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"Bonjour, mademoiselle."

Bri flinched and looked up, both relieved and terrified to see Chris. She'd been dreading this moment since being led to the mess hall. At least she'd slept well; evidently 'first thing in the morning' literally meant midnight here, rather than the 06:00 that had been her initial best-case expectation.

Still. The hour in which she'd woken up and realized that the events of the previous night hadn't been a dream had been the most difficult of her life. And the fact that the mere act of breathing made her reproductive tract hurt was the least of it. She'd tried to hold off her tears, fearful of what might be counted against her. But pretty quickly she'd realized that it was a losing battle and decided to hope that what happened in her private quarters wouldn't count for so much. At which point she'd gone from zero to sobbing, and that had hurt even worse.

It was loneliness. And homesickness, which she somehow hadn't expected at all, given the ostracism and ennui that had defined her life on Pétain. But mostly it was the helplessness of her situation. She was trapped in so many more ways than she ever could have imagined. And yes, she could - would, necessarily - have children now, but in the clarity of the morning she'd known for the first time that it was all wrong. She didn't want that here, and she didn't want it like this. But now she was stuffed absolutely to capacity with some unknown canid's sperm, and before the day was done, she'd be back in that room, back on that bed, back in the restraints that were really only the tip of the iceburg of her captivity. _Every_day, it sounded like, until she gave birth to a litter of puppies and the impossibility of leaving Ontario grew even more pronounced. Who would volunteer to take on a social scholar, anyway? She'd thought the Canadian computer valued her work, but evidently she was nothing more than a set of ovaries to it. For which reason it almost certainly wouldn't let her go, anyway.

She'd needed more than anything to see the one person in orbit who could possibly have understood. Except he'd either been with her the night before, or else not. Either way she had no idea how to process that.

And now he was here, and he'd called her 'mademoiselle', and this, of all things, seemed to be the camel's-back-breaking-straw that was about to make her dissolve into tears right in front of the giant portrait of the Queen.

"Avec ma bite et mon couteau!" he blurted out in a hurry.

This brought her up short. "What?!"

"Sorry," he said, setting his tray down across from her. "Had to, you know.Cheer you up. The code-monkeys I worked with on Pétain said that all the time. Aaand, now you've more or less heard the full extent of my French."

She stared for a moment, entirely at a loss. And then laughter was coming up from inside of her before she even knew it, and she gave in, laughing much louder and longer than the situation warranted. The feeling was a strange synthesis of mirth and the relief of vomiting after hours of crippling nausea.

When she was done, she wiped her eyes and looked up to find real sympathy on his face.

And bandages on his right fingers.

"But you are injured," she observed. Her body had gone completely rigid as she flashed back to the previous night, remembering how her claws had flexed when her maidenhead was broken.

He pretended not to notice her tail sticking straight up like an exclamation point and raised his hand to examine the wrappings as though noticing them for the first time. "Oh, this? Yeah, overestimated my typing ability last night and took on a double-black-diamond keyboard that it turns out I wasn't ready for."

She blinked, not having understood that at all but pretty sure that he was deflecting. Which had to mean-- didn't it? Unless--

He wiggled his fingers thoughtfully. "Listen, Bri, I'm not feeling very hungry this morning and by the looks of your tray, neither are you. So would you like to take a little walk with me? There's so much of the station you haven't seen yet, and I feel like showing you around would be the neighborly thing to do."

The compounded uncertainties weighing upon her notwithstanding, she'd have done just about anything for a few more minutes of Chris's companionship. "Please. This sounds lovely." She gathered her feet and pulled herself, as gingerly as possible, atop them.

Chris watched but did not help. "It may interest you to know that hand-holding, or any physical contact between men and women, is considered inappropriate unless they're going steady."

Bri took a few wobbly steps forward. "Yes, I suppose I am not."

The kwee-yoat laughed for some reason. "No, it's... never mind." They didn't speak again until out of the mess hall, which took a while given her limp. She didn't even care where they were going. Just having him there made her feel so much better. And those bandages...

"How are you settling in to Ontario?" He asked nonchalantly, as though he hadn't noticed anything amiss.

She tried to remember how he'd put it the day before. "Daunting," she said faintly. "As you said, living up to such... promise... is so..." But her lip was quivering too hard for her to continue.

He noticed. "Hey, we're going to see TIMBIT!"

That almost stopped her in her tracks, but at least it stopped her from crying. "What? How do you mean?"

"Oh, I just figured. You're a social scientist, right? And these good people around us are the heart of Ontario, of course. But TIMBIT is the brain, and I had to think you'd like to see what that looks like."

"Yes," she agreed, still surprised. "Although, when you say 'see' it...? I imagined that area must be secure."

He nodded and guided them into a passageway that seemed to angle 'uphill' more sharply than the usual softly-sloped corridors of a diaspora station. "Oh, it is, comparatively speaking. But I have access, and I'd be curious as to your impression. Never know when an outside perspective might shed new light on things. That's why I'm here, after all. But yeah, while you're in there with me I won't be able to access anything really sensitive, which is fine. I just thought you might be curious to see the racks. Not that you'd be able to tell what's going on under the hood, of course."

She wondered. "If you think I will find it interesting, I am sure that I will." Her steps were growing lighter, her movements easier. She wondered if his presence were really making her feel that much better, until she realized that they must be headed away from lower levels of Ontario, where the centripetal force was strongest.

Chris smiled, but there was worry behind his eyes. "Yes. I am certain that you will find it most enlightening."

* * *

"THAT WAS MUCH EASIER THAN I EXPECTED," she yelled. Not the trip itself; now they were in the large cylindrical node at the center of Ontario's double main rings, where TIMBIT was housed, and she was almost entirely weightless. But it had been a long time since her emergency null-G training. Between being out of practice and the inability to anticipate which unfamiliar movements might trigger blinding pain in her gut, their journey had gone from hard to easy to hard again.

But obtaining clearance to enter had merely been a matter of Chris waving his wristband over a sensor and the caribou attendant toggling the door open for them, nodding cordially to her as she followed the kwee-yoat inside.

"YEAH." Chris seemed to be able to hear her over the din of the racks all around them as he sailed down the aisle ahead of her, which was good. "SOMETHING YOU GOTTA UNDERSTAND ABOUT ONTARIO," he took a breath, "IS THAT EVERYONE HERE IS COMPLETELY TRUSTWORTHY. THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY POINT TO HASSLING US WITH SECURITY, BECAUSE..."

They passed through another door into a much quieter space, cool and dim compared to the area they'd just floated through. It looked like a disused storage unit, with lots of bare bulkheads and empty crates strewn about in cargo nets. The centripetal drift toward the far wall of the room was almost imperceptible.

As soon as the door hissed shut behind them, Chris swung his shoulder and rotated gradually toward her with a pensive look on his face. "Because the Canadians have lost all capacity for questioning orders or any sort of independent thought at all, is why."

She was stunned by the bluntness of the statement for a moment before it sank in. "Are we-"

He was on her before she could even finish formulating the question, wrapping her in a powerful hug, which caused them both to go into a gentle spin. "Bri," he said, audibly choking up. "Bri, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

Her arms rose to his sides in disbelief, then clutched desperately at his back, trying to secure herself against him. "It was you?" She had so many questions to ask, but that was the only one that really mattered. "It was you, right?!" She could hear the desperation in her own voice.

"Yes it was me," he murmured, nuzzling down into her neck. "I didn't know if I'd be able to make it happen in time, or at all, but... you were the first, you know, real person I'd seen in a long time, and I couldn't just stand by and..."

"Thank you," she stammered, and burst into tears. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn't... I thought it might be you, but I tried to tell myself not to hope."

Some of the tension left his shoulders. "Then you don't hate me for it?"

"No!" She pulled back to look him in the eyes. "No, of course not! Not ever! How could I hate the one who..." She shook her head, tears speeding away in oscilloscope tracery, at a loss for words.

He nodded, and smiled with reddened eyes through tears of his own. "That wasn't... what I think either of us imagined our first time would be like, I know, but it wasn't... so bad either, right?"

"No," she insisted, and buried her head in his chest. "It was good. It was so, so good. Now that I know, it was so good."

He heaved an enormous sigh and stroked her back. "You can barely walk."

She shook her head against him. "It is nothing. Emma says I will be..." her mind cast back, "'right as rain' again soon."

"Your coupling tech?"

"Oui. I can say that here, yes? Un lapin. Rabbit. She also said she would tell the technician on your side to instruct you to hold back next time. Tonight."

"Bri, I'm so sorry. Forgive me. I-"

She smiled and shook her head again. "No. I know. You could not possibly have been more, ah, considerate. There is nothing to forgive."

They held each other for a long time, their minds no less burdened but at least sharing those burdens.

At long last he spoke again. "I'm not leaving Ontario."

She glanced up at him in surprise. "You're not? For me?"

"For you." He lowered a hand to press ever-so-gently at her abdomen. "For them."

Her mind reeled.

"Besides, I had to take the Queen's oath yesterday to make myself eligible. TIMBIT had been pushing for that anyway, I think. I'm not entirely certain it would have allowed me to leave in the first place."

The relief that had welled up within her ran onto cold ground at his words. "TIMBIT," she repeated softly. "Chris, what...?" She gestured broadly at the station beyond the walls of their little room. "What is going on here?"

He traced his fingers against the bulkhead to kill their rotation. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I was about to give up on this place entirely when you walked in. The situation here is so much more fucked than you know. The people... like I said before, the... the_spark_ has been bred right out of them. Males are selected based mainly upon their puck stats, as far as I can tell, which is to say sheer power and brutality. Teamwork too, I guess. The average woman is more likely to get a chance for kids, so the selection pressure is lower, but any kind of depression or emotional instability and they get pulled right out of the gene pool. Both sexes are selected for unquestioning compliance, and are helpless without constant, moment-by-moment guidance from the computer. If it didn't tell them to eat I'm not sure they would. And they call electricity 'hydro' for some reason. Hydro. Hydro means water! And these fucking," he waved his left arm, "wristbands. Mine's a dummy, per my contract, but I can't tell you how many times I've seen a little kid ask some really insightful question only to get zapped, and you can just see in their face the exact moment they resolve to never do that again." He glanced down at her bare wrist. "You still haven't been issued one?"

She shook her head. "No one has said anything about it."

"That's weird. Maybe I should poke around and see if the fab lab is down for some reason." He exhaled slowly, and when he continued his words were slower. More measured. "Anyway, they all - most of them, anyway - they know something's wrong, but they don't know how to talk about it, or even think about it. As far as I can tell most of them are living lives of quiet desperation, trapped in a system that ruthlessly crushes anyone who can't pretend to be completely happy about everything all the time. They have so little to do, day to day, that they've developed all sorts of elaborate apology rituals to fill the hours. And they're totally dependent upon an electronic brain that's... I mean, TIMBIT. It's dying. It's dying a slow, and... _random_death, as subsystem after subsystem drops offline. It's only a matter of time before Ontario goes dark. And in the meantime, it's getting increasingly senescent. Issuing commands that are only proximal to what it actually wants, like it's an old man with aphasia, having a hard time expressing himself. If it ever had the capacity for direct communication, it was lost before I got here. So most of what I do all day is apply bandaids and try to figure out what it's really trying to do and help it along. There's literally no one else here, or at this point, probably anywhere in orbit, who could take over for me."

She clung to him, her scholar's mind utterly fascinated and thirsting for more but the greater part of her horrified by his words. "Then, what will happen to us?"

He let his head loll back. "Well, yesterday morning I'd have said there was no hope at all. I'd about made up my mind to get away from here as soon as possible. Was really wrestling with leaving these people behind. I mean, they're... what they are, but they're still good people. Really, genuinely so, for the most part. I even have a couple friends, kinda. But I'd done what I could, and just didn't see the point of going down with the ship."

She was puzzled. "And... I changed that for you?"

He considered her face for a while before answering. "Bri, has it occurred to you that your presence here doesn't make any sense?"

When he'd implied as much the previous day it had nettled her pride. Now it hurt for a different reason.

She couldn't keep the shame and disgust from her voice. "But it does make sense. I had been thinking... I was so happy that Ontario wanted my work. That it valued everything I had poured so much of myself into. No one on Pétain ever did. And I could be a mother also! It was too good to be true. But..." Now she wanted to cry again.

"Here, let's..." He drew her over to the far bulkhead, where she found herself settling ever-so-softly back against it, he at her side and their hips touching. It was oddly like lying on the ground, except the door they'd come through was on the 'ceiling' above them. He turned his head to study her face. "You don't think TIMBIT cares about your work?"

She shook her head angrily. "Emma said to me that my schedule, with her, is booked solid for... almost forever. Because TIMBIT is, she said, 'hot' for my genetics. All I am good for in Ontario is to be, to be..." She sputtered. "Livestock! Livestock, for breeding. Now this is all I will ever be!" More hot tears and dry sobs.

He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, speaking softly but urgently into her ear. "Number one, you're never going to be that to me. Understand? You're not livestock, you're Abrielle, and you're a brilliant and incredibly brave woman, and... hell, I'll just say it, incredibly beautiful, too. And amazing in every way. And number two, I'm not..."

She sniffed and looked up. Why did he sound hesitant? She could see the wheels turning in his head.

"That conclusion, about breeding being your main purpose here... may not be warranted. Bri, I saw your original schedule yesterday while I was poking around in the subsystem that handles the eugenics program here, and it was heavy but it wasn't that_heavy. Just a little moreso than average, I'd say. You were paired up with a series of mostly cougars with a ninety-eight percent expectation of conception within eighteen months. That's not consistent with... _oh." He averted his eyes.

"Oh?" she echoed. If what he was saying about her schedule was true, nothing made any sense at all any more. "Oh, what?"

He grinned sheepishly. "So you know how... Well, look. Obviously TIMBIT does want your genetics, or else you wouldn't be in the program at all and it probably wouldn't have made you agree to the idea in the first place. Consent does actually seem to matter to it in a way, given extremely exotic values of 'consent'. But cats and coyotes--" THAT was how to say it! "--are anything but a natural pairing. The chromosomes don't even match up. Even the tech last night said that, yes, the results had been ideal, but even with months of optimized followup, there was still only something like a fifteen percent chance of any given egg implanting successfully and carrying to term."

"Okay," she agreed, wondering what Emma's comment about her 'dropping eggs like crazy' portended for their future in light of this new information. The idea that she might not have much of a litter after all was strangely disappointing. "But how does this...?"

He chuckled nervously. "Y'see, this where, ahem, I come in. You were paired up with other cats, and that made sense, and TIMBIT was satisfied with the arrangement even if it was gonna take a while. But to make sure that I was the one who ended up in that coupling with you, I basically had to, uh... see, trying to override the computer's compiled plans directly is a really dicey proposition. Not only is it liable to break important things - like, y'know, life support - but I'm not sure it isn't liable to get me recycled, whether I'm critical personnel or not. I've definitely figured out that not everything TIMBIT does is voluntary, and the last thing I want to do is provoke a defensive response. So when I do try to make changes, I have to start several steps back. In this case, instead of just assigning myself to you, I restricted the pool of potential mates to those who matched criteria that didn't obviously point to me, but whose details only I could possibly satisfy, and let TIMBIT re-kajigger its plans under those updated guidelines. And hoped for the best. But, like I said, lioness plus coyote doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So, I think what happened is, TIMBIT realized that unless something changed your genetics would almost certainly be lost. So it started kicking out hundreds of work orders intended to-"

"'Work orders?!'"

He blinked. "Yeah, that's what they are. Work orders. And not only did it flood your schedule in terms of sheer quantity, but it also dropped the hammer as far as the specific settings went. See,-"

"Yes, I know about the parameters."

He nodded. "Right. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is," he shrugged and raised his hands, palms up, "Mea culpa?"

Bri ignored his nervous smile and turned this over and over again in her head. "If this is true, you are correct that my conclusion was unwarranted. So then, do you think that I am actually here for my work? Or, would have been?"

Chris scratched the back of his neck. "I can only speculate, of course, but... did Ontario seem particularly interested in it while negotiating the terms of your transfer? Or might - uh, my apologies if this is insensitive, but - might that just have been you filling in the blanks with what you wanted to see?"

It was a fair question, but... "Yes, I think so. They only wanted my_thèse_, my dissertation, at first, and afterward requested everything I had done since then."

"Well, good news, then, because TIMBIT isn't generally one to waste time with that kind of thing. If it asked for the rest, it wanted the rest. And I'm glad I asked you, because that means that it's probably freaking out right now about how you're so tied up making puppies that you don't have time for... whatever work it was hoping you were going to do here. And I need to take that into account."

She nodded gravely. "To help it along?"

"Mhmm. I'm as much a shaman as a programmer these days, trying to interpret the desires and demands of a half-mad, half-mute god. But my point - what I've been trying to get to, with all this - is that, yes, TIMBIT may want your work, but something else is going on, too, and I have no idea what."

She frowned. "How do you mean?"

"Okay, so. It wants your work. And it wants your genes. I can float half a dozen plausible explanations for why it's interested in your thoughts about social stability, but_why does it want your genes_? It's never pulled anyone over here for breeding before you, so why it start now? And why, when push comes to shove, is that more important than your research, given that that clearly matters too?"

She could only shake her head. "I am certain I do not know."

Chris sat up slowly enough that it didn't launch him into space, bracing his arms to keep from settling backward. "Neither do I. But that was one of the major factors in my decision to stay, yesterday. After you and the pups, of course. 'Cause TIMBIT is up to something. Something big, and something... new. And that's not just hopeful, it's... sorry if I sound cavalier about this, but it's interesting. It is so goddamn interesting. It was as if all of a sudden I could smell a change in the air. Maybe there's hope here, after all, and if there is, and I'm a part of it, and you're a part of it, how could I possibly walk away from that?"

She felt her heart stir at the passion in his voice. "You really think there is a chance of... a good life, here, then?"

He relaxed his arms and settled back down beside her. "I think... I think that you're here, and I'm here with you, and that might be enough on its own. But yes. Things aren't so bad, yet. There's no reason to think the lights will go out tomorrow, or even in the next couple years. And by then, maybe whatever TIMBIT's planning will have paid off. So I'm gonna do my best to stay open, and be ready when the time comes, and... I think you should, too. Because if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that you're not just here to..." This time he had the good grace to look embarrassed, his ears flattening low.

She smiled, rolled halfway atop him, and gave him a long, tender kiss.

"You cannot imagine how much I wanted to do that last night," she purred.

He swallowed hard. "I think maybe I can."

She kissed him again. "It is so strange that you can, how do you say, knock me up and this is perfectly acceptable, but we are not allowed to touch at all in public."

He nodded and visibly hesitated before derailing the moment. "As to that. Obviously we each know who the other person in that coupling is, and there's no way that TIMBIT doesn't know we know. But I'm pretty sure it's important to it that we keep up pretenses, even when no one else is around. That's one way for us to signal that we're playing on its team."

She nodded, then looked around the room and frowned. "What is different about this place?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Ironically enough, the one TIMBIT-free spot I've found in all of Ontario can only be accessed by waltzing right through TIMBIT itself. I think this room might have originally been part of some other space, because that wall over there doesn't match the others. And, presumably, new surveillance equipment was never installed here to make up for the deficit." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter why, really. I'm pretty sure it's a Faraday cage. Honestly, I mainly use it for those days when it all gets to be too much and I just need to yell about something." He sighed. "Anyway, TIMBIT knows we're in here, and probably has a pretty good guess what we're talking about."

"And you are not worried about a, ah, defensive response?"

He shrugged. "You can't live that way. And anyway, no. It's only tangentially able to articulate itself, but it's not dumb. Not at all. And it thinks in multiply-layered contingencies. The two of us ending up together like this is gonna be part of its plan. Or one of them, at least." He gave her a sad smile. "That said, we probably shouldn't come here too often. Or stay very long when we do."

She wrapped her arms around him again. "I cannot bear to leave."

He looked thoughtful. "It should be fine to stay a bit longer. I feel like there's so much more we need to talk about, while we have the chance."

Bri nodded, pensive. "I know what you mean. And I have so many more questions. But perhaps... could you just hold me, instead? For as long as we can."

He pulled her closer and breathed deeply of the scent of her. "What I said, earlier, about 'going steady' -- in the future, we can announce that publicly. Here on Ontario, it's tantamount to a declaration of engagement, and breaking it has serious penalties. Hidden ones, I mean, but everyone knows they're there. Anyhow, after we do that, we should be able to hold hands and even hug in public."

She smiled. "I think this would be wonderful."

He squeezed her hand in his. "Probably we should give it a little while, though. We've known each other less than forty-eight hours. Moving ahead that quickly would be considered... unseemly."

She nestled into him. "Has it truly only been so long? I feel..."

"I know." He kissed the top of her head. "I feel it, too."

Her mind passed back over the memory of the night before. It had seemed such a lurid, obscene thing in the morning, especially given the revelation that she hadn't been at all under the influence. But now, knowing what she did, it all felt right again. As it had in the moment. "I knew I could trust you," she sighed. "Even when my mind did not know. My heart knew." And a warm, golden glow kindled within her at the truth of the words.

"...About tonight," he said hesitantly. "I know you're hurting, and I promise-"

She put a finger to his lips. "Only hold me, mon coeur."

"I just don't want you to fear, mon... uh... mon... chou?"

Bri snorted. "I do not think that anyone has said this for a very long time."

He smiled ruefully. "Told you I don't know much French. Swing and a miss, then?"

"No." She smiled and relaxed completely into him. "No, it is good. I think it is... how do you say? The thought which counts."

* * *

The same assistant as before came out exactly on-time. "Ab," she began. "Abra-"

Bri was still the only one there. "It is Bri," she offered with a gentle smile.

The beaver stared with glassy eyes. "Sorry. Could you please confirm for me that you're, um..." She turned the tablet for Bri to see the name displayed on it. "This person?"

Bri sighed. "Yes. I am Abrielle. We met last night."

The assistant turned away. "Sorry. Yes. This way, please."

Chris's description of the modern Canadian mind weighed on Bri as she followed the beaver down the corridor. The girl didn't seem repressed, she just seemed... blank.

Bri hadn't even noticed that they'd passed coupling 4 until the girl stopped in front of a large number 5, which parted down the middle to allow her inside.

The assistant turned to face her. "This is your coupling. Please wait inside and the tech will be with you shortly."

Bri glanced within. This room was different. It looked more like a comfortable waiting room than the spartan exam chamber next door. "Not 4?" she wondered aloud. "I was, ah, given to understand-"

"Sorry," said the assistant. "There's a timetable and--"

"Yes, of course." Bri walked through and the door hissed shut almost on the tip of her tail. A sense of numinous dread began to rise within her. Why a different room? Could it possibly signal that there would also be a different...?

She turned at the sound of the door and was mildly relieved to see Emma walk in. "Just Bri!" the rabbit called out jovially, which of course told Bri nothing. She'd probably use the same tone of voice to announce that the lioness was to be scrapped for parts. "Coupling 5 doesn't have a dedicated tech 'cause it's not much used, so I'm covering tonight. Good to see you again, and good to see you looking comfortable on your feet!"

"Emma," began Bri with the most convincing smile she could summon. "What, ah... what are we doing here?"

The tech smiled and turned to her terminal. "Please take a seat, hon." Tap. Tap. Tap.

Bri did her best to remain composed and settled down into the plush armchair that seemed to be in place of the exam bed.

"You're in rough shape," began the rabbit, "and according to this morning's analytics there wouldn't be much point in a repeat of last night. Your womb is about as thoroughly filled as is theoretically possible, and further attempts are more likely to harm, than aid, your chances of conception. Yet we do need to maximize your exposure to the father, for the reasons I mentioned before." Tap. Tap.

Bri felt herself begin to relax at those words.

Emma glanced over to her. "Coupling 5 is only ever used if the following criteria are met." She glanced back. "One. There's no further benefit to be gained from the standard approach." Tap. Tap. Tap. "Two. Parameters are set to near-maximum for emphasis on conception." Tap. Tap.

Bri's ears were fully erect, tuned to whatever Emma might say next.

"Three. The mother has displayed compliance and reliability in pursuit of the objectives of the program." The rabbit smiled wide. "I'd say you fit that description." Tap. "And four. The father has demonstrated his capacity for inflicting enough damage upon the mother that it's in the best interest of the program for his prerogatives to be... abrogated. Whether it was intentional on his part or not."

Bri blinked, uncomprehending.

"Coupling 5 is pretty much a mirror image of the other four, hon. You're gonna be in the pilot's seat tonight."

Comprehension dawned. That... didn't sound so bad, actually.

"Miss Emma, please make it very clear what is expected of me. As you say, I wish to, ah, pursue the goals of the program."

Another bright lapine smile. "Of course you do, hon. It's simple. When I leave I'll toggle the go-light from out there. And when the tech on his side has done the same, the door will open. You'll have as long as you need, but," she ran an arm down her ears, smoothing them against the back of her head, "I suppose it goes without saying, but do try to be considerate. Really shouldn't take much time at all. And once you've received as much you're going to, you're expected to withdraw back into this room as soon as possible."

"Of course. But I am still not sure that I understand. I am to... 'receive' again, yes?"

Emma cocked her head and prodded the screen. "According to the scans that are coming in, there's about... a hundred and eighty-five cc's in the father right now! Pretty impressive regeneration, that. So you just get as much of it inside you as you can - by any means you want - and then we'll call it a night and maybe I'll be home in time to make supper for Tom and the kids. But, um, operational considerations do come first, of course, so take all the time you need."

Bri wondered what must be going through Chris's mind on the other side of the door, and couldn't keep a wicked smile from her face. "Last night you suggested the possibility of, ah, 'alternative methods?'"

"Exactly," confirmed the rabbit. "Just... in you. However you want. Such that your system can warm to it. Raises odds of conception, reduces chances and severity of complications from eclampsia, and a whole passel of other benefits." She squinted at the screen once more. "The parameters-"

"Thank you, Miss Emma. I believe I understand."

Emma laughed and made to leave. "Okey-dokey! I just love what a go-getter you are. You can bet TIMBIT's gonna notice, too." She paused in front of the door. "Oh, but, gown off, hon."

Bri smiled and rose to pull it over her head. By the time her face was clear the rabbit was gone.

She turned to the door - ha, _the_door! - and waited, almost flexing her claws in anticipation. This was going to be good.

It wasn't long before the thing slid open in front of her.

She took one step forward and stopped, momentarily perplexed. She'd expected him to be on the exam bed, as she'd been, perhaps with his maleness framed in a beam of light. But instead...

Her eyes adjusted to the minimal illumination and she realized that Chris_was_ on the bed, and bound; only, it had been positioned fully upright. His feet were only an inch or so above the floor.

There was some directed light on his erect manhood, after all. Just less than she'd anticipated. And-- Mon Dieu, it was no wonder she was having difficulty walking. The real question was how she wasn't dead.

She felt herself moving toward him before realizing she'd decided to. His shaft was fully extended before him, twitching shallowly with every beat of his heart. She looked up and squinted to verify that he was, indeed, masked, then back down to his erect length, satisfied that she could examine him privately and at her leisure.

Last night it had grown past its baseline size only when he had neared climax, and at first she assumed that what she was seeing must be the same. But the rigid head was extremely well-defined, and his knot, while surely not fully expanded, was visible enough that she knew it couldn't have been so when he'd worked his way into her. They must have given him something to make him...

He grunted and shifted his hips, as though the shaft projected out in front of him was a discomfort he couldn't quite make peace with. She realized that, between his blindfold, her slow pace, and the natural padding of her feline toes, he must have no idea that she'd even entered yet.

She grinned, stepped as far to one side as she could, and settled her naked body up against his, taking care to not touch his erection in the slightest.

He flinched briefly before exhaling long and loud. The cool air had hardened her nipples, and she was sure to graze one across his bicep as she inclined her head to give his jaw a tiny lick.

His head lolled to the side, and she allowed herself a self-satisfied snicker right up against his ear.

He snorted and failed to suppress a dry chuckle.

This caused her to laugh even more, which set him off, too, and before long she was leaned fully up against him, one arm thrown across his chest as together they filled the room with laughter.

By the time they came down, he had a huge grin plastered across his face, and she could imagine that she knew just what he was thinking. 'Let TIMBIT try and work _that_out!'

"Mmmm." She smiled and trailed her fingertips down his chest to where his abs stood out more prominently than she'd have expected from an engineer of any sort. But she remembered the sparse fare on his plate that first morning - steamed vegetables and fatty fish - and supposed that it wasn't really a surprise that he'd been keeping himself in shape more generally. The hulking puck players he'd have been daily surrounded with were powerful, yes, but also fairly stocky, and this may have been one means by which he maintained a sense of independent identity.

She let her hand rest there, on his belly, and nuzzled her face up against his shoulder. He was warm against the coolness of the room, and in that moment she couldn't bring herself to care about Emma's working hours in the slightest.

But then he shifted his hips in discomfort, again, and she realized that he must after all be in some amount of distress. She let her eyes run up the length of the rigid shaft jutting proudly out before him and drew in a deep breath.

Very well. It was time to repay him for his tenderness the night before. She disentangled herself, worked around to directly in front of him, and settled to her knees. The floor was warmer and more giving than expected, allowing her to put her weight forward rather comfortably.

Before long she was kneeling fully beneath his shaft, looking up to see it silhouetted against the dim LED cluster on the ceiling.

First things first. She reached forward to place her hands on his knees, as he had done for her, to let him know where she was. And then she brought her face up under his tip, opened her mouth, and exhaled onto it from down in her diaphragm, her breath hot and wet.

The whole thing jumped in front of her face and he whined and bucked against the restraints.

She was too startled to smile. Yes, they'd given him something, all right. Emma had said she had no such thing to give Bri, but even on Pétain, it was well-known that this was easier to accomplish with men than with women. It occurred to her that, depending upon how long she drew things out, he might even end up as sore as--

Well, no. Not even close. But sore, though.

She didn't want that for him, exactly. But she did resolve to stay well clear of that flared head of his, just for laughs.

Instead she leaned forward until she could almost have kissed his thighs, then angled upward and planted a soft kiss on his dangling balls.

Now these jumped, jerking briefly up into him as his breath caught in his throat. His shaft leapt, too, but not nearly as high as before.

Bri smiled and licked her lips. Perfect. She executed a long, languid series of kisses and soft nuzzles against those heavy balls of his, interspersed with the occasional tiny flick of her tongue up against the base of his shaft. The sounds he made when she did that were enormously rewarding. How many cc's had that rabbit said? Bri was sure the number would have climbed substantially by the time she allowed the kwee-yoat - no, the kai-oh-tee, she reminded herself - any relief.

The taste and scent of him was strange but familiar. She felt that she could go on this way all night, and for a while she was inclined to do just that. But then she spied what looked like the backlit controls for the exam bed and just couldn't resist. His breathing had been noticably accelerating, anyway, and she suspected that whatever they'd given him had him close enough to hair-trigger mode that she'd need to back off for a while if she didn't want their time together to end in the immediate sixty seconds.

So she stayed low, and backed away, and smirked at the long, low whine and tiny ineffectual thrusts that resulted. Just after she'd moved aside, a drop of clear fluid fell from his tip and spattered audibly against the floor. She looked up to see another already formed, dangling pendulously from his underside, and wondered idly if Emma would chide her for the 'loss'.

She snorted at the thought - Chris would probably assume that it was at his helplessness, and she supposed it was that as well, after all -- and turned her attention to the controls. How to...? They were pictographic and consequently rather incomprehensible. English she could have dealt with, but what on earth had the designers meant to indicate by a little picture of-- oh. That made sense, actually.

Before long she'd worked out how to get the bed to do what she wanted. Probably.

Bri entered her commands and stepped back to watch the results. Sure enough, the thing reclined backward to about forty-five degrees, taxied horizontally until it was re-centered beneath the ceiling-mounted instrumentation panel, and then continued its declination until perfectly level. Then it was just the work of one more button press to bring it down almost to the floor, and...

His breathing had leveled off again, no doubt as he found himself wondering what the hell was going on.

He was only a little higher than her ankles, now, so it wasn't any trouble at all to step onto the firm bed, then lower herself gingerly onto her knees, which she planted on either side of his tall ears.

She knew his lungs must be full of the scent of her arousal. One more little scoot forward, and she was finally able to ease her beleaguered sex down to touch the tip of his muzzle.

Bri didn't have to look over her shoulder to know how his shaft must be straining behind her. But she did note how his arms clenched, and his hips tried to roll, before he regained control of himself enough to give her what she obviously wanted.

No half-measures this time. His first lap against her was long and full, and she tossed her head back and moaned even as he groaned low in his belly at the taste of her.

She dropped her pelvis a little lower, then reached forward to take his head in her hands.

Another minor shift in her weight, another broad lap at her slit, and suddenly everything was exactly perfect. She could raise or lower herself as needed, and turn his face this way or that as desired. This was good, because she was still far too sore to take too much direct stimulation all at once.

One of his strokes hit just right. She found her back arching and her eyes rolling back into her head. "Oh!" she grunted from deep in her gut. Her abdomen had tensed involuntarily back up in a way that hurt wonderfully. If she'd known a man's tongue could do this, there was no way she'd ever have made it to twenty-six years old still a virgin.

His body trembled beneath her and he whined and whimpered and bucked again, but his tongue slowed not at all. If anything, it grew somehow frantic against her.

She realized that he was past the point of doing what he was doing for her sake. He must be half-delirious, unspeakably frustrated, and desperate for any kind of contact with the one thing in orbit that he needed most.

She wondered what it said about her that she liked that. Liked the feeling of this man, so much bigger and stronger than her, yet so entirely at her mercy. Liked the privilege of being able to withold everything from him simply because she felt like it.

Purely to indulge herself, she raised up and away from him for a span, and sure enough his upper body immediately strained to follow her, a long, helpless whine escaping from his throat.

She settled back down and started stroking those ears of his, relishing the sweet ache in her sex and wondering if she was a terrible person.

Another perfect ten of a lick, and she bit her lip and purred. Maybe she was. What did it matter? He wasn't going anywhere.

Then another lick, and the corded muscles of her belly contracted and cramped, and she hurt, and she came absolutely all over his face.

What felt a long time later, she realized she was holding her breath and let loose a long, low groan. And, a minute after that, she even had the presence of mind to release her deathgrip on his ears.

Not that he seemed to have noticed. His whines had grown nearly constant during her brief blackout, and if his licking had slowed it was only that he might better lap her thick girl-cum into his mouth. She allowed this as long as she could stand it, then pulled back a little to let herself cool off and watched as his blind lapping slowed to a stop and reverted to panting.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the source of his trouble, which now looked painfully swollen even to her unpracticed eye. Her knee joints were a little stiff as she rose, but it still wasn't too much trouble to turn around and face the task in front of her. She settled back down and regarded it with open curiosity, wondering how in orbit anyone could ever have taken seriously the proposition of such a thing simultaneously occupying the same physical space as her body. She glanced down and probed curiously at her abdomen with her fingertips, not finding any obvious hollow spots and wondering where everything could possibly have _gone_until he'd pulled out.

She sighed, contentedly looking forward to a future full of exploring this particular mystery, and wondered how best to proceed. His manhood looked primed to explode if she so much as breathed on it wrong (a second time) and this didn't suit her at all. But those balls of his had proven themselves both resilient and rewarding, and with a smirk she stretched down his body, reaching around his shaft on either side to cup at his sack with her hands, taking one of his large balls into each of her palms.

No sooner had she done so than she stiffened at the unexpected sensation of his tongue on her sex again, this time from behind, now centered on her perineum due to her changed orientation and angle. "Ah-!" she gasped, momentarily distracted from the work of her hands. Any further up her slit and it would have been too much in her post-orgasmic state of heightened sensitivity, but the spot he was hitting was just right.

She thought back to his earlier comment about how the night before wasn't what either of them had thought their first time would be like, and wondered again at the ambiguity of the statement. She hadn't wanted to press for clarification, not least because she wasn't sure she actually wanted the answer, but the prospect of possibly being his first definitely made her heart warm, even if she knew it shouldn't. On the other hand, Chris - or at least his tongue - sure seemed to know his way around a woman, and she tensed and stiffened as it again pressed into her perineum and even teased a little at her entrance. If she wasn't his first, it was at least difficult to be upset about what he'd evidently learned along the road.

Or maybe dog tongues were just that way, and skill had nothing to do with it.

She sighed again and shimmied back against his face a little, then bent her mind toward the release that he so entirely deserved. How best to make it everything it could be, for him?

She massaged the orbs in her palms while she considered the question. Probably another couple minutes of just this would be enough to send him over the edge, but...

Bri's train of thought was derailed by the coyote's long, thick tongue sliding fully inside of her. Her eyes slammed shut and her hands clenched tighter than was probably comfortable for him. Warm and soft and slippery as his tongue was, it didn't even hurt, really, but it was still far more sensation than she'd been in any way prepared for that evening.

Chris gave no indication of minding the pressure on his balls, so she gave them another squeeze and was rewarded with a low moan and a fat drop of precum falling to spread on his belly. She lowered her head to lap curiously where it had fallen, finding the taste unpleasant but at least only mildly so. Then again, it wasn't the real thing either, so this was perhaps to be expected.

She licked her lips, wondering if, when the time came, it might be possible to take him deep into her mouth right away and so circumvent her tastebuds entirely. Probably this would feel better for him, anyway.

The coyote's tongue withdrew and she felt his hot breath instead.

Her hands ceased their gentle massaging and crept carefully up to the base of his shaft, which she encircled but did not actually touch with her fingers. Goodness, he was thick. With her fingertips touching there was circumfrence to spare, but only just. And the knot, mere millimeters above that...

She pressed down around where his shaft met his body, not at all surprised when he whined and bucked beneath her. Delighted, she watched as his knot began to thicken before her eyes.

But then his balls were slowly drawing up, too, and she realized that even the indirect pressure around his base might have been a hair more than he could handle.

As quickly as she could she slid her hands up his shaft to squeeze his knot and planted a sloppy wet kiss directly on the tip of his throbbing head, mashing her sex into his face in the process.

Chris yelped beneath her and his manhood jerked hard in her hands even as his sack yanked hard up into his body. She had the presence of mind to open her mouth and push as far onto his hardness as she could, but only just in time, as the first of his hot, salty spurts coursed into the back of her throat.

In that moment her trepidation was replaced by triumph. She was doing it! She even remembered to swallow as the first spurt was joined by a second, and then-

Suddenly her mouth was full of more dog cum than she could possibly have believed, and the sensation of his hardness pressing into the soft palate of her throat caused her to gag more violently than she ever had in her life, and she choked and coughed and for some reason her sinuses were burning, and...

She tightened her grip on his knot and ground down onto his face, determined to see this through for the sake of the man who'd been so good to her.

But choking and gagging and swallowing all at the same time proved difficult to manage, and with tears streaming down her face, she dropped her jaw and pulled back slightly as a cascade of his thick, virile substance poured from her mouth and down her chin and spattered noisily against his belly.

Allowing most of it to escape helped a lot, and she did a pretty good job of catching the next heavy eruption and swallowing it whole. But the one after that came too soon, and before long the pool of cum on Chris's stomach was running down to the bed on both sides of him.

And he evidently wasn't even close to done, yet.

She pulled back entirely, sat upright on his face, and started rubbing up and down his shaft with both her hands, taking extra care to squeeze hard at his knot on each pass. She stared, slackjawed, as additional jets of cum arced forward to splash across her breasts, her stomach, and Chris's chest and collarbone.

Bri had forgotten how much the rabbit had said Chris had within him, but this certainly seemed like a lot more than anything she might reasonably have been expecting.

But at long last the coyote did seem to be winding down. His thick spurts were replaced by a slow stream running down the top of his shaft, and the frenzied grunts against her mound slowed as well.

Part of her wanted to laugh in disbelief, and at relief that she'd somehow made it through that, but instead she found herself tilting her head back and swallowing the slew of coyote semen still pooled within her mouth.

She couldn't tell if it tasted bad, any more. Somehow it was beyond good or bad, in a category all its own. It tasted like sex, and like the well-satisfied mate below her still groaning his release into her feminine heat. How could she ever have thought to try to get it all into the back of her throat so as to avoid the taste that now suffused her senses? Why had she even wanted to?

She licked her lips and swallowed again, and started to purr.

Chris jerked his face significantly beneath her.

Oh, right. She leaned forward in a hurry, waited for him to draw that first deep breath, then squeezed again at his knot and smirked at the startled-sounding sharp gasp that resulted.

"Hmmm," she mused, entirely pleased with herself.

With an unsteady wobble she rose to her feet, stepped off the bed, and looked down. Her mate was a mess of slick, saturated fur from waist to chin, his chest heaving as he regained his breath, his shaft already beginning to diminish absent the tension of her body around his knot to keep it erect. The light was too dim for her to get a good look at her own front, but she knew she hadn't fared much better.

Goodness. Where did he _keep_it all?

She felt woozy and was tempted to lean over, place a quick kiss on his forehead, and stagger out of the room toward the waiting shower and good night's sleep. But the pool of standing semen on Chris's belly gave her pause. She had no way of knowing how much she'd swallowed percentage-wise, of course, but she had no trouble believing that if she walked away now she'd get an earful from Emma.

Besides which... okay, now that she was asking the question, there was no way for her to avoid the truth that she was completely in love with the rich taste of the coyote's seed in her mouth. Plus, if it was really true that swallowing more would help to ensure that she got his pups in her...

Perhaps it was the endorphins flooding her system, but settling to kneel beside him wasn't uncomfortable in the slightest.

She savored the first mouthful gained from lapping at his stomach, and smiled at the way the fingers of his nearest hand seemed to be stretching out toward her, as though wishing he could stroke her head while she did her work. She understood completely, and slipped her own hand into his as she returned to her task. There was so, so much. No chance whatsoever that Emma would be home in time to cook for her family.

But operational considerations did come first, after all.

* * *

Bri had a song in her heart the next morning as she added an extra pat of butter to her waffles before completely drowning them in what the Ontarians cryptically referred to only as 'Grade B'. There was sausage, too, and eggs, and surprisingly-good decaf coffee, which she assumed she was probably supposed to opt for now even if she wasn't yet sure she'd conceived. Show TIMBIT she was a team player, and all that. The future, if hazy, at least seemed like a _bright_haze, and if nothing else these Canadians certainly knew how to eat.

When Chris came in he shot her a quick smile, but sat on the other side of the hall and did not look her way again. She was disappointed but supposed that he knew best. There was plenty on her plate to keep her occupied, at any rate. And they'd see each other soon enough. She smirked. Even if one of them wouldn't actually be able to see!

She was about halfway through when she saw him rise, deposit his tray in the receptacle, and stride toward the exit. But he paused there and glanced briefly over his shoulder, his hand making the tiniest of 'come on' gestures.

Bri abruptly lost interest in her food and almost failed to pick up her tray in her haste to follow after him, but realized that not tidying up after herself was likely to be a cardinal sin among the Canadians. Even the becker-kids in the corner did it, though not without exaggerated contemptuousness.

Chris was waiting outside and they made small talk as they headed inward, the 'gravity' growing perpetually lesser until it became more expedient to switch from walking over to climbing. She was moving much more easily today, and he seemed relieved to see that it was so.

"Okay," he began when the door of the secret room closed behind them. "So, I take back my apology from yesterday. I'm _not_sorry about what I did to you that first night, and you deserved everything you got!"

She laughed and wrapped her arms around him. "Let us call it even, then." They kissed. Almost right away she felt a growing hardness against her. "Oh? What is this? Perhaps you have in mind to, how do you say, get back at me?"

She felt, more than heard, Chris's low growl. "You have no idea how much I'd like to. They'd notice, though. You're not the only one struggling with the experience of being treated like livestock. They..." he rubbed at his bicep, "they put something in my arm yesterday, after we left here. Some kind of slow-release hormonal thing, I think. I've been going crazy ever since. Feels like I'm twelve years old again, suddenly having to figure out how to hide this thing at the most inconvenient times."

She grinned. "Yes. I can imagine that such a thing must be difficult to hide." She began to reach down toward it for a squeeze.

But he caught her hand in his. "Seriously, though. Later today I'll be subjected to all kinds of scrutiny, and TIMBIT doesn't play around with the program. Has zero tolerance for unofficial sexual activity, too. And frankly I'm not sure that just looking at you isn't gonna be enough to set me off."

She'd felt abashed as he'd spoken, but felt herself warming again at those last words. "Can you really find me so tempting?"

He looked into her eyes, apparently trying to determine whether the question was rhetorical. "You have no idea. It's like every little thing about you is perfectly calculated to drive me up the wall. Your hips, your fur, the way you walk... the way you smell. Your accent. Your eyes. Everything. Everything. I actually questioned for good long minute whether TIMBIT might have brought you here just to keep me around. And with this implant, I'm losing sleep just fighting my urge to picture your face and let off steam in my bunk."

She was pretty sure she understood, his colloquialisms notwithstanding. But what he was saying worried her. "And this is not allowed? I thought of you in my room last night." Her ears lowered in embarrassment. "Several times, in fact."

He snorted. "Yeah, that mental image isn't helping. Not that I don't like hearing about it. But I don't think it's a problem in your case. The rule mainly applies to guys with a coupling session scheduled, for obvious reasons." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Did you say you have a room? Like, a private one? Not a bunk in a dormitory?"

"Yes? I thought that perhaps everyone had such quarters on Ontario."

He shook his head. "Usually only married couples, and women can't get married until they're pregnant. So, families. Even I'm in a dorm with eleven other men. Privacy isn't... well, it's not unusual here so much as it's completely unknown. I wonder-" He cut off and jerked backwards. "The hell?"

Bri took in the startled expression on his face. "What is it?!"

He looked down at his left wrist in uncomprehending horror. "My wristband," he finally managed. "It went off." She watched as he tensed up. "And now it just did it again. Very lightly. More a buzz than a shock."

She looked down at the offending item. "I thought you said it was a..." The word he'd used escaped her. "Inactive?"

He considered it too. "Yeah, it was. But I'm a subject of the Crown, now, so I guess it's online now. But..." he looked up at her. "If TIMBIT can trigger it in here, TIMBIT can observe us in here."

Her head spun at the implications. What had she said, earlier? Yesterday? What had _Chris_said during his extended diatribe?

He frowned. "There it goes again. Repetitive and low-powered. Not trying to deter me so much as... almost politely? trying to tell me something?"

She reached out to take his other hand. "What should we do?"

Chris glanced at his wrist, then to the door. "Double pulse when I looked over there. I think it might be asking us to leave?"

It occurred to Bri that they might as well, anyway, given this most recent implosion of one of the few things she'd thought she could take for granted. "Perhaps we should, then, and see if...?"

He nodded and together they drifted back to the door to the server room. "But if it was active yesterday, then either TIMBIT didn't mind what we were saying, or else... it was giving us enough rope to hang ourselves."

Bri's blood turned cold at those words. Once outside, Chris waited a moment, then looked up at her. "I THINK WE'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK."

This seemed hopeful. She followed as he led her back toward the security checkpoint, where the caribou security guard had been joined by another, a hulking polar bear in a mounty uniform. "Aberriella?" he prompted, his voice low and gruff.

She glanced to Chris, who looked concerned but shrugged that he didn't know. "Yes? I am Abrielle."

The mounty took her wrist in one of his enormous paws. "Please come with me."

Before she could answer he was drawing her down the hallway, her comparatively-insignificant mass trivial to handle in the near-null G. She was just able to turn back and glimpse Chris's worried face before it disappeared around the corner, the bear's claw fixed like iron around her slender wrist.