Watson, Ian - Novel 08 by The Gardens of Delight (v1.1)

over by
Loquela on to Sean’s lap . . .
                 Cicadas
chirred excitedly. Presently Sean found himself involved not only with Muthoni,
but Loquela too—and was that Jeremy’s hand? Somewhere Denise emitted a little
cry.
                 Squinting,
Sean saw a pair of toads hop up, croaking and creaking like old floorboards—a
couple of mobile leathery sporrans or cachesexes.
                 “Our
sexual juices attract them,” whispered Loquela. She licked his ear—a much used
ear by now, since its first initiation as a magpie’s tympanum. “Maybe toads are
obsessed with physical love—or will be—but with you and me,
                 Sean,”
she cooed, “it’s a way of speech, this, isn’t it? On the day when we ever do
conceive new children, frogs not toads will sing an anthem at our wedding.
Their strings of spawn in water stand for the creative sperm. Ke-ke-kexx,” she
teased the goggling, halted batrachians.
                 The
party rolled apart after a while and sat up, grinning at each other.
                 At
this point Paavo returned from the bushes, alone. His hands were empty, and his
body was bare: he had lost his own jumpsuit. “Damned monkey! Damned hussy!” he cried as, nude, he fled up the access ramp into the ship,
with scarcely a glance at the relaxing revellers, too bound up in his own
dereliction was he. Muthoni burst out laughing. From inside the ship an
outraged Tanya berated the Finn in Russian, continuing her tirade till he was
safely clad in silver-grey again . . .
                 Austin
Faraday looked ever more remote and detached from events: a Captain absconditus . Jeremy regarded him with a wry
sympathy. It wasn’t so much that discipline had collapsed as that there was no
longer any context for Austin’s authority. This world had its own Captain, in
Eden—who had switched a starship off and ordered revelry. Jeremy shrugged, and
smiled lightly. Arguing with that Captain was no use. They would learn, they would learn.
                 Jeremy
sighed.
                 Sean
tapped him lightly on the arm. His eyes twinkled. “Surely not
the post-coitus blues?”
                 “Hardly! Not in these Gardens—though believe me, you can get quite ice-blue in Hell! No, it’s just remembering . . . what’s bothering
Austin. Melancholy memories, for little old me. If I
can’t forget where I came from, you see, I can’t quite arrive anywhere else
...” The cloud passed; Jeremy grinned raflishly.
“Still, we all had a sweet little forgetting just now!”
                 “I
have decided,” began Austin, when Tanya and Paavo had rejoined them all in the
open. He stood there, hands on hips, saying nothing more for a while after his
great pronouncement.
                 Paavo
was sulking now. He felt he should have enjoyed himself more freely and
leisurely in the bushes with the redhead—but one couldn't, on an alien world, even if humans did walk around blithely naked here!—so he resented her
and he resented himself, and wanted to be a little way back in time, but the
time had already passed and soured. And he couldn’t believe how unconcernedly Sean and the two women had amused
themselves (according to Tanya, who had refused to watch any more) while he was away doing his duty by them, risking
his skin for their clothes! Why hadn’t they come looking for him when he was
away so long? That was precisely why
he hadn’t felt free to relax, to let go. So he felt justifiably cheated. Doubly
so! The redhead must have been in cahoots with the ape that slipped in and
stole his suit. Probably she was up
some tree right now, giggling, committing bestiality with it! If he could find
that tree, say tomorrow when he was ready for her again, he’d show her. She
owed him.
                 “I’ve
decided that a party of three should set out as soon as possible.