by C. V. Walter
She took a bite and moaned. He raised an eyebrow and took a bite of his own portion.
"What do you mean by cycle?" she asked after a second bite. "You said this was the middle of the sleep cycle, right?"
"That is correct," he said. "Since this is a space ship moving through deep space, there is no sun to provide an orientation for a day and night cycle. This is difficult for my people who need the sun for certain biological functions and rest better with naturally occurring dark periods. The lights in all the public spaces on the ship imitate the sun on our planet, including going dark slowly over a period of time then changing to a gentle shade that imitates our moon."
"Okay, humans have found something similar. Do you have most of your work shifts during the 'day' cycle, then?"
"Yes. Some of our people prefer to work at night and they generally volunteer for those shifts while the rest of the crew sleeps."
"That sounds reasonable," she said. "Is that why I haven't seen anybody else? I'm always up in what's basically the middle of the night?"
"Ah, no," he told her. "You've only seen me because you're effectively in quarantine until the rest of the crew can get the off-world vaccine added to their bio-nano's."
"I'm not-" she said, then stopped. "Do you have the off-world vaccine?"
"I am currently the only one who has it," he said, disgust in his voice.
"Oh," she said quietly. "So, you're the only one who can deal with me."
"At present, yes," he said. "Do you...are you unhappy being treated by me?"
"No," she said, subdued. "I'm sorry you haven't had any relief, is all. You've been here constantly and I had to wake you up the one time I saw you asleep. Spending that much time with a single patient is probably pretty taxing."
"Yes," he agreed. "The first several cycles were grueling, though I did sleep here and there as I was able. I could have wished the rest of the medical team were as prepared as I thought they'd be, and now that you're recovered, I will be remedying that. Being in here, with you, has not been difficult. Truth be told, I don't know what I'd have done differently had there been someone who could take over for me, except maybe get a little more sleep.
"Oh, yeah?" she asked, her voice more energetic.
"Indeed. I have so many questions to ask you, so much research, I can only thank Alvola for inputting as much as he did to the translator program."
Molly opened her mouth and huffed out a breath. "Research. Yes, I can see how a new species would be a great opportunity for research. I'm sure if I was more scientifically inclined, I'd be chomping at the bit for this kind of research, too."
"So, you see? Being in here constantly since you got here has been no great difficulty on my part, I only wish you were more comfortable with me touching you so I could get more information."
She ground her teeth together and found a muscle in her jaw ticking. "Touching me how?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"When I've touched your skin directly, rather than through some kind of cloth barrier, you seemed to find it unpleasant. As I have no desire to make you uncomfortable if I can help it, I have refrained, though it has been difficult at times."
Molly remembered the spark of electricity, the pooling of heat low in her belly, and the jolt of desire that ran through her every time he touched her. The longer he'd touched her, the more pronounced it became, until she wanted to crawl over him and demand he press his naked body to hers.
"Um, yeah, I think that's probably a bad idea."
Chapter 12
Mintonar sighed. He needed to explain to her what was happening when he touched her but didn't have enough of a frame of reference to even begin. Knowing nothing about human mating customs and rituals left him a drift when it came to describing his own.
"So, you're going to make it so other of your people can come in here and interact with me?" she asked, looking down at her food.
There wasn't much left in her bowl and she seemed to be moving it around more than trying to eat it.
"I have to, if you're to be able to go out in the rest of the ship," he told her and she looked up.
"Oh," she said. "I don't know why I didn't think about that. That would be nice."
"You can't stay in here forever," he said. "You're healthy, now. Getting up and moving around is good for you."
"Right, I know that. It's usually a part of any kind of recovery at home, too. I just hadn't really thought of what happens next."
"You've recovered remarkably fast," Mintonar told her. "Far beyond any of my expectations. Especially when I wasn't entirely certain we could save you. Your physiology is close enough to our own that much of our technology worked better than I could have possibly hoped."
"What happened?" she asked quietly. "I don't remember being spaced and the suit I was in wasn't rated for it. Unless you caught me as I came out of the, um, cargo bay? You couldn't have gotten to me on time. I should be dead."
Mintonar's chest ached. "I don't know what happened on your space station. We weren't expecting anything to be there and when we sent out sensors to find out what was going on, you were inside our shields and heading straight for one of our cargo doors. You weren't moving fast enough to be a weapon so our engineers opened the doors and caught you in a net, assuming you were some kind of probe."
She laughed but it wasn't a happy sound. "So, you captured me because you thought I was trying to attack you."
"Not attack," he said. "Learn about us, maybe, find out what we were and we wanted to know what was going on as well. As far as we knew, there wasn't supposed to be a space station in that area. All of our charts have this area of the galaxy listed as uninhabited."
"Well, that would explain why you weren't expecting a space station," she said wryly. "And it might not be much compared to what you have here but we are, in fact, inhabited. And mostly civilized, too."
"Mostly civilized?"
She shrugged. "I mean, there's no accounting for some people, but the majority of us walk up right, eat with utensils and enjoy running water. Some of us even enjoy whisky."
"All the hallmarks of civilization," Mintonar said with a laugh. "We have all those things, too, except maybe the whisky. That's a drink of some kind, yes?"
"It is a gift from the gods, sent to soothe men's souls and keep the Irish from taking over the world."
"Is that a concern?" he asked, eyebrow raised.
She smiled. "Only if you're English."
"I take it that's a human joke," he said.
"Yeah," she said. "Requires a minimum understanding of about 20 years of history that is the culmination of close to a thousand years of tension between two islands off the coast of a major continent."
"You're familiar with these, then?"
"Intimately," she nodded. "I studied a lot of it for fun in school. Not much need for it these days but the jokes are fun and lets you know who you might get along with."
"A useful skill, I take it."
"What, you didn't have in-groups and out-groups when you were studying to be a doctor on a space ship?"
"Ah, yes, there are always groups of people who are in favor rather than out of favor, with the authorities and with each other. Humor is a useful way of distinguishing where one lies in relation to all of those."
"One of my professor's always said that humor creates a bond and draws a line. On one side of the line are those who get the joke, find it funny, and will bond over that enjoyment. On the other side are those who do not find it funny and will not bond with those who do. It's a very useful thing to have when you're trying to navigate an uncertain world."
"And is your world very uncertain?"
"Less so than is used to be," she said. "But always at least a little bit. Because that's life. You make what choices you can, hopefully the best ones you can, and interact with others who have made theirs. Sometimes your choices work together to create something beneficial for both, sometimes they don't. Because humans can make different choices, you never kno
w what will happen. You can guess, and will often be correct, but you can never know until it happens."
"The nature of all life is uncertainty," he agreed. "And when your choices create strife, you must deal with that, as well."
"By standing your ground and fighting, negotiating until an agreement can be reached, or retreating to a place where there is less conflict."
"And if there is no retreat?" Mintonar asked, leaning forward.
"Ideally, you fight for what's right. You might lose, but you fight anyway."
"Is there another option?"
"Slaughter," she said, looking in his eyes.
"Yes," he agreed. "All the hallmarks of civilization."
"Oh?" she asked. "You're not going to tell me that your people are so far advanced, they have no need for war and conflict?"
"Of course not. We've just gotten better at it and at convincing ourselves that the right thing to do is destroy people who will not bend to our will, then telling them that it's their fault."
Maw-lee gave him a wry grin. "Sounds like our people will get along swimmingly, then."
He sighed again. "Better than you might think and I would hope that negotiation would be an option rather than having to fight."
"Why, you think you'd lose?" she asked with a snort.
"I have no stomach for slaughter," he told her. "And would not see a planet destroyed because we could not get along."
"Especially not one that can support life such as yours," she said.
"Yes."
"Your people are here looking for an uninhabited planet capable of supporting life. And you've found us, instead. What happens next?"
Mintonar let out a deep breath. "I don't know, actually. A great deal of that depends on people who aren't me and who I'm sure would very much like to meet you."
With a wry smile, Maw-lee closed her eyes. "Of course they would. And now the translators are updated so we can speak. And my suit had been taken apart to see how it works. And if I hadn't survived, you would have done the same to me while you tried to figure out how to speak to the people on the space station. Do they know you're here? Do they know what happened? That I'm still alive?"
"I don't have any of those answers, Maw-lee."
"We should probably get them, then," she said. "Because my people have a habit of being rather hostile to outsiders."
"You don't have to worry about all of that right now."
"No, I should have been worrying about it the first time I woke up but I wasn't. I've been very careful not to worry about the ramifications of being picked up by an alien space ship that damaged the space station, saved from the brink of death by an alien doctor who I've been finding more and more attractive by the hour, eating alien food and being injected with tiny little robots that are reading my cellular data and broadcasting it to a medical bay to be analyzed."
She took a deep breath and Mintonar kept part of what she'd said running through his head over and over. An alien doctor I've been finding...attractive. Attractive. She finds me attractive, he thought, his heart racing.
"Tiny robots?" he asked, trying to distract himself.
"The bio-nanos," she said. "That's basically what they are, right?"
He tilted his to the side, thinking. "I suppose so, yes. I've never really thought of them like that, though. They're smaller than your red blood cells, designed to help natural processes rather than replace them, to make your body more efficient."
"Which is really cool," Maw-lee said. "But the data collection is unbelievably creepy and it really bothers me."
Mintonar reached over and took the bowl and spoon out of her hands. She hadn't eaten anything for several minutes and there wasn't much left in the bowl. He was careful not to touch her skin and it felt like the most unnatural thing to be careful of.
"I have few options for studying your species quickly," he said, unreasonably irritated with everything. "I apologize for the invasion of your privacy but I would rather you be upset than dead and had no opportunity to ask you before doing so."
"I-" Maw-lee started, then snapped her mouth shut. "You're right. I'm not mad at you for saving me and I don't know what your other options are. I guess I appreciate that you guys haven't been hanging out on the dark side of the moon for forty years and abducting people to experiment on."
He frowned. "Has that happened before?"
"Probably not," she said and laughed. "I mean, there's all sorts of crazy theories about what aliens exist, if they've visited before, what they would do if they did. We've made movies about some of them. A lot of movies about them, actually. I wouldn't recommend watching them. They're not terribly flattering for the aliens."
"No, I wouldn't imagine they would be, if you assume we would abduct people for experimentation. That's horrible."
She nodded. "Yep."
"There would be no way to keep a control group. The data you could gather that way would be questionable at best. Unless you're abducting random parts of every population but that would be highly incompatible with hiding on the dark side of the moon because it would require being seen by large groups of people. If you don't want to be seen, you'd have to abduct people who are isolated and that will only tell you about isolated people rather than the species as a whole. Truly, a terrible way to conduct research."
Maw-lee stared at him in shock for a moment than giggled. When he grinned, her giggle turned into a laugh that involved her entire body.
Chapter 13
Once she stopped laughing, Mintonar told her what her options were for more comfortable sleeping arrangements now that she didn't have to be on the table.
"So, I can sleep on the cot you were using the last few nights, one of the nurses offered to put me up after she got nano's updated, an empty residential suite but I can't move into one until you get authorization from the captain or with you," Molly said, ticking the options off on her fingers.
"In my quarters, yes. Not, you wouldn't have to, share the bed if you didn't want to. And since you seem to prefer me not touching you, I would assume you don't want to."
Molly's cheeks burned as she thought about it. "I wouldn't want to disturb your family. The cot in here is good enough, I suppose, unless you need the room to see other patients tomorrow."
"The room won't be used until it's been sanitized and that can't happen until more people get their nano's updated. I'll be doing that in a separate area," he said. "And you wouldn't be disturbing my family."
"What, is your wife used to you bringing home patients?" she asked with a laugh.
He paused for a moment as he worked through the translation. "Ah, a mate. No, I don't have one. I live alone and have never taken a partner with the intent to produce and raise offspring."
Molly wanted to ask about partners for other reasons and how that worked but bit hard on her lip instead. It wasn't her business, it wasn't appropriate to try and make it her business, and she didn't think he would appreciate her being nosy.
"Do you have one?" he asked hesitantly.
"One? One what?"
"A mate. A wife?"
She smiled. "Husband. A wife is female, husband is male. Mostly. And no, I don't. I used to but that ended several years ago."
"Did you not achieve the desired offspring?" he asked.
"That's rather personal," she snapped.
"My apologies," he said. "I didn't realize it wasn't something you talked about."
She sighed. "We do talk about it, often in fact, but it's a bit of a sore spot for me. My ex-husband and I had a child together, a son, who has just entered adulthood."
"Are you able to mate more than once?" Mintonar asked. "Do your people not mate for life?"
Her lip quirked up at the side. "That's the ideal, at least. Til death do you part is part of the vows, at least in my culture. It's not always possible, though."
"I don't understand," Mintonar said. "You will have to explain this to me."
"Okay," she said. "But later, all right? There's a lot
to unpack about why people would choose more than one spouse and how marriages can fall apart."
"Yes, that part can wait. Tell me, though, can you physically create offspring with more than one partner?"
Molly thought she heard a hopeful note in his voice but rejected the possibility. "Biologically, yes. There's emotions attached to sex that make that non-ideal but a woman could technically have a child with a different partner every ten months or so. It's physically taxing and emotionally difficult to have that many different baby-daddies but it can be done."
"Ah," Mintonar said and nodded.
"I take it that's not the case with your people," Molly said.
"Um, no, not quite. We have a resonance that allows us to know who we're genetically compatible with. It's not unheard of to take a sexual and emotional partner who does not spark that resonance but those unions are typically temporary. That resonance, if followed to a mating relationship, releases hormones to solidify the relationship. It can still be severed but the longer the relationship goes on, the harder it becomes, until one partner cannot live without the other."
"Oh," Molly said. "That sounds both very romantic and very uncomfortable. If they're genetically compatible but not suited emotionally or they have conflicting personalities, that could be torture."
"Indeed," he agreed. "It's why my people are reticent about starting sexual relationships with those they resonate with until they've learned how they get along. When the resonance is strong, it can be hard to fight it, and there have been many political alliances solidified by a very faint resonance."
"Well, so you're not immune to political alliances, at least."
"No, though they can get complicated rather quickly."
"Yeah," Molly agreed. "What does it feel like? The resonance thing?"
"It's been described as a faint buzzing mixed with a pleasant electrical pulse in the places where the skin has been touched."
Her eyes widened. "It feels good? I mean, it's supposed to be pleasant, right?"
"Most of the people I've asked about it has said it's a gentle, pleasant addition to the joy they take in their partners touch. Some have described it as being more intense."
