Nepenthe Page 8

  I know you.

  Kiral chose.

  It was less that he walked away from the remaining hesitant humans, and more that he allowed the conversations and bodies to slip away from him. It was something of a talent. People tended to notice his absence only after he was long gone—Kiral made sure of it.

  Only when his shoulder blades rested against the cool metal of the wall, and the lone alien was a dark mass in his periphery, did he bother with words.

  “Would you prefer not to be chosen?” He was only loud enough for the Nepenthe at his side, and he kept his eyes on the crowd milling in the center of the hold. For a time, the alien said nothing, but Kiral knew better than to think this observant one hadn’t heard him.

  “By the wrong one, yes.”

  The foreign voice was deep, and Kiral still didn’t altogether understand how the races were able to share a language. That strange pop in his ears when they’d been brought onto the ship was somehow involved, that was all he could put his finger on.

  “And how do you know which is the right one?” said Kiral.

  There was movement from the corner of his eye, and he wanted to look, but kept his focus trained on everything else in front of him. It was a game they played now; a delicate one, but he had committed. This one would understand him. He knew it.

  There was a low noise from the Nepenthe. A chuff like amusement, but it was so much more difficult when Kiral didn’t know what their sounds meant.

  “I find these things tend to sort themselves out,” said the alien. “If one only waits. And pays attention.”

  Fine hairs stood up along his arms.

  Yes. This one.

  “My name is Kiral.”

  “Kiral,” the Nepenthe repeated, as if trying out the name. And then, after a pause, “I am Mur Desh.”

  Dark shapes moved at his side, and Kiral no longer had to keep his eyes from the alien, because the enigmatic being had left the shadows of the wall and was moving away into the hold.

  Kiral quit leaning and blinked. He’d been so sure.

  What did I—

  Mur Desh halted and turned his head to speak over a deep purple shoulder. “Have we mistaken each other, Kiral?”

  Holy shit. No we have not.

  He closed his mouth. Shoved himself away from the wall and followed in the alien’s wake.

  Almost none of the others took note of either of them as they wove a path to the opposite side of the cargo hold, where doors made an exit into other parts of the ship. The sole exception was a nod between Mur Desh and the Ptolarch; worth it to note that the two were on familiar terms.

  Kiral spied other human-Nepenthe pairs firming up as he left the crowded space behind. The med tech and that Ea Nir were among them.

  But Mur Desh moved at a steady pace on his roiling mass of suckered arms, and they’d soon rounded a bend in the corridor that led away from the hold. The noise of introductions and negotiations fell away at their backs, and here Kiral’s world both narrowed and expanded at once. Gone was the last of anything he knew—humanity and all its particular games and strategies—and opening up before him was utterly foreign everything.

  So what? He’d chosen an alien to house him? Now what? Where were they going? What would happen when they got there?

  He wasn’t a woman, so he had no value as an incubator. No hurry to get him full of eggs.

  Kiral went where Mur Desh led, the round-walled corridor making another curving turn, and the angle of the floor rose just enough under his feet to let him know they ascended to another level of the ship. The grey surface they moved over was like nothing he knew; it had the slightest spongy give under the soles of his shoes, and his footsteps made no sound on it. There were fewer lights as they went, until at last there were only dim, blue markers glowing at intervals in twin parallel rows overhead. The darkness and color had Kiral’s thoughts wandering to alien sensory capabilities, visible light spectra for them.

  And then Mur Desh made an abrupt right turn. Kiral nearly strode past him before he realized there was no longer anyone to follow down an empty hallway.

  There was not so much a door or portal where the alien had veered off, but more a branch of the corridor that spiraled in a new direction until its walls opened up into a larger space.

  A much larger space.

  Mur Desh meandered ahead of Kiral into a vast, multi-tiered hall that had the human’s jaw slack and head on a swivel in his attempt to take in the entire scene at once.

  It was a cyborg of a place, the organic and inorganic veining through one another in a way that made him feel tiny. If a bracket fungus could have formed itself into an architecture inside a bowl, it would look like this place. Tiered levels above the main floor, where he stood, cantilevered out from the walls at intervals that had no human logic, ramps connecting them along the outer wall. Alien flora in containers burst or draped from everywhere in dark greens and purples like Nepenthe flesh, punctuated by the occasional specimen in waxy white.

  A soft glimmer of artificial lights, embedded in patterns Kiral didn’t understand, on every wall or freestanding furnishing, provided the only illumination in the space. The shifting glow, in more blues and, here and there, greens and pinks, beaded the edges of glossy leaves, sheened the surfaces of low tables and benches tucked in among the light banks.

  Guard down as he turned in place to wonder at the cultivated, alien grotto, Kiral forgot himself and paid no mind to his tongue.

  “Is this … are these your living quarters?”

  Mur Desh made a sound that might have been amusement, and Kiral felt the tops of his ears heat.

  Of course these aren’t his quarters. Who would need this much room?

  “No,” said the alien. “This is a data repository,”

  Kiral goggled some more, but his eyes changed focus to Mur Desh when the Nepenthe spoke again.

  “I am not the Ptolarch,” said Mur Desh. “My personal quarters are not large.” Some flat surface like a high table peeked out among draping flora, and the alien drew a pattern along its rim with his webbed fingers that so closely resembled human hands. In response, the underside of the table added a greater glow of blue-white light to the space where the Nepenthe stood. “After the crowding in the hold, I thought we might both appreciate space to breathe. Perhaps become acquainted without feeling cornered.”

  “Considerate,” said Kiral, his gaze wandering again. The intuition behind his snap decisions tended to work in his favor, but he let a breath go in the alien surroundings. Let his shoulders drop, so he might be more relaxed and alert in the event his instincts had failed him. “This is a beautiful space,” he said—a low-risk conversational gambit. “Our data storage facilities tend to be utilitarian. Not anywhere a person would want to spend time.”

  The Nepenthe responded with some facial expression akin to a smile. A steep learning curve, the body language here. “This is not utilitarian?” He gestured around him with the tip of a suckered arm.

  “Well.” Kiral reached to feel the leathery texture of a broad purple leaf close at hand. “All the plants? The lighting?”

  “Humans aren’t using photosynthetic energy?” Mur Desh sounded disbelieving. “You must have had plant life on your home world.”

  Kiral snorted and looked at the floor. By the looks of this lush, humid archive, it might be better if he didn’t explain in detail the way humans had left their planet.

  “So what was your role?” When Mur Desh spoke again, Kiral felt the change in subject. “Down there on this watery planet that has managed to entice and repel both our species?”

  Kiral met his lavender eyes and then smirked, his gaze sweeping the repository again. Mur Desh had a way with words.

  More alike every minute.

  “Data work, coincidentally enough.” He began to move again, letting his steps meander among the containers. “We came from Earth—our home planet—with all these methods of communication we’d been using for decades. Centuries.” He glanc
ed at Mur Desh. “A long time. But when we set up outposts here?” He shook his head. “This planet’s magnetic field … I don’t know. There are others who could explain the specifics. Well. There might be. I don’t know who we have still alive. Either way, the means we thought we’d use to get information from outpost to outpost, between islands …” Here he made a vague gesture. “The data would arrive with random packets just … scrambled.”

  The alien cocked his head. “We become so accustomed to what is reality,” he said. “To what we know is the way things work. And then we have to flee everything we ever knew, and hope our collective understanding is enough.”

  It was an acknowledgment that the Nepenthe followed, but far more philosophical than the simple affirmative Kiral might have expected. He cleared his throat.

  “Exactly,” he said. “And so I was the one responsible at my outpost for correcting the scrambled data. There was a basic knowledge component. Really anyone could educate themselves on what caused the issue. Methods of troubleshooting. But there was an element of talent for it. The mangled data groups were like”—he looked upward, searching for a description—“puzzles. There were patterns to them some of us were good at picking out.”

  Why he stared so hard at the plants and glimmering lights while he explained all this, Kiral did not fully understand. ‘Modest’ was not a word he thought anyone would use to describe him. Perhaps in this foreign environment, the skills he might boast of among his own kind felt primitive. The accomplishments of a child next to all this.

  “And you?” he asked Mur Desh, ready to shift the focus.

  The alien made a noncommittal motion of head and shoulders. “The Ptolarch doesn’t dare give me an official title.” He moved around the table-high surface he’d activated for more light. “There would be … objections. To leadership endorsing someone with my ideas.” Those eyes met his again, cryptic. “The rest have little use for me,” he said, “but the Ptolarch, the Magistrand … a few others of rank, they do seek my council, from time to time.”

  Well, fuck me.

  Had Kiral realized the Nepenthe was going to give such an evasive answer, he might have been less forthcoming with his own. What was the end game here? Aside from two wary and manipulative creatures having spotted one of their own in a crowd.

  “You didn’t have to leave the hold with me,” said Kiral, switching tactics from peeking around curtains to whipping them aside. “I can’t host your eggs. What do you get out of this?”

  Mur Desh made an abrupt noise that Kiral took for a laugh. “I’m supposed to get something?” Several of the suckered arms wriggled, a movement he had no idea how to interpret, and the alien wandered in his direction. Kiral turned him a skeptical eye. “The Nepenthe will have opportunity,” said Mur Desh. “You won’t incubate for me, but one of your kind will, at some point.”

  No. Too political. Kiral didn’t buy it.

  “But what do you get?” he said. “Right now.”

  Mur Desh gave him a bland look but said nothing.

  “There’s no free lunch,” said Kiral, aiming to provoke. “You’re going to let me live in your space? Give me food? I watched you back there. Let’s not pretend either one of us doesn’t look for advantages.”

  The Nepenthe folded his webbed palms together. “Are you offering … advantages?” Had he been human, Kiral was sure the question would have come with a raised brow. The alien face had no hair. Its eye sockets had a different structure. So much to not understand.

  “I’m being realistic,” Kiral said.

  “You believe I will have use for you?” said Mur Desh. “Beyond fulfilling my part of our races’ agreement to sponsor one of your kind? In what are you skilled, human?”

  It was a goad, and Kiral knew it. He was also just insulted enough not to care.

  “Telling lies,” he said. “Fucking.”

  He cringed a little inside at that last one, but it was usually him who did the running people in circles. He enjoyed it less when he was the one walking backwards.

  Again, the noise like laughter from the alien. Kiral’s brow furrowed. “You find it amusing?”

  “Your kind aren’t able to lie to us,” said Mur Desh. “You have no sense of guarding your thoughts.”

  No sense of guarding …

  “You … know our thoughts.” It had to be bullshit. Yet his legs had a tension in them as though they wanted to back him away from this being.

  “We find it surprising how inaccessible this sense is for your species.” The Nepenthe moved sideways and feathered an idle hand through something deep green and fern-like in one of the waist-high planters. Lights on a backing wall plate shimmered in response.

  Kiral squinted. “I don’t believe you.”

  Translucent eyelids blinked at him in a lateral snap. “Tell me two truths and a lie, Kiral of the Humans, and I will discern among them.”

  What kind of fucking stage trick was this? Even a good guess still had a decent chance.

  “Fine.” Kiral frowned. “I had four brothers.”

  A nod from Mur Desh, and Kiral held up his first finger to begin a count.

  “I was dishonorably discharged from the fleet back on our home planet.”

  Another nod, another finger.

  “I have a tattoo of my family name on my back.” Three fingers. Kiral gave him a doubtful look.

  The Nepenthe smiled, and Kiral had the sense it was both a true smile at the same time as being an impressive imitation of human expression.

  “They are all lies,” said the alien, who made his way to stand in front of Kiral.

  No. Fuck him. No way.

  “You have no broodmates.” Mur Desh lifted a webbed hand to close a purple finger over one of Kiral’s, snuffing the first lie by curling the digit back into his fist.

  “You were never discharged,” the Nepenthe went on, “and in fact the rank you attained feels impressive, from the weight of the worry you put on another discovering that truth.” He covered and bent a second finger. Kiral had to look up to meet the taller being’s eyes.

  Not possible. No one knew about that. No one left alive, anyway.

  “And you have no permanent marks on your body.” Mur Desh wrapped a gentle grip around the third finger, covering Kiral’s hand so that it became a loose fist. “They would make confirming your identity too simple, or so you believe.”

  Kiral’s jaw was slack. Without paying attention, he’d stepped backward. A table edge thumped into his spine, and Mur Desh followed where he went. Velvety slick alien flesh still surrounded his raised hand, all his falsehoods contained there.

  “And Kiral is the name you call yourself now,” said Mur Desh. “But it was not always. Was it.”

  Fuck. Me.

  It wasn’t a question. But Kiral had no answers. He didn’t know if he could make words at all, just then. All he could do was stand there in the new knowledge that his one advantage was lost, and try to breathe.

  “So, no.” The Nepenthe’s words were quiet. “You can’t lie to me.”

  Blue and green lights played on the lower edges of the alien’s face. The pale purple eyes were complex and clear, like a shallow lake. Ovoid pupils seemed to breathe with the rest of him. The place they touched, the hand covering his, was not a threat. It was a test. Would he retreat. Lash out?

  He felt one, or possibly more, of the suckered arms shift near his ankle.

  “But you do claim to have other skills, Kiral.”

  There was a stillness in the humid air. His heart flickered in his chest like the expanse of tiny lights on every wall. He swallowed. There was no flight map for this.

  “You … want to …”

  He had never bumbled like this. Not even as a teenager.

  “It wasn’t my intent when you spoke to me in the hold.” Mur Desh tilted his head. “But it also wasn’t me who brought it up. And I will admit”—exotic eyes wandered down and back up in a frank assessment—“it has been quite some time.”

 
Nope. No question. And now it was just Kiral stalling for time. Why hadn’t he seen this coming?

  “Some time since …” He leaned backward with an edge of furniture making a line along his ribs.

  Something curled around his calf.

  “Since I turned to another for pleasure.” Mur Desh’s entire focus was on Kiral, and the feeling overwhelmed.

  “So much for not being cornered,” Kiral said, with glances to the repository on either side of the alien occupying most of his field of vision. What had been promised as a non-claustrophobic space had shrunk to the sphere containing only him and the Nepenthe, who had not let go his hand.

  “You are enjoying this game,” Mur Desh said, shifting closer still. “Your thoughts give you away.”

  Kiral’s cock twitched, one step behind his brain.

  Shit.

  At last, the alien let go his hand, but only to glide a light touch over his wrist. Down his arm. Kiral shivered.

  “I can assume the form of one of your females,” said Mur Desh, “if that would help ease your mind.”

  Kiral shook his head. “I … prefer men.” He cleared his throat. “Males.”

  An alien shoulder lifted, as if this made no difference. “A male then.” Shapes in Mur Desh’s face began to shift.

  “No.” Kiral put a hand up, catching himself for only a second before he laid fingertips on a Nepenthe chest. “Don’t,” he said. “Just be … be who you are.”

  Mur Desh held his gaze and, after a thoughtful pause, what little he’d changed reverted back to its original state. “We did make an astute choice, didn’t we, you and I?” Lavender eyes dropped to take in the hand on his chest. “Your experience won’t be familiar, if I retain this form. It doesn’t dissuade you?”

  Kiral chewed at his lip. Splayed his fingers in fascination over alien flesh. “I’ve had plenty of familiar,” he said. “I don’t see a point in trying to convince myself this is something other than what it is. Are you not bothered?” He watched the lavender eyes for a reaction. “That I can’t choose to have … purple flesh? More than four limbs? I certainly won’t look like one of your females.”