Chapter 7

Soft, blue light played over Zuri’s bare stomach from the factotum’s cupped digits as she lay back on the grass. It was impossible to believe that a baby could exist in her flat, firm belly, but there it was, projected and magnified in a hologram above her navel: two tiny yolk sacs with their fetal poles. Twins.

I held Zuri’s hand, breathless in wonder, feeling her hand squeeze mine tightly. “That’s us,” she whispered.

“We’ve always been a fecund species,” our mother said, then blinked. “I don’t know how I know that. Would you like to see how they will look?”

“Yes!” Zuri’s eyes were wide.

“98% probability,” she said softly as the hologram changed to show the projected profiles of two young girls.

I knew that our children inherited only a tiny fraction of their DNA from us; the majority was managed by Ship. It was still impossible not to see ourselves in them.

They were both stunningly beautiful. Zuri’s fingertips extended, touching the projected images gently as they rotated above her belly.

Both girls shared the full eyebrows and lips of their female line, together with Mother’s and Zuri’s high cheekbones and regal bearing. But one had a light olive complexion, the other darker.

“She’s Ainuid.” Mother pointed at the first. Dark, deep-set eyes and a slim nose in a perfect, oval face. “From northern Japan. Almost extinct on Old Sol. Now...” she paused, correcting herself. “Now almost certainly extinct.”

“And her?” I pointed at the second. Curlier hair, darker skin. The projection was so detailed that I could see that one dark eyebrow was slightly straighter than the other, rising above the outside corner of her left eye like a gull’s wing in flight.

“Indid. One of Earth’s greatest and oldest cultures. And...” she looked up, surprised by the information Ship was providing her. “Hallstatt. Nothing to do with you,” she added quickly.

I felt a sudden, sharp sense of disappointment, as if Mother had robbed me of a birthright. I knew that I didn’t influence my children that way. But would it have been so wrong to allow me to believe it, just for a moment?

“Curious,” Mother said. “I assumed that Ship would concentrate on pure phenotypes before making blends. But there you are.”

Despite a faint sense of disapproval from our mother that lingered and grew over her first two trimesters, Zuri’s pregnancy didn’t stop our sexual exploration. Where a single blanket had been sufficient during our childhood, we now needed two. Mother became entirely used to us wandering off together during the day and catching up with her before evening. We didn’t let night, or the fact that she was sleeping a few meters from us, stop us either.

We discovered the tripwire sequence of sensations in each other that were most likely to explode us into orgasm, and how to remain balanced at the very edge of those borders, plucking and stroking them for hours. An entire erotic world history available from Ship encouraged us to explore positions. As we mated, we’d talk about our daughters and how we would raise them.

“I want to give you lots of babies,” Zuri said one evening, “It’s a great big world. I want to fill it with our children.”

It was possible. Zuri’s ovaries cradled thousands of perfect ova, just as our mother’s did. That store of life was only drawn from when she wanted to conceive; in principle, she could have hundreds of children. Mother thought that most homo liberas women probably stopped at four or five, spaced over a very long lifetime.

But our greatest discovery was one that we made between ourselves.

“Hold me...” Zuri gasped.

“I am,” I said, grinning down at her.

We had been fucking for what felt like hours, fluidly switching from position to position. Zuri responded best to anything that left her underneath me. The state that she was in now, on long legs folded in a lotus and held against my chest as I thrust into her from above, was one of her favorites.

“No, I mean really hold me...” she moaned.

Curious, I moved my hands to her slim upper arms, warm in the sunshine, and gripped hard, pressing her back against the grass so that she couldn’t move under me as I pistoned my hips faster, driving myself in and out of her hot, wet cunt.

“Oh, yes! Like that, like that, like...” Her neck strained as she tilted her head back and screamed loud enough to set birds into flight from the trees around us.

I felt her squeezing me extra-tight in a series of rippling contractions as her wetness gushed around me. Zuri’s wail of pleasure went on and on, finally trailing off into a series of soft, happy cries that faded into murmurs.

Slowing, I pulled back, letting her unfold as I felt my cock tick like the second hand on an ancient clock, very close to orgasm but not quite over the edge. I slid up beside her to stroke her hair.

Zuri’s eyelids fluttered, and she opened her eyes. “Why did you stop?”

I rolled close, kissing her my sister as she whimpered softly into my mouth.

“Wanted to be sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” she said blissfully. “I was kind of ... floating. That was multiples, I think.”

“Wow.” I gazed at her in loving wonder. “You really like it when I control you like that?”

Her body shuddered in pleasure at the word. “Yes.”

“So, like that from now on?”

Her eyes opened wide. “Yes! Well ... maybe not all the time. But a lot. Can we see how it goes?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” She rubbed her head up against me like a cat, then rolled me onto my back. “Now, let me take care of you...”

Second only to intercourse, Zuri had come to absolutely love oral sex. Receiving, of course, but especially giving. She had perfected the art of curling her body to wrap her thighs around my calf, rubbing herself against my ankle to bring herself to a series of orgasms while she licked and sucked on me. But it was the position we moved into now – me rising to stand against the solid trunk of a tree as she knelt worshipfully in front of me – that was her absolute favorite.