of the country, get to
the city, get to the nightlife and enjoy it. Here, there was no city
to go to, there was only the Ring, an enormous world with inhabitants
few and far between, and finding a sister dyke in all that was harder
than admitting that she wanted to find one at all.

She rolled on the bed with Trellin in her arms. Trellin smiled up at
her and whispered, "Are you all here?" she asked.

"Sometimes," Christiane replied as Trellin's mouth began working a
spell of desire on her breasts and nipples. Trellin slithered, furry
snakes upon her body, as she moved down, working her mittens over
Christiane's skin in a way that made electricity surge in her belly.
Tension held court within Christiane, passed judgment, dissolved into
a party of small, collected tensions all their own that whirled down
into her thighs and up into her brain. She moaned with desire, not for
Trellin, not for pleasure, but for a release from the incessant
tightness that had become her unwanted companion since setting foot on
the Ring.

Christiane's body arched with need. Trellin, though, was taking her
time. Touches of tongue and lip streamed across her belly, and finally
she remembered to touch back, to run her fingers over the short,
smooth fur of her partner. A shoulder, a side, the dangling fruit of
Trellin's breasts were all is her reach, and she reached out to stroke
one dark exposed nipple. Trellin's welcoming sigh was a message from
one woman to the other, to be here, now.

Christiane put the tension behind her for a moment, let the pleasure
of touching and being touched wash over her, let the intimacy of
Trellin's kisses drive her stresses away for just a moment. As
Trellin's mouth dropped between her opened thighs her attention
snapped into place. It was impossible to daydream, not when a mouth
was hot on her vulva, a talented tongue probing between her lips,
seeking out the soft, vulnerable places where ecstasy lived.

Trellin's skills were honed on slow, attentive progress. Christiane
lay halfway between gentle appreciation and an impatient desire for
Trellin to get on with it. She felt herself growing wetter. A furry
hand slipped under Trellin's chin, against her intimate opening,
Trellin's the thumb entering her. Suddenly she knew that she had to
have more, that she couldn't wait for Trellin to shove that entire
thing into her. But Trellin took her time, still, and every lick
seemed to hint at the end, at the edge, at a climax that would be a
relief.

Trellin's thumb rolled back and forth. Christiane felt the tip of her
mitten pressing against the opening of her cunt, pressing the thin
tissue there wide, opening her. Her body felt charged with need.
Trellin's moldable hand spread her further, opening her. Christiane
was breathing harder, her body relaxed but full of the power of
impending pleasure, and then Trellin's mitten was completely inside
her, and all she had to do was turn it just a little, lick just a
little more, and Christiane exploded.

As she subsided, Trellin was already tugging at the opening to her
cunt in the other direction, sliding out, waiting for the different
tension, that of climax, to ease completely. Christiane lay back on
the bed, her eyes closed, and willed her body to let Trellin out.
Soon, they were cuddling again on the bed, Christiane's hand now
between Trellin's legs, her fingers intimate with the familiar details
of this part of her blue-furred lover's anatomy at least.

Trellin's responses were different. She became tense immediately, her
eyes glazing with desire. Christiane had learned from experience that
for Trellin, a mouth was okay, the twisting strength of finger were
better. She wanted to be watched, wanted Christiane to be there, body
to body, as she came. Christiane gave her what she wanted. Her fingers
dug into the soft flesh of Trellin's vulva, played with labia. Pinches
on Trellin's nether lips made her moan in ways that kisses to her
mouth could not control. Christiane let one finger between those lips
find Trellin's button, press on it, caress it gently. Trellin became a
quivering girl, gasps of acknowledgment filling the room as she came
quietly, in Christiane's arms.

Wordlessly, Christiane gathered Trellin up and the two of them lay
together, in Trellin's soft and wonderful bed. Christiane sighed and
thought that she could live with Trellin's presence for the trip home.
For a brief moment, at any rate, the stresses were quiet. She knew
they'd return, in lesser forms away from the Ring, but with Trellin
there, she might be able to hold them at bay until she finally set
foot on Earth. That was all she wanted.
 ________________________________________________________________

The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., and Related
Tales are Copyright (C) 1988-2002 Elf Mathieu Sternberg. Distribution
limited to electronic media not-for-profit use only. All other rights
are reserved to the author.

The complete Journal Entries collection is available at:
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf

--
Elf M. Sternberg, rational romantic mystical cynical idealist
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf
EAC Department of Corrective Phrenology

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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