Baby Makes Four
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 2
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 2 - The United States settled the Project 1950s as a lifeboat in case of a nuclear war. The founders picked an alternate time line where humanity died out with the Mt. Toba eruption of 75,000 BC. It is currently some 18,000 BCE, and the height of one of the periodic ice ages. Wendy van Veldt is an engineer-in-training. Her plans for the next few years are to start her career, and live happily ever after with her husband and her wife. Things don't quite work out that way.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Romantic Fiction Science Fiction Pregnancy
Amy’s part of the bed was still empty when I got up. Her coat wasn’t in the closet, and I couldn’t find her in the apartment. I called the front desk again.
“Nobody’s come in since 1:30 last night,” the woman said. “I’m sorry.”
“What could have happened to her? This is so unlike her.”
“Have you checked where she works?”
“They don’t open for another hour.”
“I’d call them anyway. The snow came down really hard just after midnight, and maybe she stayed at work rather than brave the weather.”
I found myself nodding. Amy was sensible that way. “I’ll do that.”
When I did, they told me she’d left on time. “She had the grill cleaned and left at 11:30,” the woman said. “We both got on the bus together, and she was still on it when I got off.”
I didn’t have any choice: I called the police. This isn’t something any of us enjoy doing. The police enforce the law, but they also enforce ‘good order’, which is whatever they decide it is. In practice, it meant that they had certain ideas about the way things should be, and whatever didn’t conform to that view, such as three people married to each other, was wrong. The police in Center generally didn’t care for people from Three Valleys, which has always struck me as kind of peculiar and shortsighted.
We are very law-abiding citizens. There are a lot of very close, very tight friendships in Three Valleys; you get that way with our social activities. This means people know what each other is doing, and someone doing something illegal is either hidden so well it never comes out, or people tell the cops. What drives a lot of the police in Center nuts is that some things that they ‘know’ is wrong is perfectly acceptable in Three Valleys, social sex being the most notable. And the police in Three Valleys don’t do anything about it. Of course, to them, this isn’t a disruption of the social order, it’s what’s normal.
The police sent two detectives, a man and a woman, and I met them in the lobby.
“Mrs. Van Veldt?” the woman asked.
I nodded. “Come on upstairs. I suppose you’ll want to see the apartment and see if there’s something that’ll help you find Amy.” I’d already told the manager of the complex, and he’d told me the police would want to do that.
They kept turning their heads, but there wasn’t anything to see. Fortunately, there wasn’t anyone running around naked in the halls. I’m sure the police knew all about the place, but knowing about it and seeing it are two different things.
Detective Campbell’s eyes narrowed slightly when he saw the apartment. Amy cooks, I clean the house, and we’d collaborated on how we’d decorated the place. Our living room was modest, with a couch, a couple of chairs, a bookshelf holding my professional books, some mementos, and the TV and stereo in the corner. Detective Campbell stared at our wedding pictures. I don’t think he expected to see two women in bridal gowns and one man in a tuxedo.
Chris introduced himself and sat on the arm of my chair while the detectives sat on the couch.
“I’m Detective Perrin,” the woman said, “and this is Detective Campbell.” She was a willowy brunette wearing a very light pink turtleneck sweater and black slacks. He was wearing heavy corduroy pants and a heavy wool shirt. She looked chipper; she looked dour.
“What makes you think something happened to your ... friend?” Detective Perrin asked.
“It’s not like Amy,” I said. “The restaurant closes at 10:30. They have an hour of clean-up and inventory for the next day, and Amy cleans the grill while that’s going on. She and another woman leave at 11:30—the bus waits for them to come out—and she’s usually home just after midnight. I waited up until nearly 1:00, and she didn’t show up.”
“Did you call the restaurant?” Detective Campbell asked. “There was a particularly heavy snow last night, and she could have stayed over.”
I nodded. “I talked to the woman who rides the bus with her. She said they both left on time. Amy told me the girl gets off one stop before hers. I checked the front desk. The woman there said the last people to come in did so at 1:30, and that was a couple. That’s when I called you.”
“What’s her relation to you?” Detective Campbell asked Chris.
“She’s my wife.”
He looked at me, but before he could say anything, Detective Perrin put her hand on his arm. “We’ll need a description,” she finally said. “A picture would help.”
Chris got them one, and after giving them the phone number of the restaurant, I saw them to the door. They went right to the elevators, looking neither to the left nor the right. A family was standing there wearing robes. The kids were carrying floating toys; clearly they were all headed to the pool, and I was glad they were following the building’s rules.
“I’m not sure that was a good idea,” Chris said, “but what else could we do?”
I looked at our wedding photos. That had been such a happy day. Our anniversary was coming up in a couple of months, and I wanted to recreate the love and joy of that afternoon.
“It’s hard enough with the people from Three Valleys,” I said. “How much harder is it for someone from the outside?”
“Think they’ll find Amy?”
“God, I hope so. This is so unlike her.”
Before I could say more, the phone rang. I was closest, so I picked it up.
“Mrs. Van Veldt? This is Detective Perrin. I was wondering if you would mind answering a few more questions.”
“If it’ll help find Amy, sure.”
“There’s a coffee shop here in the lobby. I was wondering if we could meet there in, say, five minutes?”
“Do you want me to bring my husband?” Somehow I sensed that she didn’t, and her next words confirmed that.
“No, this would be just girl-to-girl.”
“Five minutes, sure. I’ll be right down.”
I told Chris, then grabbed my purse and went down. I had a feeling what was coming, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
“I have a personal question,” Detective Perrin said. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.”
I waited, pretty sure what was coming.
“What’s her real relationship to you? I saw the wedding pictures.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“She and I are married to each other, as well as to Chris.”
She frowned slightly at that. “Isn’t that a bit ... isn’t that unusual?”
“It works for us. Believe me, we didn’t look to do this; it just happened.”
“But how do you make it work? Don’t you have, oh, I don’t know, jealousy issues?”
“I don’t think we’ve had one bit of jealousy. A lot of that gets drilled out of you in Three Valleys.”
“What about ... if you don’t mind me asking, but what about, you know, sex? How does ... how do you work that out? I mean, two girls, but only one guy.” Her face was a bright red, and I could see why. This was not a normal conversation for someone from Center.
“We make it work. Amy and I make love to each other, as well as with Chris.”
“But how...?”
“Is this really a germane question?” I asked, “or is it just the woman in you being curious.”
She blushed even harder. “Uh, the latter I guess.”
“We make it work,” I repeated. “That’s all I can say.”
“But you and Amy, isn’t that, well, unnatural?”
I shrugged. “Some might consider it so, but we don’t. It’s different than with a man, and with Amy there’s a lot more emotion ... and kissing.” I smiled fondly. “Amy is a terrific kisser.”
If anything, her blush deepened. “How, uh, how do two women ... you know...”
“How do we make love?” I smiled and shook my head. “We do. I don’t know how other women do it, but with Amy and me there’s a lot of kissing, caressing, and touching, and we take our time.”
She stared at the floor. Even the tips of her ears were red. Gradually, after several deep breaths, the colors began to fade. “You know, bigamy is against the law. Somebody might make something of that.”
“It isn’t where we come from. It’s unusual, but as long as everyone’s happy and no one gets hurt, people accept it.”
She sighed. “That’s right. You live in this complex, and I guess the rules are different for you. They’re not supposed to be.”
“Keep in mind that we’ve been married for almost four years, and I think we’re more in love now than the day we got married.”
“This is ... this is strange, that’s all.”
“Do you think your bosses will have a problem with it?”
Detective Perrin shrugged. “I don’t know. They might. There are some who are very rigid in their outlook.”
I closed my eyes. “I hope not,” I said quietly. “I just want Amy back. I want to know what happened to her, and who did this.”
She left after a couple of perfunctory questions, and I had this bad feeling about what was going to happen. Chris agreed with me when I told him. “Think they’ll come after us?”
“It’s possible.” I looked at our wedding pictures, Amy in her full gown with the train, and me in my ball gown, both of us looking scared and happy at the same time. “I hope not.”
Chris stared at the same pictures. “It’ll probably come down to us. If they won’t look for her, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
“You can’t take the time off,” I said, “but I don’t have to be anywhere until classes start again.”
“You’re going to look for her yourself?”
I nodded. “I have to. I’m not sure the police will. We’re ‘unnatural’, and you know what they would think of us.”
“You mean what they probably already think of us.”
“Yeah, that too.”
I called the restaurant, talked to the woman Amy rode home with, and got the number of the bus they took. I looked up the schedule on the display in the lobby, and when it was time for one of its earlier rounds, I got all bundled up against the cold and went out to meet it. Not for the first time I wished we were living back in Three Valleys where it was warm.
There was a fabric-covered tube that extended from the door of the building to the bus stop. It was a temporary structure, put up at the beginning of autumn, and taken down in the spring. Today the snow was piled halfway up the west side of it. The cement of the walkway was freezing over. There were no disturbances in the snow, including the sidewalks on either side of the bus stop, though about halfway down the tube there was a metal piece like a bracket that was part of the structure that extended across the sidewalk. The cement wasn’t frozen on either side of the bracket, something I thought peculiar. If there had been someone here, they either got back on the bus, walked down the street, or walked into the building.
The bus driver wasn’t any help. “Yeah, she got off at this stop. I remember her because she’s pretty nice.”
“Well, her husband said she didn’t come home last night, and he’s worried.”
“Shouldn’t the cops be checking into this?”
“He’s contacted them. I couldn’t sit there doing nothing, so I thought I’d ask around a little.”
“Well, if it means anything, the tube is normally pretty well lit, but it was awfully dark. That seemed kind of funny.” He looked pointedly at his watch.
“Okay, thanks for your help. I should let you go. I know you have a route to finish.”
I waved, he waved, and he headed up the street. I had to wave my hand to get rid of the smell of cooking grease. Buses all used things like cooking oil for their power. It works in Center because the ground is relatively flat. I don’t know what they use in the towns in the hills.
“Nothing,” I told Chris when I got back to the apartment. “The driver said she got off at the bus stop, and that was it.” I described the rest of the scene.
“Did you check the snow? The wind hasn’t really been blowing, and it hasn’t snowed yet today.”
“Nothing. The snow was unmarked.”
He sighed. “What happened to her? This is so not like her.”
We didn’t feel like going to any parties, though we’d been invited. I covered Amy’s spice and put it in the refrigerator. I’d had experience with what she did, and it would only get stronger if I left it out. I fixed something to eat, and then we huddled on the couch and talked. We both missed her, and I think it showed.
The next couple of days just sort of slipped past. We got up, we puttered around, but we didn’t do much. On Sunday, after Church, we went swimming. A few people asked us about Amy, and we told them what we knew, which wasn’t much.
Chris had to work Monday, and I was in our apartment trying to read when the phone rang. It was Detective Perrin, and she had more questions.
“Do you want to come here?” I asked. “Or should we meet somewhere?”
“Why don’t you come downtown?”
“Sure, whatever.”
I had to wait in the cold for a good 20 minutes—the bus was late—and sat on the bus with the hot air blowing up my legs. I’d thought of wearing the jeans I wore in the field and test facility, but I didn’t want to appear too abnormal.
The two detectives met me in the lobby of the police station. They took me upstairs to their desks. I sat next to a coat tree—the coats were cold—and they started with questions about our marriage.
“We’ve been married for four years,” I said. “I know it looks unusual to you, but nobody minds where we come from.”
“But you’re related.”
“Amy and I are, but Chris isn’t. We all had the same legal father, but not the same biological one. Amy and I are half-sisters.” I gave them both a smile. “It isn’t incest. We checked.”
“It does look unusual,” Detective Campbell said. “I hope you realize that.”
“It’s not what you find in Center, no. And even if Amy and I are half-sisters, we can’t get each other pregnant. We thought about that before we went very far with this.”
“Aren’t you jealous of her?” Detective Perrin asked.
I shook my head. “Not at all.”
“But she has Chris when you might want him.”
“And I have her, and vice versa, when he might want either of us. We work it out, Detective. It gets complicated, but we work it out.”
That seemed to stump them. They went over what they had, which was the same things I knew. Amy had been on the bus, she had gotten off, and the driver had seen her walking up the tube. Then she’d vanished.
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