The Web of Sin Ch. 04

©2003, k.x.

Halfway to the alien habitat, Govinda contacted the spacesuit through the interface net in his cybskin. He thought a series of commands: reverse thrust, line us up for a matching orbit, make sure to bring us in aft of the hab, scan for threats. The suit's non-sentient brain made a course calculation in two picoseconds, then swung the stalks of its thruster pods around to face the slow-growing disc of the bright silver moon. The reactionless motors hidden inside the pods began to push hard against the direction of motion. Govinda, meanwhile, went back to repeating the mantra for remembrance that he'd been saying since leaving the Kunyunese ship. Soon enough, the memories he'd wanted to revisit started to flow again, fragments flowing past his awareness like dead leaves carried on the braided surface of a rushing mountain stream...

***

Indhira's client didn't have a name. But, he or she or it had a face, in the form of an alt.human avatar called gunra-Ciforex. Govinda met the rep in a xanadu in Omkot, and the first thing he thought upon seeing him was, poor godscrewed fatherfucker. Of course, alt.humans, like their cousins the neo-humans, came in all shapes and sizes, everyone was used to that. But gunra-Ciforex was an unusual example of an already adventurous subspecies. Although he had the standard body plan, it was somewhat distorted, with much longer limbs than average, giving him a rather spidery aspect. The outsides of his arms and legs were covered with hundreds of thorny projections, each one dark glossy black against flourescent blue skin. His long, narrow head was topped by a mane of fire-colored hair that waved about the way a diver's hair does underwater. His birth-eyes had been replaced by a pair of metasensory clusters which were like the crowns of pink dandelions. On his forehead, he bore a row of radar-emitters, small hard beads that glistened even in the muted roomlight. On his back, he sported a pair of organic jet tubes which hung down below his knees like enormous, misplaced phalluses. Meanwhile, there was nothing hanging down from his crotch; the only thing he had down there was a ring of red clevermetal sewn with wire thread to his puckered, mottled skin. A terminal, most likely...or perhaps a weapon. In essence, though, gunra-Ciforex wasn't exactly frightening; instead, he was unsettling, disturbing, a mixed-up collection of odd phenotypes that didn't make much adaptive sense, but which definitely communicated a message. Govinda thought the message was: my Boss is crazy; don't cross him (or her, or it). The usual "or else" part was clearly implied as well.

The problem was, although Govinda had no intention of crossing anyone, he didn't see how exactly he was supposed to seal his contract with gunra-Ciforex's boss. He had come here from Guindy Port high above the city, flown down with Indhira after she'd told him his part in the plan for the job (and after they'd had an afternoon of intense make-up sex in an orbital airpod). The job had sounded difficult, maybe too difficult, but he'd agreed, reluctantly, to do the thing he'd been asked to do. It would cost him a lot...but, it would earn him a lot, too, if at least one of his selves lived to come out the other end.

But, usually, when you said "yes" to a contract, you signed it by fucking your client. This time, though...how the hell was he supposed to do that? gunra-Ciforex didn't have anyplace fuckable on him, and Govinda was extremely hopeful that the rep (or whoever was controlling the rep by remote) didn't intend to put one of his jet tubes up his backside. That was a deal-breaker, for sure...unless he could make the tips smaller...

He and Indhira had been standing at one end of an oval soft-hollow, waiting while gunra-Ciforex stood at the other, his head cocked to one side as he listened to an internal voice give him instructions. After a while, he spoke to Indhira in tradertongue, saying, "We have hired a surrogate. She will be here soon. Please, have a drink while we wait." Then gunra-Ciforex waved his large, eight-fingered hand and a serving golem appeared from out of a nearby alcove. Govinda took a cup of orange xiaolao tea off the golem's tray. Indhira took nothing, but instead shared the occasional sip of tea out of Govinda's mouth. He could tell she was getting in a mood to play, which was an infectious mood, despite his recent misgivings about bedding the avatar. Now that he knew a surrogate was coming, he was feeling a little more relaxed.

Then, a few minutes later, when he saw the alt.human surrogate, he wondered once again if he'd made the right decision...

***

A thousand kilometers above Onlo's single great octopus-shaped ocean, in an airpod with transparent walls and circular gravity beds at each axis, Indhira held Govinda close and whispered in his ear. He was still buried balls-deep in her lovely, velvety snatch; their mingled come was still flowing down his shaft and onto her thigh. In-between the aftershocks of her last orgasm, she told him what he needed to know about her "big new job".

His target was a block of code buried inside a secure cache on an artifact planet called Ghoveshet. You don't need to know what the code's for, she said, you just need to copy it and deliver the copy to the client's rep in Omkot. She linked with his cybskin, which was balled up in the small of his back. A holomap sprang open in his dataview: Ghoveshet, marked with a blue-green X, was in a system in an open cluster four thousand lightyears west by northwest of where they were now. A text box near the X unfolded like origami in reverse when he focused on it: Ghoveshet, terrestrial, near-standard gravity, inhabitants mostly retro-humans, politically non-aligned, primary business: datahaven services. Its system server had large sections walled off, all of them doubleplus private, owners unknowable. A few big clients possibly true-alien, not some species of human. You could tell from the usage data, the traffic pattern going in and out, much of it indicating a flow between Ghoveshet and a Haradza habitat far outside the Settlement. The clients wouldn't be Haradza, of course, since they were all long gone, maybe to otherspace, maybe beyond. But, habs could be taken over and used by just about anybody. And that far out on the edge of The Edge, the squatters were more likely alien than anyone from inside human space. The only thing was, no one knew of any non-human species in that direction. The closest were the enigmatic Tsunkatsa, and they weren't close at all.

Govinda was curious, but he knew not to ask any questions about Indhira's client's interest in the code. Even though his cock was still filling up his boss's cunt, intimacy didn't imply liberty; in fact, it implied just the opposite. Many months later, on board a slowboat on the other side of the Galaxy, he would learn by accident what it was he'd helped steal away from Ghoveshet. Then, feeling something akin to guilt for the first time in his life, he would leave Indhira for Atsuko, then would leave Atsuko to drift far and wide, ending up at last on Pale Blue, his head a mess from knowing too much. And there he would stay, keeping himself apart from all his old friends for a long, long time...until the morning when a nude pseudo-girl would bring him an invitation to an encrypted fax address.

But, all of that was in the future, and in the airpod in orbit above Onlo, when Indhira told him how the plan would work, he wasn't thinking about much of anything else but how good she felt wrapped around his hardon...

***

The first part was simple: he stepped into a fax booth at Omkot Rapid Transit, then, several minutes later, five freshly-minted Govindas stepped out of fax booths on five distant worlds. At each destination, Govinda sought out and found an out-of-the-way hotel in a big city. Then he settled in and waited, doing the usual touristy things to make himself blend into the background. On Gevorah, he attended staged reenactments of Torture Cult rituals; on Idoko, he wandered for long hours through the diverse entertainments of the Perpetual Carnival; in Kirhadoun on Pirchakty, he played complicated sexgames with the adepts of the Mysteries; in the orbital city called Chalice, high above the hellworld of Vorn, he visited art galleries and museums full of alien biotech; on Kest, he fought in the battle arena against all manner of golems and machines and alien beasts. Meanwhile, back on Onlo, the original Govinda slept for days in a big bed in a shielded xanadu far beneath Omkot. And in his sleep, he dreamt long and hard about Ghoveshet and how best to get inside and back out again. For he knew, the second part wouldn't be simple at all...

***

The surrogate was, if anything, more odd-looking than gunra-Ciforex. But, this time, it was the good kind of oddity, even if it took a little while for Govinda's libido to adjust to her appearance. Tall and well-muscled, she had bright red skin everywhere except on her face, which was mint green under fine white fur. At the moment, she wore her cybskin rolled up into a thick collar around her long, slender neck, and Govinda admired the way subtle shadows played all about the furrows and curves of her nude body. Her glossy black hair was waxed and sculpted into a complex style that Govinda knew was popular on Yedovazra, the sister planet to Yedyevo a hundred lightyears south of Onlo. But, unlike the other natives of that system, she didn't have hedgehog quills growing out of the mound of her sex. Or, at least, she'd resorbed them, or plucked them out, just for tonight. Govinda thought, lucky me.

gunra-Ciforex said, "Kivrin will be my agent in this matter. I will observe and record. Please enjoy her. And, if you need anything, let me know."

Indhira stepped down into the soft-hollow, pulling Govinda down beside her. Kivrin smiled at them both, then joined them on the scattered fat cushions at the bottom of the pit...

***

After he'd been asleep long enough to devise a strategy for invading Ghoveshet, Govinda woke himself and sent burst-messages by very fast radio to his other selves. As soon as they assimilated the messages, they would know what to do and when. Govinda then asked a house golem to send for a jumpjet, which arrived topside a few minutes later. The self-piloting 'jet flew up and out of Omkot, and took him across grassland and marsh and ocean to an island in the middle of nowhere. There was an old house on the island, built in the style of Onlo's first human settlers. Made mostly of milk jade vitrex and hexagons of terra-cotta tile, it was shaped like a squat obelisk with boxy wings on two sides. The house belonged to gunra-Ciforex's boss/controller, and was mantrapped from its foundation to the sharp apex of its roof. But, the house's ghost had been instructed to let Govinda inside, which it did, after a quick deepscan at the clevermetal door. If anyone else approached the door, it would dust them with its nano-gun.

Govinda sat on a crescent-shaped sofa in the huge living room and pulled a key out of the thigh pouch of his cybskin. He touched the slender rod of the key to his tongue, to confirm his identity. Then he held the key out and squeezed it hard three times. The rippling disc of a semi-permeable barrier field appeared in the air before him: the portal to an otherspace pigeonhole. Govinda reached in and pulled out his customized 'net terminal. Then he closed the portal and put the key away.

He rolled the terminal around in the palm of his outstretched hand. It was a matte black marble, outwardly the same as any other terminal made in the last year by the fashionable tech house of Alesso on Pirenne. But, Govinda had massively reorganized its inner workings, and the designers at Alesso wouldn't have recognized anything of their handiwork in the chaotic tangle of hypercircuits, metawave boosters and quantum effect devices that now filled the little sphere. Govinda closed his fingers around the terminal, then threw it toward the far wall. It arced up then stopped in midair. Govinda spoke a command, and the terminal turned translucent. After a second command, the terminal grew until it was a large see-through globe that filled the middle of the room. Govinda rose up off the sofa, walked toward the terminal, then pushed against its event horizon and slipped inside...

***

Kivrin's cunt was warmer and deeper and wetter than any cunt Govinda had known in years. He very much enjoyed sliding around inside her, and liked especially the way her vaginal muscles trembled in sympathy with his every stroke. And, because Kivrin was so tall, he could lay his head down between her firm, pointed breasts as he fucked her. A nice place to be, her hard dark nipples within easy reach of his questing tongue, her sweaty red skin filling his nose with a subtle/unsubtle scent that was like seawater and hot metal and mourning orchid, all mixed together.

He also enjoyed having Indhira's cleverjelly phallus up his ass. She fucked him with it by remote, while she sat astride Kivrin's face. The phallus felt amazing as it pulsed against the back of his ballsack and the nerve-rich muscles of his netherhole. His breath came hard now, his cock was nearly ready to erupt with hot semen. Even so, despite the urgent red tide of lust that was flooding his mind and body, he slowed himself down some, to draw out the moments until his come. He glanced up occasionally to watch Kivrin's tongue draw circles around and beneath Indhira's engorged clitoris. He watched as Indhira clutched at her own breasts, then squeezed them hard enough that they would show bruises later. Bruises which Govinda would kiss, long and slow, each one tasting of wine and old blood.

Behind Indhira, gunra-Ciforex stood motionless and silent, his puffball eyes blind windows into whatever soul he might've possessed. Still, he smiled just a little, which Govinda recognized as the tell of a fellow voyeur. He didn't know what satisfaction gunra-Ciforex could get with that cockless body of his, but perhaps he had the kind of libido that could be satisfied in other ways. Perhaps he was wired up and infected with a cybvirus that could give him orgasms whenever he wanted or needed them. Govinda had lived like that for a while, but the novelty wore off for some people. To him, in the end, there was nothing in the universe better than pressing hard against another warm, sweat-slick body...or two...or ten.

After a few more minutes of attention from Kivrin's artful, relentless tongue, Indhira gave voice to a loud, drawn-out moan, and pressed her body down hard on Kivrin's busy mouth. Govinda watched as her pussy twitched then gushed honey all over Kivrin's chin and neck. At nearly the same moment, he felt Kivrin tighten her embrace around his pumping cock. He pushed against her, and the phallus in his ass swelled and throbbed until he couldn't hold back any longer. The moment he felt the first shockwave of Kivrin's orgasm rush through her cunt, he dove into her deep as he could, and emptied his balls of their heavy burden of cream...

***

Govinda's avatar was floating in the middle of a vast sphere, with no direction up or down or sideways. This nexus was one of the quadrillion that were scattered all throughout middlespace, the artificial dimension where most of the infrastructure of the 'net resided. Every nanosecond, there were millions of data packets passing this way or that, all of them represented in his graphical interface as points of flickering blue light. On the distant white walls of the sphere, he could make out countless black lines, some of them like tangled threads, others laid out in delicate patterns like the webs of spiders. He scanned the lines until he found the route he wanted, then he poured himself into the network and made his way toward the heavily-defended datahaven of the Ghoveshet system.

Meanwhile, his other selves did the same, from several different directions. Along the way, they morphed and split up into various kinds of 'net maintenance tools, shedding all but tiny hidden grains of ghost-identity. If they were tricky enough and also very lucky, at least one of them ought to survive to penetrate the secure cache long enough to find and copy the target code.

***

He knelt between Kivrin's spread thighs and ate his come out of the cleft of her sex. He kissed her labia, sucked her hot-button clit, tongued her relaxed, welcoming asshole. He cleaned out her vagina with his mouth, teasing every drop of their mingled wetness from every delectable hiding place. Meanwhile, up above, Indhira laid down next to Kivrin and kissed her forehead and eyes and ears and chin, then tasted herself off of Kivrin's down-covered lips. The three of them lay together like that for a long time, while gunra-Ciforex looked down on their entwined bodies and very subtly nodded his head in approval...

***

In the last picosecond, he had woven his way around dozens of obstacles, broken through several maze-like layers of defense systems, jumped over and crawled under various kinds of detector, outrun several semi-sentient softweapons, all to arrive here, at the inner wall of the datahaven's vault. He had many seconds ago lost contact with his other selves; some of them had fallen under anti-hacker fire, some had been weeded out by clippers, some had simply run up against dead ends. All of which almost certainly meant he was the lone survivor (in real life as well as in the 'net; the contract had specified immediate termination of any flesh-and-blood copy of Govinda whose avatar failed the mission). For the moment, things were quiet, but that wouldn't last. He scanned the wall, then worked quickly, before a guard dog could spot him and turned him into cyberdust. He threw out a slipknife virus and held onto its tail as it burrowed into the body of the vault...

***

gunra-Ciforex clapped his enormous hands together and called for a serving golem to bring towels and bowls of hot water. When the golem arrived, it handed round the warm damp towels, and Govinda, Kivrin and Indhira washed themselves and each other, thus performing the last step of their shared ritual. Once they were clean, they stepped up and out of the soft-hollow, and joined gunra-Ciforex by the side of a table where a pot of tea was brewing. Kivrin prepared the tea, then poured a small amount into four shallow cups. gunra-Ciforex lifted his cup with surprising delicacy and took a sip, saying afterwards, "Indhira Chandamurtha, we are pleased to be in business with you. Let us now speak no more of business, and when our business is concluded, let us each forget the other exists."

Indhira sipped at her tea, and said, "We are agreed." Govinda followed and gave his assent. The tea tasted like insect blood and spoiled honey, but Govinda didn't mind. He still had the rich druggy scent of Kivrin's aroused pussy in his nose and mouth...

***

He was inside. Below him: a vast placid ocean. Above: an enormous empty sky. Kilometers away in the distance: a cloud hovering low over its own shadow, which was a dark stain on the dimpled skin of the water.

To Govinda, the VR environment looked a little old-fashioned, and reminded him of the work of designers from First Wave worlds like Novy Zvezda and Tannhauser Gate. Fortunately, Govinda had studied ancient designs in his long-ago youth, so he knew what to do.

He willed himself forward, and the cloud grew until it became a soft white wall across his path. He sank into the mist, and felt for the structure that would be hidden inside. He didn't have to go far, and was soon knocking at a door of the cloud-house. A curator-golem appeared and asked for Govinda's ID. He showed the golem his expensively-faked credentials: V.S. Hoxa, a researcher from Tsilkoy, one of the haven's larger clients. The golem allowed him in after checking nine times with policeware and various ghost authorities. Govinda got a quick tour: the interior of the cloud-house was laid out like an old-style library, with cubical data cabinets set in rows across a wide, fur-tiled floor. The whole space was illuminated by lightpipes hanging down from the low ceiling. Govinda looked around and noticed that there were a few other researchers moving about the library, all of them accompanied by golems. None seemed interested in him.