Well, perhaps “underside” was an exaggeration, for the true underside floated only slightly above the lakebed, and the space underneath was choked with thousands of tendrils in addition to the eight immense geothermal taproots that bored deep into the magma flows below. Aili was exploring more off to the side, though still within the bounds of what the creature’s ultimate size would be. Indeed, she could legitimately say she was within the jelly itself. Extending from the island, forming the framework of its ultimate saucer shape, were eight radial vanes of staggering size. The vanes consisted of a dense lattice of tendrils of all sizes, catching matter from the winds as well as providing a framework for vines, small animals and avians to climb on. Between them grew a tangle of fibers and struts, growing out across the water’s surface and down below it, further anchoring the growing creature and extending the reach of its self-sustained ecosystem. Beneath the water, the network of its growing body had become the basis of a complex ecology like that of a coral reef or a deep-sea thermal vent on Pacifica or Earth. Schools of fish darted among its tendrils, and Lavena playfully chased after some of them, leaving her wrist-mounted tricorder to work on its own. They proved elusive, though, and darted through a narrow gap which she couldn’t swerve in time to avoid. Her shoulders wedged into it, and she struggled to break free.
To her surprise, though, after a moment one of the tendrils shimmered with magenta ripples and dematerialized, setting her free. “Thank you,” she said, sobered by the reminder that this was a self-aware ecosystem, conscious of the needs of everything that inhabited it and acting to provide for them. It was how the jellies drew so many species to live among them, an irresistible lure. Nearby, she could see more purplish shimmers, almost looking like reflections of light in the water, as the jelly provided plants for a group of whirling starfish-like creatures to dine on. Such a thing could be the perfect trap, Lavena realized—it could draw in animals with their heart’s desire, then beam their constituent molecules into itself as raw material for its growth. But the jellies grew so slowly, or so Jaza had explained, that they could easily wait for the animals to die and decay naturally.
More than that, though, they seemed to genuinely care about their nests, feeling a responsibility—even in youth—to give back to the ecology that nursed them. Thinking about it left Aili feeling abashed, and she decided to swim to the surface and get her mind off of it.
But when she breached the surface and got her bearings, she found Deanna Troi nearby, sitting on one of the jelly’s tendrils with her boots beside her, dangling her bare feet in the water. “Hello, Aili,” she said. “The water is marvelously warm, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Aili replied. She tried to hide her unease from the commander, but knew it would be futile. “Commander…I need to tell you something. About…what you saw…with Dr. Ra-Havreii…”
Troi studied her. “Ensign, I don’t pry needlessly into the private lives of my crewmates.”
“Of course not,” Aili was quick to say. “But…I just didn’t want you to think that I was…flaunting my sexual activities before you. I have no intention of doing that, of doing anything to make you or…or the captain uneasy with me.”
Deanna smiled. “Aili, I have no reason to be uneasy about it. You and Will had a harmless fling two decades ago. If that sort of thing bothered me, I never would’ve married him.” She lowered herself languidly onto one side, propping up her head with one fist, to bring herself closer to Aili’s eye level. “I think we both know that I’m not the one who’s bothered. I think we both know what Captain Riker doesn’t—about the difference between amphibious and fully aquatic Selkies.”
Aili stared at her, motionless except for her gill-crests, which reflexively undulated to maintain waterflow across them. “Then…you know?”
“I know that in your amphibious phase, you’re supposed to devote yourselves to procreation and parenting. That purely recreational sex is something you’re supposed to save for your aquatic phase, once you’ve discharged those obligations. I also know it doesn’t always work that way in practice.”
“Yes,” Aili said in a small voice. “Especially where offworlders are involved. They find us more alluring in amphibious phase…because they can mate with us more easily in the air, and because our breasts are enlarged then.” She gestured toward her own four small breasts, which no longer needed to produce milk and had thus flattened out to enhance her streamlining. “Often they don’t understand the difference between our phases…and we’re often content not to tell them.”
“Understandable,” Troi said. “To be expected to be so responsible all the time…then to look at your aquatic elders and see them free to romp and play, to be totally free in their sexuality…it’s a natural temptation. Not just the desire to be free from responsibility, but the desire to ‘act grown-up,’as it were.”
“But giving into that temptation is…somewhat scandalous.”
“But does that actually stop anyone from doing it anyway?”
“Rarely,” Aili admitted. “After all, they’re offworlders. They’ll go away and no one will be the wiser. And you never have to see them again.”
“Unless you decide to join Starfleet…and end up on a ship commanded by one of them.”
“Well, there’s that.” Aili looked away. “It’s just that…it was inappropriate. Not for him—I was an adult, fully mature by human standards—but for a Selkie it was improper and irresponsible, to spend my energies on a human lover rather than my children. And if it were known that Will…that the captain had participated in my impropriety, it would reflect badly on him. And I don’t want that, ma’am.”
Troi smiled. “I understand. Will’s former partners tend to remember him very fondly.”
“Well…truth be told, I don’t remember him that clearly at all.”
“Really!” Troi seemed mildly offended on her husband’s behalf, though there was humor in it.
“It’s just…there were so many. I was…very irresponsible back then. More than most. I was a poor mother, a poor caregiver. I wanted to put that behind me, to make up for it. That’s why I joined Starfleet. Even though I knew I might encounter…various old partners again. I’m a different person now, I figured I could handle that. But to have the captain himself be one of my…I’m just concerned how it would reflect on him.”
Deanna reached out and clasped Aili’s shoulder. “Well, your secret is safe with me. No one else needs to know you were intimate with Will, and Will doesn’t need to know about the…inappropriateness of it. After all,” she said with steel in her voice, “it’s not like he’s ever going to try it again.”
Aili would have sighed if she still breathed. “Thank you, Commander. I’m so relieved that you understand.” She smiled. “Would you like to join me for a swim? You were right, the water’s wonderful.”
But Deanna had suddenly grown distracted, looking skyward. A shadow passed across the sun, and Aili looked upward. Above them, a gigantic star-jelly hovered, a vast dark cloud with a halo of refracted light limning its edges. Wispy tendrils extended downward from it like rays of sunlight breaking through clouds. “Oh, no,” the commander breathed. Then she tapped her combadge and scrambled to pull her boots back on. “Troi to Titan.”
“Go ahead.”
“Will, I’ve just been informed—another school of jellies is being attacked.”
Riker had been just about to order the away team beamed aboard when, with a shimmer of purple, they materialized on the bridge. All but one, that is. Deanna’s eyes scanned the others—Jaza, Eviku, Chamish, Rriarr—and she struck her combadge. “Troi to Lavena. Are you aboard?”
“Yes, Commander, in my quarters,”came her response a moment later, her voice oddly modified by the underwater acoustics. “They beamed up my drysuit too.”