Glasshouse - Charles Stross [5]
“That’s very common.” Her tone is guarded. “What changed it for you?”
I frown. Knowing it’s a common side effect of reintegration doesn’t help. “I’ve been an idiot. I need to take a backup as soon as I go home.”
“A backup?” Her eyes widen. “You’ve been walking around here wearing a sword and a dueling sash all evening, and you don’t have a backup?” Her voice rises to a squeak. “What are you trying to do?”
“Knowing you’ve got a backup blunts your edge. Anyway, I was angry with myself.” I stop frowning as I look at her. “But you can’t stay angry forever.”
More to the point, I’m suddenly feeling an awful, hollow sense of dread about the idea of rediscovering who I am, or who I used to be. What does it mean, to suddenly begin sensing other people’s emotions again only after you run someone through with a sword? Back in the dark ages it would have been a tragedy. Even here, dying isn’t something most people take lightly. For a horrible moment I feel the urge to rush out and find Gwyn and apologize to her—but that’s absurd, she won’t remember, she’ll be in the same headspace she was in before. She’d probably challenge me to another duel and, being in the same insensate rage, turn me into hamburger on the spot.
“I think I’m reconnecting,” I say slowly. “Do you know somewhere I could go that’s safer? I mean, less likely to attract the attentions of berserkers?”
“Hmm.” She looks at me critically. “If you lose the sword and the sash, you won’t look out of place round the block in one of the phase two recovery piazzas. I know a place that does a really good joesteak—how hungry are you feeling?”
IN the wake of the duel I have become hungry for food just as my appetite for violence has declined. Kay takes me to a charmingly rustic low-gee piazza of spun-diamond foam and bonsai redwoods, where quaint steam-powered robots roast succulent baby hams over charcoal grills. Kay and I chat and it becomes clear that she’s mightily intrigued to see me recovering visibly from the emotional aftereffects of memory surgery. I pump her for details of life among the ice ghouls, and she quizzes me about the dueling academies of the Invisible Republic. She has a quirky sense of humor and, toward the end of the meal, suggests that she knows a party where there’s fun to be had.
The party turns out to be a fairly laid-back floating orgy in one of the outpatient apartments. There are only about six people there when we arrive, mostly lying on the large circular bed, passing around a water pipe and masturbating each other tenderly. Kay leans me up against the wall just beside the entrance, kisses me, and does something electrifying to my perineum and testicles with three of her hands. Then she vanishes into the hygiene suite to use the assembler, leaving me panting. When she returns I almost don’t recognize her—her hair has turned blue, she’s lost two arms, and her skin has turned the color of milky coffee. But she walks right up to me and kisses me again and I recognize her by the taste of her mouth. I carry her to the bed and, after our first urgent fuck, we join the circle with the pipe—which is loaded with opium and an easily vaporized phosphodiesterase inhibitor—then explore each other’s bodies and those of our neighbors until we’re close to falling asleep.
I’m lying next to her, almost face-to-face, when she murmurs, “That was fun.”
“Fun,” I echo. “I needed—” My vision blurs. “Too long.”
“I come here regularly,” she offers. “You?”
“I haven’t—” I pause.
“What?”
“I can’t remember when I last had sex.”
She places one hand between my thighs. “Really?” She looks puzzled.
“I can’t.” I frown. “I must have forgotten it.”
“Forgotten? Truly?” She looks surprised. “Could you have had a bad relationship or something? Could that be why you had surgery?”
“No, I—” I stop before anything more slips out. The letter from my older self would have said if that was the case, I’m certain of that much. “It’s just gone. I don’t think