Bodies of Light by Lisabet Sarai Page A

focused her attention on it, she could see planets orbiting the star, at least half a dozen of them.
    Where was she? And where were her lovers? In the aftermath of their shared bliss, she felt little anxiety. All would be well. She trusted that she’d find them.
    She returned her consideration to the nearest sun. Somehow it exerted a powerful attraction. All at once she was there, a mote of consciousness hovering within the solar system itself. She pushed aside the question of mechanism. She’d figure it out later.
    One of the planets swung close enough for her to catch glimpses of the surface through intermittent clouds. The familiar shapes of the continents tugged at her memory for a moment before the truth hit her. Earth. She was hanging in space, a being of pure mind, looking at her home planet. Meanwhile, her body lay abandoned in a tiny space ship billions of miles away.
    She had done it, without intending to. She had twisted space and travelled faster than light, just as Zed and Alyn had described. But how? And how was she going to get back to them, and to her body?
    She turned her gaze inwards, away from the vision of Earth. Intuition as well as training told her there were other dimensions. She probed and tested the fabric of space time, finding whorls and wrinkles. Which ones were passages to other parts of the universe, though? Was it possible to create the necessary conduits as needed?
    Christine brought up images of the equations she knew so intimately, the ones with which she had struggled for so many years with so little success. Immediately she saw transpositions and reductions she’d never noticed before. Perhaps material bodies blunted the intelligence as well as the senses. What was it Zed had told her? Take matter out of the equation and everything became simple.
    She flicked mentally at the symbols, tumbling them into a new arrangement. Amazement flooded her, followed by triumph. There it was—crystal clear and astonishingly easy, at least if you happened to be a being of energy.
    Imagine where you wanted to go, and you’d be there. That’s what the equations told her. Hard to believe and yet so sensible. Energy organised and animated matter. Consciousness added the ability to materialise objects—that was the secret behind Zed’s and Alyn’s physical bodies. An act of deliberate imagination was an act of creation, for pure intelligence. There was no movement, actually. Mathematically speaking, you were disassembling and reassembling the universe around you.
    Some part of her must have been thinking about Earth during that transcendent instant of union with Alyn and Zed. Without fully intending it, she had arrived at the threshold of her old home. To return to her body, she needed to summon a clear image of the Archimedes, and of her lovers.  
    Alyn. Zed. Her coupling with them as an energy being had been incredible, but she still craved their physical bodies. She remembered Alyn’s silky skin, his dancer’s build, his pale, smooth cock like a pillar of ivory. She added Zed to her mental picture, stocky and powerful, black curls tumbling over his brow, black eyes challenging her, bronzed erection jutting from his groin like some massive tree branch. Arousal clearly was more than physical. The more details she added, the more excited she became. Finally she pictured her vacant form, lying on the mess hall table, awaiting her return.
    There was no sensation of motion. She simply found herself on the Archimedes , hovering near the ceiling of the dining chamber and gazing down at her own body. She’s pretty , Christine thought. She has lovely chestnut hair .
    Then an irresistible force claimed her, sucking her downward. She slammed into her material body and blacked out.

Chapter Seven
     
     
     
    A siren rang in Christine’s ears. She tried to ignore it. She was so tired—she just wanted to sleep a bit longer. The persistent whine refused to go away. With a sigh, she forced her eyes open.
    The