Chapter 16: Earth - 3753 C.E.

"What I don't really understand," said Jorgen, "is why you ever got married to Paul."

"It's because I love him," Beatrice replied. "Is that so difficult to understand?"

"Well, if you love him," Jorgen persisted, "why do you make love to me so often and so passionately?"

"Because I'm a passionate woman," said Beatrice as she leaned over Jorgen's bed where they lay and grasped his penis which was one part of his body thankfully undamaged by shrapnel but still enhanced by surgery.

"I can see that," said Jorgen. "I've never met a woman before as passionate as you."

His last word was prolonged by the spasm that shuddered through his body as Beatrice's tongue slobbered upwards from the shaft of his penis to the glans. Her lips squeezed gently on the tip as it glistened with a sticky gauze of semen.

"You're cheating on Paul," said Jorgen. "Isn't that a contradiction of your assertion that you love him? Or is he one of those who doesn't mind?"

"He'd mind all right," said Beatrice as she rubbed the tip of her forefinger on the glans. "That's why I don't tell him."

"It's deceitful," said Jorgen. "He's your husband. You should be faithful to him."

Beatrice was bored with this conversation. She'd heard this and so many variants of it from the stream of lovers she'd had ever since she and Paul got married. She couldn't understand what the problem was. Her husband was happy to have regular sex with her. She was happy to have sex with him and with other people. Paul wouldn't be happy if he knew the extent of Beatrice's sexual escapades, especially since the time they'd arrived on the Moon and then travelled to Earth where there were significantly more opportunities for sexual encounters. If the purpose of morality was to maximise the scope of human happiness, wasn't she working at it as hard as anyone? And hadn't she more than fulfilled her moral mission given that she'd made so many other people happy?

As she was doing now in the company of a man who as nearly resembled her as a human could. The fact that his body was as much machine as biological was bound to fascinate someone like Beatrice who wasn't even partly biological. He was stronger, faster and had more stamina than most humans, even allowing for the advances in medicine and surgery that had prolonged lives and enhanced bodies far beyond genetically prescribed limits. His senses, particularly those of sight and sound, were acute though not quite as much so as Beatrice's. And his ability to make love also exceeded that of most humans as Jorgen was now demonstrating. He was deep inside her and his pelvic thrusts were hard, fast and thoroughly agreeable. Beatrice gripped his scarred metal and plastic back and reciprocated his thrusts with her own. She gave vent to cries of passion, not because she needed to (as she had total control over herself) but because she knew these would further inflame her lover's passion.

Beatrice was a frequent visitor to Jorgen's bedroom and was aware that Grace knew about their relationship. Jorgen may even have told her. It was in Beatrice's interests, of course, to also seduce Grace and thereby compromise any suspicions she might have concerning Paul's beautiful wife, but the guard was clearly not interested. Beatrice was sufficiently versed in human sexual behaviour to identify those tempted by her charms and those who weren't. It wasn't surprising that more men than women were attracted to her, but Grace wasn't even interested in sexual relationships with men. Beatrice understood that there was a spectrum of sexual desire which extended from perpetual lust to total indifference, but she still thought it was a shame. She'd love to push her fingers deep between Grace's muscled thighs. Beatrice was equally attracted to men and women however much or little it was reciprocated. It was a design feature that could bring her as much distress as it did delight.

"And why Paul?" Jorgen wondered when he and Beatrice slumped face up back on the bed with his torso streaked with perspiration. "I can't see how you could possibly love a man like him. Don't get me wrong. I understand that people are attracted to the most peculiar things..."

"What kind of things are people attracted to?" Beatrice asked teasingly.

"Don't change the subject. You know just as well as I do. Some of these activities mightn't even be legal. But what I wonder is what you see in Paul. He's not especially good looking. He's only averagely intelligent and his range of interests is so narrow that his conversation ranks amongst the most boring I've ever had to eavesdrop. Is it only because he's on a secret mission that you've taken to him?"

"Secret mission?" asked Beatrice, who didn't like the turn in Jorgen's speculation. "What do you know about a secret mission?"

"We haven't been fully briefed, but there have been hints," Jorgen admitted. "And of course there are rumours."

"Hints? Rumours? Tell me more."

"You don't have to do too much thinking, sweetie," said Jorgen. "Paul Morris of Godwin has been associated with the Anomaly for years. And there are precious few anarchists from the barren wastes of the Kuiper Belt who've been authorised to visit Earth. He doesn't have much wealth, his specialities in database archaeology would never qualify him, and his progress across the Solar System has been accompanied by an extraordinary trail of assassination attempts..."

"Speculation like that is unavoidable," said Beatrice. "But what is the secret mission?"

"I don't know," said Jorgen. "There are rumours about the Interplanetary Union chartering a gigantic space ship to fly beyond the Oort Cloud. There's a rumour that the source of the Anomaly was originally on Earth given that this Paul Morris established that it was first identified one and a half thousand years ago. There is a rumour, which I find truly incredible, that Paul Morris is in some way the mastermind behind the Anomaly. No one really knows. Why should I know any more than that?"

Beatrice relaxed. Jorgen didn't really know anything. "Do you think I married Paul because of this secret mission?" she asked.

"It doesn't seem too unlikely."

"What's my role in the mission then? Is it to seduce Paul's bodyguards and fuck them here to paradise? Is it to weasel dark secrets out of Paul? To become one with the mastermind behind the Anomaly? It all seems ludicrous to me."

"You must admit though," said Jorgen who reclined on the mattress with his cock drooping temptingly over his thigh, "the rumours don't sound much more bizarre than the notion that you somehow fell in love with a man like Paul and married him after a whirlwind romance on Ecstasy."

"That as may be," said Beatrice who grasped Jorgen's penis in readiness for a further bout of lovemaking. "But it's all the truth there is."

Beatrice was grateful for the protection provided by Jorgen and Grace, but from her point of view these and all the other bodyguards who'd shadowed Paul and her on the journey from the Ecstasy colony onwards were at best a distraction from her central task of keeping Paul safe and to keep secure her passage aboard the Space Ship Intrepid. If the man should fall victim to an assassination attempt, it would be regrettable for Paul and Beatrice might even feel quite sad, but the more serious result would be the derailment of Proxima Centauri's mission to the Anomaly. There were other options, of course, but she'd been informed that her role in the campaign was currently the most promising. What would Paul think if he knew that he was travelling beyond the Solar System on the whim of a civilisation from more than four light years distant that he didn't know even existed?

Beatrice was able to lower her level of alert since she and Paul arrived in Earth orbit. There were many Proxima Centauri operatives scattered about Earth and its satellite: far more than in the more recently colonised settlements in the outer Solar System. Very few such operatives were androids, of course. Beatrice belonged to a very elite set. Most operatives didn't resemble humans in any shape or form at all. Their appearance was more likely to be that of street furniture, household robots or industrial machinery. It was much easier to maintain invisibility in such a form than in the intricate structure of a human being, especially when you were subjected to so many intrusive body scans in the name of security. Beatrice knew where these operatives were stationed, but even a bodyguard like Jorgen with his heightened senses wasn't capable of identifying an operative disguised as a waste dispenser, a light fitting or a home computer. With such additional support, Beatrice was able to relax but she was also aware that unknown threats still existed.

Beatrice and her husband had blundered into yet another place on Earth that Paul now regretted having decided to visit. On the map, Antarctica seemed an attractive proposition. It was empty, white and beautiful. It was also so cold that Paul might as well be in the orbit of the outer planets. Even though the air outside the Polar Station was breathable, it was so bitterly cold and windy that even a moment's exposure was enough to kill a man who wasn't properly protected. So Paul and Beatrice were now lounging inside a hotel which afforded them a glorious view of the midnight sun over an Antarctic ice-scape that was often obscured by snowstorms.

"Don't you ever open the blinds?" wondered Beatrice when she wandered back to the hotel room where Paul was studying an online book about a twenty-second century television science fiction program.

"Blinds?" Paul asked. He pressed the button to open them and accidentally opened the triple-glazed windows that let in a sudden gust of icy air that even in midsummer was dramatically below zero. He hurriedly found the button to close the window while he shivered from the intense cold and watched as the blinds slowly slid open. It was watery sunlight of almost the same intensity at whatever hour of the day or night. There was a peculiarity about time here, of course, which had also attracted Paul to the South Pole and that was that the hotel was so positioned that it was simultaneously the same hour on every degree of longitude. By convention the day was measured using an archaic measurement called GMT which time zone wasn't even adhered to in Greenwich.