Singularity's Ring by Paul Melko Read Free Book Online

I wondered what Moira would have said about our trespassing.
    She’s not here.
    We leaped between flat stones, crossing the small stream that fed the lake.
    Beneath the cottonwoods, the ground was a carpet of threadbare white. The air was cold through our damp clothes. We stepped across and around the poison oak with its quintuple leaves and ivy its triplet.
    An aircar stood outside the cottage, parked in a patch of prairie, shaded by the trees.
    Conojet 34J, Manuel sent. We can fly it. We had started small-craft piloting the year before.
    The brush had been cleared from the cottage to make room for long flower gardens along each wall. Farther from the house, in the full sun, was a rectangle of vegetables: I saw tomatoes, pumpkins, squash, and string beans.
    “It’s not a summer house,” I said, because Quant was out of sight. “Someone’s living here.”
    Manuel skirted the vegetable garden to get a good look at the aircar. I felt his appreciation of it, no concrete thought, just a nod toward its sleekness and power.
    “What do you kids think you’re doing in my garden?”
    The door of the cottage flew open with a bang, and we jumped, as a man strode toward us.
    Strom took a defensive posture by reflex, his foot mashing a tomato plant. I noted it, and he corrected his stance, but the man had seen it too, and he frowned. “What the hell!”
    We lined up before the man, me at the head of our phalanx, Strom to my left and slightly behind, then Quant and Manuel behind him. Moira’s spot to my right was empty.
    “Stepping on my plants. Who do you think you are?”
    He was young, dressed in a brown shirt and tan pants.
His hair was black and he was thin-boned, almost delicate. I assumed he was the interface for his pod, but then we saw the lack of sensory pads on his palms, the lack of pheromone ducts on his neck, the lack of any consensus gathering on his part. He had said three things before we could say a single word.
    “We’re sorry for stepping on your plant,” I said. I stifled our urge to waft conciliatory scent into the air. He wouldn’t have understood. He was a singleton.
    He looked from the plant to me and to the plant again.
    “You’re a fucking cluster,” he said. “Weren’t you programmed with common courtesy? Get the hell off my property.”
    Quant wanted to argue with the man. This was Baskin land. But I nodded, smiling. “Again, we’re sorry, and we’ll leave now.”
    We backed away, and his eyes were on us. No, not us, on me. He was watching me, and I felt his dark eyes looking past my face, seeing things that I didn’t want him to see. A flush spread across my cheeks, hot suddenly in the shade. The look was sexual, and my response …
    I buried it inside me, but not before my pod caught the scent of it. I clamped down, but Manuel’s then Quant’s admonition seeped through me.
    I dashed into the woods, and my fellows had no choice but to follow.
     
    The undertones of their anger mingled with my guilt. I wanted to rail, to yell, to attack. We were all sexual beings, as a whole and as individuals, but instead, I sat apart, and if Mother Redd noticed, none of her said a word.
    Finally, I climbed the stairs and went to see Moira.
    “Stay over there,” she wheezed.
    I sat in one of the chairs by the door. The room smelled like chicken broth and sweat. We had gengineered antibodies
for cholera and hepatitis, but no one had found a better solution for rhinovirus except rest and tissues.
    Moira and I are identical twins, the only ones in our pod. We didn’t look that much alike anymore, though. Her hair was close-cropped; mine was shoulder-length auburn. She was twenty pounds heavier, her face rounder where mine was sharp. We looked more like cousins than identical sisters.
    She leaned on her elbows, looked at me closely, and then flopped down onto the pillow. “You don’t look happy.”
    I could have given her the whole story by touching her palm, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I