She twirled like a woman showing off a new dress, only she was actually showing off her new body—which was a really pretty one, Liv admitted to herself.
“Well…do you want to come home with us, Nana?” Sophie asked uncertainly. “Would you like to meet my husband, Sylvan? He’s the Head Chancellor of the Kindred High Council.”
“Oh, I know! Barsis here was telling me about him when I asked who was in charge around here and then your name came up and then I realized you and your sister must be here on this big ship we’re all in,” Nana said, smiling.
“It’s actually a spaceship, Nana,” Sophie pointed out. “And we’re orbiting around the moon.”
Their Nana seemed to take the news easily enough.
“Well, that’s not too surprising, considering the last thing I remember is being captured by those aliens who said they were recording my essence and making a kind of recording or copy of me.” She frowned. “Is that what I am? A copy of the real me?”
“Uh…maybe,” Liv said carefully.
“Where is the real me then?” Nana wanted to know. “Still married to your Pop-pop down on Earth?”
“Um, Nana…I’m not sure how to put this,” Sophie said uneasily. “But, well…you’re not exactly, uh, alive anymore. And neither is Pop-pop.”
“Oh my!” Nana put a hand to her heart, looking disconcerted for a moment. Then she seemed to shake herself and take the news in stride. “Well, then at least I haven’t cheated on your grandfather,” she said, clearly looking on the bright side. “And that means I won’t have to divorce him to stay with Barsis here.” She cast a loving look at the big Kindred who returned it with a smile.
“Your mother’s mother is a truly exceptional woman,” he growled softly. “After my mate died, I thought I would never find another to love but she has proved me wrong. I am so glad her soul came to reside within the body of the pairing puppet I chose to meet my needs.”
“Uh, sure.” Liv cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Look, Nana, it’s been a long, long day,” she said. “Would you like to come home with Sophie or me and meet our families? You have great-grandchildren now. But they’re all in bed at the moment,” she added, not sure how she felt about introducing the pairing puppet to her kids as their great-grandmother.
“Oh my! Just think of that—great-grandchildren! And I just love being a grandma too!” Nana clasped her hands joyfully, her big blue eyes sparkling.
Actually now that she thought of it, Liv decided the pairing puppet bore an uncanny resemblance to pictures they had seen of their grandmother when she was young. She had turned into a little old lady by the time Sophie and Liv came to know her, but in her youth, she had looked a lot like she did right now.
“Would you like to meet them?” Sophie asked, smiling a little. “I have twins—a boy and a girl named Kara and Kaleb.”
“And I have a boy named Daniel,” Liv put in.
“Oh girls, I would love to meet your sweet babies!” Nana exclaimed. “But as you say, it’s getting late and I don’t want to wake them up. Could we maybe get together tomorrow?”
“Well, sure—I guess.” Liv thought about asking to get off work early so she could meet with her deceased grandmother who was now in the body of a pairing puppet somehow and dating a Beast Kindred. She could only shake her head. Why did crazy things always happen on board the Kindred Mother Ship? This wasn’t as bad as the time she and Baird had switched bodies right before Daniel was born or the lust gas that had incapacitated everyone for about a week, but it was a close second or third for sure.
“Let’s all do an early supper together,” Sophie suggested. “That way you can meet our kids and our hubbies both at the same time.”
“That sounds good but what will Nana be doing until then?” Liv asked. “Are you, uh, going back to the Pairing House, Nana?”
“Oh no—at least, not tonight, although I might go later for a change of clothes,” Nana said. “For right now, Barsis is going to take me for a night on the town. And then I’ll probably, um, sleep at his place. If you girls know what I mean.” She winked at them broadly.
“You will definitely spend the night with me, lovely female,” Barsis growled softly. “It will be my pleasure to care for you in every way.”
“Um…” Liv cleared her throat. “Okay well—let’s make it a date. Dinner at five at my suite. I’ll, uh, send you directions by my hubby, Baird. He can bespeak Barsis.”
“That will be more than acceptable,” the Beast Kindred growled, but he had eyes only for their Nana.
“Yes, that will be lovely.” Nana gave them both a bright smile but it was clear she was being drawn into the Beast Kindred’s orbit. They were drifting together like an iron filing pulled by a magnet, Liv thought.
Since she didn’t want to see her grandmother getting busy—even in the body of a pairing puppet—she grabbed Sophie by the arm and started to leave.
“Oh wait—let me get a hug before you go!” Nana exclaimed.
She drew them both into an embrace at the same time, just as she used to when they were kids. Liv was a little uncomfortable at first but then Nana whispered, “I love you my little sweet peas!” exactly as she had when the two of them were little and Liv felt her eyes filling with tears.
“We…we love you too, Nana. We’ve missed you,” she said. She wondered if she ought to tell Nana that her daughter—their mother—as well as their father had both died in a car wreck when she and Sophie were in their senior year of high school but she didn’t want to ruin her night.
“We love you, Nana,” Sophie echoed. “I don’t know how you’re here but, well, you’re welcome on board the Mother Ship.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.” Nana gave them both a kiss on the cheek and smiled. “Now, you two run along and I’ll meet you for supper tomorrow night. And I’ll see if I can scratch up the ingredients for my special banana pudding too.”
“Oh, we haven’t had your special pudding in years!” Sophie exclaimed. “Every time I try to make it, it doesn’t come out right.’
“Were you trying to use that stuff in a box for pudding mix?” Nana rolled her eyes. “You have to make your pudding from scratch or it’s no good! Well—I’ll bring you some tomorrow. I’m sure we can manage it. Can’t we, Barsis?” She looked up at the big Beast Kindred who smiled at her.
“We can manage anything you like, Ruth. Anything.” He lifted his bushy black eyebrows expressively and Liv realized it really was time to go.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, smiling at her Nana. “Good night!”
“Good night,” Sophie echoed and then the two of them let themselves out of the privacy room, leaving their Nana to explore her newfound sexuality in her newfound body with her newfound Beast Kindred boyfriend.
Chapter Thirty-three
“I have no idea what is going on here but it is freaking weird.” Liv shook her head and took another sip of hot cocoa. After the run in with their Nana, any thought of an early night had flown right out the window. They were both in Liv’s suite and Baird was there too. Sylvan was making sure the twins were asleep before coming over but he was taking longer than expected.
“So you say that the spirit of your deceased mother’s mother now resides inside the body of a pairing puppet?” Baird asked, as though trying to make sure he was getting it right.
“Yes, she does apparently,” Liv said flatly. “And she’s dating a Beast Kindred named Barsis. In fact, more than dating since they’ve already done the ‘sex act’ as Nana calls it.”
“I don’t remember Nana being so, uh, sex positive, when we were growing up,” Sophie remarked.
“Well, to hear her tell it, Pop-pop was no great shakes in the bedroom so maybe there wasn’t much to be positive about,” Liv pointed out.
“I know Barsis.” Baird nodded approvingly. “He’s a good male. He’ll be a good addition to the family.”
“We weren’t exactly looking to add family members, you know,” Liv pointed out.
Baird shrugged. “You know you’ve always said you wished Daniel had grandparents to spoil him the way you did when you were young, lilenta.”
“Yes, but—” Liv began but just then Sylvan walked in.
“Sorry I’m late.” He ran a hand through his short blond hair, looking harassed.
“Were the kids that bad, honey?” Sophie asked sympathetically.
“No, they’ve been asleep for hours,” Sylvan said, sinking down beside her on the couch and giving her a kiss. “I’ve been fielding calls from all over the Mother Ship—it seems that everything on the ship that has an AI is acting up.”
“Well, I knew the trams were messed up,” Sophie said.
“And my blood Analyzer at the lab seems to think it’s some guy from Ohio,” Liv put in.
“And our dead Nana is somehow inhabiting the body of a pairing puppet and dating a Beast Kindred,” Sophie put in.
Sylvan’s eyes widened and he looked at Liv. “You were serious about that? I thought maybe it was some kind of joke or I had misheard you.”
“Nope. Nana is back and she’s doing the nasty, as Kat would say,” Liv said bluntly.
“We’re having dinner with her tomorrow night and she’s going to make her famous banana pudding and meet the kids,” Sophie put in.
“What I’d like to know is, how?” Liv said. “How is she here when she’s been dead for almost fifteen years?”
“Wait a minute…” Baird had a thoughtful frown on his face as he turned to Sylvan. “You said it was everything on the ship with an AI—and Artificial Intelligence, right?”
“Right. But as we all know, we keep our AI’s simple,” Sylvan said. “We don’t want a repeat of what the Knower did on Uriel Two before the timeline was fixed.”
“That would be awful,” Sophie agreed and shivered. The Knower had started as an AI to help with all planetary communications and then it had become self-aware and had wound up killing everyone on the entire planet
“So we keep our AI’s simple and without personalities,” Baird said. “Yet somehow every fucking thing on the ship with an AI has somehow grown a personality.”
“Exactly.” Sylvan nodded. “It started around six tonight with the trams and it seems to be spreading all over. Every machine that has even a bit of artificial intelligence now thinks it’s a person.”
“Wait—around six?” Baird frowned. “That’s exactly when I was bringing Dark to your office with the Shannom-rah.”
“So you’re saying this phenomenon coincides with the presence of the Shannom-rah on the ship?” Sylvan asked.
Baird nodded. “Yes, I guess so.”
“But if that’s so, then—”
But Liv didn’t hear the rest of what Sylvan was saying. She had a sudden feeling that someone wanted to speak to her urgently. No sooner had she tuned into the message than she heard a familiar voice.
“Oh Liv, I’m so sorry to bother you, but please, can you help me? I’m having cramps again—really bad ones. Oh—they hurt so much!”
The mental cry of anguish made Liv jump to her feet, spilling hot cocoa all over the coffee table.
“Oh, what is it? What’s wrong?” Sophie gasped because Liv had grabbed her head and probably had a wild look on her face.
“It’s Anna—she’s in pain!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I never should have discharged her from the Med Center!”
Sylvan was all business at once.
“Where is she at? What can I do?”
“She’s in a guest suite by the Docking Bay Med Center” Liv told him. “I’m going to run see her right away.”
“How can I help?” her brother-in-law asked. “Do you want me there or would you rather handle it on your own?”
Liv appreciated his willingness not to butt-in on her patient but she wanted a more experienced healer to look Anna over.
“You can join me but maybe run to the Med Center first and see if you can get her blood test results,” she told Sylvan. “I had to tube them over to the far side Med Center. If their Analyzer wasn’t acting up, the results should be done by now. Then you and Sophie meet me at her suite.”
“Anything I can do?” Baird asked.
“Just watch the kids,” Liv told him. “All of them, hon, if you don’t mind going back and forth.” She was glad that she and Sophie were in side-by-side suites with a connecting door for just this kind of emergency. It was always good to be able to leave and have one adult watch both sets of kids.
“Got it.” Baird nodded. “Go on,” he said when Sophie would have stopped to clean up the spilled cocoa. “I’ve got that. Just help Olivia’s patient.”
“Will do.” Sophie nodded gratefully and they all piled out the door. As they went, Liv jammed a think-me on her head and sent soothing messages to Anna.
“On my way! Be there soon so don’t worry—you’re going to be fine,” she told her patient.
She just hoped she was telling the truth.
Chapter Thirty-four
“Oh…Oh!” Anna moaned. She was curled on her side, clutching her lower abdomen and experiencing the most terrible cramps she’d ever had in her life. Even her worst period made these seem like a mild headache. But it wasn’t a long-delayed period that was causing this pain because she had no bleeding. Anna didn’t know what was wrong with her—she only knew it felt like someone had cut her open and was scraping her insides out with a rusty knife.
She moaned again just as the door opened and Liv came quickly in.
“Lights,” she said and the overhead glows came on, flooding the bedroom in soft, golden light.
“Oh, Liv,” Anna panted. “Thanks…so much for coming. Hurts…so bad.”
“I know, that’s what you said, hon.” Liv put a hand to her head. “Just hold on—I’m going to do a quick exam.”
She measured Anna’s vitals, a look of concentration on her pretty face, but what she was seeing apparently didn’t tell her much.
“Nothing,” Anna heard her mutter to herself. “No fever, no swelling…what’s going on?”
“I think I might have a clue as to the problem.” Someone new walked into the room—it was the tall blond Blood Kindred Anna had seen talking to Dark on his viewscreen and Sophie was right behind him.
“This is my brother-in-law, Sylvan who is also a healer,” Liv introduced him rapidly. “And he’s Sophie’s husband. What did you find, Sylvan? Toxins in her blood?”
The blond Kindred was holding a clip-chart and paging through it rapidly.
“Not toxins, exactly, but…no, this can’t be right.” He frowned, shaking his head.
“What? What is it?” Liv asked anxiously.
Sylvan frowned doubtfully.
“Well…if this is correct, it looks like Anna has overdosed on bonding fruit.”
“Overdosed?” Sophie asked. “Can you do that?”
“To hear Kat tell it, you certainly can,” Liv said dryly. “Remember her story about eating a whole bowl of the stuff the first time she visited Twin Moons with Deep and Lock?”
“I’m not talking about just a bowl of the stuff,” Sylvan said, still studying the chart. “If these numbers are correct, Anna would have had to eat about a hundred of the bonding fruits. The dosage in her bloodstream is incredibly concentrated.”
“Bonding fruit?” Anna asked weakly. “I’ve heard a little about those but I don’t think I ate any.”
“I don’t see how you could have—how could anybody eat a hundred fruits all at once without getting sick?” Liv asked. She looked at Anna urgently. “Maybe it was something else you ate. Some of that awful Trollox food you told us about?”
Anna shook her head. “No—I didn’t even have to touch Trollox food for the past week. Gorn was gone and Dark was cooking me decent food. I just pretended to eat the food at our last dinner with Gorn. Just kind of pushed it around on my plate. I—”
She stopped suddenly as a thought occurred to her. She saw herself sitting at the table with Gorn and watched as he dumpe
d the bag of “sweeties” out onto her plate. She heard his voice saying, “One of my new drewgs said they’d be good for you. Said all breeders love ‘em. They’re Kindred sweeties, they are.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered faintly.
“What? What is it? You remembered something, didn’t you?” Sophie asked urgently.
“I did,” Anna admitted faintly. “Just before that last dinner, Gorn gave me these…dried apricot-looking things. They tasted weird but really good—like peaches and strawberries and mangoes and even sort of like buttered popcorn.”
“Oh no—that’s bonding fruit all right,” Liv said, nodding. “It’s that buttered popcorn aftertaste that’s so addictive.”
“Did you say they were dried?” Sylvan asked, frowning.
Anna nodded. “Looked like dried apricots, like I said.”
His frowned deepened and Liv asked anxiously, “What is it?”
“Selling dried bonding fruit is forbidden because it concentrates the chemicals in the fruit so extremely,” he said. “Dehydrating a single fruit gives it the strength of ten fresh ones.”
“Oh dear!” Sophie exclaimed. “How many did you say you ate, Anna?”
Anna shrugged and winced as another severe cramp hit her.
“I don’t know…eight or ten?”
“No wonder it looks like she ate a hundred of them then!” Liv exclaimed.
“There’s only one cure.” Sylvan looked grave. “You know what I mean, Olivia.”
“What? What cure?” Anna begged. “Can you give me some muscle relaxers? I had those a couple of times when I had a really bad period at home and they worked great.”
“Unfortunately, muscle relaxers aren’t going to help.” Sylvan frowned. “I am trying to think of a delicate way to put this…the cramping you’re feeling is your vaginal canal and uterus seizing up because they need deep penetration and male seed, respectively. That is what the bonding fruit does—it helps to elasticize your opening in order to achieve penetration by a larger than average shaft and it causes your body to crave male seed.”
“Are…are you saying that’s the antidote? Having sex?” Anna felt sick. “I can’t…I don’t want to do that,” she whispered, shaking her head.
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