had a home on Tomales Bay and Skeets spent a summer in California when he was six.
The wind shifts slightly and Skeets corrects, sailing on a beam reach, a course which carries him, by degrees, farther out to sea. Skeets remembers his father’s warning about keeping in sight of land and jibes suddenly, coming about hard-a-lee. The boy leans back as the boom swings across, lashed by a stinging spray blowing over his bow. It is a dead beat to windward all the way to shore and Skeets prepares himself for a long hard sail.
Vera rides in a trance, unaware of the wind-tears streaking her cheeks or the splatter of sand against her legs. The warm powerful flanks rippling between her thighs and the steady tickling crotch-rubbing joy of galloping headlong down a deserted beach have dampened her panties and filled her head with wild whirling thoughts.
Spent, she reins in. Chi-Chi slows to a trot and walks stiff-legged for a few paces. Vera dismounts, weak-kneed and trembling. She leads her mount up the beach and ties her to a splintered piling. Vera wonders if she is going to be sick. All this summer new emotions have troubled her body like seismic tremors. At night she can’t sleep; during the day she feels frequently dizzy. Only long reckless rides on Chi-Chi seem to satisfy her yearning. Or almost, for the fire still burns, the itch continues to prod.
Vera unbuttons her cotton dress and steps lightly out of her entangling underclothes. The wind caresses her burgeoning body and makes her nipples pucker. She runs her hand down across her tummy and the furz of maiden floss, cupping her sex, which hungers like the mouth of a raging vacuum cleaner. She wishes she could hose-up the entire world: beach, sea, sky, and stars. She would be like that storybook Chinaman who swallowed the ocean, filled to the bursting point with all the unbearable beauty of a summer morning.
Vera heads for the water, a swim in the Pacific to cool her torrid flesh. The sea feels fresh as an Alpine stream; the girl runs splashing across the foam and dives beneath the curl of a breaking wave. She swims straight out, ignoring a weathered sign nailed to a submerged piling. It is in English, a language Vera didn’t learn until she was over thirty, but the reincarnated adolescent reads it naturally and without effort:
DANGEROUS CURRENT … NO SWIMMING .
The Amco-pak has all of its arms working at once. While several pair are busy with the cranial container—removing the face plate, disconnecting media hookups, and attaching an emergency oxygen hose—another set probes within the Mark X’s own interior, readying the reserve cockpit for its new occupant. This vestigial operation center remains from the time, centuries before, when the Amco-pak was first developed as an ambulatory vehicle for cerebromorphs. The introduction of the portable Compacturon DT9 computer emancipated the maintenance van but the original cockpit was retained for emergency operations.
Actual cranial transfer is the simplest part of any decantation. A long rubber-and-steel duct extends from the side of the Amco-pak like a mechanical ovipositor. Electromagnets maneuver the cranial container onto internal conveyor rails and the resident rides smoothly inside where final linkage is completed automatically. While a spectrographic medical analyzer (standard equipment on the Amco-pak) probes for possible cell damage, the Mark X attempts communicator contact.
B-0489 … B-0489 … attention … all lines are open … answer immediately if you receive my signal… B-0489 … attention … attention …
Obu Itubi hears the mechanical voice and relaxes. There had been panic and doubt during those moments of isolation when all his circuits were disconnected, but he is safe now. Everything is working perfectly. He is ready for the final phase. It is time to communicate.
Attention, Amco-pak; I am receiving your signal clearly. Please let me thank you for being so prompt.
Over-all time from
The wind shifts slightly and Skeets corrects, sailing on a beam reach, a course which carries him, by degrees, farther out to sea. Skeets remembers his father’s warning about keeping in sight of land and jibes suddenly, coming about hard-a-lee. The boy leans back as the boom swings across, lashed by a stinging spray blowing over his bow. It is a dead beat to windward all the way to shore and Skeets prepares himself for a long hard sail.
Vera rides in a trance, unaware of the wind-tears streaking her cheeks or the splatter of sand against her legs. The warm powerful flanks rippling between her thighs and the steady tickling crotch-rubbing joy of galloping headlong down a deserted beach have dampened her panties and filled her head with wild whirling thoughts.
Spent, she reins in. Chi-Chi slows to a trot and walks stiff-legged for a few paces. Vera dismounts, weak-kneed and trembling. She leads her mount up the beach and ties her to a splintered piling. Vera wonders if she is going to be sick. All this summer new emotions have troubled her body like seismic tremors. At night she can’t sleep; during the day she feels frequently dizzy. Only long reckless rides on Chi-Chi seem to satisfy her yearning. Or almost, for the fire still burns, the itch continues to prod.
Vera unbuttons her cotton dress and steps lightly out of her entangling underclothes. The wind caresses her burgeoning body and makes her nipples pucker. She runs her hand down across her tummy and the furz of maiden floss, cupping her sex, which hungers like the mouth of a raging vacuum cleaner. She wishes she could hose-up the entire world: beach, sea, sky, and stars. She would be like that storybook Chinaman who swallowed the ocean, filled to the bursting point with all the unbearable beauty of a summer morning.
Vera heads for the water, a swim in the Pacific to cool her torrid flesh. The sea feels fresh as an Alpine stream; the girl runs splashing across the foam and dives beneath the curl of a breaking wave. She swims straight out, ignoring a weathered sign nailed to a submerged piling. It is in English, a language Vera didn’t learn until she was over thirty, but the reincarnated adolescent reads it naturally and without effort:
DANGEROUS CURRENT … NO SWIMMING .
The Amco-pak has all of its arms working at once. While several pair are busy with the cranial container—removing the face plate, disconnecting media hookups, and attaching an emergency oxygen hose—another set probes within the Mark X’s own interior, readying the reserve cockpit for its new occupant. This vestigial operation center remains from the time, centuries before, when the Amco-pak was first developed as an ambulatory vehicle for cerebromorphs. The introduction of the portable Compacturon DT9 computer emancipated the maintenance van but the original cockpit was retained for emergency operations.
Actual cranial transfer is the simplest part of any decantation. A long rubber-and-steel duct extends from the side of the Amco-pak like a mechanical ovipositor. Electromagnets maneuver the cranial container onto internal conveyor rails and the resident rides smoothly inside where final linkage is completed automatically. While a spectrographic medical analyzer (standard equipment on the Amco-pak) probes for possible cell damage, the Mark X attempts communicator contact.
B-0489 … B-0489 … attention … all lines are open … answer immediately if you receive my signal… B-0489 … attention … attention …
Obu Itubi hears the mechanical voice and relaxes. There had been panic and doubt during those moments of isolation when all his circuits were disconnected, but he is safe now. Everything is working perfectly. He is ready for the final phase. It is time to communicate.
Attention, Amco-pak; I am receiving your signal clearly. Please let me thank you for being so prompt.
Over-all time from
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