Part 11 (2/2)

Secondly he grasped, that Hep was still very worried about the phantom hacker he had spotted at Markham, whom Alexander had followed so arduously. Hep was clear about the origins of the mind behind the mystery hacker and was sure there was a Hadean counterpart to Alexander somewhere. The existence of a second computer attempting to divert the main stream from HIGO, (Alexander had learned from the meld that the entry node numbers tallied with Markham) was positive proof of a Hadean attempt to check out what was going on.

Hades, probably in some kind of alliance with Chronos, had managed to get a messenger from his own netherworld communications through a fissure in the barrier erected by the Olympians so long ago and it had made contact with the human internet. How long until they breached the Olympian Chronosphere itself? Alexander correctly a.s.sumed that Hades and Olympus were two systems working in parallel and so ought never to meet. What if Hades was planning his own link? Not only was this unimaginable, it would mean unknowable changes would be put in train to undermine the status quo of aeons between the two realms and the relations.h.i.+p of G.o.ds, mortals and the Underworld. Between the past and present. This would be a deliberate act of provocation, the consequences were so unpredictable that they could not be fathomed by even Hep's own powers of prophecy. Again Hep wondered if Zeus knew what he was doing.

Thea, herself struggled to find a pattern to so many different possibilities of action, that for once she was rendered unable to respond, a fact which Alexander found hard to understand and so thought he must have got it wrong.

Heps' first thoughts about a Hadean messenger, were of Core, his sister, called Persephone when she emerged from the underworld; one of the few messengers from Hades allowed to cross both ways. Hep and Thea had spent a good deal of time on L3 checking. Alexander was of the opinion they had discounted her since her movements were prescribed and well known, although Alexander was not sure they had put her entirely above suspicion. Only Hermes was able to pa.s.s as messenger between and he was above suspicion. The only other go-between was Pan whom they knew well. There were no other dwellers of the nether-world able to leave, unless it was Hades himself, who, to the best of their knowledge had only left once for unusually necessary medical attention. Hep concluded things were very serious if his uncle was out and about mixing the past with the present w.i.l.l.y-nilly. The effect on the living earth of his underworld powers, and the release of what was locked up there, were unknowable, and he shuddered at the thought. However this was unlikely, for if Hades was really out and about the balloon would have gone up already.

Such a departure from the orderly and rational arrangements about who controlled what, made after Zeus' skin of his teeth victory over the t.i.tans, was truly unimaginable. Both Hep and Thea spoke of this in ways which were far from Alexander's ability to follow anything but his own conjecture. Alexander thought he caught a sense of the inclusion of the mightiness of Zeus himself but could not be sure.

Given the complexity of a situation unfolding on so many levels of unseen activity, it was decided Alexander's actions were to be limited to one major task. It was agreed that Thea would stay on s.h.i.+ft with her brother, but would have immediate access to Hep and the others. Total secrecy was necessary, needing subtle use of the 'sphere. Alexander would be well employed to initially follow up the mortal manifestation of the curious interloper. If he could find out what he, she or it was up to they would know more about the state of activity of the opposition and what Alexander was to do next.

Not fully following the details of their multi-faceted communication, it seemed to Alexander that these were early skirmishes in a much larger struggle. The stakes of which held more that the rescue of the earth from delinquency of mortals. It was inconceivably, something even bigger, which his mind was quite unable to grasp, but which was obviously clear enough to Hep and Thea, of central importance to Hera and which began and ended with the supreme Zeus.

Hep left the room, his large frame bent with care. Thea, sat silently pale, suddenly tired, and for the first time in his life Alexander felt vulnerability in her. He suspected his ignorance of the overall situation was a strength, a freedom in innocence which she could never know. It may well lead him into unknown dangers, but he would never feel the weight of knowledge she felt at this moment and he was glad of it. He also knew with certainty that to know what she knew would crush him utterly.

Thea, aware of his thoughts as he was unaware of hers, came to him and they embraced silently. He felt her salt tears on his neck and loved her with all the pride and fierceness of a twin. He felt her struggle to break the embrace and holding him at him out at arm's length resumed her usual deliberate manner but spoke softly.

'Come on, there's no time for this sort of thing.' More softly still, in parenthesis, slipping out unchecked as if from another part of her mind she added, '....as we shared a womb so we will share....the rest.' He saw her eyes were full of pain. 'I will not forsake you however difficult it becomes......and you will at the end....let me....us all....go. Now, to our work. I must go to with Hep, I leave you with Marina though mortal, you can trust her as one of us. She has skills, some of which you have enjoyed, but she has others, and she knows her job. She does not know that she was chosen by Prometheus to guard you and he saw to her training. Like Penny, she has inklings but no knowledge. Tell her of the hacker and be guided by her intuition. Call me on the 'sphere at any time. Good luck Alexi mou.'

She kissed him lightly on the cheek, and left the room with a backward glance which made him want to run and hold her. She was after all his twin and at the bottom of them, they had shared everything.

Alone, through the vibrations of the net round his shoulders, Alexander felt that neither Hep nor Thea were still on the same time-line as himself. He was alone in the house with Marina. To test himself again he sought the door in his mind and found it already open. Beyond the threshold was an impenetrable swirling mist, it was as Thea had said; without a reason to enter there was nothing to link to, his mind saw nothing. He felt he was slowly getting the hang of this 'sphere business.

It seemed to him that its reality was not something outside himself but was conjured up from inside. He thought of those trick films, which start with an individual. Then panning upward take in the town, country and continent, then the whole earth. Then it goes beyond the nearer galaxies to finally stop at the outer rim of the universe: only to fall like a stone back to the individual on earth. Now magnifying the epidermis, the cells, the molecules and on into the single atoms and stopping only at the edge of the vastness which is the atomic inner-universe, comparable in complexity to the external cosmos.

The Chronosphere was different. It was not a physical ent.i.ty. It was fabricated from pure thought. With no equivalent in the external world, it was in its way as large as creation itself. Larger, if that were possible; for it was itself constantly recreating new thoughts at the speed of thought itself. Here was no time, no s.p.a.ce, and amazingly it was available, at least in theory, to any sentient being. It occurred to him, that if his thoughts were able to be launched beyond himself, they would be available for ever to any other being who wanted to link with them. Given that most of them were rubbish, he couldn't believe they would all be available, and was embarra.s.sed to consider they might be accessible to Thea or, the G.o.ds forbid, Lucina.

Suppose there were a kind of filter. A gate of some kind to prevent the 'sphere from getting clogged up with the inconsequential musings (which seemed to occupy large quant.i.ties of his waking life, especially those of s.e.xual reverie) excluding those even longer periods when he was quite unaware he was thinking at all. Perhaps the door image was too simple to work all the time. Maybe the gate he sought was not so literal, it was probably somewhere inside him, that would be consistent with the nature of the 'sphere if he had it rightly.

He would need to search within himself for a more satisfactory entry point. At this the net round his shoulders quivered infinitesimally. Most of the time he ignored Zeus' gift, saw it as a kind of aid, but it seemed now to be more than a simple antenna. It definitely responded to his thoughts. Perhaps it could not only radiate other thoughts and timelines inwards, but it was also a means of broadcasting his own thoughts outwards.

He tried another experiment. He had no idea where his sister now was, but if he was right, she had to be somewhere on the 'sphere. He realised he was concerned at the nature of her departure, feeling an acute sense of abandonment. Also numerous questions for her had risen in his mind. He wanted to understand more, but as usual she had swept him aside to get on with the job in hand. Although he believed this time she was as distressed to leave him as he was to see her go.

Could he at least communicate on L1 wherever she was? If not, how was he to communicate when he was fulfilling his task, how to summons her on her s.h.i.+ft watching over him? Was the communication process to be one way only, or could he take the initiative? He realised that up until now she had always appeared to him, not the other way round.

He summonsed the door icon, but all he saw beyond the sill was a vast emptiness, within which he could journey forever. He'd had enough of that for the time being and couldn't be sure Hep would be there to rescue him. He has a sudden idea, he would consult the net. He thought hard - The net gripped his shoulders lightly but firmly. He took it as an affirmative, he went on: 'Thea where are you? I want to talk to you, I want to know more of what you were saying to me just now. Where are you, answer me?

He slipped into L1 mode and through Zeus' net he somehow knew his thought was winging on a correct trajectory. Immediately he entered L1 he melded with Thea. The meld had the same timeless feel as the others he had experienced, but this time without her needing to be present. During the communication Marina came into the room and Alexander was able to acknowledge her without breaking off and found he was even able to say words of greeting without violation of the mind-meld. Part of his brain registered the fact that the communication with Thea was taking place outside time and was also occurring in parallel with Marina in real-time. The thought realm was indeed just that, another world in which within and without ceased to exist. It was no longer a question of either-or, but both.

While he spoke to Marina, the L1 conversation soared into L2. He recognised Thea's delight at the quickness of his learning and his use of the golden net. The answers to his questions about their relations.h.i.+p were less forthcoming. He felt a change in the way they communicated, a rare beauty in the mode of communication as twins experiencing a sharing of sameness and indivisibility. A combination of powers, exclusive of other people. He also sensed a second sense of an otherness within her, which he did not understand. His thoughts attempted to entwine with hers but although she allowed them to enter within the meld he could not engage with her fully. He felt not so much excluded as unready and somehow satisfied with that, he felt her disengage, but softly, lovingly. This was a new sensation and he felt sustained as he had with Nemmi but never until now in the same way, with Thea.

During the meld he was astonished to find he had been holding a quite different conversation with Marina. She was already working on a plan of action concerning the location of the code number of the entry node of the computer which was flicking its electronic tongue around GAIANET. While engaged in the conversation, Alexander surprised himself by the facility his mind was developing to concentrate on different things at the same time. He put this new facility down to the new use and understanding he had about the value of Zeus' net. Not only could he now communicate on the 'sphere at will, but he could engage with real-time in parallel and he was also holding a third conversation with himself about what was going on with Marina.

He realised that his thoughts were probably no more powerful than before, but that he was more aware of how they worked and was gaining control of them. For a start everything about his experiences of Marina was sharply revealed to him. From the moment he saw her when her sheer physicality had sent a flame of desire through his blood; to the utter disbelief in such perfection and the incomparable pleasure he felt when she entered the room.

Now he was placed in her care by Thea, and they were making plans. As part of his brain engaged with the conversation, another part was trying to make sense of the nature of the developing relations.h.i.+p with this strong woman. He wondered if he was taken only with the proficiency in her movements; the way she held her head, the articulation of her limbs. From her body there flowed more than a simple s.e.xual charge. She was somehow too desirable to have, too potent to touch. As much as he wanted to simply grab her and bury himself in her body, feel her thighs and calves twine in his, her firm, pointed b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their long nipples pressed against his chest, her fine tensile fingers grasping him in strong arms. Nevertheless, he felt unable to initiate any movement towards her. She was too much herself. Too completely within herself to be available to the naked l.u.s.t her mere presence arose in him.

She on her part, seemed to be testing him. He felt she was not so nakedly sensual with others. It was as if she let the electricity of her s.e.xual charge flow fully, without rein, in his presence. He had felt the seemingly limitless depth of her healing capacity as she had soothed his aching head. She had been the one in command and used her body to control his desires while also exciting them to fever pitch. Something had to be done to get into some kind of normal relations if the conversation they were having was not to be totally displaced by his ever rising desire. He wondered if a mind-meld were possible as a way of communicating these thoughts. Normal language seemed impossible. He considered simply jumping on her, since there was no way he could verbally communicate the turmoil she caused in him.

He failed to make a mind-meld. As he launched his thoughts towards her mind he could immediately tell that she had no inkling of the 'sphere and there was no connection possible. She was as impenetrable as any other mortal. What did surprise him was his own awareness of thought waves within her, and the notion that with effort he might be able to develop a crude form of thought-link with her, maybe. Having no way of handling this idea he did not even allow the thought to gel enough to make it conscious. He decided the only policy was to take the direct route as his concentration about what she was saying was about to fail him utterly. He would have to speak no matter the outcome. Like a guilty adolescent he spluttered, 'Marina, I'm sorry - but I can't continue with this, he struggled for words and blurted out before he had time to think of the meaning he was conveying. 'You'll have to turn something off, or else I'll explode!'

'Turn something off?' her large black eyes were amused. He was acutely embarra.s.sed.

'I - mean - I can't concentrate on what you are saying, you - I - you - I mean...'

'I what?' she smiled, and then, to his utter surprise she firmly held his head between her hands and kissed him hard at first so he could feel the pressure of her teeth, then more softly.

His knees turned to water His hands clasping her back felt the tension of her dorsal muscles under the thinness of her clothing, his hand slid to grasp a firm, b.u.t.tock as she entwined a powerful leg around his. She reciprocated, slipping her hand into his waistband a strong and knowing finger probing downwards. His already overloaded mind gave up the struggle to hold onto any thoughts as he entered into an explosion of sensuality, matched moment to moment by Marina's well-honed s.e.xual authority.

Hours and hours later, not only had she allowed him to explore all his own fantasies but introduced him to some new ones of which he had not even conceived. They continued until his need for inventiveness waned only through physical and mental exhaustion.

The evening, the night and most of the next day pa.s.sed in a welter of super-heated pa.s.sion, cool, detached, caressing; hard, quick, long slow penetrations, slow, impossibly anguished and multiple o.r.g.a.s.ms of mind and body that stretched all his senses and sent him spinning into s.p.a.ce for ever, where he slept floating as if free from gravity, waking to new sensations of warmth and wetness, of skin on velvet-skin, odours and tastes. .h.i.therto unsensed and untried.

If anyone had asked him what happened in those several hours, he would have replied in awe that he was pulled inside out by a sensual wonderment which spent every desire and drew from him all cravings, leaving him not only sated but reborn as a man complete. If he never had a woman again, it would be enough.

He had no idea what it did for Marina. Though his pleasure, had seemed to be hers too. She gave herself as a consummate teacher gives a bright pupil knowledge, sufficient an act in itself for the benefit of the other. Later, he lay in the bed watching her walk naked into the bathroom. Wet from the shower she came and straddled him in the bed. He was too spent to do anything with only glimmerings of a rigidity that would not turn into anything useful, and sucking the droplets of water from the tips of the cones of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he groaned deeply and then explained with a laugh that although the flesh was weak, the spirit was willing.

'Good,' she laughed jumping off him. 'Now you've got that out of your system...' She kissed his limp p.e.n.i.s, raising it a little and then letting it drop with a flourish. '....Maybe now we can do some different work!' Covering the curve of her b.u.t.tocks in one smooth movement of a silk dressing gown while on the move, she swept from the room and soon the fresh smell of coffee drew him downstairs.

'I love you,' his voice had an unintentional catch. She sat opposite him holding a coffee cup between her two hands. 'You reach places in me I didn't know I even had and you fill up all those aching gaps. I can't even remember what the world was like before you. It's like I was incomplete before, always searching for something that wasn't there. When I first saw you at Markham, I couldn't shake off your image, it was as if your presence had locked onto mine and was welded into me so there was as much of you inside me as outside. It was like a physical thing, a bit like the feeling of twins.h.i.+p I have with Thea, but much more physical.'

He gently unclasped the fingers of her left hand from the coffee cup. 'I have to touch you all the time, feel you there, skin to skin. I can feel desire welling up again.' He laughed, 'At least I can control it now.'

'Listen lover, it's twelve-thirty, that's eighteen hours of my life I've given you. Remember I'm an expert and you need to work with me on important matters and I can't be doing with your p.r.i.c.k forever getting in the way. So, let's get this straight. Let's not get into love. It probably won't work with us. You don't love me, you only think you do. You're suitably grateful for what I can do for you and I like that, not everyone is. That's fine, you're welcome, I liked doing it with you. Don't go getting the wrong impression though, I only do s.e.x like that with people I really like, and I like you. As it happens I also like your mother and your sister, not that I do s.e.x with them. 'she laughed at the idea, ' I owe them, and by now it's a sure fact that they owe me: so we're even. What I do for you I do of my own free will. You owe me nothing that you've not given me already, so less of the love stuff, take it for what it is. It's pleasure, fun, satisfactions of mind and body, I give satisfaction in all things, I do what I want and I do it very well. Anyway, I'm sure you noticed, I did lay it on a bit thick for you, so I'm not surprised if you fell so hard. Anyway I mean to have more of you'

'I think you've made a man of me,' his voice was low, meaning to protest his love, but he let go of her hand, knowing she was right, and he was not in love with her, not quite, not yet. He liked her - liked her a lot - enjoyed her frankness and lack of sentimentality. He, owed her for the last eighteen hours, would always owe her, whatever she said. And he looked forward to more.

'Enough! To work!' she said gaily. 'While you've been getting your testosterone sorted out my spies have been hard at it.'

'Spies! What spies?'

He had spent enough time being surprised about the happenings in the looking-gla.s.s world he was now inhabiting and was now there was even more new knowledge. Part of him knew that this was to be the norm for the foreseeable future. He noted her raised eyebrow at his response, and was glad she let it go. He was tired of expostulating at each new surprise and a.s.sumed correctly she would prefer to treat with him as a man of understanding and involvement as an equal.

'Go on,' he said. 'Sorry'.

She smiled knowingly. 'My spies, have been hard at work. They've been checking on the computer numbers Thea got you to find out about. She's afraid there is a hacker working to get into GAIANET and it's my job at security to find him or her and deal with them. She was very particular that it was you who were to make any contact with the person concerned, I was to get you there and after that I'm to keep a weather eye out for you but you're to go in alone. I won't say I'm not curious why she wants a greenhorn (Alexander winced at the term) to be so up-front in what's my security operation, but you're part of the family and it's their Firm. So as the brother of a director and the son of the MD who am I to say anything?'

She laughed and pulled him to her and kissed him hard on the lips.

'We'll make a real man of you yet...G.o.d, what a future you've got in front of you. I'm going to eat up as much of you as I can while you're still soft enough to be mine. It won't last long, soon you'll not be available to the likes of me but then I'll be able to say I had you and formed you at least a little.' She let go of him, 'Seriously my lad, I'll be with you for as long as necessary, and I'll have my fill of what I can get. You will be glad of me for a while and I'll be happy for that. I don't know why but I want you to be able to say you never wanted or needed any other person, male or female, beyond me. Perhaps there's room for love somewhere, later perhaps. We'll see.'

He thought it best to say nothing and was glad there was a possible future with her. Today it was enough he felt that with her he had no need to try and be anything other than what he was and he could rely on her. For the first time since the encounter with Lucina, for the first time in his life, Lucina or no, he did not have to pretend or disguise anything about himself. He could be weak, strong, confused, childish, foolish, clever - anything he needed or wanted to be with her - and would be accepted and understood. If in return she wanted to eat him alive, he would offer himself to her. He could not imagine ever being without her, let alone leave her behind him, used up by him, she could never be just someone pa.s.sed by in the maelstrom of life to merely be recalled with pleasure or regret.

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