Resurgence

When you lived your whole life aboard a ship—or would, if only people would leave you in peace—you indulged your personal preferences. The Have-It-All possessed weapons that would make most military captains drool, but there was no sign of any of that here. Louis slept on a bed three meters long and three meters wide. No one would ever call it soft, but most of the time he slept in low gravity or no gravity, where that wasn’t an issue.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and removed his boots. He yawned, slowly stripped down to his shorts, and lay back with his head on the pillow. He scratched his hairy belly. Where the hell were they? And if they didn’t show, where in this godawful place would he find another navigator? Although you had to hate anything as slimy and supercilious as Claudius, there was no doubt that the Polypheme knew what he was doing. To everyone else on the Have-It-All, travel in the Sag Arm was a mystery.

He closed his eyes.

* * *

On the water-world of Pluvial, where a day without rain came once in a thousand years, Louis had encountered several of the native Cetomorphs. He rather admired those marine intelligences, and certainly he envied one of their abilities. They slept with half of their brain at a time; the other half remained awake and available for discussion and action. After a while the halves were ready to swap roles and the sleeping side awoke.

Louis had asked them to teach him the trick. It turned out to be impossible. The best that he could manage was a light trance, in which he was neither asleep nor awake, but sensitive to all external stimuli.

He had been in that state for the past several hours, until finally he heard with drowsy satisfaction the far-off but distinctive sound of the pinnace docking with the Have-It-All. He had no doubt that Sinara and Claudius were the people aboard, because the ship’s security system would not allow anyone lacking correct identification within a thousand kilometers.

He would give Sinara a good chewing-out for failing to call in and tell Louis what they had been up to, but that could wait until morning.

The other noise began five minutes after the docking ended. It was much less familiar. Not at all familiar, in fact. It sounded like two people, singing raucously and off-key.

Louis rolled off the bed and padded toward the door. He felt naked without his boots, but the condition of the ship came first. As he left the master suite and stepped into the dark hallway that led aft, something fell against his chest. It giggled and said, “Oops!”

He called for lights. Sinara Bellstock stood in front of him, although stood was hardly the right word. Her arms were around his neck, and her face pushed close against his chest. She made a strange questioning sound and pulled one hand back to run her fingers over the pits and nodules of his pheromonal augment.

“Mmm,” she said. “Nice and fuzzy. Never saw one of these before.” She leaned close and sniffed his chest. “Interesting smell. I like that.”

He pushed her away, trying to avoid contact with bare flesh. That wasn’t easy, because she was wearing about half as much clothing as when she left the Have-It-All.

“What happened to you?” But he knew the answer. Sinara was drunk, and on something far stronger than alcohol.

“Happened? Happened? Nothing happened. Went down to Pompadour, keep an eye on Claudius. Thaswhat I did, Mr. Fuzzy. He showed me all over—all over the place. Had a real good time. Haven’t had a time like that since . . . since . . . I don’t know. Never had a good time like that. Real good time. Real, real good time.”

Her face was against his chest again, and he was supporting half her weight.

“He took you to some dive, didn’t he? Got you stoned. Did you know what was going on?”

He wasn’t sure she knew what was going on now, until she raised her head, frowned up at him, and said, “Course I knew. Met aliens—lots and lots of aliens. Treated me real nice. Wanted to have sex with me, some of ’em—Claudius too. He said, ’til you have sex with a Chism Polypheme you don’t know what sex is.”

“I bet. You—er—you didn’t, did you?”

“With Mr. Wriggly? Of course not. Be like having sex with a live corkscrew. Didn’t have sex with any of ’em. Told ’em the truth.” Sinara was weaving patterns with her right index finger around Louis’s navel. “Told ’em they didn’t have a chance. I was saving myself for my heart’s desire, Mr. Fuzzy, back on the Have-It-All.”