Arguing the Basics Read online

  “Why were you on Gol?”

  “I was the advance party. After I left Lowel, I landed on Gol and set up a home here, working and living beside them. When I was sent the message that you were coming, I had to keep an eye out for you, and you did not make it easy. I applaud your skills in playing tourist. It was an excellent logical reason for not staying put. Did you learn what you were sent to learn?”

  “I am pretty sure I did. How long until we reach the station, and what was that mist?” She sat up and dangled her legs off the bunk.

  “Illuma can explain the mist. Are you ready for something to eat?”

  She nodded, and he helped her to her feet. They moved the few feet to the galley. He called up a cup of tea and some food for her.

  She sat at the small table and ate familiar rations. “Oh, thank goodness. I have been subsisting on sandwiches and pastries for the last few days.”

  She dove into the hot food with enthusiasm. The hot tea was also in the familiar range.

  When she was done, she put the tray in the recycler and got more tea. She wandered up to the command deck and folded down a jump seat. Illuma and Ioko were taking up the other two seats.

  “So, Illuma, what was the mist?”

  The pilot turned toward her and smiled. “It was me. I am Nishan, well, half Nishan.”

  She thought of what the woman could do. “So, you can become anything you want, the mist is your relaxed form and you can also shift biology?”

  “Yes, but this is my normal form. It takes effort to become mist.”

  “Oh. All right.” She bit her lip. “Does anyone mind if I take a nap? I have been running pretty much constantly since I landed.”

  Ioko smiled. “Go ahead. The debriefing can wait until you are rested.”

  She quickly slugged back her hot tea and headed for the rear of the ship. Sleep would help clear her head, and perhaps, she would stop staring at Morgthen’s face looking for traces of Ioko. He was completely changed physically, but his voice was similar.

  She returned the cup to the galley and hit the bunk, pulling the covers up as completely as she could.

  Sleep would help.

  Ioko had gallantly let her go first. “She does this trick with the hair that is completely wonderful.”

  As she lay on the bed with a sheet over her, he stayed near her head.

  Illuma wheeled in a wide container on a frame, and inside the container was the hair that she had removed from Koara’s scalp.

  Illuma smiled. “Now, we go hair first so that I can tweak it a little while I work on the rest of you.”

  The hair was sitting on a gel bed, and it looked even pinker than Koara remembered. “Ready when you are.”

  “All right. Here we go.”

  Illuma began to work, and Ioko took Koara’s hand. When the hair began rooting in her newly pinked scalp, she squeezed his fingers in hers.

  It was the beginning of a very long day.

  Koara’s skin felt weird and sensitive as she stood next to Ioko and watched his hair go on. The rooting process was peculiar to see from the exterior, and it felt even weirder. He flinched a little and reached for her hand. Instead of squeezing it, he ran his thumb along the back of her fingers in a slow caress.

  After his hair was done, his face was reformed. She could finally see Ioko again.

  “Hello again.”

  He smiled at her, and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Hello.”

  His body slowly turned from grey to rich brown as Illuma worked him over.

  The change in colour crept from the point of contact, across the skin and under him. It was easy to see how far the colour progressed; he was only wearing a short sheet across his hips.

  It seemed that modesty was not a Kozue necessity.

  “Is changing people tiring?”

  Illuma smiled. “No. The change is an effect of my injecting my mist into tissues. The slightest amount of my mist and I change the pigmentation in the skin as well as the texture. I tend to leave the change in eye colour to technology. I will slow a heartbeat, but I will never mess with someone’s eyes.”

  “So, you were running around on me the whole time?”

  Illuma shrugged and kept working. “It makes my charges easier for me to track. I simply call on myself and feel the answer.”

  “And now, you are simply gathering in the leftover mist.”

  “Precisely. It is the equivalent of lending out one of my fingernails. The amount of missing material is negligible for me and for my charge.”

  “Nice. Are you happy working for the Alliance?”

  Illuma quirked her lips. “I have a job, I have a purpose, and I have as much social exposure as I want on any given day.”

  Koara could see Ioko looking from one of them to the other.

  She looked down at him and winked. He grinned back.

  With his braids in place and his skin tone back to normal, he was just as fascinating to her as he had been the first time they met. Soon, he would be back in his normal clothing, on another mission and she would be back at Lowel.

  She sighed. “What will I have to do as a report?”

  Ioko scowled. “You will have to share your assessment of their adaptability to the idea of other species living and flying through space around them.”

  She nodded. “I can write reports. I am exceedingly good at reports.”

  Ioko nodded. “That is what I have heard.”

  Illuma smiled again and kept working. She had quite a bit of work left before he was ready to get back to normal, but since the zip was Koara’s ride home, she was in no hurry to leave the medical chamber.

  It took another hour to finish Ioko’s cosmetic reset, but when he was ready, they left the chamber to let him change.

  “What will you do now, Illuma?”

  “I suppose I will wait until the next assignment rolls through. Or, I will be called away, but I like this little station. The larger one that they have created that hosts the visiting students is too big. I like being out of the way here.”

  Ioko emerged with his armoured suit in place and straining at the shoulders to contain the bulging muscle that was endemic to the Kozue.

  “Would you care to share a zip to the surface?” Ioko smiled at her.

  “Um, sure. You are going to visit?”

  “The debriefing is going to be a large event, and Lowel is set up for a secure auditorium setup. Since I will have to explain to Iara what I do for a living, I thought if I held Agren, she might not yell as much.”

  Koara chuckled. “That might work.”

  “I am willing to try it. She was forced out of our clan; to think that I have left the life of battle willingly might not sit well with her.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  He was about to answer when she spotted Illuma. She ran up to her and hugged her. “Thank you for your help.”

  “It was a pleasure. I promise to work on my facial expressions for your next mission.” She smiled briefly.

  “You did fine. I knew that when you smiled you meant it. It means more than an artificial twist of the lips.”

  “Thank you. I think so too. Enjoy your new channel of interest. I think you will thrive as an assessor.”

  The sincere well wishes gave Koara a warm, fuzzy feeling, which reminded her of Sookar, which made her give a hasty goodbye. She grabbed her bag and met Ioko at the zip station in under three minutes.

  It was time to go home.

  Chapter Eight

  Sookar met her at the zip station. He was hopping from one little foot to the next as he waited for her to get out of the pod.

  The moment her feet were on the ground, he pattered up to her and pecked at her legs until she shifted her bag and picked him up.

  He chided her for leaving him, and his mind demanded that the next time she leave, she take him with her.

  Ioko looked at them. “What is he on about?”
/>   “He is upset that I left him with his sister and her person.” She smiled and nuzzled his pink, fluffy head. “I am telling him that I had to go to a place where no Yaluthu would be welcome.”

  The indignity blazed in his mind.

  She laughed.

  “What?” Ioko was curious as he put his arm around her to escort her into the base.

  “He is indignant at the thought that there is any place in the universe where he would not be welcome.” She rubbed her face against the silky softness again and breathed in the scent of her bonded companion.

  Iara came toward them in the hall, her expression shifting with delight as she took in the sight of her brother.

  “Ioko! I am so happy to see you.”

  To Koara’s surprise, Iara wasn’t wearing the baby or Harmony.

  “So, Rion is home?”

  Iara grinned. “He has confiscated the baby so that I can make arrangements for some sort of high-security Alliance discussion on the world that Koara just went to.”

  Iara took in Ioko’s arm around Koara’s waist, and she asked, “Is there something I should know?”

  Koara smiled. “Not yet. We will keep you posted.”

  Ioko squeezed her waist, and he chuckled. “I have something to tell you, sister. I am preparing to throw Koara between us.”

  She held Sookar toward Ioko’s chest, and her little beast pecked him for her.

  He yelped, and the ladies laughed. As a homecoming went, it was pretty fun.

  She was putting the finishing touches on her report when there was a knock on her door. She looked over at Sookar in his food stupor. “Can you answer that?”

  He just gave her a smug look from those beautiful eyes of his, and so, she was forced to get to her feet and answer the knock.

  Ioko was standing there with his bag over his shoulder. “Good evening, Koara.”

  “Good evening, Ioko. Would you like to come in?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He walked in and put his bag on the floor near the wide couch. “I have a favour to ask you.”

  “What is it?”

  “May I stay here tonight? Iara has a strict rule about booking a place to stay at the Citadel. As I did not call ahead, she isn’t willing to provide me with a guest room until tomorrow night.”

  She cocked her head at him and said. “Couch.”

  He blinked as if he had expected more of a fight. “Really?”

  “Well, I would have said bed, but Sookar would have pecked your eyes out while you slept. He has come around to blaming you for my absence and will need some time to get over it.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, the couch is fine. Do you have extra covers?”

  She smiled. “I do. Just a moment.”

  She headed to her closet and pulled out the one thing she had brought from home. It was a quilt that she and her mother had made when she was a child.

  She grabbed the extra pillow off her bed and brought it along. “Here you go.”

  “This doesn’t look like Citadel issue.”

  “It isn’t. I just haven’t been able to put it on my own bed yet. It reminds me of home.”

  He was solemn as he took them from her. “I promise not to eat in bed.”

  She grinned. “Good. I just finished my report on Gol. It is going to be quite the lecture, but I hope that I manage to convey what it is that I discovered.”

  “What is that?”

  “They would be restricted trading partners, and no one can live on their soil.”

  He blinked. “Really?”

  “Really. They are well educated, have an all-inclusive religion that does not focus on them being the only beings in the universe. The pay rates, even in the rural areas are high enough to allow everyone to live decently given the cost of living. The technology is amazing, but it is solidly focused on the crystals and that is where their tech stumbles. They have the ability to develop other methods of energy production that would not deplete their natural resources, and yet, they do not. The plans have been filed but nothing has ever been constructed. My assessment is that they have an aversion to any mechanical device that is not powered by their own crystals.”

  She dragged in a deep breath. “As all of their technology is dependent on the crystals, it would be parasitic to attempt trade with them until they are ready to leave Gol under their own power. That said, if they are willing to trade, each item on offer would have to be carefully considered.”

  He tossed the pillow onto the couch. “So, they would be in danger of trading despite themselves.”

  “That is my assessment based on their history going back to the earliest recordings. Even the way they record their history speaks volumes about them.”

  “What about the cultured crystals?” Ioko opened his suit and started to pull his arms out of it.

  “The technology isn’t far enough along. They are currently only manufacturing enough for their own immediate purposes. In the final analysis, it is their decision. I am just sharing my observations interpreted through my own experiences.”

  “That is your talent. I respect it. If you say that Gol is a bad choice for direct contact, I believe you.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t say it was a bad choice for contact; it is simply a bad choice for trade. They do not pursue alternative energies and their manufacturing capabilities are limited.”

  He had stripped to the waist, and he came over to sit on the edge of her bed. “What about their social peculiarities?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, the back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Illuma didn’t make us exactly like the Golum. They have a broad swath of skin on their backs that acts as an erogenous zone in both men and women. It starts near the shoulders and ends at the hips. It is why all the public chairs and transports are so comfortable.”

  He was shocked. “How did you learn that?”

  “I went to the Sex Museum in Krimkat Province.” She shrugged. “I will be right back.”

  She grabbed her nightshirt, went into the lav and changed. When she emerged, she put her suit in the refreshing unit.

  “How did you know to go there?”

  “I read the tourism information for each area. It is a tedious way to do things, but it did work. Since we got back, I looked up similar adaptations, and the Moreski spots are the closest thing I could find.”

  He nodded and reached out to scratch Sookar. Her Yaluthu showed him that the blunt beak was still dangerous.

  He jerked his hand back. “Still ticked, huh?”

  Sookar growled.

  Koara looked at the bite on his hand, and she hissed. “Damn.”

  She sat next to him and took his hand. To his surprise, she put her mouth over the wound, and she licked it. He jerked, but he didn’t pull his hand away.

  When she was finished, she sat up and licked her lips.

  He stared at the spot where the gouge was. “It’s healed.”

  “Of course. All the lower-class folks on Trimel have this adaptation. It was necessary when we couldn’t depend on getting emergency medical care in time or paying for it. So, we pay for breaks, but we treat cuts ourselves.”

  “That wasn’t anywhere in the specifications for your people.”

  “Of course not. Nor was the whole back issue for the Golum. Some things you take for granted. Everyone knows about them, so you just have to go to the place where they are discussing it openly as a wonder of biology.”

  “You are a wonder of biology.”

  She blushed. “Thank you. You are pretty as well.”

  Sookar hopped onto her lap and growled at Ioko.

  She held him tight while she leaned forward to kiss the Kozue on her bed.

  Sookar’s growl ceased when Ioko kissed Koara in return. When they slowly parted with flushed cheeks and pounding pulses, Koara cleared her throat. “You are still consigned to the couch.”

  “That is acc
eptable. Who do I contact about courting you?”

  She blinked. “Trimel. The Avatar is the one who has power of guardianship for me. He had the right to remove me from his world, so he has the right to call me back. I am one of his people.”

  “Good. As long as I know who to talk to, things will be fine.” He winked and got to his feet. “I will wish you good night, Koara Ulings.”

  “Good night, Ioko Hanikada.” She climbed backward with Sookar on her lap and scooted under the covers.

  She waited until he was on the couch before she turned the light off via the control by her bed. He was closer to her than any man had ever been, and she hoped to one day close the gap between them.

  Two days later, she finished the question-and-answer portion of the lecture and gave the Alliance representatives food for thought. She had mentioned social mores and gone into details. If anyone tried to make contact, they would need to know that an exposed back was lewd and a turned back was a sexual invitation.

  When the meeting was done, she headed off for lunch with Iara and Agren, as well as the elusive Rion. All their Yaluthu were also in attendance, and it made for a riotous lunch when Agren kept reaching for Sookar, and he hid behind his siblings.

  Suddenly, Agren looked up and reached for Koara.

  Iara grinned. “This should be interesting.”

  Koara was holding the baby a moment later, and the little fists closed on her hair, and he rubbed his face in it.

  “He likes pink. Problem solved.” Iara grinned.

  “Sookar will be so relieved.” Koara let the baby rub his face in her pink hair, and he was content to do so.

  Iara smiled. “Where is Ioko?”

  “Finishing up the report. I have given my all and passed along all the tourist crystals that I had collected. They got my opinion, and they will do with it what they will.”

  “Can you really give it up to them like that?”

  “I have to. I can’t push folks into doing my whim. That isn’t safe or sane.”

  Iara smiled. “But you could if you wanted to.”