Close Encounters Of The Erotic Kind

Space Girls Are Easy-4

Does he have a mate? Daughters? Surely he must have something I can wear.

She padded out into the hall, her bare feet noiseless on the polished floor. Seemingly made of some golden-brown wood, it shone dimly in the morning light. She turned a corner and the house opened up in front of her. Muted noises and a toothsome smell made her quicken her steps. In a well-lit nook, her host was performing some arcane activity that seemed to involve making a very large mess, but also resulted in quite a large pile of food.

“Good morning,” she said, pleased she remembered the proper language and cultural markers.

“Hel…lo” he said, his voice turning very strange as he looked at her. Her nostrils flared, and even through the aromatic scent of food, she was able to readily distinguish the scent of his pheromones.

What stunned her, however, was her own body’s response. His smell was an intoxicant, and she could feel her n*****s surge erect in unwitting reaction. Her loins were suddenly, alarmingly wet, and her feet slid forward, pulling her near.

She might be aware of the magnitude of the event, but Mark, blessedly, was not, though he was staring at her with every evidence of deep appreciation. “Would you like something to wear?”

“Oh, I suppose.” She tried to hide the quaver in her voice. “I forgot that nudity was a taboo in your society. I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.”

He frowned at her. “Not a taboo. Not as such. Just something that is not often done between people who do not know each other well.”

“Really?” She c****d her head to one side. “Then my data is curiously out of date. Do not your own rituals include men and women mating on very short acquaintance?”

Mark’s skin turned an interesting shade of red, and his aroma became, if anything, more enticing. “Not me,” he muttered. “Anyway, let’s get you something to wear. I can’t have you dripping pancake syrup down your chest. You’ll get all sticky.”

“Dripping what?”

*****

Pancakes, Shayla thought, some time later, now dressed in a long warm robe that belted at the waist, are awesome.

And bacon might have been invented by the five gods themselves. She pushed her chair back, replete, and smiled at her host. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He studied her. “You’re… not what I expected.”

She c****d her head. “You expected something different?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure it seems silly to you. But I’ve dreamed of something like this. Not me, personally,” he said hurriedly. “But the thought that there might be other people out there. That we weren’t alone in the universe. I always wondered if we would ever meet them.” He laughed. “And then you land right next to me!

“If this was a movie, the next thing that would have happened is that I would have woken up on a hospital bed, and some gray-skinned alien would have been giving me an anal probe.”

She blinked. She had understood maybe two words out of three, and the context was baffling. “I don’t understand. Why would an alien want to probe your anus?”

He waved a hand, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s…just a stupid joke in our culture. People who aren’t quite right in the head claim that they have been kidnapped by aliens and used for medical experiments.”

“Oh. Scouts would never do such a thing. And the Silver Horde…well, an anal probe would be about the most pleasant thing they would do to you.”

“The what?”

She touched the back of her head, ignoring his question. “Are you a healer? How did you know how to treat my injury?”

“Oh. That.” He smiled sadly. “My father was a nurse. He taught me a little about first aid when I was younger. He sad you would never know when you might need the training.”

She frowned. ‘Nurse’ was a word with several connotations, none of which seemed to make sense in the current context. She chose the one which she thought was most accurate. “One who assists other physicians?” She searched for the right word, and grabbed it before it could slip away. “The doctors?”

“Right. Speaking of which, I should change that dressing.” He carried his empty plate to the sink, then returned, carrying several items in his hand. “I’m sorry. This is probably going to hurt a bit.”

She flinched as he peeled the bandage away. Several strands of hair tore loose from her scalp, caught on eh bandage’s surface, and she gritted her teeth. Five Gods! Would it be asking too much for these people to have developed a decent spray-on anticoagulant? Instead they stick cloth to my head and tape it down. That is so unsanitary. She stifled a sigh. Luckily, her shots still had several years left to run, and she doubted any bacteria or virus on this planet had the capacity to defeat her immunizations.

“It seems to be healing clean,” Mark murmured, his voice low and soft. The sound made her shiver. Goosebumps rose up on her forearms as his breath whispered into her ear. A damp cloth gently scrubbed away at the back of her neck. “Can you hold up your hair?”

She gathered the shining silver mass in her hands and raised her arms, holding it above her head. “Much better. You’ve got a nice thick scab back there.” Fingers pressed into the area surrounding the wound, but she held still, despite the lingering soreness. “And there’s no sign that you have a skull fracture. Have you had dizzy spells? Or been sick to your stomach again?”

“No.”

“Good. Then I think we can just put a smaller bandage on this and call it done.” In a few quick, efficient motions, he had covered her wound back up. “You can put your hair down.”

She did, and he stood up. She watched him do so with regret. He really was quite attractive. If she had met him during her training, she would have happily partnered with him, either as a mated pair or as a co-pilot.

He sat back down, sipping at a glass of fruit juice. “So. How much can you tell me about you? Or are you going to eat and run?”

“Eat and run?” She smiled, catching his meaning. “No.” She touched the back of her head. “My ship would never allow me to lift in such a state. I will have to pass a fitness protocol before I resume my responsibilities.”

“Your ship. Someone is going to see it, sooner or later. I know you landed in a pretty out-of-the-way area, but someone is going to notice. And then all hell is going to break loose.”

“No, it won’t.”

“What?”

“The chameleon defense will keep it from being seen.” At his confused look, she explained. “It’s a series of sensors that sits on the ship and is activated whenever it is in uncharted territory. The hull of the ship projects a view of what would be seen if the ship were not in the way. To the casual eye, the ship is invisible.”

Mark chewed a strip of bacon, shaking his head. He took a deep breath, but then apparently decided not to argue. “So what are you doing here? On Earth?”

She should, she knew, change the subject, deflect the question. If necessary, she should subdue him and leave. Her commander would have a foaming fit if she knew she was sharing the secrets of the scouts with a native of a planet that had been kept ignorant of their very existence. And she could stay in her ship, assuming she could find it, until she was well enough to shake the dust of this planet off her boots and head back out to the stars.

But she felt drawn to this man. His open, honest interest was so different than the jaded attitude of some of her peers. His eyes were alight with fascinated curiosity. It would be a sin to not explain, just a little.

“I’m…a scout,” she said slowly, then stopped.

“Scout Lieutenant.” He nodded. “You told me that last night. What does a scout do?”

Five Gods! How to explain it to him? How to explain an organization that was revered above all others in her culture? “A scout is…one of the elite.” She smiled as she recalled the words carved into the lintel above the main entranceway to the Scout Academy. “We are, by definition, intelligent, courageous, supremely adaptable and endlessly resourceful. We go out from our planets, seeking others.” She made a throwing gesture with her hands, her fingers spread wide. “In the Cataclysm, hundreds upon hundreds of worlds were seeded, when it became apparent that civilization itself might be coming to an end. The scouts…seek to find those lost worlds, the descendants of those who we could not save. If they have lost their way, we guard them until they have reached a social and technological level that will mean their re-entry to the galaxy as a whole will not tear their culture to shreds. If they have bootstrapped their way to a minimum standard, we make contact and ease their way into the Union of Humanity.”

“Wow.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And I’m guessing that we,” he tapped the table as if to emphasize his own planet, “aren’t ready yet?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re making progress. Especially on the technological side of things. But socially, culturally, and politically, you’re not even close.

“I was on the garbage run. That’s what we call it. We spend a few days visiting each planet, monitoring their communications, checking up to see if you’ve managed to invent something interesting. Reinventing, really. For example, if I’d seen evidence that you’d managed to develop a functioning jump engine, or antigrav technology, I would have had no choice but to report you to headquarters.”

“And what would have happened then?” Mark leaned forward.

She shrugged. “No idea. A new member of the Union happens so rarely that each one is an individual case.

“But since you are so fractured politically, I think the scouts would have eased into your area slowly. Since we are all humans, it would be fairly easy for a few scouts to infiltrate and become influential in your society. With the right set of conditions and incentives, it might be only a generation or two until your people could join us.”

“Us? How many is us?”

“As of last count, four hundred and eleven member planets. Along with several dozen protectorates, such as Earth. And we add one or two new protectorates every year.” She sighed. “The work will never be done. Not in my lifetime.”

He shook his head, stunned. “Four hundred…how do you govern so many planets? So many people? There must be trillions.”

“We don’t govern. Each planet is responsible for its own affairs. There are mutual defense pacts, of course. Against the Silver Horde and other hostile races. But to try to micromanage so many people, as you’ve said, is impossible. Worse, it’s madness. It’s one of the things that led to the Apocalypse.”

“But…” his brow furrowed. “If you were just here to monitor us, like you said, what the heck were you doing in an Illinois cornfield at midnight?”

“I was bored.” She felt her lips curl in a smile. “And I felt like taking a walk.”

He shouted with sudden laughter, and she began to laugh in turn. The feeling warmed her.

“What about you?” She touched the back of her head lightly. “Your father, who taught you? Your mother?”

His face saddened. “Gone. Two years ago. My father died of cancer. My mother…” he sighed. “She was a teacher. But when my father died, she just…gave up. She was like a tree that had been cut off at the roots.”

“I’m sorry.” She touched his hand lightly.