Stearn had finished checking the Karamojo. Everything was running smoothly with the rotation-induced gravity, all the rings twisting to best maintain their new down vector despite the fact that it was nearly perpendicular to what it had been for the vast majority of the trip. This new state was temporary. When they reached SS Cygni they would maintain a rail-drive assisted orbit at an altitude above the outer rim of the disk and there would be a substantial gravity, back again along the ship's central axis.

In the English library he had made of his quarters, Sylvia proposed to Stearn a game of chess. He accepted. The opening moves went quickly, the Tasmanian variation of the Sicilian Dragon defense, and they were soon embroiled in a familiar middle game. And gossiping about other couples. Had they become such an old comfortable couple already to do such a thing?

"He just needs to get laid," Stearn explained to Sylvia as he moved his bishop. She was the smartest woman Stearn had ever hooked up with, but she sure could be dumb about some things.

"You think?" She shook her head, then leaned forward from her couchbeast to rest her elbows on the edge of the board. "I just don't see it, Phil. I mean, you think everyone needs to get laid, that it is the secret of life."



He grinned and absent-mindedly reached to scratch where his feathers used to be and jumped when he scratched smooth skin. He had sure kept those wings too long to be having that reaction months later. "Everyone does need to get laid, and it is the secret of life. Human life, anyway. Captain hurt Fisher bad, and now he's bitter. He needs that touching, and I bet he's not giving it to himself."



She didn't even get distracted by his baiting anymore. Part of him felt disappointed by that, but another part of him liked they way they were settling in together.



Sylvia's brow wrinkled in concentration. He loved to watch her think. She gave it such devotion it was a thing of beauty, and the backdrop of the English drawing room -- complete with the musty-dusty smell -- made her seem so damn sophisticated about it. Stearn fancied himself an artist of love, or at least lust when he was being more honest with himself than usual. The real art of love, he believed, was discovering that one telling feature that caught the unique essence of a lover in a single stroke. And cherishing it. For Sylvia, it was that knit brow he had first understood as she rode him in the jungle canopy of her cabin, that she wore in those quickening moments approaching climax. That she wore whenever she focused her entire self on a pursuit she loved. That expression of her focus was the essence of her.



Sex, in one form or another, was always the key. Stearn knew it without any doubt.



"I don't think that's it," Sylvia muttered in a dismissing tone, "but we need to do something. The dwarf nova outburst will have subsided in another seventy hours, and those two are going to ruin this mission, and us with it, as soon as they get the chance." Sylvia pushed her rook pawn forward a square, forcing Stearn's bishop to retreat. After he moved it back along the diagonal, maintaining the pin, she went on, "I'm sure it's not the lack of sex. He's more complex than that. He can just crank down his hormones and ride out the dry spell perfectly happily. Not everything revolves around the drive to reproduce." Sylvia pushed forward her knight's pawn two squares, cutting off the pin and attacking Stearn's bishop. She really seemed to hate that pin.



Too emotional here, too distracted, trying to shake the pin. That weakened her defenses and she hadn't analyzed the tactics as carefully as she usually did. Stearn considered his options, and finally decided to play true to himself. "What are the stakes on this game?"



Sylvia rolled her eyes up for a second. "The usual, I thought. Winner gets fantasy of choice."



"Let's make it a bit more interesting. Loser has to seduce Fisher, winner gets to watch." At her abrupt look of alarm, he amended, "Not in person. On neural recording, of course."



She didn't look relieved at his amendment. "I don't think so. It isn't much of a prize for me either way."



"Think of the bedroom talk, what he might say afterward in the afterglow. He might give away the whole trick of who he is. Are you saying you can resist that prize?"



"Yes I can." Sylvia rocked back and forth as she rested her chin in her hand. "But I do admit you've got my curiosity piqued now."



He stared into her eyes, waiting.



"But Fisher won't go for you. He might not go for me, but he certainly won't go for you."



"Leave that to me." He grinned at her. A semi-illegal code running on his biochip confirmed his evaluation of the chess position.



"Okay," she finally said with an expulsion of air. "But we're only talking an attempt. I can talk friendly to the man. I'm no prude."



Stearn broke into a broad smile. Without taking his eyes from hers, he reached out and took her knight's pawn with his bishop.



Sylvia broke the stare to look at the board. Her brow knit in concentration erotically, then, after about two minutes it flattened out into a placid ocean surface. "Shit," she said.



"Mate in four, unless you care to lose your queen," said Stearn.



"That's not fair," Sylvia said.



"Chess is completely fair, no random element whatsoever."



"You know what I mean!"



He did feel guilty. A little guilty, anyhow. But what has the point of a biochip interface if not to use it? Sylvia wanted a good game from him, didn't she? "To even things out, I'll seduce Captain."



Sylvia started to laugh.



"Hey! A man doesn't need to hear that!"



"She won't sleep with you." Sylvia laughed harder.



Probably true. Still, there were a hundred ways to seduce a person. Physical union was not the only way to take pleasure in someone, something that Sylvia had reminded him of. "I'll seduce her into intimacy, make me her confidante. I'll get her to go hunting with me. She'll get to shoot something and blow off some steam. It'll have to help ease the tensions. That's the real purpose behind this, right?"



"If you say so. I can't believe I'm letting you trick me into this."



"You don't think Fisher is dangerous, do you?"



She knit her brow. "Not to us, not if we don't get in his way."



This was getting too heavy. "You don't have to actually sleep with him. Just make an attempt to gain intimacy of one sort or another. Make contact with him. It'll be fun."



Sylvia reached out and took Stearn's hand. "Phil," she said, "let's do this not just for fun. Let's do it to make things better, if we can. You agreed this is to ease the tensions."



Heavy. Donning an appropriately serious face, Stearn said, "Sylvia my darling, we must seduce them for the good of the mission."



She broke up laughing.



Then they swept the pieces off the chess board, a large sturdy thing from another century, crawled onto it themselves, and made love in a very complicated position.