Nepenthe Read online

  It felt like a conversational gambit and not an accusation. The human was making an effort to distract from a series of odd barriers they both would have to overcome. The Magistrand could respect this.

  “You will want to refer to her as ‘Ptolara’ in front of the others,” he said, “but you are correct. All Nepenthe are capable of shifting forms, but there are those of us who have more of a talent for it than others. The Ptolarch is gifted in this way. Our lead healer, Ea Nir, as well. They enjoy the challenge of perfecting other forms.”

  The woman let out a small puff of air through her nose. “More of an art than a science, then, is it?”

  A unique way to phrase it, and Dae Keth let some of the anxiety bleed from his limbs, as well. “I would say that is accurate.”

  “And you don’t seem like an art man,” she said. “Or, um … Nepenthe. I guess. I don’t know your words.”

  The Magistrand moved a dismissive arm through the air. “I am not a politician. My responsibilities do not require others to like me. And I am proud to be Nepenthe. I have no desire to assume other forms without good reason.”

  Yesmín wrapped fingertips among a section of her hair—the strands were tiny plaits, he could see now, not ropes—and nodded, eyes drifting. “I can understand that,” she said. “I don’t want to look any different than I am, either.”

  As he watched her, some shallow drive within him gave thanks that his host was one of the humans with deep-toned flesh, closer to Nepenthe purple than the paler members of her race. He was not nearly as adventurous as Io Rae—any familiarity he could find in this woman would a blessing—but another part of him writhed under a thin veneer of shame that he should give such weight to appearances.

  “And how can I understand you?” she asked, focusing again. “How are you speaking our language?”

  “I’m not,” he said, with a true smile, at last. Would his facial features convey it to her? “I’m speaking our language. You are simply hearing me in yours. We provided the adjustment to your aural pathways as we found each of you alive on the surface.”

  “That … pop in my ears? That’s what that was?”

  “Correct.”

  “How does that work?”

  Dae Keth laughed, his first in some time. “You’ll have to ask Ea Nir, or one of the bio scholars. I have no idea how it works. I just know the feeling of how to accomplish it.” She gave him what he was coming to learn was a skeptical look, but he pressed her. “Can you explain every intricate function of your body?”

  “Alright,” she said. “Fair enough.” Her dark eyes moved around the room again and lit on him at the end of their circuit. “But we’re going to have to figure out how some of this works. If this thing is happening.” She searched his face and inhaled when his inner eyelids snapped closed and open again.

  He tried to shrug off the out-of-sync feeling that lingering on the fixed portion of the floor left him with, when under any normal circumstances, he would have long been in the water by now. They would have to come to it. They couldn’t delay forever.

  “I agree,” he said. “Perhaps if you were to explain how your usual mating process takes place, and I do the same, we might find the best path forward from there. An attempt to meet in the middle.”

  The woman eyed him. “Maybe. I suppose we’ll have to find out what the middle is. I mean I already w—human women already carry our own eggs inside us. The male just … fertilizes them. We give live birth.”

  Dae Keth would not be capable of fertilizing this human’s existing eggs, but Io Rae had certainly found a way to implant his own. It was not as though the Ptolarch had given a lecture on the subject, however. The Magistrand had found his leader just as he’d completed the act.

  “And how do your males go about fertilizing your eggs?” he asked.

  The lines of her face changed, and she looked everywhere but at him. “Do I really have to have the birds and the bees talk with some alien who’s about to fuck me? Is that what we’re doing here?”

  The meanings of all her individual words came through, but their collective ideas told him little. Birds? Bees?

  But ‘fuck’. Dae Keth understood that one.

  The connotations thrumming in her open thoughts did not coincide with the Nepenthe concept of the mating act. What her word implied was a pleasure joining. He felt implications of bright-burning intensity. Possible violence, depending on context.

  This female thought he expected something far more intimate from her than the transfer of eggs. Rows of suckers rippled, involuntary, from the tips of his arms up toward his body. That Yesmín was even considering how to manage such a thing with him …

  He tried to brush away the image of Io Rae cradling his chosen down there in that dingy room on the surface, his eyes glassy and expression sated.

  The High One had absolutely ‘fucked’ his Ptolara.

  The Magistrand of the Nepenthe colony ship worked to maintain the course of his focus: the good of his people. Make a host of this woman, and in such a way that she would be willing to make an affirmative report back to her people about the safety of the process.

  But Dae Keth, who never allowed himself a respite from duty, was letting one word from this human send him into speculations on what might be possible. What it might be like, were he and Yesmín to … to fuck.

  The woman made something of a cough and growl with her throat. Dae Keth shook his head and uncurled some of the tips of his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is … new. For both of us.”

  She gave him a look, with the line of her mouth twisted, and her thoughts told him this look meant frustration.

  “Listen,” she said, “I can’t jump into this cold. It’s too much.”

  “Cold?” Literal translations failed him, and her thoughts whirled too fast to pick apart for meaning. His quarters were an ideal temperature.

  “I haven’t been laid in four years,” she said with some vehemence, body leaning forward for emphasis. “If we’re doing this, I’m getting something out of it.”

  “Laid?”

  “Had sex. Mated.”

  Fucked.

  Dae Keth was learning.

  “Ah,” he said, “But you are getting something out of it. We are providing for your people. Food and Shelter. Protection. Assistance in finding a new colony planet.”

  She folded her arms across the front of her, and the swells of her chest buoyed higher. If her kind gave live birth, then these could be breasts. Her garments stretched over them in subtle ways when she moved.

  “And you’re getting an incubator,” she said. “Do you think you’ll be enjoying yourself while it happens?”

  A series of images throbbed, alive in his mind, and Dae Keth appreciated for the moment that these humans did not appear capable of sensing thought.

  “It is possible.”

  Yesmín tilted her jaw forward. “Then you’re going to make sure I get the same. Magistrand.” The way she threw his title at him sounded like an accusation, and assaulted pride welled up in the Nepenthe leader.

  “Wait here,” he said. “Touch nothing.”

  He turned and opened the portal, toggling a lock on his way to secure all his storage compartments and the retractable floor. The woman opened her mouth to speak, but he was already closing her off in the space. Gliding down the corridor on the roiling mass of his arms.

  She wished to enjoy herself? Very well. They could both surrender to such urges. But Dae Keth was not going into battle unarmed.

  * * *

  Of all the new information he’d absorbed, perhaps the most eye-opening had been the fact that Io Rae was more of a libertine than Dae Keth had ever imagined. The things he’d attempted with his chosen …

  The things she’d done. Willingly.

  His flesh strobed a brighter purple as he approached the portal to his quarters, but he calmed the reaction before entering the room again. He was the Magistrand of an entire colony, but the level of detail
the Ptolarch had reveled in providing had been embarrassing, even for him.

  Yesmín started when the portal dilated open. She’d moved to sit on the floor, her back against the adjacent wall. He closed them in the space again, and the woman looked at him without standing up.

  “Have a good time?” she asked him.

  “I apologize for the delay,” he said. “Shall we try again?”

  “I didn’t think we’d started trying in the first place,” the woman said to the floor as she went through a series of maneuvers to get back to her feet.

  He would have to do something about the budding antagonism in the room. It would not serve his people to enter this process with blood surging. Instincts wresting command.

  “I would like to speak again of meeting in the middle,” he said.

  “Yeah?” She eyed him, and her thoughts painted a picture of low expectations.

  But he would try.

  “I know I am foreign to you,” he said. “And I understand it might be … distressing. I can make it less.”

  Her facial features opened, receptive but hesitant.

  “You might be more comfortable,” he continued, “if I assume the form of one of your kind, as my Ptolarch has done for his chosen. I would change my face. My upper body. I will not change color.”

  “Halfway …” She murmured, considering him with what he hoped were new eyes. “I thought you didn’t change forms without good reason.”

  Would the offer of a smile convey?

  It would if you’d shift already.

  “Are you not a good enough reason, Yesmín?”

  The human took her lower lip just between her teeth at this, her thoughts uncomfortable. But it was at just this sort of uncomfortable Dae Keth aimed.

  “What shape would please you most?” he asked.

  An image flared bright and strong in her mind, and the Magistrand seized it. One of her kind with whom this woman had strong associations. He allowed the form to ripple into place, from head to human navel.

  Yesmín took an immediate step back and her face drooped on both sides. “Oh no. Not him.” She was shaking her head. “How did y—uh-uh. No.”

  “This form does not please you?”

  The human kept her eyes on the floor. “You look like my husband.”

  The word translated to him as ‘mate’, though in some more ceremonial sense, and Dae Keth flashed back to his natural shape. “And he …” There would be nothing good behind her reaction. He’d leapt at that first image without thought.

  “He’s dead.” Her voice was flat. “Four years.”

  The Magistrand made a percussive trill of apology, low in his throat. “I am sorry, Yesmín.” And after a pause, and a softening of his voice, “Would you like to think of another? Another male who pleases your eye?”

  She wouldn’t look at him. “You can read my thoughts?”

  He did not need this revelation to become an obstacle. “If they are loud enough,” he said. “Another of our abilities that is ‘more of an art than a science’, as you say. If you choose to ally with us for a time, I can help you learn not to project, unless you wish it.”

  The woman made him wait while she considered, and Dae Keth did his best not to look at the silent conversation her mind had with itself.

  “Alright,” she said at last. “This, then.”

  Her thoughts formed a new picture, clear and strong, but with less attachments, he felt. Dae Keth allowed the likeness to spill over him, though again, he eschewed the human legs. His own ten arms would be much more suited to what lay ahead.

  “Better?”

  Yesmín dared to let her eyes travel again, and when she found his new form, her chest rose and fell with her breath. “Wow. Um … yeah.” She took a step in his direction but stopped herself. “That’s … as close as I’m going to get. Probably.”

  The way her gaze wandered let him know his efforts had been a success. A glow of pride warmed the Magistrand—it was rare for him to shift forms, but he was not entirely without talent.

  “I think,” he said with his agile new human tongue, “you will want to remove your protective coverings. Unless you are cold?” She’d said something about being cold, earlier.

  “I, um …” The woman glanced around the room. He tried not to allow her nervous thoughts to incite any of his more predatory urges. “I’m not cold. No. I mean … you’re probably right. You’re not wearing clothes already.”

  The protective layers were ‘clothes’, then. He got a sense from her of some shame in going without. “We don’t feel the need,” he said, hoping to reassure. “Unless to protect ourselves from elements. Or injury.”

  She let out a breath. “Of course you don’t.” With a shake of her head, Yesmín began to peel away the layers of fabric. Her hands made complex movements, dexterous and precise when they arrived at some of the intricate fastenings that kept the garments in place. Even the hard coverings for her feet joined the pile she folded and placed on the floor. The extremities were like her hands, in a way, but the digits were shorter, and did not look specialized for as many uses.

  He took note of additional short patches of fur when she stood. At the fork of her legs—anatomy about which Io Rae had recounted an obscene amount of details—and perhaps a shadow under her arms. That he might touch all these places and discover their texture had the tips of several of his arms curling onto themselves again.

  Something about this transition had changed the woman’s demeanor. She did not close her mouth while breathing anymore and observed him in a more blatant fashion. Her bare feet moved her another step or two in his direction.

  Dae Keth smiled with human lips now, and hopeful thoughts fluttered in time with the sweep of her eyes. Yesmín came within reach of him and lifted a hand, but then stopped.

  “Can … can I …?”

  “Of course.”

  He should not be enjoying this as much as he was, already.

  The woman unfurled her fingers and extended a cautious hand. The five padded tips met with his chest, ever so tentative, as though the contact might shock or burn. When no such thing happened, she let the fingers splay, warm against his skin.

  Dae Keth took efforts to prevent any of his arms from curling around her limbs in response. While his upper body structures in his natural form were not so different from these bipeds, the mass of his long, suckered arms, on which he moved about and performed so many tasks, would be most alien to this woman. Her thoughts could tell him when she was ready to brave his touch.

  “You feel … wet,” she said, dark eyes on the place her palm now pressed and slid over the muscle of his chest. This close, he now saw that instead of an inner eyelid, a thin line of fur fringed the edges of her single outer lids, fanned and ciliate to brush away debris in the air.

  The lines of her curved and swelled and coursed in every direction. He could see muscle groups beneath her skin that promised powerful movement on her human legs. Her flesh was not monotonous in color but varied from brown over the larger expanses to night-dark at the round nipples centered on each breast; paler on the palms of her hands and shell pink inside her lower lip. Brighter for the tip of the tongue that darted out to wet that lip.

  There was a delicate twitch at her throat, the pulse of at least one beating heart.

  In her alien way, Yesmín was beautiful.

  Dae Keth did not want to fail her.

  “You know what you feel like?” She allowed her touch to glide up, around the curve of his shoulder. “A stingray.”

  There was no repulsion in her tone. “And what is that?” he asked.

  “It’s a water animal.”

  “These were on the planet below?”

  “No.” Her thoughts drifted, hazy, but she brought her other palm to splay beside its twin. “On our home planet. I got to touch one when I was very young. It’s almost … velvety.” She pushed the pads of her fingers along his contours. “Soft. Luxurious,” she said, explaining her choice of word
s.

  Ready. Perhaps.

  “A large beast?” he asked her. “This ‘stingray?’ ”

  Yesmín shrugged a bare shoulder. She stood very close now, mesmerized by her own hands on his altered form. “The ones I saw were small.”

  He couldn’t have delayed longer if he’d wanted. Arms spiraled around her legs, twining their limbs together. He sent another to circle the narrowest point at her middle, to drag their bodies close. She was dry and soft as sand against him, and Dae Keth slipped one of his own hands—human-looking, at the moment—over hers, so she might feel the quickening of his three hearts.

  Human eyes rolled up over their hands, past his throat and mouth, to meet his.

  “I am not small.”

  It was a juvenile thing to say, but the urge to attract her overwhelmed. Their limbs tangled already in a mess the Magistrand decided he would very much like to continue making.

  “Noo, you are not.” She drew out the words to make them mean more than the obvious, and Dae Keth preened inside to sense both fear and excitement in her thoughts.

  “I’ve heard your kind have a much higher core temperature than our people,” he said.

  Her breasts swelled with her breath at this, warm and smashed between them. “You’ve heard?” For all her nerves, the woman did not wriggle to leave his hold.

  “I have.” The Ptolarch had waxed on well beyond necessity on the topic.

  “You don’t seem to care about privacy at all.”

  Was that … flirtation?

  “We’re not a secretive people,” he said, and one of his rear arm tips traced out an unlock pattern on the floor.

  The transparent portion began to retract, and Yesmín’s head turned at the sound. Quiet and smooth, the waterberth covering slipped away into its slot along the room’s outer wall. Still, clear water awaited, and Dae Keth unraveled their limbs.

  “Join me?”

  He’d slipped over the ledge before she could answer, and his body went almost limp in comfort the moment it met the water.

  Dry and gritty from his planet-side exertions, the Magistrand indulged in a backward roll. The feeling of cool, liquid home rushed past his skin, even in part-human shape, and he jetted once to the far side of the pool and back, his arms curling and pluming behind to propel him along.