"Denial! I am not trying to seduce you."
She approached him, her hair flaring more widely. "Then perhaps I will seduce you."
He stepped back. "Wouldn't that make me untrue to Red? This month I belong to her."
"Not in no fault." Now her hair actually extended toward him as if to enfold him.
"Is this no fault?"
"Negation," she said, smiling.
"Am I to work with you?"
"Affirmation." Now he remembered: he had seen Stevia on occasion when with Flame.
He simply hadn't made the connection. "Tell me what to do."
"Background: Gale—I believe you know her—recently traveled to a world of sapient plants, and obtained much information. But it is unorganized. We must organize it."
"Ignorance."
"The information is in the form of alien mental capsules designed for ready assimilation. We, being new to intercultural contact, find it to be not all that ready. So we must digest it somewhat, to make it available for the Glamors who will do the work. Black, Blue, Green, Air, Translucent, Yellow, White, Brown, Silver, Gray, Orange, and of course the more recent cluster of nonChroma. Most will remain in the background, but their work is vital."
"Observation: if Glamors have trouble handling it, I, a mortal, will hardly be of much help."
"Negation. There is detail work involved that you should be competent for."
He shrugged. "I will do my best."
She touched his hand, and a faint but evocative electric tingle passed through it. "Appreciation."
She got up and went to a cupboard he hadn't noticed before. She brought back a large pad of paper and a marker.
"You will make notes."
He smiled. "This is within my backwoods village technology." Then he realized. "By no coincidence."
"You will also classify." She indicated a table and chair he also had not noticed before, and suspected they had just been conjured. "Sit."
"Question?" But he did sit at the table, holding the marker over the pad.
"These species are of every living type. Gale encountered a plant culture. She or Havoc will likely handle other plant cultures. Red will handle six legged animal cultures. Deva—she's Yellow—will handle fish cultures. Et cetera. You will formulate lists of types that will serve as a general guide. If you are not sure, use question marks. This will be rather general at first."
"Willing. But surely Red would be far more competent to make these distinctions."
"Red will be otherwise occupied."
"Then I will make the effort. But from what am I to judge? I am not good at alien mental capsules that confuse even Glamors."
She leaned forward, showing a fair amount of gray cleavage. Her hair whipped forth a gray tress, looped his head, and drew him in to her face. She kissed him and let him go. "Cute man."
Fifth fought to keep a straight face. That trick with the hair was something, as was the exposed curvature of her bosom, and so was the kiss, charged with the same tingle as her hands. She was flirting with him, and becoming more interesting by the minute. The Red Glamor had forcefully seduced him, but evidently was far from through with him; now her alternate form was starting over. "Show me how."
"Practice example." She closed her eyes, concentrating.
There was a swirl of color above the table. It coalesced to form an illusionary picture of a lean young woman with flaming red hair, standing before a cottage in a glade. A small gust of wind riffled her hair.
"Flame!" he exclaimed gladly.
"I am only an image, Fifth," she responded, meeting his gaze. "Classify me."
Oh. Disappointed, he made a note on the pad.
TYPE: Animal.
LEGS: 4.
HABITAT: Land.
CHROMA: nonChroma.
The Flame image looked down. "Better add sexuality," she said. "It can make a difference."
He added SEX: bi. That meant that her species had two sexes. "I hope we can practice it soon."
"Concurrence," she said, smiling, and faded out.
He looked at Stevia. "Impressive."
"Crafted example. The others are more difficult."
"I think I have the idea."
She concentrated again. This time a large green plant formed, in a forest of plants, with a single huge flower on the ground.
TYPE: plant, he wrote.
LEGS: 8?. For that was the definition of plants, which typically had eight major roots. But alien plants might be different.
HABITAT: Land.
CHROMA: nonChroma?
SEX: Bi. Though both might be in the same individual.
The plant extended a tendril toward him. He reached with his left hand to touch it. "We communicate via touch," it said in his mind. "And deliver information via sex."
"Question?" he asked, surprised in more than one way.
"Via packages of spores containing concentrated data."
Oh. He added a category.
COMMUNICATION: Touch, Sex.
"Appreciation." The tendril withdrew, and the picture faded.
He looked at Stevia. "Amazement."
"That is the culture Gale visited. They delivered a major package of informational spores to her, and this is what she relayed to me."
"All these animated pictures—via spores from a plant?"
"Affirmation."
"Question. If the spores are sexually transmitted, how did she obtain them?"
"I will recreate the scene, from what she told me." Stevia concentrated again, and the picture re-formed. This time a quite beautiful nude human woman was stepping onto the flower.
"Gale!"
Gale squatted over the flower's central stamen. She set her cleft over it, drew her nether lips wide open with her hands, and carefully worked the bulbous head of the stamen into her genital opening. The distension it required would have been painful for an ordinary woman, but she was a Glamor. When the whole of the anther had been taken in, leaving only the stout supportive column, she extended her legs and sat on the petals, with the bulb deep inside her torso. In a moment the flower quivered, and her body shifted slightly, as if something more was entering it. Her face assumed an expression of wonder and rapture, as of a marvelous sexual climax. Then the scene faded.
Fifth, who had once been Gale's no fault lover, was left with a painful erection. He was in one sense repulsed by what he had seen, but in another sense powerfully turned on.
Stevia looked at him. "Question?"
There was no point in even trying to deceive her. "Urgency." She pretended confusion. "Of what nature?"
He knew what she wanted, and it burst out of him. "Stevia, I know you are Red. I am supposed to love other women, so this form of yours is part of the process. I can love you without being false to Red. Certainly I can share sex with you. Please." He tore off his clothing and stood bare and erect.
She smiled. "A magic word." She came to him, her clothing dissolving. Her hair flared phenomenally to wrap around him, enclosing him in a soft cocoon. She wrapped her arms around his torso as they seemed to float in air. Her gray cleft seemed to catch the tip of his rigid penis, holding it at the brink of her hot slick aperture. "Do it."
Given that leave, he thrust violently, penetrating to full depth and spurting instantly as she braced and squeezed against him. He sent pulse after pulse into her before the edge softened. "Appreciation!" he gasped.
"Welcome."
They were drifting embraced within her ambiance of hair. He was done, but she did not let him go. He knew what that meant. "More?"
"You had your turn. Now give me my turn."
And of course he had to. Glamor women could climax as fast as men did, but did not always choose to. She had elected to make this a double session: first him then her. Considering his excruciating urgency, he truly appreciated her gesture.
He kissed her and squeezed her ample buttocks. She shifted her torso against his, so that her full breasts stroked his chest. Tendrils of her prehensile hair writhed in the crevice of his buttocks and insinuated their way into his anus.