The Transmigration of Souls Read Free Page B

confront her lover with the excitement of faux elimination, on demand. Big canisters of concentrated chemicals down where the intestines ought to be. So she can manufacture lubricants and sweats, filled with pheromones to excite Roddie’s senses, enhance his every pleasure...
    She snapped the hull shut and, once again, Amaterasu was a sleeping girl.
    o0o
    The shower room, brightly lit, was all shiny chrome, white porcelain, black tiles, Astrid Kincaid getting undressed, not quite oblivious to its stark, utilitarian symmetry. Its beauty. Yes. I’d call it that. Standing in the middle of the floor, dropping her clothes in an untidy pile while the shower hissed behind its frosted glass door, stray bits of steam starting to roll up by the ceiling.
    The image in the mirror.
    A tan, Caucasian woman, mature woman of indeterminate age. Not young, you understand. But not old. Tall. Robust. Limbs lined with smooth muscle. Belly flat above neatly outlined pelvic bones, padded enough to hide the hardness there. Breasts large enough to be... womanly? Hair of spun gold, shining like metal in the sun. Eyes of molten silver.
    Is that my face? I can’t remember.
    A pretty face, yes. But strong. A soldier’s face, perhaps.
     Suddenly conscious, just then, of the faint tang of her own sweat. Hardly there at all, but reminding you of other sweaty days, sweaty days and nights that seemed to go on and on, ‘til you thought you’d have to die to escape. She got into the shower, turning her back to the spray, feeling the water sluice down over her skin, rushing over her shoulders, little waterfalls forming, water streaming off the ends of her nipples.
    Bar of soap, soft in her hand, pale violet soap with a smell of lilacs, wet soap going round and round between her hands, soap foaming up white, slick foam rubbed on her skin. Rubbed in her armpits, around the base of her neck, where sweat would accumulate. Soft, slick soap foam rubbed on her belly and down between her legs, wet hair matting suddenly, golden hair like metal wire growing spiky and strange.
    Dull thought: Playing with the robot should have excited me. Didn’t. Hands motionless down between her legs, fingers... not even tempted?
    No.
    I haven’t felt like it in a long damned time.
    Tired. I’m tired.
    Tired for years. Maybe even decades.
    A soft sigh, hands resuming their washing, then turning round and round under the showerhead, clean water carrying away the foam, not carrying away the sense of... exhaustion? No. Impossible for me to be tired. Little symbiotes in your blood, inside your cells, symbiotes substituted for organelles.
    Tipping her head back under the shower now, letting the water run through her hair, down over he face, closing her eyes, feeling it run over her lips. Not lost. Nobody’s ever lost anymore.
    Image of a face. Of many faces. Lost.
    Faces falling down through the all the unending universes, down to the bedrock of Platonic Reality and beyond. Bitter smile. We understand so much now. And so little.
    Hard pang of despair. Oh, God damn you, Dale Millikan. Why did you have to go and die on me? Image of his face, aging face, face from the days before immortality engulfed us all. Crisp gray hair. A hint of jowl line. Neutral grayish brown eyes. Eyes full of... full of telling. Of...
    Image of Dale... snap ... reduced to a little pile of clean white bones. Is that what happened? Is it? That old, old panic, that old sorrow, welling right up, then... You don’t know . You weren’t there . What if he didn’t die? What if he’s out there, somewhere, wandering, lost, waiting for you?
    That pathetic upwelling of hope.
    Ridiculous hope.
    Dead and gone. You know that. Dead and gone, like all the others. What’s this hard lump in your throat then, Astrid Kincaid?
    o0o
    Then, sitting in the living room, hot mug of black coffee cradled in her hands, settled into her old red favorite chair beside the big, open bay window, window facing the sea. Pale gray ocean out