But he never commented on it. If it made the poor girl happy to believe her daddy loved her, he wasn’t going to break the illusion. At least not while he was enjoying her splendid body every night.
He recalled those meetings with another sigh. Kandria… Her skin, that gorgeous turquoise hue, so flexible, her huge eyes. Her passion… Kandria was a magnificent example of what Ettubrute would cynically call “optimal utilization of installed capacities.” Which were few: like almost all hybrids, she was congenitally sterile. The funny part was how, without a vagina or functioning ovaries, she could show such sexual enthusiasm…
“When it comes to sex, nothing is written in stone.” Moy shrugged and checked the skinners. Everything was perfect. Ettubrute was not only a skillful agent (maybe too skillful) but also a very competent assistant when it came to technology. You could almost say he fully earned his twenty-five percent.
If not true friendship, the two of them had developed a very special relationship. Love-hate was too crude a term to define it.
It all started with the nickname Moy had given the Colossaur around the time he had signed the contract, when he admitted he was couldn’t pronounce his real name, which sounded like Warrtorgrowrrtrehrfroarturr. “Et tu, Brute” was just a sophisticated way of saying “that old thing” or “you there.” The Colossaur didn’t really appreciate it. Since then, they had spent half their time making fun of each other, acidly. Maybe to forget how much they needed each other.
“Maybe if I stopped calling him Bruiser, the alien might stop mangling his Planetary syntax,” Moy reflected out loud, checking the pendulums and bleeders.
Even though his race wasn’t known for its language talents, Ettubrute had always refused to use a cybernetic translator. He preferred to mangle the Earthling language in his own barbarous fashion. Moy had finally gotten used to it, and he almost enjoyed it. At least it was more… personal, or Colossaurian?… than a translator’s mechanically perfect pronunciation.
Though neither of them complained to the other, Ettubrute was as alone as he was. Or more so.
In Ningando, the Cetian capital, there weren’t even five humans apart from Moy. Meanwhile, pairs of Colossaur police patrolled everywhere. But those perfect specimens of their race despised Ettubrute for his “weakness” and his “dishonorable” line of work. They even ignored him when their paths crossed, as if he didn’t exist. To them, he was a virtual leper. Though Ettubrute pretended not to notice, he obviously found it much more painful when his fellows ostracized him than it would have been if they simply hadn’t been there.
That’s probably why the two of them had ended up becoming so close.
“The solidarity of pariahs,” Moy thought ironically, checking the explosive charges one by one and finding no mistakes.
He’d never found out whether Ettubrute was male or female. He’d always called him “he”… He unconsciously identified his strength and brusque manners with maleness.
Not that it made much difference. From the little he knew, Colossaurs came in something like seven sexes… In any case, they kept their genitals hidden under the plates of their armored carapaces 99.99 percent of the time. In the rare moments of sexual intimacy they had shared, pretty much compelled by their mutual loneliness, the human had always found it safer and more soothing to let himself be caressed by those big tridactyl hands and that sensitive forked tongue than to pay much attention to the flaps of skin, tinged violet like faded flowers, that he guessed were his agent’s genitals. He’d never found out whether Ettubrute expected him to penetrate them or to let himself be penetrated by them… Nor did he have any intention of finding out.
Caressing Ettubrute’s armor-plated bulk was a strange sensation. Like feeling a machine, or a stone statue. Moy had always heard that Colossaurs had almost no sense of touch in their carapaces. But Ettubrute seemed to like that most of all. It didn’t cost Moy much trouble to satisfy him. It was like petting a dog. Just slightly bigger…
From his earliest years, Moy, like all terrestrials, had discovered that sex was the common coin humans used to repay their obligations to the xenoids. Though it had never even crossed his mind to take up freelance social work, he figured the time he had spent satisfying the Colossaur’s strange appetites was a valuable investment… emotionally. It probably had made the difference in Ettubrute’s decision to give him a second chance with his debts.
In this life, everything has its price.
Everything was okay. Whistling, Moy left the tent and stepped out into the teeming plaza. The bustle, the noise, the smells, the colors hit his senses like a whack across the face. He took a deep breath and kept walking.
A short walk before each performance had become a habit for him. The lovely spectacle of the Cetian capital and its people calmed him, and motivated him, too. It functioned more or less like: “Look at all the stuff you can have, if you work hard and don’t spend too much.”
Normally there weren’t many pedestrians on the wide esplanade, but today was special. With the outrageous sense of aesthetics that only the Cetians could pull off (when they felt like it), a planetary-scale carnival was ringing in Union Day. The most important anniversary for every race. Commemorating the day they joined the community of the minds of the galaxy. Something like a coming of age.
Cutting through or circling around groups of Cetians and other xenoids decked out in exotic polychrome costumes, Moy wondered whether someday humans would be able to celebrate something like this, instead of Contact Day. Or would it be better to say, Conquest Day?
“Karhuz friz!” He was so lost in thought, it took him nearly a second to become aware of the words a Cetian had enthusiastically directed point-blank at him.
He stared at him. The xenoid had used an ingenious system of holoprojections to make the right half of his body look completely transparent. The half-person had apparently mistaken Moy’s human physique for a particularly hilarious costume and had made some witty comment on it. Or maybe he had only asked where he’d gotten it because he wanted one, too.
Moy only knew a few words in Cetian, and he didn’t have a translator on him. Like the Colossaur, he wasn’t crazy about them.
He hugged the Cetian warmly, almost yelling into his ear.
“Your half-mother sells herself to polyps!” And he laughed.
The humanoid looked at him for an instant. Then he shook his head sideways, the Cetian gesture for nodding in agreement. He let out a crystal-clear laugh and gamboled off, happy.
Seemed male. Pity.
Though ninety-nine percent of the time they were refined aesthetes who treated all beings other than their own race with distant, solemn, and courteously disdainful manners, on Union Day they let their hair down completely. For these twenty-six hours, every sort of joke was allowed, and the Cetians turned to amusements they would consider obscene to even think about the rest of the year.
The patchouli-scented aphrodisiac that he’d picked up by hugging the Cetian stimulated Moy’s pituitary and nearly gave him an erection.
He stared after the Cetian, with half a mind to follow him.
He must be a male (and Cetians hated and punished homosexuality), and he had never much liked his own sex. But if everything was permitted today… why not?
The half-person had already disappeared among the crowd.
Moy sighed. Maybe after the performance he’d find a female who was more… communicative. And who wouldn’t charge. Because Cetian hetaerae were magnificent but ridiculously expensive.