(I)
The sergeant and the corporal watched the longhaired man leave the shed. He's leaving the woman, he realized, which seemed odd. But that was better for the field analysis. The woman would be much more vulnerable sleeping alone in the shed.
"How long till you think one of them gets her?" the corporal's voice issued through the earphone.
"Could be hours, could be minutes. No way to tell. The worms' sensory organs are supersensitive, and the ovum too. They'll seek out the largest heat signature as well as the most profound pheromonic emanations."
"Pheromonic?"
The sergeant couldn't believe the deficient level of tech training the younger NCOs were getting these days. "Airborne glandular emissions of bombykol molecule groups that come out of the skin, particularly the skin of genitalic regions. They're picked up by ol factory VMO receptors and stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. Chemical triggers, you know, from the tech classes you passed to get this duty assignment. They trigger innate reproductive responses."
The corporal clearly remembered nothing of these classes. "Fine, but since you just said it might take hours for one of the specimens to get her, I think we should go in there right now and have some fun. We'll get her pheromones going, all right."
The sergeant glared at him through the visor of his protective mask. "Any more comments like that, I'll write you up."
"You're not serious, Sarge."
"Try me." The sergeant would not have that sort of thing going on while he was ranking NCO in the field. It didn't matter that all the subjects would eventually die, it was protocol. That sort of thing could get out of hand. "She's probably got all kinds of diseases. I don't want to have to be quarantined when we get back to the post."
The corporal grumbled.
I really don't trust these new kids at all, the sergeant thought. "We're done for now," he said. "Let's get back."
"What about the two men on the boat that came in tonight?"
"They'll be infected by morning, if they're not already."
They slipped away from the shed, then turned on their low-light lenses to refind the trail back to the field HQ. They passed one corpse along the way, one of the women infected by the ovum. She hadn't released the brood yet, but the dead belly quivered from all the immature larva that bloated it.
"She hasn't been dead long," the corporal said after lancing a dead arm with the portable chromatograph. It had been calibrated to read serum levels of putrefactive gases. "A few hours maybe."
"A 'few' hours isn't good enough." The sergeant passed his troop the lance thermometer. "Check the drop-fall time against the mean-to-zero brain temperature."
The corporal looked lost. `I've never done that."
Damn. The sergeant snapped the gauge away and uncapped the lance. "I can't believe they're graduating you kids through this occupational specialty. This is supposed to be one of the first things you learn." He turned the unit on, input the readout of the air temperature, then-
Crunch.
– jammed the lance into the corpse's nostril. The breasts seemed to quiver a moment, but that was just reflexive. When the thermometer beeped, the sergeant slid the lance back out. "Hour and eleven minutes," he read.
`How's it work?"
By comparing the brain's temp against the air temp and calculating the drop time."
"Oh."
Yeah. Oh. The sergeant snapped some digital pictures for the file. The mutation element is incredible. Look at her skin."
"Yeah. Neat," the corporal remarked.
The woman's skin had fully turned now, to the same translucent yellow, peppered by bright red spots. But the sergeant couldn't help but notice how his underling's eyes were fixed on the cadaver's swollen breasts. "You're an animal. You're gaping at a dead woman's breasts. If I weren't here, you'd probably be having sex with it."
The corporal shrugged.
What can you do? The sergeant guessed he was just getting old. It wasn't the victim's former beauty that captivated him, it was the level of mutagen-transmission.
The Transfection Unit that made these specimens really knew what it was doing.
"Take a tissue sample so we can get out of here," he ordered. "I think the colonel's going to be really pleased about this."
(II)
"I slept great last night," Loren enthused, picking out his Sigma flippers and snorkel. The clean, fresh air of the great outdoors, I guess."
"Me too." Annabelle appeared just as lively, blond hair shining in the morning sun. Today she wore a bright parrot-green bikini that seemed to cover even less of her body than yesterday's apparel. "I got to sleep pretty late," she said, inadvertently looking around for Trent, "but slept very well. I'm surprised how quiet the forest is at night."
"Quiet?"
"Oh, sure. You should hear the racket the woods make in Brazil and Southeast Asia. Ten times louder than this."
"Wow, you've been all-over the place."
"Indeed I have. My job's sent me on shoots all over the world, from the Sahara to the Arctic Circle."
"What about the Arctic Circle?" Trent asked. He looked exhausted when he came out to the narrow strip of beach, his uniform crumpled and circles under his eyes.
Loren found his diving mask. "Annabelle's a world traveler, from her job."
"A world traveler, huh? I believe it."
Annabelle gave him a sultry smile. "This little island's more like a vacation to me."
Trent rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, me too."
The blonde untopped a tube of waterproof suntan lotion. "Would one of you mind putting some of this on my back?"
When Trent stepped forward to take the tube, she gave it to Loren. Trent frowned.
"You'll definitely need this," Loren said, hands already shaking as he smoothed the lotion over her skin. "Shallow water magnifies UV rays. You'll have to reapply this all day; waterproof means it won't wash off for ten or fifteen minutes."
"Where's Professor Craig?" Trent asked.
"She's already out in the water"
Trent gazed out into the Gulf of Mexico, arms crossed. 'So today's the big hunt for the scarlet bristleworm, huh?"
"Yuh-yep," Loren confirmed. His hands gingerly spread the lotion around the strap of Annabelle's bikini top, then shakily slid lower.
"Loren, since you're down there, would you mind doing the backs of my legs?"
"Shuh-sure," Loren said. Now he knelt to find himself face-level with Annabelle's derriere.
Trent frowned again.
Annabelle glanced over her shoulder. "That's enough, Loren. Thanks.-
His hands continued to shake when he gave her back the tube. Annabelle fitted on her diving mask, then propped it up on her forehead. 'I'm ready when you are, Loren.'
"Damn, I forgot my collection bag. It's back at the head shack-I'll be right back." He jogged off into the trail.
Trent laughed when Loren was gone. 'You really made that kid's day. See how he was shaking?"
"Well, I wasn't trying to intimidate him."
"It's probably the first time he's ever had his hands on a woman."
Annabelle grinned but didn't look at him. "Your hands were doing all right last night."
The comment caused Trent to stall. "That's good to know."
"I hate to tell you this but what's-her-name saw us."
"Who? Professor Craig?"
"Um-hmm."
The lieutenant mulled it over, then shrugged. "Doesn't bother me what she saw. I couldn't care less about her. You're the one I'm interested in."
Annabelle coyly tapped his nose. "Oh, don't get all mushy on me. Last night was just one of those spontaneous things, you know.7
"Yeah, well, we need a lot more of those spontaneous things."
"We'll see," she said, still not looking at him. Now she checked the underwater housing for her camera. "And I'll bet seeing us last night made her day."
"She and the kid are a real pair."
Annabelle chuckled. "Geek Patrol."
"You really have to wonder about people who devote their lives to studying worms."
"She and Loren are peas in a pod, I'm afraid."
Trent nodded smugly. "Right, and now that you've changed the subject, I want to see you again tonight. And I want your number."
"Oh, the assertive type, I like that. But you don't need my number. It's not practical for us to continue seeing each other. I live in New York."
"They have these things called planes."
"We'll see," she said.
"One way or another, before this worm thing is over, I'll get your number."
"Shhh! He's coming back."
Loren reappeared with a net bag full of plastic specimen tubes. "Got 'em."
Now Annabelle was checking her snorkel. "I really can't wait to see one of these worms. I'll be credited with having the most recent photographs of it. Loren, how long till you think it'll take to find one?"
The young man had regained his composure after having had his hands on her preeminent body. 'Well, keep in mind that Pritchard's Key is the only known place in North America to have them. It's very rare, because of the shifting water temperature, like I was saying yesterday. It might take all day to find a scarlet bristleworm. It might even take all week. You don't just turn over the first rock you see and, bam, there it is."
Nora trudged up to them in her flippers, dripping water. She pushed up her mask and handed Annabelle a specimen tube. "Here's your scarlet bristleworm."
"You gotta be kidding me," Loren said, amazed. "How did you-"
"I turned over a rock and there it was," Nora told them, unimpressed.
Trent was laughing. "Outstanding. The rarest worm in North America and Professor Craig finds one in five minutes."
Annabelle held the clear tube toward the sun, peering at its brilliant bristly contents. "It's really disgustinglooking but it's also… incredible. The color-it's so bright, like a glowing ember."
"I just swam out to about a ten-foot depth," Nora explained, shaking off more water, "found a cool-flow, and started turning over rocks. There're lots of them out there. You'll see a narrow trench cutting down near that cool-flow. At the tip of the trench, there's a big chunk of reef about the size of a bus-that's where the nest is."
"This I gotta see!" Loren exclaimed, visibly excited. He dorkily plopped down the beach in his flippers and waded into the water.
Trent was still chuckling. "The kid acts like he just won the lottery."
"He's never seen a live one before," Nora said. "To a polychaetologist, that's like a coin collector finding a two-headed Buffalo nickel. Oh, and we'll be having spiny lobster and stone crab for dinner. I've never seen so many in one area before."
"Outstanding," Trent said again. "Professor Craigyou are one squared-away polychhhh-polywhatever. I'll let you two finish the big worm hunt while I go look for more pot plants to burn. Have fun."
Nora stopped him. "Oh, Lieutenant? I wanted to ask you something. Didn't you tell us yesterday that the army took all the surveillance cameras off the island when they closed down the missile site in the eighties?"
Trent seemed piqued by the question. "Yeah, sure. This used to be a high-security military reservation. Why do you ask?"
"I think I found a camera, last night." Nora pointed back toward the edge of the forest. it was on this side, somewhere between the campsite and the head shacks."
"I guess they could've missed one," Trent supposed.
"And it was the strangest thing-I mean, I think it was a camera of some sort; it definitely had a lens. But it was really small."
"A surveillance camera would be small," Annabelle said.
Nora restrained most of a smirk. "Small as in tiny. It was like a half inch long, sticking out of a tree, and about as thin as a pencil. Just a stub."
"Might have been an old proximity sensor or motion detector," Trent reckoned. "But it's long been discon- nected.-Were there wires coming out of it?"
"No."
"Any indicator lights?"
"Nothing like that, either."
Trent didn't seem concerned. "Show it to me later, okay? It's probably just one of those old-generation electric eyes that would trip an alarm if someone crossed it."
"I'm sure you're right," Nora said. It just gave me this really uncomfortable feeling. Like when I looked in it, someone was seeing me."
Trent smiled at her paranoia. "I guarantee you, whatever it is, it hasn't been hooked up in over twenty years."
Trent walked off toward the trail.
"Spy cameras in the woods, huh?" Annabelle leaned over to adjust her flippers. "But you were the spy last night."
"Pardon me?" Nora couldn't believe what the woman had said.
"Oh, you know what I'm talking about, Nora. But don't worry, I'm not mad." She smiled to herself. "I'm not the inhibited type, being watched never bothers me. But, honestly, I never figured you for a voyeur."
It was too early in the morning for this. "Hey, I was just going for a walk in the woods. I had no idea you'd be out there fucking."
"Don't get so upset," Annabelle chided. "Nature has a way of taking its course, especially in an environment like this." She stood back up, her posture accentuating her bikini'd bosom and table-flat stomach. "I told you, I wasn't mad."
Nora glared, a headache pecking at her. "I don't give a flying shit if you are."
"I was just going to say"-the blonde maintained a quiet, controlled tone-"that Lieutenant Trent's pretty good, and I'm not a territorial person. So you can go for it, too, if you want. I don't mind."
"You're outrageous!" Nora almost shrieked at her. "I can't wait for you to go back to New Fucking York!"
Now Annabelle tinkered again with the big encased camera.
"Professor Craig-profanity doesn't become you. And you don't have to worry about being embarrassed around Lieutenant Trent."
Nora winced so hard that creases seemed permanently etched into her face. "Why would I be embarrassed?"
"I didn't tell him that you were spying on us last night."
"I wasn't spying!" Nora flat-out yelled.
"Shh! Calm down. Loren's coming back. You don't want him to hear, do you?"
Before Nora could yell further, Loren trudged back up to them, seawater running off his body in rivulets. He seemed frustrated. "Nora, I couldn't find that coolflow you were talking about."
Nora's teeth were grinding back and forth. "I'll be out in a minute."
Annabelle lowered her dive mask over her face. "Loren and I will find it, Professor. But you did a great job finding that first worm. I'm really looking forward to that lobster dinner you mentioned. Maybe later, you can show Loren and me where they are." She absently put a hand on Loren's arm. "We'll have a cookout tonight, it'll be fun!"
Then she and Loren walked back toward the water.
Nora fumed after them.
She didn't know what kind of game the photographer was playing. She looked around, wide-eyed in rage. Have I EVER been this mad? She sat down in the sand for a few minutes, trying to rein back in some composure. They can find the fucking worms, she decided. I'm done for today. And… the NERVE of that phony bitch!
Asa breeze began to dry her skin, she tried to reflect on herself. Is it me? There are lots of assholes in the world. I can't get this bent out of shape every time one crosses my path. Maybe this was why she'd chosen an academic-based career instead of something more socially connected.
And she knew she had to consider something else, too.
Deep down, in her most hidden subconscious fibers, was she actually jealous of the more attractive woman?
Hell no, she decided. And what was she talking about with Trent? Like now that she's "had" him first, it's okay for me…
The notion just infuriated her more. Trent was a dullard.
She took a few more minutes to shake it off. She was sitting right in front of a vinyl beach bag…
That's Annabelle's bag, she realized. It contained towels, flip-flops, sunglasses, and the like. And right next to it lay a tube of sunblock.
What was Nora thinking?
She looked to the water. Annabelle and Loren had already gone under. So she picked up the tube of sunblock and without even much forethought, scooped a hole in the sand, emptied the lotion into the hole, and covered it. The tube read SPF 45.
Nora refilled it with her own SPF 2.
She looked up to the blazing sun and nearly giggled. Now the bitch can go back to New York barbecued!
She felt like a juvenile delinquent pulling such a prank, but she figured she deserved it. It had been the comment regarding Trent that bothered her most, Like he's her property that she's giving me PERMISSION to use! Yeah, she thinks she's the queen of the hive, all right. Like she's on some horse's ass reality show. Annabelle Island. And Trent's one of her puppy dog grunts.
Nora was discovering her very own Peyton Place.
She pulled off her flippers and mask, then lay back on her towel. The sand beat heat into her back. In spite of the sour mood, she admitted, the water was perfect-clear as gin and just a degree above cooland she did enjoy snorkeling. She was trying to motivate herself to do something-go back on the worm hunt, catch some lobsters, anything. Or she could return to their makeshift examination lab and make some more notes on the strange yellow ovum they'd found in the shower stall. But a sudden fatigue hauled her down. Not enough sleep last night, she realized, eyelids drooping in the sun. She began to nod in and out, the mildest surf-sounds rocking back and forth in her ears…
When she roused herself, it seemed like she'd been sleeping about fifteen minutes. Then she looked at her watch.
"Oh, for God's sake!"
The sun had moved halfway across the sky. It was past noon. Annabelle, lying belly-down on a towel, turned her head to look at Nora. Loren knelt at her side, slowly applying more suntan lotion on the photographer's back.
"Look who's awake," Annabelle said.
"Hey, Nora. You slept the morning away." Loren looked over at her quite sheepishly, while his hands tended Annabelle's back.
"Hope you don't mind me borrowing your associate, Professor Craig. Loren, if you ever decide you don't want to study worms anymore, you'll make a great masseur."
Nora frowned, watching Loren spread more lotion on Annabelle. Look at him. He's getting his jollies being her personal cabana boy. At least there was a tiny satisfaction, though. She thinks he's using heavy sunscreen but it's really only SPF 2. She'll look like a fire truck by the end of the day. The bitch.
Annabelle and Loren suddenly seemed to be squinting over.
"Nora, did you forget to put on sunblock?" Loren asked.
Then Annabelle: "You're looking pretty pink, come to think of it."
An alarm shrieked in Nora's brain. She'd been too busy sabotaging Annabelle, she'd forgotten about herself. She looked with dread to her arms, then her legs, and found herself pink as deli ham. Oh my God! How could I have let this happen?
"I did," she finally admitted. "I forgot to use my block." Then she held up the empty tube, disgusted with her secret.
"You know better than that," Loren told her. "We're marine zoologists, Nora. We're out in the sun ten times more than other people. You've been lying out here for three hours with no block? Of course you'll get burned."
When Nora rubbed her face, even her cheeks hurt. Now I'M the fire truck…
She had a feeling this wasn't going to be one of her better days.
"Loren found a really big nest of the scarlet bristleworms, right in front of an underwater trench and the most fascinating coral configurations," Annabelle informed her next. She spoke with her eyes closed as Loren continued to massage her back. "I got great pictures!"
"Actually it was Nora who found the nest," he at least had the presence of mind to say. "She told us where it was. Thanks, Nora. You were right. We hit the jackpot."
Who gives a shit? Nora glanced, embarrassed, at her pink arms. "That's wonderful. So we can go now?"
"Oh no," Annabelle piped up. "We'll be here a few more days at least. I need pictures of every aspect of the worm's life and its environment. The sun hits the water perfectly at midafternoon. Loren and I need to dive again tomorrow."
It didn't even anger Nora anymore: the way Annabelle excluded her from everything.
"I'm even going to have Loren in a few of the underwater pictures, so his name can go in the article, too."
The only reason I don't bury you, Nora replied in thought, is because I'm too tired to dig the hole.
"And I got plenty more samples for us to catalog for the college," Loren added, "plus some pretty interesting echinoderm fossils that look like they go back to the Cambrian Period."
"The what period?" Annabelle asked.
"Cambrian," Nora answered with no interest. "About sixty million years ago, when invertebrate life was just beginning to soar."
Annabelle was careful not to acknowledge Nora at all. "You also found some other weird things, didn't you, Loren?"
"Couple of translucent megalodae, some multicolored Clitellatas, oh, and a sea potato."
"A sea potato?" the blonde asked, amused. "It's not like a potato we eat, is it?"
Nora smiled. "Yeah, Annabelle. Loren will cook you up some fries in a jiffy."
Loren intervened. "No, it's just called a sea potato. It's actually a sediment-dwelling sea squirt." – -- – -- – -- – - -
Annabelle looked right at Nora and silently mouthed, Kiss my ass. Then she winked.
What gall! For each hour that passed, it occurred to Nora that a conflict would erupt eventually. I guess I shouldn't be getting in any catfights, she realized. The bitch would probably beat me up.
Annabelle rose to her feet and did a long stretch, giving Loren an eyeful. "Thanks for the back rub, Loren. You're a master. But after all that swimming, I think I'll go take a nap." She glanced down to Nora again. "You might want to put some sunblock on Professor Craig, though. She's turning as red as a fire truck."
You would say fire truck. She even steals my analogies.
"Oh, and, Professor? What time will you be cooking that lobster dinner you promised?"
About five minutes after I put my foot up your ass, Nora thought. Instead she just said, "About seven, if that doesn't cramp your sophisticated itinerary."
"Oh, don't worry, it doesn't. See you later!"
A lot later, I hope.
Annabelle traipsed off to the woods.
"What's with all this friction between you and Annabelle?" Loren asked.
"She's just a bossy, arrogant, territorial bitch, that's all. No friction. Women mark their turf, Loren, especially women with implants."
"Oh no, she's natural, she told me."
Nora smiled to herself.
"And there's no reason for the two of you to not get along," he added, fishing in his bag for more sunblock. "We're all in this together, you know."
"Not if you ask her. She treats me like I'm not here."
"You're imagining it. She's actually very nice. Emotionally unfolded, professionally dedicated, and intellectually diversified."
Nora leaned up, squinting outrage. "Loren! She's a ditz with big tits! She's phonier than Al Capone's secret vault. She's a mover, Loren; she uses her body and her sparkling eyes to manipulate men for her personal benefit."
Loren almost got mad-something she'd never seen. "That's harsh and judgmental, Nora. I'm surprised that an academician such as yourself would make such a shallow invective. It almost sounds defensive, even insecure."
Nora laughed. "She's got bigger boobs than me-big deal. I'm not insecure about it. She's more attractive than me, lots of women are, but you know what? I don't care! I could shit care less and whistle Dixie at the same time. But since you're not just my assistantyou're a good friend-I only feel it proper to warn you."
He seemed defiant now, lower lip trembling at the challenge. "Warn me?"
"She's a textbook floozie who's wheeling for you. Don't let her pull the wool over your eyes. Girls like that eat guys up and spit them out like gum when they're done with them. And she'll do it to you if you let her."
Loren glared; now his lower lip was really trembling. "That hurts my feelings, Miss Perfect. I'm glad you have such confidence in my acumen with the opposite sex." His head bowed, almost as if he were about to sob.
Oh, jeez… "Loren, I'm sorry, I only meant-"
His head jerked up in a grin and a loud clap of his hands. "Had you going, moron! Jesus Christ, I know she's a bogus, manipulating, saline-stuffed bitch. I'm just playing Poor Little Infatuated Nerd-Boy so maybe she'll feel sorry for me and give me a sympathy fuck. Believe me, I ain't looking to hold hands in the fucking park with that Paris Hilton wannabe."
Nora signed, relieved. "You're such a tool, Loren."
"Damn right, and a big, big tool at that-like a friggin' roll of cookie dough if you want to know the truth. I'll hump her so hard she'll sound like someone stomping on a squeak-doll."
"Loren!"
"Now shut up and flip over so I can put sunblock on your back. Otherwise you'll get redder than a-"
"Don't say fire truck!" she insisted.
"I was going to say scarlet bristleworm." He grabbed a tube of his own sunblock.
Sputtering, Nora flipped over on her belly. "I guess you're getting to be an expert at this."
"I'm an expert in everything," Loren claimed.
"I feel like chopped liver here."
"Why?"
.You were too busy rubbing all over Barbie, you didn't even stop to think that maybe your boss might need a back rub."
"And what's wrong with chopped liver?" he said, squirting lotion on her back.
She tensed a moment as his hands slid over some sunburned fringes, but then relief began to work in.
Loren chuckled. "I overheard Annabelle talking to a friend on her cell phone, and she referred to me as The Geek."
"Are you sure she wasn't talking about me?"
"Naw, you were Professor Dork."
"How flattering."
"And here's the best part-she's yacking away to her friend and eventually tells her that she's certain you and I are both virgins. How's that for a laugher?"
Nora smoldered and kept silent.
"What? I say something wrong?"
"No, just-"
"I'm no virgin, that's for sure. I've had sex a bunch of times, and my first one was with this foreign exchange student who stayed at my house while my brother went to Sweden. This girl was hot! She even-"
"Loren, I don't want to hear about your sex life!"
"Wow, you're really testy today," he said. "Guess Annabelle was right."
"What?"
"She also told her friend on the phone that you had permanent PMS."
Nora almost yelled, "That insufferable bitch! I'd like to mop my floor with her bleached-blond head!"
"Calm down," he urged, his finger daintily spreading the cool sunblock around her top straps. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
"No!"
"Are you a virgin?"
"No. Of… course not! And even if I were, it's none of your business. Just put the damn stuff on my back, mouth shut."
"Sony." His fingers paused. "Wait, take this off before I goo it up."
My cross, she realized. Her grandmother had given it to her eons ago at her confirmation. She rarely ever took the tiny golden cross and chain off. "You take it off, I can't reach, and I'm too lazy right now to sit up."
He carefully worked the tiny catch and slid it off. "I've been working for you over a year and never knew you were a Christian."
Nora thought about it. "In truth I guess I'm a pretty shitty Christian. My grandmother gave it to me and she was cool. I always wear it under my top."
Loren grinned behind her. "I like the dichotomy. The symbol of the man who died for our sins, and you keep it between your breasts, which are the symbols of female sexuality."
She rolled her eyes under closed lids. "Loren, my boobs aren't exactly pillows of carnality."
"Oh, that's right, I forgot. You did admit that you're a virgin."
Nora knew he was just pecking at her for fun, which normally she went along with. But now, here, the conversation filled her with dread. Throughout her adulthood, she hadn't even been "saving" herself for the right man. I couldn't GIVE it away… She didn't suppose she was downright ugly, and she was at least complex enough to realize that not all men went solely for Annabelle-types. Jesus, I can count my heavy makeout sessions on ONE hand. Then a worse possibility assaulted her.
Maybe Annabelle's right. Maybe I really am a great big case of permanent PMS. For one thing, what guy wants a woman whose career field revolves around worms? And for another, what guy wants a woman who's bitchy, unhappy, and cynical all the time?
But was that really her?
When she felt the cross slip out from between her breasts, she couldn't even remember if any man in her life had actually had his hands on them…
Now Loren was doing the backs of her thighs, multitasking the application of the lotion into a pretty good massage. Nora blanked her mind of all negativity… and felt better.
Her thoughts drifted to last night's dream: the crude sex-fantasy. It had been a gratifying dream, of course, until the end, when she'd wakened unfulfilled.
Just sex, she thought. She focused on the dream's details-the faceless night suitor with no identity. The rough, intent hands on her flesh, the urgent tongue that incited her nipples and her sex. That's what I need, she joked to herself, a man who's just a body.
A body for her.
She could almost fall back to sleep now. The Bimbo's right; Loren gives a killer massage… Now he was working her feet, firing nerves she didn't know she had.
"The feet are an erogenous zone, you know," he said.
"Your point being?"
"Clinical reflexology. As scientists, we should be intrigued by human reproductive response systems, and all their intricacies."
"Loren, please." Slippery fingers glided back and forth across her arches and insteps. "Just be quiet and keep doing it."
The sensations overwhelmed her; she felt woozy in some carnal way. Her buttocks clenched when his hands slid back up the calves, then thighs. She knew this was absurd: she was letting an innocent back rub become much more, she was stealing something from it. She tried to imagine Loren as the lover from her dream, but then some distant moral twinge disallowed it. More sensations flowed from her thighs to her groin, somehow squeezing her sex with a lewd, hot pressure, and in another mental recess, she imagined herself turning around in the sun and masturbating, or worse, brazenly inviting him into her.
The mental alarm bell clanged louder, and the fantasy dissolved with her realization of the truth. My teaching assistant is putting sunblock on me and I'm getting horny. Nora, congratulate yourself on a new low.
"That's enough, thanks," she blurted. She flipped back over quickly, assailed by an inexplicable guilt. At least if she were blushing, her sunburn would hide it. "I can do the front," she said.
"Damn, I was just starting to have fun."
Nora frowned. I'll bet. Probably musing over the Bimbo. She rubbed more lotion on her front shoulders and arms. The tingling between her legs mocked her; she struggled for a harmless subject. "So what's on the rest of today's agenda? Are you and Miss Priss going out for more worms?"
"You heard her," he said, lying back on his own towel. "She wants more underwater shots when the light is optimum, she said. And she wants to try to get some mating shots. Probably tomorrow afternoon."
Figures. 'Did you sex the samples you brought up?"
"Of course. All today's samples are back at our field lab. I've got them in some field aquariums." He chuckled. "And don't worry, I won't let Annabelle dupe me. Today she kept brushing against me-what a tease. I'll let her go on thinking I'm a virgin. Then she'll really want me, right? I mean it's true, all women want to crack a male virgin?"
She shook her head to herself. "How about if we stick to more professional subjects?"
"Come on, it's true, right?" he insisted. "Everybody wants to be somebody else's first. It's completely biogenic, it's got to be. In a sense, we're all still back in Neanderthal days. Part of our brains believe this."
"Remnant Darwinism in sexual function," she murmured, closing her eyes again and lying back. "Let's stick to scarlet bristleworms, huh?"
"I'd rather talk about sex," he thwarted. "It's fun. I'm going to play Annabelle's game, let her think what she wants, and execute my right to your remnant Darwinism in sexual function." He nearly giggled. "I'll wind up giving her the best balling of her shallow, insipid life!"
Nora looked over, shielding her eyes. "What's gotten into you? You never talked so-"
"Libidinously?"
"That's not quite the word I was looking for. 'Trashy's' more like it."
"Same thing. Why mince words? I don't know, it must be the environment, the air, the sun, just the four of us here in the cusp of nature's beauty. It all reaffirms my vitality as a sexual entity."
You sound like a horny redneck, Loren."
"I am a horny redneck, baby," he said, his giant Adam's apple bobbing. "And when I get back to the mainland, I'm gonna tear it up! Watch out, girls!"
Jesus, I've created a monster-nerd…
"And speaking of abandonment of modern morality," he said, "here's your cross back."
She'd forgotten about it-a symbol, perhaps, of her forgotten religion. She reconnected the chain and slipped the cross beneath the top of her one-piece. The tiny tidbit of metal felt cold between her breasts. "What about you?" she asked. "Are you spiritual at all? Do you have any religious beliefs?
"Sure," he answered at once. "I believe in scientific conclusionary phenomenalism."
Nora almost hacked. "What the hell is that?"
"Reverence to the acknowledgment of the contradiction that space and time are forms of intuition. Man's spiritual absolution can never be made manifest in our finite minds but in the genetics beyond the whole. Follow me?"
"No."
"What I mean is, salvation is a consistence of a judgment pursuant to other judgments, fitting in ultimately to a single absolute system."
Nora rubbed her eyes wearily. Never ask a genius what his religion is, she told herself.
"It's just a neo-Judeo-Christian attitude, that's all," he dismissed. "Quasi-existential dynamics-and if there really is a hell, you can bet that Sartre and Nietzsche are there. We'll only find out who's right when we die; until then, there's only faith."
Interesting gobbledygook, but Nora thought about that. If God exists, where will I stand in the end? she wondered with a chill. I'm not a bad person, but am I really a good person?
And if there isn't a God… does that really mean nothing matters? The ideas frustrated her, even as she unconsciously felt her cross beneath the swimsuit's fabric. She looked for any escape. "You're covering a lot of bases today," she pointed out. "Now you're talking heavy theology and five minutes ago, you were telling me about how you're going to connive Annabelle into thinking you're a virgin just to get laid."
"But lust is innate," he responded. "God forgives all."
Nora smirked. "I've had enough sex-talk and Godtalk." She got up and brushed sand off her skin. "Now I'm going to do something that really matters."
"What's that?"
"Catch lobsters."