This file is a part of Elf Sternberg's Collected Works on ASSTR.  The
complete archive of Elf's work can be found on his website at:

http://www.drizzle.com/~elf

The author can be contacted at:

mailto:elf@drizzle.com

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                           Accepting Treasures

Journal Entry 180 / 01028

Noren, Urim 09, 01028

Outside the large window, a starship was coming into view. The Ille
Pendoro was far too large to actually dock with the station, but if we
got her close enough she could use the SDisk network. For one thing, it
helped alleviate the need to do any dangerous vacuum dancing, that time
when ships of that size are linking together by tenuous and structurally
dubious umbilici. "We have SDisk network integrity. The Ille Pendoro
can transport its cargo directly to the receiving bay."

"Hello, Pendoro," Baler said. "Is anyone listening?"

"We're here, we're here."

The personnel Sdisk glowed for a moment. Standing on it was a lovely fem
Vulpin. I bowed. "I'm pleased to meet you again, Fezzik. We met in 997,
I believe. The Interstellar Conference on Micromagentic Engineering."

For a moment, shock ran across her face. "You remember that?"

"It was only thirty years ago. Hard to forget," I mentioned as the
Sdisk glowed again. This time, a Mustela Lutra stood there. "Hello,
Doctor Baker."

"Vatare'!" The way he said it bothered me only a moment, as he hopped
over to where I stood, reached out and took my hand. "Good to meet you
at last.  I must admit to having been concerned although I see now that
my crewmates' fears were most unfounded."

"No," I disagreed. "They were not." Fezzik and Baker both looked
up, alarmed. "We had not resolved the question when you made your
announcement. Truth to tell, it hadn't even ocurred to us the way it had
to you. You galvanized us, made us think about our policy. We've decided
to go with saving them. We're ready for that, now. Thanks to you guys."
Baker looked relieved; Fezzik looked doubtful. "Okay, let's get your
charges over here. You say we have four possible?"

"Two probables. If anyone can save the other two, I'm sure you can. They
are Sandahl Hai, Erroll Veray, Darch Danchlerri, and Thaif Onerom. The
first two are the most probables."

"Let's get to work."

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I don't really want to write about the next four days. I stayed out of
the way for most of it.

It started with a comprehensive review of what Fezzik and Baker knew was
supposed to be pumping through their veins compared to what was really
in there now. I was again struck amazed by the miracle that any of them
seemed recoverable. In cryo, you cannot heal. Damage is accumulative
without any chance of remission until normal cell biology is restored.

After two days of study, it was decided to try and bring the first
one out. Onerom didn't even make it to a drained tube; the telepaths
pronounced him dead on arrival. The same thing was true of Danchlerri,
but after the resuscitation his heart stubbornly refused to stop beating.

I grit my teeth for a moment. "He's strong." I swore quietly. "Doesn't
know when to give up."

"He's physically in prime shape," said Baker. "In his case, it's the soft
tissues of the eyes and brain that took the most damage. Freezing started
at that end of the tube. But his brain stem seems to be relatively intact
and is still sending out the right signals."

"Great. A body-builder with cranial freezer burn." I sighed. "Full restore
on everything. We'll find something to put into that skull." I looked
down into the operating room, and then at the monitor where the last
two were waiting patiently. A Mustela telepath wandered between them,
listening quietly. We were rapidly using up our contingent of Cutter
psi on this one issue.

The decision was to bring Erroll out next. He was physically in better
shape than Sandahl, but his tube wasn't. Although we had long ago
swapped out most of the components in the tubes with local equivalents,
we didn't know what kind of microscopic damage had been going on inside
him in all that time. Baker, bless his heart, had cooked up a batch of
nanotech blood scrubbers that were cleaning the microscopic flecks of
metal from both of their blood vessels, but still, the big issue was
getting him back on the road to healing.

Much to everyone's surprise, Erroll came out of the tubes without
much complaint. Although physically not the strongest of the four, he
was still in the best overall medial condition. He didn't even require
cardiac support. In less than four hours, he was lying in a Pendorian
suspension tube, held in a near-comatose state while we fed him and kept
him warm and allowed his body to begin the healing process on its own.

Sandahl, on the other hand, was another matter. Most of us watched while
Nance and P'nyssa worked like mad. By the end of the fourth evening, they
both had SD/IV cuffs around their arms, pumping life support into them
in ever-increasing doses while a talented young femSatryl named Chisai
watched over them like a mother hen. The operating room was packed with
at least nineteen people.

I don't know if I've ever watched them work so hard. Nance is a
powerpath-- as he once said, "useless unto himself"-- but in a supporting
role, he can make medical telekinetics like P'nyssa perform miracles. She
must have spent much of the hours with him pressed up against her back
while her hands reached into Sandahl physically and rearranged his
insides. She used scalpels and sutures as much as her own talent. His
voice calmly dictated for the record what he saw. "Some sort of filtering
body, like the liver. Yes, I believe in the medical texts that organ there
was identified as a slayn and acts as a saline level regulator..." It took
fourteen hours of total work before Sandahl was in his own tube, his lower
half encased in a soft, metallic bag that pretended to be his body cavity.

To nobody's surprise, both Nance and P'nyssa passed out.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

She slept through much of the next day, as did Nance. By tradition, we put
them in the same bed and allowed them to stay in contact while they slept.
As far as anyone's ever been able to determine, nothing terrible happens
if powerpaths and those they assist aren't allowed to recover together,
but it seems to be a good arrangement all around. Besides, one thing I
know is that ever since P'nyssa found Nance, she's been reluctant to
work with other powerpaths. "There's something about his power," she
told me once, "That just feels right to me. I can't describe it. It's
like when you find the perfect music to write code to."

"Ken?" Dave announced. "P'nyssa has awakened. She asked me to call
for you."

"Thanks." I put my PADD down and wandered out of my domicile, down the
hallway, and a left. I palmed the lock.

"Who cooked up this color scheme?" I asked no one in particular, looking
around at the awful, blue-white color of everything. The room was laid
out as a flat, white, almost sterile-looking room, with a low square
bed set in the center. "I've seen better in cheesy sci-fi movies."

P'nyssa turned over slowly. "I don't care what the color of the walls
are," she muttered, smiling. "Come here."

I sat down on the bed next to her, looking dubiously at the unconscious
lump next to her. "Sleep well?"

"No," she groaned. "I still feel terrible. Eyes are all itchy."

"That's the stimulants. I'm sorry," I said. "Want something for them?
Water?"

She pointed to a bottle by the bed. "I got some already." She reached
out with her tens and wrapped them around me. "I just wanted you."

I leaned over and fell ungraciously beside her. "Well, you have me then."

"Mmm-hmm." She sighed softly. "I dreamed about you. Something about you
in a uniform, fighting with some llerkin against a giant machine. Didn't
make much sense."

I chuckled. "Your dreams have so much plot to them sometimes. I wish I
had dreams that complicated."

"You just dream about sex and genecode."

"Guilty as charged," I said. She lay down against the pillows and
stretched her flexible tentacles up to the roof, groaning softly as she
did so. Her back arched, pushing her comfortably moderate breasts against
the white sheets, smoothing the cloth and emphasizing her charms. "Murr,"
I said, softly.

"I thought you weren't attracted by breasts," she joked.

"Says who? Besides, I'm attracted by you." I kicked my house slippers off
and slipped under the sheets. I felt her soft body through my clothes.
"Mind if I undress?"

"It would be nicer than your wearing clothes into bed." I took that
as a 'yes' and threw my shirt and pants across the room with a couple
swift tosses. Her soft mittens were on me as soon as I was naked. "Oh,
yes. Much better."

I grinned. "You feel better too." I love the soft caress of her fur
against me. The familiar tilt of her pelvis against my own when we lay
one atop another reminded me how long we'd been together, how long we'd
known each other, how long it had been since we had first found where
we fit. I wrapped my arms underneath her and held her to me. "You know,
you scare me when you faint like that."

"Part of the job." She turned her head to look at the still-sleeping
lump next to us. "Hope he's okay, too."

"I'm sure he is," I said, leaning down to kiss her.

She wasn't ready for the kiss. Her body got stiff for a second, then eased
when she realized what I wanted. Her kiss wasn't very strong and I figured
she was still weak from the day before. But she moaned when I kissed her,
and that told me what I wanted to know. "You're not getting... excited...
are you?" I teased.

"Mmm-hmm," she said. "I can feel you getting hard."

I hadn't noticed that, but now that she mentioned it, I did have a bit
of an erection. "You're tired."

"So?" she asked. "Make love to me, my love."

I felt a little uncomfortable thinking about having sex next to Nance--
I consider waking someone up to be incredibly rude. But P'nyssa seemed
determined and Nance seemed dead to the world. She parted her legs enough
to let me settle between them, my erection poking at her private places,
trying to find its way in. When I finally did find the right furrow to
follow, it wouldn't go in. "Mmm.. I'm dry."

"I can help with that," I said, sliding downwards. Eating P'nyssa is
something of an obsession with me. Her cunt is small. Not "tight" as
some would think it, but small. From her prepuce to perineum is a very
compact distance.

I kissed at her lips once, twice, and then watched as her cunt just opened
up for me like a flower. Under the dense and crossed-over thickets of
blue fur that hide her loveliness I saw glints of the purest pink I have
ever seen in my life. It's like the inside of a delicate seashell. And
she tastes like heaven. Especially after the first few minutes.

I like to lick all of her, but she prefers me to concentrate on her
clitoris. I settled into a comfortable and familiar pattern of licking
around her clit. It hardened and came out to play, accompanied by the
first reluctant moan, her admission from her lips that she was getting
ever more hot. For P'nyssa, self-control is a serious issue. She rarely
wants to admit that I can take it away from her-- especially with just
a kiss. A long kiss, but a kiss nonetheless.

I pressed my lips around her clit, pushing down, pushing it out to my
tongue, which greedily flickered over it. Her body tensed noticeably as
the first waves of pleasure started to really flow through her. I licked
two fingers and slid them inside her. "Ohhh.... You know."

"Mmmm..." I agreed with her. I tried to press upwards, against her
g-spot, but her pelvic bone right there is larger than average, making
the actual spot hard to reach. It didn't seem to matter, though. Her
body got hotter as I pressed my mouth to her clit harder. I wanted her
to come. She wanted to come.

Her mittens brushed me out of the way just long enough for her to tug on
her outer lips, pulling upwards and letting me directly at her clit. When
my tongue touched down again, she went rigid, her body winding up. I
could feel it in her belly; her cunt clamped down on my fingers. Her
knees drew up into the air from the tension, and then she trembled,
shaking the bed hard as she came, writhing against the bedsheets.

"Oh, wow..." She tried to say more, but she needed to catch her breath
as well. I barely gave her that time as I rose up to face her and press
my cock to her cunt. Now she was wet enough to receive me. "Oh, yes,"
she sighed as I slid into her. She wrapped her arms around my back and
held onto me as I just had my way with her. It was something we both
wanted right then-- she would have told me otherwise.

She lifted her legs, letting me get a deeper angle, a stronger hit. Her
arms held onto mine as I lifted myself up to look down between our
two contrasted bodies. Her large breasts shook up and down as I pushed
myself into her and withdrew. My pubic bone slammed into hers with a
soft, thudding sound that pounded loud in my ears. That might have been
my heartbeat. She felt so good, her cunt holding onto me in a way so
familiar. My body knew it meant pleasure, and pleasure was what we gave
one another. I could feel my cock tingling, getting ready to release.

It seemed to take a long time for me to come, though. That tingling
would rise, subside, rise again. Her voice made soft moans in my ears
as I felt it rise again, rise fast and strong, and suddenly I knew I
was going to come this time. What I was doing now would make it happen
so I didn't change my pace. Her cunt sucked me in and let me go, in and
out, and I could feel the soft textures of her tunnel caressing my cock,
bringing me closer to orgasm. I couldn't hold it back and I didn't try,
ducking my head down to press my mouth to the pillows and muffle my roar
of pleasure as I came.

Dizzily, I lifted myself up and looked down at her. "Better?"

"'M tired again," she muttered, smiling at me. "Better."

"Go back to sleep, then."

"I'd like that," she said. I slid out of her with a delicious tingle,
then slowly eased myself out of bed.

"G'night, P'nyssa. Take care of Nance."

"I will." She was already drifting back into slumber. I kissed her on the
cheek. As I walked out, I looked back on the two sleeping forms lying in
bed together and thought about how vulnerable and innocent they looked. I
realized just how much I missed all this. Pendorians are innocent in
so many ways. They come from such a culture of abundance, such a notion
that together they will provide, that there is no fear. Not as scarcity
cultures, like the one Erroll and Sandahl came from, know it. I hoped
they never learned-- and I hoped Erroll's people would learn from us.

I went back out to check on the progress of our two survivors.

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Original document is available from:
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/journals

The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., and Related Tales
are Copyright (c) 1989-2000 Elf Mathieu Sternberg. Distribution limited
to electronic media not-for-profit use only. All other rights are reserved
to the author.
