“Indeed!” The Trader rubbed his hands together. As though, Azia thought cynically, the theatrical gesture could mean anything to Pluummuluum. The Trader waved his hand and named the varieties of stocks he had on hand. Pluummuluum, of course, had been informed before the meeting of exactly what these were. The naming of the items was simply the means to get to the terms of the exchange. Trader Barraclough elaborated the germ stocks’ selling points at great length, before casually mentioning that he had one milliliter of the Jasper V virus, which Azia knew he knew Pluummuluum had an interest in acquiring.
“My principal,” Azia said, “is interested in considering the stocks you mention as a package to be traded for as many as seven feathers.”
“Seven?” Trader Barraclough said. “How could I possibly afford such a trade?”
Azia shrugged. She recalled well the stern instructions that she never, never offer concession after only one complaint. “Feathers, as you say, are in great demand.”
“That is true, that is true. But these particular stocks—when will the Trader run across someone wanting to trade them for feathers, of all so-expensive items?”
“Ah, but I imagine that feathers must be the easiest things to re-trade, considering how totally hot they are.”
Trader Barraclough blinked, glanced at Azia with a surprised look— then quickly away, as he realized, she thought, that he had broken form. She swallowed. Of course it was she who had broken form, by using her own words, rather than the formulas she was supposed to apply to the situation. She cleared her nervous throat. “My principal will reluctantly agree to trade eight feathers for the stock, but eight must be the ceiling.”
To Azia’s surprise, Trader Barraclough accepted eight for the germ stocks, though he exacted five for the virus. Azia then flatly asked him how many lyric crystals he had and told him that Pluummuluum wanted as many as he had, but would not bargain for them. This he already knew, and allowed him the pretense of making the gracious gesture as a special courtesy to an old trading partner.
The session ended with extended ritual courtesies. The Barraclough contingent left by the door on its side of the room, and Azia and her bonder by the door on their side of the room. They walked sedately back to their suite, Azia a decorous three steps behind. But as soon «s she entered the suite, a wild elation and euphoria swept over her, making her leap and dance around the room with manic, joyous energy. “We did it!” she said—meaning that she had surprised herself by actually doing what her bonder had expected. Delirious with joy, she spun and whirled around the room, circling Pluummuluum, crowing her victory, until, dizzy, she dropped to her knees before it. She looked up at its blank, alien eyes and pressed her face and breasts against its legs in an embrace that sent sexual excitement rushing over her skin, coursing through her muscles like air rushing in to fill a vacuum. It didn’t matter that she knew nothing about Corollian sexuality, it didn’t matter that she’d never interacted sexually with another entity, human or otherwise. Her mind was filled with images of desire for this being, this creature, filled with images of touch—of its strange limbs and tentacles touching her, of the weird slickness of its skin touching her, of its touch on the back of her neck, a touch she longed for even as she imagined it, a touch which she imagined—no, felt—wrenching at her bones, burrowing an ache into parts of her she’d never before recognized—was what she wanted most in the world at that moment, as she’d never wanted anything.
A sudden strike of nausea to her stomach, of cramps to her abdomen, of an indescribably unpleasant odor to her olfactory nerve shocked her somatic self. Her teeth felt as if she’d been sucking a lemon. A wave of tension set her shivering. And before Azia realized what was happening, Pluummuluum had moved away, off into the hygiene facilities, shutting the door between itself and her.
A thick, viscous wave of self-loathing rushed over her. She was disgusting, she thought. She was so disgusting. And why had she thought she was so wonderful, anyway, for carrying out her part of a ritual of trading, the terms of which had been more or less arranged beforehand? That creature wanted nothing to do with her, except to use her for speaking formulas. She might as well be a robot. Bitterly she wondered why it hadn’t bought a robot instead of her, since it could communicate with processors just as easily as it could communicate telepathically with her. For a moment, she wished she were a robot, she wished she were a machine, because then she wouldn’t always be making an idiot of herself, wouldn’t be emotional, wouldn’t mind being the loneliest being in the galaxy. But this thought, a few moments later, made her further ashamed of herself. She considered what her family would say to such disregard for Life—not to mention for the grammar of What Will Be.
Azia pressed her cheek to the ugly bare floor and wept. She knew they would say that even in circumstances like these there is always some tiny access to the grammar of What Will Be, however narrow its application might be, and that if she lived in despair and self-loathing, she would never perceive it. The insight did not comfort her, but made her feel weak, inadequate, and guilty.
10.
Pluummuluum informed Azia that its ship would be ready for departure in ten hours and that they would use the time until then for sleeping. She wasn’t sure which kind of hours it meant, but she knew it was far too early in their day for her to go to sleep, and she said so. Pluummuluum simply inflated a bed and gestured her to he on it. She looked at it; she looked at the bed; and she considered arguing, or at least pleading for some kind of amusement to pass the hours. But something about the way it was looking at her, waiting for her obedience, made the hair on her arms and the back of her neck prickle with a frisson like static electricity (which she hated, and had always seemed to be getting her on board the Emma G.). She felt bad, lying down on the bed in capitulation. She felt stupid and shamed. And she knew she couldn’t sleep.
But when it reached down and touched the stubbly crown of her head with a tentacle, she did drop into sleep, instantly.
This time she did not wake with terrible need gnawing at her; it woke her itself. It was with difficulty that she emerged from a state of heavy, body-dragging sleep, her heart thudding, her eyes so thickly crusted with dried mucus they required real effort to get open, and her body sticky with sweat. Her lips were parched and bitten; her skin drawn. But all that was nothing to the squirmy, slimy sensation that felt as though it was emanating from somewhere in her crotch, a constant creeping and crawling over her skin that she knew must have something to do with the grotesque wet-dream she’d been having. She almost couldn’t bear to look at it, waiting, she thought, for her to get up and moving. She did get up, quickly—because for once she didn’t want it touching her, not even to send her a telepathic burst.
It hadn’t told her not to, so after she urinated, she used the shower (as though sonic scrubbing could rid her of that feeling!). As she came fully awake, she wrestled with the deep, gut feeling that if it had been able to put her to sleep like that—and she knew that it must have done so—then it could have given her that dream. She knew it didn’t make sense. Even if it could give her those kind of dreams (which must be substantially different from the Reception kind, right?), it wouldn’t have given her a sexual dream, considering its attitude toward her.