by Clayton, Jo;
Abruptly conscious of her nudity, Aleytys pulled the lacy cover off the bed and wrapped it around her. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Aamunkoitta, hieno-nainen. I am hiiri assigned to care for these rooms.”
“You’re not a nayid.” Aleytys eyed the full breasts thrusting against the wrapper. “You’re mammal like me.”
The brown face flushed. Full lips thinned for an instant then the stolid face mask slid back. “I am hiiri, hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys tucked the cover absently around her. She hates them, she thought. I suppose she’s a slave too. I wonder … damn! If I could just.… She wriggled her shoulders as the itch intensified and her thoughts veered wildly until she disciplined her mind and seized hold of a remembered word. “Rooms?”
“Hieno-nainen?”
“There are other rooms here?”
“Yes, hieno-nainen.”
“Hah! Aleytys glared at the petite woman. “If you think that stupid act is fooling me.…”
The hiiri gaped at her. “Hieno-nainen?”
Rubbing a palm that itched to slap the tiresome little creature, Aleytys sighed. “Never mind. Show me the other rooms.”
The hiiri rose gracefully to her feet.
“Wait.” Aleytys hitched up the trailing ends of the cover. “Where can I get something to wear?”
Silently the hiiri glided to the far side of the room. She reached up, got a handful of the tapestry and pulled it to one side, the rings clattering along the wooden pole. As she tugged more strongly, a portion of the hanging broke away from the rest, uncovering a section of wall pierced by another of the arches.
The hiiri reached up and spread her hand across a milky white square. A light came on, illuminating a small inner room.
Aleytys stepped on a trailing end of the bedspread and nearly strangled herself. Muttering impatiently she caught up a few more folds and padded cautiously through the archway.
Empty shelves, rods, hooks … the old queen’s clothing had been swept away except for a few shapeless tent-like garments hanging from hooks beside the arch. The hiiri slipped past her and frowned thoughtfully at these. She lifted a shifting mass of blue-green from its hook. “There is this.”
She shook the folds briskly and held the garment out to Aleytys. “The kipu must have put these here for you. If you want more, see that one, hieno-nainen.”
Aleytys sighed. After a minute’s struggle she got the multiple layers of the shimmering blue-green silk over her head and slid it down over her body, letting the cover drop to the floor. She settled the brooches on her shoulders and shook her body so that the silken layers of material slid across her skin and settled into graceful folds falling to her ankles. She felt immediately less vulnerable and turned to the hiiri with a new sureness in her movements. “The other rooms?”
The hiiri bowed her head and left the closet. Farther along the wall she pulled the tapestry apart again, touched the light switch and waited for Aleytys to come up with her.
“This room is for your body’s needs, hieno-nainen.”
A huge sunken tub took up half the room. An elaborate throne-like commode made of beaten gold studded with jewels had a matching fur-cushioned footstool. Aleytys blinked, then giggled. “My god,” she said, voice vibrating with awe, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Yes, hieno-nainen.” The hiiri’s bland colorless voice sucked away Aleytys’ sudden high spirits. She looked at the small stolid face and sighed. The hiiri lowered her eyes meekly and moved away toward the other side of the room, passing behind the big bed close to the glass wall.
“Wait.” Aleytys ran lightly up to her, stopping in front of the clear glass. “The other rooms can wait. Is there any way out there?” She splayed her hand out on the glass and looked hungrily at the sunlit garden.
“Yes, hieno-nainen.” The hiiri pulled the tapestry farther aside, baring a section of glass with two milky squares set in it. She tapped her fingers on the topmost square and stepped back as a section of the glass slid rapidly and silently upward. “To close,” she said colorlessly, “tap there twice.” She pointed to the lower square, now more than a meter beyond her reach. Aleytys brushed past her and stepped onto the grass.
The sun was the wrong color, an egg-yolk yellow instead of red or blue, and it was single in the sky. She looked up, shaking her hair out, letting the gentle breeze play through it.
The grass was cool under her feet. It felt right, though the green was not so dark as she remembered. Even the water looked lighter, brighter under this yellow sun. Again she felt the abrupt disorientation as her body reacted to the wrongness of the feel. She felt too light, too cool, too.… it was hard for her to bring to consciousness all the things her body found wrong here. But the smells of the green growing things were just enough the same.… She closed her eyes and took a few steps farther onto the grass, letting the feel and the smell take her back in memory to the valley where she’d spent her growing up time. For a deep aching moment she smelled the sharp clean penetrating fragrance of the horans that grew along the Raqsidan, heard the laughing roar of that mountain river. She sank to her knees, tears of aching homesickness running unchecked down her cheeks.
She jumped to her feet, ran back into the building, stretched up, tapped the square, stepped hastily back as the glass door slid down. Shivering slightly she twitched the tapestry back over the glass, shutting out the disturbing view of green and lovely garden.
The hiiri was gone. The bed was made up, the cover restored, the pillow slip a crisp unwrinkled white.
Aleytys walked along the wall, poking gloomily at the tapestry, her mouth twisted into a self-mocking curve as she studied a prancing male figure with organ impressively erect. After a minute she turned away, clamping down the disturbing memories that threatened to send her spinning futilely down roads she couldn’t retrace.
She paced nervously around the bed, feeling disoriented and purposeless. An inchoate urge to do something, anything, ate at her. The damper itched in her back and scrambled her thoughts so that, without some definite point to claim her attention, she grew dizzy with the erratic leaps her mind took. She clenched her fists and banged them against the glass wall, crying out in her anger and frustration, wanting to hurt something, to strike out at something, and at the same time being appalled at the rage and nervous irritation that blew her soul to shreds. She pushed away from the wall and flung herself around the bed, determined to go out the arch, guard or no guard.
The nayid male standing at the foot of the bed smiled at her and bowed gracefully.
Aleytys halted and stared at him, for a long horrible moment incapable of any kind of response to her presence.
“Parakhuzerim,” he said calmly, his voice lighter, more musical than a female nayid’s. “May I serve you in any way?” The words were formal, but as he straightened he smiled at her again and his long feathery antennas swayed gently, sending the blues, greens, purples, reds rippling in iridescent giddiness across the crowning peacock eyes.
“What are you?” To Aleytys her voice sounded fumbling, mushy. She closed her eyes and clasped her shaking hands behind her. “How’d you get in here?” Her voice rose shrilly on the last word, shocking her with its touch of hysteria. She swallowed and said more evenly, “Can anyone who wants walk in on me?” A muscle beside her mouth began to twitch.
“I am … Migru.”
She heard the slight hesitation. Although the alien faces were still too strange for her to read, the quick jerk of his antennas and the flush on his pale cheeks suggested a certain dislike for the name. I don’t blame him, she thought. To be named Darling. How sickening.… Damn, if I just.… The damper kicked into high, sending her mind on a sickening spiral into chaos. It was a minute before she could see again.
Migru hitched up his short pleated kilt of blue-green silk and waited for her to say something.
“Migru,” she repeated, slowly regaining control of her mind and body. “Why.…”
; He bowed his head, the smile still curving beautifully chiselled lips. “I thought that you might perhaps have questions when you woke. A strange place. Strange things happening. I knew the kipu wouldn’t think of this, so.…” He spread out his hands.
Aleytys lifted a hand to her head. “That was kind.” She looked around vaguely. “Sit down … yes … let’s sit down and talk … talk.…” She plucked at the gauzy curtains with fumbling uncertainty. “Sit down.…” She sank down on the end of the bed.
The nayid male stood quiet a moment, his mouth hardening for an instant. Then he walked quietly to her and settled on the bed beside her.
Aleytys shivered, his closeness waking confusing emotions in her. So long since a man sat beside her. Touched her. Held her. Loved her.…
“Is something wrong, Parakhuzerim?” He frowned, reached out to touch her, then hesitated, fingers a thread above her skin. “Are you ill?”
Rubbing her fingertips along the blue-green material covering her thighs, she said cautiously, “This is the old queen’s room, isn’t it.”
He caught her trembling fingers in a warm gentle hold. “The queen is dead, the queen lives.”
“Why did they put me in her bed?” She let her hand lie quietly in his, a hard cold knot under her heart melting slowly at the friendly contact. “I’m no nayid.”
“In a way.” He hesitated as if reluctant to go on.
“I don’t understand.” But the muscles in her left thigh twitched painfully.
He dropped her hand and traced the outline of the wound. She could feel the heat of his fingertips through the silk. “You’re Parakhuzerim,” he said quietly. “The guardian of the seed.”
She shuddered. The surge of rootless anxiety sickened her, woke a need to run. Far and fast. “Tell me,” she said urgently.
He hesitated. Then he cupped a hand over one of her breasts. “You’re mammal. Your young are born out of your body.”
At this unexpected touch her body responded explosively. A light film of sweat popped out all over her skin and an empty aching filled her, then his words jolted her out of her forgetting. Born. She mouthed the word. Born. Gritted her teeth, clamped her eyes shut. Sharl. My baby. My son. She lifted her hands and let them fall back. Empty. There was nothing for them to hold.
Migru ran his fingers lightly over her contorted face. Wordlessly he stroked the taut quivering muscles. After a minute he lay back on the bed, pulling her down beside him. Even in her misery she felt his gentle fingers tracing lines of heat on her body. Her body surprised her once again with its eager response to the caresses.
She pressed herself against him, whispering urgently … please … please … please … Migru.… I need.… But she couldn’t say the words.… He was a different species. In the terrible aching need of her body there was an embarrassment, a marrow-of-the-bone xenophobia that startled her immensely but locked her mouth.
But Migru seemed to know. His caresses grew more explicitly sexual. Aleytys shut her eyes and let her hungry body take control.
CHAPTER III
Gloriously relaxed, drifting in a semi-aware euphoria, Aleytys sighed and stretched. A single note chimed briefly, a pure lovely sound that broke the subdued night silence of the dark room. Startled, Aleytys probed at her head with trembling fingers. The smooth metallic threads of the diadem hadn’t materialized but she heard a second ripple of notes scarcely louder than a whisper.
She pulled her hand down and lay staring up at curtains more guessed than seen. Beside her she could hear the soft inhalations of the sleeping nayid. Impulsively she touched the smooth skin on his shoulder, the feel of the warm flesh confirming the peace within her. She closed her eyes. “Well,” she breathed. “Here you are again.” Amusement and irritation were almost equally mixed in her. “Where were you when I needed you?”
An image formed behind her eyes. She found herself looking into a polished white room with stainless steel accents. Several nonhumans wrapped in spotless white milled around a woman’s nude body stretched out face down on a narrow steel table. Her skin was a pale gold that seemed to glow in the sourceless light. Her red hair flowed in a gleaming waterfall over the end of the table.
The gray wrinkled sophont lifted a rubbery tentacle, a scalpel sparking silver highlights as he slit open the skin just below her left shoulder blade. A second tentacle delicately inserted a small disc into the wound. Abruptly her head reeled with vertigo as the disc swelled until it filled her consciousness. The scene clicked off into blackness, then on again with the disc vibrating behind her eyes, again blackness, disc, blackness.…
“Yes, yes. I understand.”
A ripple of sound like a laugh answered her. Then the scene changed. A blind groping through blackness. This way. That. Working a tortuous road through blackness toward a light intuited rather than seen. A bright flash. Then, at last, a relaxation into a narrow freedom.
“Ah. Can you help me now?”
A feeling like a mental shrug. Once again the image of the disc floated in the forefront of her mind. Strong interrogation.
A hand touched her shoulder. She opened her eyes. Mouth pinched with worry, antennas swaying gently, Migru bent anxiously over her.
She smiled. Reaching up she caressed his cheek with her fingertips. “Don’t fuss, Migru.”
“Not Migru.” His face twisted with distaste. “My mother named me Burash. The other … the old queen … you understand?”
“Burash … ” she murmured drowsily.
He lay back and began touching her again with gentle affection. “Growing up … mmmmh … it was a good time. For you?”
She nodded.
“I had two sibs … most of the time nayids come in threes, narami. We were inseparable. Like a sun with two shadows, mother said. Kanuu led. Being female she was always the strongest, mind and body. Gammal … he had a mind like wildfire.…” He sighed.
Something kept nudging at Aleytys as she lay warm and content, listening to him ramble on about his childhood. Lazily she fished for the elusive thought.
“Burash!”
He broke off and pushed up onto his elbow. “What is it?”
“You never finished telling me about the queen egg.”
“Leyta.” His voice was low, his mouth curled taut, unhappy. “Why not just forget it?”
“No.” In her head she felt the subtle agreement of the diadem. She wrinkled her nose, suddenly realizing that her orgasms had been shared by the rider in her skull. Then she shrugged off the brief distaste and returned to the probing. “I need to know. I need all I can learn about this place.”
Burash pulled away from her to sit with his back against the headboard of the bed. “This won’t help you.”
“Tell me.”
“Your people and mine,” he began slowly. She could see his graceful antennas sweeping back and forth like a marvelous metronome. “We are alike in the way we manage impregnation of the female.”
Aleytys chuckled. “Yes.”
He tapped her nose. The strange huge eyes skewed her perception of his expressions so that she was never sure just what they meant, but she felt warm and protected. “After coupling,” he went on hesitantly, “our females walk another road. When the female is made fertile.…” His hand reached out and closed around her fingers. “She produces eggs, three usually, and implants them in the flesh of a living food source. In these days this is usually a specially raised immeru.” He said thoughtfully, “That’s a long-haired beast with long curving horns, a graceful and loving creature.” He smiled reminiscently. “Gentle and loving. In our early days as a thinking species she would use the fertilizing male as host.” He grinned and bent over her, brushing the hair from her startled face. “The change, needless to say, has my enthusiastic approval.” He chuckled. “Turn on your stomach, narami. Let me relax you a little.”
She felt a little chill down deep, but turned over. “Go on,” she muttered, her voice disappearing into the pillow.
He began smoothing his
hands over the taut muscles in her back, then started working up and down her shoulders, hitting the muscles with a series of light taps. After a minute he began talking again. “The queen is different. I was born on Sep. That’s a big island about a hundred stadia off the coast of this land. A thousand years ago all the nayids there were lived on Sep.”
She stirred impatiently. “The egg.”
“Yes.” He laughed briefly, unhappily, and tapped her on the buttocks. “A little patience, narami. Listen.” He began working on her spine. “All my people by this time had changed, male and female able to exist in amity. All but the queen. She was different. Mortal like us all, but somehow.…” He worked quietly for a moment on her neck and shoulders. “Somehow her last egg was the old one born over, memories and personality intact.”
“Huh?” She lifted her head and gaped at him.
He pressed her head back down on the pillow. “Just listen, Leyta. Relax and let it flow over you.” He smoothed his hands rhythmically up and down the length of her back. “The queen egg has another peculiarity. As soon as it’s implanted, the grub absorbs the genetic potencies of her host, giving her, in effect, three parents.”
Aleytys blinked, her eyelashes scraping across the quilts. “Why me?” she murmured.
Unhurriedly he smoothed her hair back from her face and neck, touching the thick shining strands with firm gentle fingers. “My people finally rebelled and drove her from the island along with her most fanatical followers. We couldn’t manage to give her the death she deserved but we drove her from our island. She came here, built the city, took the hiiri, met the starfolk and here we all are.”
Aleytys turned over and scanned his face. “Why me?”
