"That can be dangerous among strangers."
"Agreement. Then phrase your avenue."
"Entanglement."
"Question?"
"On the molecular scale, particles can come to associate with each other. Thereafter they act as one, though separated. On the macroscopic scale, the equivalent is marriage."
"Surprise!"
Fifth, too, was surprised. Not by the concept, but by Voila's surprise. Rafal was setting her back. That spoke volumes.
"The avenue is complicated," Rafal repeated.
Voila rallied. "In our culture, marriage leads to sexual expression, love, and commitment. The first seems unfeasible."
"Perhaps."
"Do you diffuse?"
"Affirmation."
"Let's try it that way first."
The tentacle extending from the water expanded, becoming twice its original diameter, then thrice. It puffed into vapor.
"Collect my clothes," Voila said to Fifth as she disrobed. She tossed blouse, skirt, bra, parities, and slippers, and he caught them and folded them carefully, piling them on a rock. He had seen her nude before, but on this unexpected occasion he was caught by her beauty of form. She was slightly endowed, by human standards, but perfect in her slenderness. The epitome of the kind of woman he could love.
"Appreciation," she said, smiling.
Fifth felt himself blushing. He kept forgetting that he might as well shout his thoughts when in her presence.
"This is a nexus," she said. "Stand back until you feel the event horizon. Then you will be able to view all the alternates at your convenience." Her hair was vaporizing, and her fingers. She was starting her ifrit diffusion.
Fifth retreated, uncertain what she meant. Then he felt it: a kind of mental tingling as if reality were shifting around him. He went farther out, and discovered fragmentation: the view of Voila and Rafal's pool shimmered as though refracted by a translucent curtain and became two. Then three, and four, and five. But they were not identical.
What was happening?
"The separation of alternates," she called. "Rafal is making a nexus. If you enter one, you will assume its reality. Do not do so. Watch them all from the horizon, until the sequences play out. Wait for us to select one before joining it."
"Acquiescence," he said, amazed.
Voila did not speak again. She couldn't: her face had vaporized. Her bare body stood below a cloud of thick vapor that was her diffused substance. Beyond her was the cloud forming above the pool that was Rafal diffusing.
He looked at the adjacent scene. That was as surprising: Voila was changing her form, becoming tentacular. She was emulating Rafal's species!
The third scene showed Rafal forming his tentacles into humanoid arms and legs. His body was emerging from the water, becoming the torso, bearing a head.
The fourth scene seemed to be illusion, with the two of them forming into coiling serpents.
The fifth seemed to be empty, but he was sure it wasn't. Maybe it was just slower to develop.
He was seeing all the alternate things they were doing to relate to each other. They would discover which worked best, and select that one to keep. The others would fade, becoming only speculations.
Fifth had been in awe of Voila's power. Now he was in similar awe of Rafal's power. They were two quite different creatures, but they were similar in their special abilities. Surely there was nothing else in the galaxy like this.
Which was of course why they were the two prime recruitment targets. And why they were meeting now, and studying each other. For that was what they were doing. Only when they knew each other well enough could they afford to trust.
He turned back to the first scene. The two clouds lifted above the colonnade and floated beside each other. They extended pseudopods of vapor. The pods touched, and remained unmoving. He knew that they were in intense communication, possible only in the ifrit form. That alone would assume them of trust—or the lack of it.
He looked at the second scene. Two squid-like creatures were wrestling at the surface of the water. Tentacle coiled around tentacle, forming a seeming tangle, so that he could no longer be sure which one belonged to whom.
Was this a romantic embrace?
The fourth scene was astonishing. The larger serpent opened its mouth and swallowed the other. It was a willing act, the other wriggling to slide headfirst into the long throat, until she disappeared inside him.
Then came the climax. It must have been, because the body exploded and fragments fell across the land and into the water. Then they scraped themselves up, and formed into the two original figures, somewhat the worse for wear.
The third scene was clearer: Rafal was now a handsome naked human man. He embraced Voila, kissed her, and lay with her on the ground. His penis was monstrous, but then it diminished as he ascertained the appropriate size, and pushed into her open cleft. They were having sex. Rafal wasn't experienced at it, in this form, so it was somewhat clumsy, but he was trying and she was helping, so it seemed to be getting there.
Now Fifth saw that the fifth scene wasn't empty. It was just that the two retained their natural forms. They were doing it without adapting, surely a challenge. Voila sat on the bank and spread her legs, and tentacles came up to embrace her, wrapping around arms and legs. Two looped around her breasts, gently squeezing them. One reached up to touch her face, and she took the tip into her mouth and sucked on it. One stroked her cleft and slid into her vagina.
It drew out and thrust in again in a familiar motion. It swelled to double or triple its prior size, surely distending her vagina uncomfortably. Except that she was a Glamor, able to handle anything she chose to. In a moment so much fluid gushed out that it overflowed, half burying her groin in green goo and spattering the rest of her torso. She lay back, laughing almost hysterically. It seemed Rafal had misjudged the suitable amount of ejaculate. Probably it was correct for his own kind.
Then the scenes coalesced, and only the fifth one remained. That was the one they had decided to keep. They had managed to do it in their natural forms, and that was the way they liked it. There was no aversion to their preposterously different anatomies; their minds and Glamor powers were compatible, so their bodies were secondary.
Fifth might have had difficulty grasping that, had he not seen the alternate presentations.
Fifth walked into that scene, joining them. Voila lay supine on a curling nest of tentacles, jelly dribbling off her body and out of her vagina. She looked up at him, not embarrassed. "Love," she said.
"Trust," Rafal agreed.
And surely the physical act had been the least of it. They had connected mentally, emotionally, spiritually, reading each others' complete natures. That had made physical accommodation feasible. Fifth tried to suppress the reaction watching it had evoked in him, turning him on in much the way seeing Gale with the plant had. That had precipitated him into sex with the Red Glamor, but he had no such option now.
They unwound, and Voila jumped into the pool to clean off. She dived among the tentacles. Obviously there was physical trust.
In due course she emerged, and Fifth helped her dry and dress. It was time to go.
She caught a tentacle, teasingly bit it, and kissed it. "Trust," she said.
"Love," Rafal said.
She faced Fifth. "Leave the ikon."
He fetched it from his mouth and set it on a rock.
"Negation. He can't touch it."
Oh. He had forgotten. No Glamor could touch any Glamor's ikon. He carried it farther away from the pool and put it in a knothole in the trunk of a purple tree. It hardly mattered where it was; nothing would disturb it. It would enable Voila to come directly here without complications of routing.
They landed in a bedroom. It wasn't the home planet; there were portraits of aliens on the walls. It was just a stop on the way.