at Huntsville found that a couple could stay together, but that it worked lots better if a third party was present, someone who could kind of give a push to key portions of the anatomy at the right times, y’know? And, as they studied the problem, they learned that when dolphins have sex, there’s always a third dolphin standing by, nudging the happy couple with his nose, and for the same reason.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It’s true! Three dolphins.”
“So…are you a member?”
He grinned. “Well…I don’t have the Three Dolphin pin…”
“I knew it! And how many were in the room?”
“Just two of us, I’m afraid. But we managed okay.”
“How conventional! So, was it true what they say about zero-G sex?”
“Gee, Teri, I don’t know. What do they say?”
“Oh, that it’s a really shib experience. Better than anything on Earth.” She giggled. “That you can both be on top at once.”
Dr. David Alexander pulled her a bit closer with his left hand, while roving about slowly beneath her opened blouse with his right. “It’s really just like here,” he told her, giving her breast a playful squeeze. “It depends on who you do it with.”
“Mmm. I would like to try it, sometime.”
“It’s kind of messy. All the sweat and, ah, other fluids tend to form little droplets that just float around in the air. It can be interesting trying to chase them all down with a rag, afterward. And even on a Mars cycler, it can be damned hard finding any privacy!” He kissed her, then shifted a bit, trying to get more comfortable on his half-seated perch against the corner of his desk. “All things considered, it’s usually a lot more convenient to do it in a plain, ordinary, Earth-bound bed, with a nice steady pull of one G to keep things in place.”
“Like, maybe, a gel-bed? They say that’s the closest thing there is to zero G on Earth. If you don’t count giant swimming pools.”
“That would work. Like a waterbed without the sloshing.”
“At my place? Tonight?”
He kissed her again. “That sounds just about perfect. Dinner first?”
“Sure. You have to tell your wife you’re working late?”
He winced inwardly at the mention of Liana. Things had not been good between them for a long, long time, not since the very early days of their marriage, in fact. Liana’s stubborn refusal to consider a divorce hadn’t really bothered him before. He’d always managed to keep his affairs discreet. But now, with Teri, he found himself wishing there was something he could do to overthrow Liana’s religious convictions and make her see that their relationship wasn’t salvageable. The thought of being able to come home at night to a woman who shared his passions, who wasn’t enmired in senseless garbage like Liana’s cosmic astronuts, a woman who was intelligent and competent and endlessly fascinating…
He shook his head, dispelling the fantasy. “Actually, she’s out of town. In Pennsylvania, visiting her sister.”
“Great. Then you could spend the night.”
David’s workscreen chirped. Without letting Teri go, he reached behind his back and touched a key on his desk, opening the channel without turning on the visual. “Yes, Larry.”
“Sir, there are two people here to see you from the Department of Science? They say they need to talk to you.”
He pulled back from Teri’s moist lips long enough to say, “Do they have an appointment? I’m busy right now.”
“Uh, nossir. No appointment. But they said their business with you is, uh, Clearance Blue.”
Damn. “Wait a minute.” He looked down at Teri. “Sorry….”
For answer, she slid her hand down to his crotch and gave him a final, breath-catching squeeze. “Business first,” she said, licking her lips, then giving him a last, quick kiss. “I’ve got work to do, too. I can wait till to-night.”
She stepped away from him and busied herself with rebuttoning her blouse and tucking it in. David stood, straightened his clothing, then walked over to the large, corner-office window overlooking Lake Shore Drive and the Burnham Harbor Marina.
The crowd at Soldier’s Field, he saw, was still there, larger and more agitated than ever. Many of the protesters held signs. DON’T COVER UP OUR GOD, read one. THE BUILDERS MADE US IN THEIR IMAGE, said another, along-side a photograph of the Cydonian Face. A few had glued flatscreens to their signboards, to display animated clips or video—most of the Face or of some of the released images from the Cave of Wonders. Someone was haranguing the crowd with a microphone and amplifiers from a makeshift tower on Waldon Drive, but the soundproofing in the new IES building was too efficient for him to hear what was being said. Not that it mattered. Scuzzy-headed nonsense, all of it.
Well, not entirely scuzzy-headed. He could understand where the public—long prepared by wild stories of ETs and UFOs, of alien abductions and ancient astronauts—might have picked up misinformation enough to go off on these tangents. But the freestyle mingling of science fact, speculation, and outright fantasy had disturbed him since his earliest days as an archeology undergraduate.
It didn’t help at all that some, at least, of the long-running stories about extraterrestrials visiting primitive human cultures in the remote past were turning out to be true, at least in some aspects. Someone had transported early humans to Mars half a million years ago…and might even have been responsible for some genetic tampering at the time as well. There were still some nasty unanswered questions about the evolutionary transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, and after a long, rearguard battle even longtime conservatives in anthropological and paleontological circles were now seriously considering ET intervention as a distinct, even a likely, possibility. The timing of the artifacts on Mars and of the poorly understood transition of Homo erectus to archaic Homo sapiens were too close to believably be coincidence.
David Alexander was now the closest thing there was to an expert on the whole question. The fifteen months he’d spent on Mars had made him a celebrity of sorts, as well as the authority on extraterrestrial intelligence within the solar system.
One of the protesters on the street below, a young woman wearing briefs and nothing else in the steamy Chicago-summer heat, was jumping up and down with a large sign held above her head. YOU CAN TELL US, DR. A! it read.
He snorted, turning away from the window. Being a celebrity wasn’t so bad—it certainly had enlivened his sex life since his return to Earth two months ago. If only celebrity status didn’t attract so many kooks.
And unpleasant responsibilities. Teri, her clothing ordered once again, flashed a smile and a wink filled with promise, and strolled out the door.
“Okay, Larry. Have them come in.”
His visitors were Sarah Mackler and Roger Flores, both in conservative orange-and-green business smartsuits, with scancards identifying them as agents of the US Department of Science. “Dr. Alexander!” the woman said. Her costume was accented by a brightly colored Ashanti head-band. “How are we doing today?”
