Thomas checked his messages. A “package” had been delivered, along with a data string which he decrypted as one of his secret bomb shelters scattered throughout the city. This one was near the fishing wharfs.

He exited the research annex and bypassed the hovercart loading zone. Soon he was zigzagging down city streets in his hoverchair, past dirty snow banks and bundled up pedestrians.

“Agh!” An Alashani mother grabbed her two young toddlers and urged them into an alleyway full of kiosks and shoppers. “Don’t let the rekveh see you.”

An unfortunately common attitude. It would only get worse and more widespread, Thomas knew. He wasn’t exactly giving people reasons to love him. His whole side of the war was floundering. He really shouldn’t risk traveling in public.

And he definitely should return the sexy “package” to Lieutenant Yolpeen right now, instead of giving himself until sunrise. He should make wise decisions.

The canal district stank like fish. Certain attributes were common across habitable worlds, and saltwater oceans were one of those things. Most of the aquatic wildlife on Reject-20 was eel-like. The common eel species were popular in a lot of cuisine.

Thomas entered a nondescript alley between adobe buildings. He sped through a doorway before anyone might catch a glimpse of where he went. Down a ramp, through another door, and then there was a dead end.

He peered into a tiny camera lens. His facial recognition software approved his entry.

The vault door slid aside.

Thomas floated down a corridor that was paneled in mirrors. The booby traps were unactivated, although anyone inside the bomb shelter could arm the system, which would then automatically kill anyone who resembled a Torth. Thomas was slightly apprehensive. He had installed a master override in the control sleeve which he wore, just in case.

He parked his hoverchair at the end of the mirrored hall. For some reason that he did not examine, he wanted to show off his physicality. He wanted to walk into the bomb shelter rather than float.

He tapped his personal military code into the digital lock of the final vault door.

It slid aside.

Within the empty underground bunker, the Pink Screwdriver reclined on a nest of blankets and pillows. She was gorgeous, lush, and almost naked.

Penitents were not supposed to know about the secret lairs. It was a huge security risk, and possibly a huge mistake, to give one of them military access, plus hints about the hidden booby traps. Thomas barely knew the Pink Screwdriver.

Well, that wasn’t true. He had absorbed her entire life history and all of her deep secrets.

Not that his knowledge mattered, insofar as security. As a penitent Torth, she might accidentally share the location of this bunker with a penitent whom he didn’t know so well. Thomas could not police her day and night for the rest of her life. He could not control who bumped into her, or who she bumped into. He could control for a lot of variables, but he could not predict everything.

Especially with telepathy gas growing in popularity.

Ah well.

If Kessa found out and didn’t like it, if Garrett found out and disapproved … screw them. They weren’t living his life. Everyone should be allowed a vice or two.

The Pink Screwdriver wore a diaphanous robe, like a chambermaid. White gauze did not hide her tawny earth tones. She sat up when Thomas entered. A lock of her black hair was loose, and it spilled across a pillow like a ribbon.

Her robe was loose. One of her breasts was half-exposed in a tantalizing swell.

Thomas made sure the vault sealed behind him, locking them both inside. Then he whir-stepped onto the blankets. He felt unsteady and unbalanced, especially with so many folds and pillows surrounding his feet. He was likely to trip and fall.

The Pink Screwdriver sensed his unsteadiness. She rose to her knees, and helped guide him to a comfortable sitting position. I am so surprised (honored) that You want to see me again. Her wordless thoughts came to him in rapid overlaps and overlays; the Torth way of communicating.

Unfettered imagination was so much faster, so much more eloquent, than any spoken language. Thomas felt himself relaxing a tiny bit.

Yes.

They faced each other. She was taller than him, since she had already gone all the way through puberty.

Thomas marveled that she wasn’t crying in fear or banging on the vault door in a panic. After all, he had trapped her. She was, essentially, a slave. Terror would be a default reaction for a penitent trapped alone with the Conqueror.

Thomas hated himself. Why did he keep messing with her life? Who would welcome that?

Garrett was right. This was a mistake. Thomas should be focused on science, not on awkward encounters with a beautiful penitent. A super-genius ought to know better.

The Pink Screwdriver reached out with a gentle hand. She touched his shoulder.

Thomas knew that she was forcing herself to ignore the thunderhead of his freakishly enormous mind. She caught glimpses of ugly Torth memories churning within. He contained evil.

He was evil.

He seized minds and twisted them. He was a destroyer of souls. There was no way to hide his monstrous deeds from a fellow mind reader.

(Yes) I sense what You have done, the Pink Screwdriver admitted. But if I am supposed to tremble in fear of You…? Well, let me know.

She was actually reassuring him.

There was self-loathing within her, as well. Thomas sensed it. They were both tainted, albeit to different degrees. They were both sinners. The Pink Screwdriver was not proud of the way she had mistreated her personal slaves. If someone (the Conqueror) wished to punish her, well, she would accept it.

She thought that she deserved punishment.

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Thomas realized that he felt safe with her, in a way he felt with no one else in the universe. The Pink Screwdriver would not judge him. She already judged herself more harshly than anyone else, and no one—not even the Conqueror—could compete with her self-hatred.

The Pink Screwdriver unbuttoned his vest.

Thomas held her at arm’s length. I have made enough slaves (zombies) this week. It is not My intention to create yet another mindless slave. This visit is not meant to be (should not be) penance.

The Pink Screwdriver gently bypassed his grasp and continued to remove his clothing. I know.

Thomas sensed that she had been practicing for this very opportunity. She had even practiced on a couple of fellow penitents, in the dark of the night. In secret. The Pink Screwdriver and her bedfellows suspected that sensuality was tied to emotions and self-expression, which was connected to creativity, which, in turn, was connected with invention and all the wondrous things which slave species created.

She was done being a Torth.

She wanted to try something new.

All right. Thomas gave up on trying to hold her back. If she wanted to experiment sexually with a deranged super-genius… well, what could he do to stop her? He wasn’t exactly in the mood to singe her or torture her with a pain seizure.

The Pink Screwdriver propped him up on pillows. Her touches on his naked skin set off starbursts of tingles throughout his hormone-infused body.

Nobody ever touched him.

The sensation brought back memories of Cherise, and Vy, and Mrs. Hollander. And also Evenjos, when she had healed his neuromuscular disease. Yet the Pink Screwdriver was different from all of those touches. She wasn’t trying to keep him alive or perform some hygienic task. She wasn’t here to feed him or bathe him.

She was here to have her way with him.

Sensuality was a skill, and the Pink Screwdriver had purposely absorbed relevant memories. She had tried to study the sexuality of ummins and nussians and shani. She had reviewed what worked best for them. And she wanted to show off all that she had learned.

You (Conqueror) have actually lived among humans (lucky). She mounted him. You know so much. She sank onto him, rubbing her nude body against his. What is human sensuality like? she silently inquired.

Thomas swallowed.

He was an expert on many, many things. So he dug into the bedrock of his vast memory banks, searching for relevant experiential memories, for answers to show off.

Most of the adults he had known throughout his life were Torth.

The teenagers who used to live with him in group homes had been maladjusted. Many came from backgrounds of molestation. Thomas had encountered a few healthy sexual relationships … but he had been too preoccupied with his own survival to study them, at the time. All he had done was absorb them and file them away without any insights. Before puberty, he just hadn’t been interested.

He was now.

Um, I’ve absorbed a few movies? Thomas played sensual scenes from Hollywood films and TV shows in his mind.

The Pink Screwdriver saw him as a god of knowledge. Yet she wasn’t impressed.

Porn? He offered her previews of humans pretending to enjoy themselves.

She was even less impressed.

Hm. Thomas didn’t blame her. A lot of porn reduced sex to an animal act, and that didn’t hold much appeal to Torth, who considered animals far beneath them.

Um. Erotica? He fanned out his collection of sexually charged drawings and prose, absorbed from humans at some long-ago point in his faded childhood.

None of it seemed quite relevant to them. Those were all humans doing human things.

The Pink Screwdriver grinned. She actually giggled. This godlike mind is even less knowledgeable (!) about this topic than I am!

She was right. Thomas grinned.

She leaned close to him, her breasts grazing his chest, her fragrantly clean odors filling the air. Never mind. Stop trying to impress me.

The way she moved … Thomas groaned with pleasure. He could not help it. He was ridiculously hard.

She had been practicing. It was obvious. She moved in ways that made it actually difficult for Thomas to think.

He didn’t want to stop thinking. For him, thinking was as necessary and natural as having a heartbeat and a pulse.

Yet she guided him, and her guidance proved to him that high level thoughts needed to take a backseat for a while. If he was going to fully immerse himself in sensuality, then he needed to quit scheming and worrying, if only for a few seconds.

Be here with me. The Pink Screwdriver engulfed him in wet warmth. Give me pleasure.

She slid off of him, onto him, off and on, in a rhythm that his body automatically responded to with fervor.

The war would wait.

The lifetimes he’d absorbed would keep.

Thomas surrendered to her meager demand. It was so simple. For this one moment, he was just a person, not a soulless aggregate of other people’s life stories. Not a freak who stole other people’s free will. Not a breaker of minds, or a terrifying rekveh, or a scheming super-genius.

Part of Thomas acknowledged that he was, indeed, still all of those things … but the Pink Screwdriver did not care that he conquered worlds and destroyed minds. She was not interested in those aspects of him. She reveled in the immensity of his consciousness.

Their bodies moved in a rhythm as natural and traditional as the most ancient rituals of their sapient ancestors.

Their mingled heat and passion had nothing to do with Torth culture. It flouted Torth civilization. It defied everything which she had been brought up to believe. It challenged his vaunted ability to think clearly and rationally.

The Pink Screwdriver lost herself inside his mind, even while he lost himself inside her body.

! * ! * ! * !

Thomas inhaled her emotions. While he felt everything she felt, he lost his last shred of self-control.

The Pink Screwdriver rocked on him, her body on top, her mind underneath his. She gripped his back, fingers digging into flesh.

He climaxed right along with her in a great and violent release, pressing into her.

*** ! *** ! *** ! ***

Their passion concurred, and they did not use their voices to feel the mutual crescendo; only their minds.

Afterwards, she rolled off him. He sensed her smile at the starbursts and shimmers which were fading away.

!?

Thomas realized that when he’d lost control, he had accidentally caused wildfire sparks, shimmering shurikens of heat, and a few snowflakes.

Like a reckless doofus.

Or like a typical human. Like a Dovanack.

Back to self-chastisement? the Pink Screwdriver thought in a teasing tone. She snuggled up to him with a satisfied smile.

Thomas reeled in his expanded awareness. It was a good thing he hadn’t accidentally ignited the blankets. He should keep tighter control of his subconscious. How would a Dovanack handle sex?

Maybe they’re no better at self-control during sex, the Pink Screwdriver silently suggested. And maybe, just maybe, this isn’t the best topic for a sexual afterglow.

Fair enough.

Thomas let himself enjoy the feel of her hand beneath his head, and the flowery scent of her long hair. He basked in a feeling of wholesomeness.

Amazement, even.

He had just done something normal that was entirely new to him.

He had actually managed to shove aside all of his galactic-sized concerns. He had never imagined he would be capable of something so intimate. So fun. And so simplistic.

This cozy feeling chased away a lot of the darkness inside him.

Same, the Pink Screwdriver thought with sleepy contentment, holding onto him. It’s like We aren’t Torth at all.

Thomas stroked her raven-black hair. This was all new to him.

The Upward Governess had yearned for this feeling, hadn’t she? She had tried to coax Yellow Thomas into transcending Torth-ness. She had done that even when he himself had not believed that escape was possible.

The Upward Governess should be remembered as the first penitent, the Pink Screwdriver thought.

That was true. She was the first.

That was something.

Thomas gazed at the shiny bronze ceiling, where he had accidentally created snowflake crystals and fiery paths laid out by mathematics. He smiled at the underlying fractals and cubic splines. His brain was decompressing.

He had plenty to worry about. For now, though?

He and the Pink Screwdriver weren’t Torth at all. They were something new.