Netlink by William H Keith Page B

it to admire its tone. “Nothing like it in the universe!”
    “Mmm. What are you doing in here, then? I thought you people didn’t like the ‘taste’ of artificial light?”
    “Hey, until the sun comes up in another forty hours or so, we take our pleasure where we can. You should try it, sometime, Kara! You’d look fantastic in basic black!”
    “Not my style, Geoff. Hard getting enough to eat inside a warstrider.”
    “Ah, yeah.Didn’t think of that.” He opened his other hand and extended it, revealing a smooth sphere of polished gold, glistening against the black of his palm. “Take a jolt? Either of you?”
    “Kuso, no!” Kara said, making a face and turning away.
    Katya, more diplomatic, shook her head. “Thank you, Geoff. No.”
    He grinned. “I’ll be glad to wait while you reset.”
    “Listen,” Ran said firmly. “Can’t you see we’re trying to talk?”
    His bluntness didn’t seem to bother Geoff. He simply shrugged. “Hey, suit yourselves. I’ll be around if you change your minds.”
    There was nothing improper about senspheres… though public attitudes toward them had been changing somewhat since Naga Companions had started becoming popular. Held against the old-style nanogrown palm implants, senspheres generated a mildly stimulating, erotic tingle throughout the body. People with Companions, however, with their skin circuitry and artificial implants absorbed and reformed by their Naga, could set their body’s interpretation of the sensphere’s stimulation to be something considerably more than a euphoric tingle. Companion-linked people who used senspheres had the reputation of being wild and daring sexually.
    “Kuso, Mums,” Kara said. “Where did you download him?”
    Instead of answering directly, Katya looked at Ran. “Lieutenant? I wonder if you could get us all something to drink? Icecaf for me.”
    “Certainly, Senator. Kara?”
    “I’ll have a Columbiarise.”
    “Be right back.”
    “Take your time,” Katya said. “I need a quick private link with Kara.”
    “You know, Mums,” Kara said as Ran walked away. “I really don’t have a lot in common with all of this.” She nodded toward Geoff and a young woman wearing a Companion-grown spray of scarlet feathers. The woman held out her hand, nodding, and Geoff passed the sensphere to her. “With all of them.”
    “I know. Sometimes I don’t mink I have much in common with them either. But it all comes with the job. Come on. Let’s get comfortable.”
    Together, they walked out of the atrium and into the conversation room, a circular, comfortably furnished area with a three-step-down pit in the center ringed with soft sofafloor that wasn’t occupied at the moment. Sitting side by side, the two women faced one another, extending their hands.
    They touched, hands clasping hands. Katya could sense her Companion reforming part of itself, flowing out through both of her palms to make direct physical contact with Kara’s Naga. With their Companions able to intermesh smoothly with the human CNS to the point of actually becoming part of it, they were, in effect, directly joining their brains.
    “This is a lot better,” Kara said in Katya’s thoughts. It was like being in a com module with the words appearing in your mind, but closer, warmer somehow. Other people in the room would see them sitting together on the sofafloor, eyes closed, holding hands. Social protocol was specific about such things. They would not be disturbed.
    “Yes…”
    There was worry in her mother’s thoughts. Kara could taste it, dark and smoky. There were no masks here, in the intimacy of linked minds.
    “I should tell you first,” Katya said in her mind. “I… I don’t want you on this mission.”
    “Mother, we’ve been through this before. Many times, in fact.” She hesitated. “Damn it, you were in the military. You should understand what it all means if anybody can. The closeness. The rapport.… ”
    “I understand too well. Why