“When’s your next stupid date thing?” Claire said, finally.
“I have one tomorrow,” I said. “With a Cli.”
“What’s the chance of grievous bodily harm with that one?” Claire said.
“Pretty low,” I said. “They’re pacifists.”
“It’s not that we’re pacifists, actually,” Deputy Ambassador Fad Ronen said to me as I recounted my previous date and Claire’s reaction. “It’s just that as a people we’re not very excitable. All the violence and wars and passion you other intelligent species have. We’re just not much for it.” Ronen led me from the foyer of the Cli embassy into the main portion of the building.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Well, I think at least some of it relates to the reason you’re here,” Ronen said. “We’re not a sexually competitive species. We don’t fight over mates or do reproductive displays or things like that. Don’t get me wrong. It’s all very interesting to us to watch the rest of you perform them and to see how it integrates with your psychology. Back on Clitar a native-language staging of Romeo and Juliet has been running continually for 20 years. And we’re the biggest consumer of human romantic comedies outside of Earth. That’s why we were all very excited that you’re doing this story.” It led me into its office.
“If you don’t do reproductive displays, how do you date?” I asked.
“We don’t,” Ronen said, and walked over to a cabinet and opened it. “At least, not like you do. What we do is more of a communal thing. And as coincidence has it, this evening is our monthly get-together here at the embassy. So that’s good timing for you. Ah, here we are.” Ronen came out of the cabinet with two bowling ball-sized dirt-colored spheres. It gave one to me. “You’re going to need this.”
I took it; it was light and sticky. “What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a milt ball,” Ronen said. “From one of our junior diplomats who had to go to Geneva for a conference. Shaa will be pleased you’ll be able to stand in. Come on, we don’t want to be late, and everyone is waiting on us.” It headed toward the door; I followed.
A few minutes later we were in a small circular room with at least twenty other Cli. The room was blindingly white and tiled; in the center was a low table and along the wall was a contoured groove. My suspicion it was a bench of some sort was confirmed when some of the Cli began to unfold themselves into it.
Ronen introduced me to a few of the other Cli and then pointed at the center table, where several of the milt balls were resting. “We need to put our balls there and take a seat,” it said. We dropped our balls and then settled in against the wall.
As we took our seat I pointed back to the table with the milt balls. “Do those balls have some sort of ritual significance?” I asked.
“Ritual? No,” Ronen said. “It’s purely reproductive.”
“Pardon me?” I said.
“They’re milt balls,” Ronen said. “We Cli are hermaphrodites. We produce sperm and eggs. The eggs stay in our bodies and stored here in a spicule belt”— it pointed to a stippled region across its abdomen— “and the sperm get excreted in a milt jelly. We can either provide the sperm fresh to a mating partner, who applies it to its spicules, or store it for some time in a milt ball. The milt in the ball dehydrates over time and that causes the sperm to become inactive. It can stay for years that way before it goes bad.”
My brain was still trying to get around the fact I’d been touching alien sperm. “So what’s going on here, exactly?” I asked.
“It’s a fertilization party,” Ronen said. “As I mentioned, we Cli don’t really have any sort of reproductive competition; we prefer to do our fertilization communally. That assures a good mix of genetics for our people as a whole. So everyone here at the embassy collects their sperm for a month, and then at the fertilization party we distribute the sperm equally. That’s why everyone’s put a milt ball on the table.”
“But how does the sperm get distributed from the table to you?” I asked.
“We just add water,” Ronen said.
“Water?” I asked, alarmed.
Ronen looked over at me. “Oh dear,” it said. “I may have made a faux pas. We Cli don’t wear clothes. I should have told you it would be advisable to bring a swimsuit.”
“Oh, come on!” Jaaanta said. “You can’t stop the story there. I have to hear the rest of it.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and ran my finger over the top of the beer glass. “I don’t think I’ve had nearly enough to drink to spill the rest of the story.”
“This is just a shameless attempt to get me to buy you a beer,” Jaaanta said.
“Maybe,” I allowed.
“Outrageous,” she said. “Outrageous. I’ll remind you, Charlie, that it is you who asked me out on a date. Where I come from— and where you come from, I know that much about earth customs— the person who asks the other person out on a date pays. And, I happen to know for a fact you’re on expense account.”
“I am not! I am not,” I said. “I get reimbursed after I file the story. So that Mai Tai you’ve got going there, my fair tentacled friend, is coming straight out of my pocket.”
“Scandalous,” Jaaanta said. “And yet, clearly, I have no choice here, because I have to know what happened. Therefore! I will buy you one beer, but only after you tell me what happens next. If you tell it well, you can get a Guinness. Tell it poorly, and you get Bud Light.”
“I like Bud Light,” I said.
“Oh, don’t tell me that,” Jaaanta said. “I’ve had such a high opinion of you so far.”
“Snob,” I said. “All right. So Ronen says ‘oh dear, I may have made a faux pas,’ and the second he’s done saying that, the ceiling of the room splits open, and like an entire swimming pool worth of water of comes pouring down right on top of that table. The milt balls disintegrate like… like bullion cubes, and I’m suddenly coated from head to toe in milt broth.”
Jaaanta is laughing so hard she can barely stay on her bar stool. I know how she feels.
“But that’s not the worst part,” I said.
“Good lord,” Jaaanta said. “How can that not be the worst part?”
“Here’s how,” I said. “The worst part is that for the next two days, I smelled like gravy.”
Jaaanta whooped and smacked out a tattoo on the bar in delight. “You, my friend, are getting an entire keg of Guinness for that.”
“Why, thank you,” I said. “I’d bow, but I think the vertigo would make me vomit.”
“What, you’re not actually drunk yet, are you?” Jaaanta asked, signaling the bartender for another round.
“No,” I said. “Well maybe. Just a little. But, come on. I’ve had a rough week. You don’t know how difficult it is to date aliens.”
“Gee, thanks,” Jaaanta said. “And here I thought I was doing well.”
“You are!” I said. “You’re fabulous. You’re funny and nice and you’re paying for my beer—”
“A whole keg!” Jaaanta said.
“— but you’re the first,” I said. “As for the rest I’ve been stabbed, covered in sperm and covertly baptised.”
“Who tried to baptise you?” Jaaanta asked.
“My date from the Fruden embassy,” I said. “I knew they took their religion seriously, but that one started talking about the Slavering Godhead before we got hors d’oeuvres and was still at it when dessert came. Did you know I am slated to be digested for all eternity?”
“Luckily, you already smell like gravy,” Jaaanta said.
“Well, yes,” I admitted. “But you’re slated to be digested too, let me point out, and you hardly smell of gravy at all. We’re all going to be digested, even the saved, which makes you wonder what the point of being saved is, then, doesn’t it?”
“Did you mention this to your date?” Jaaanta asked.
“God, no,” I said. “I just wanted to go home. Anyway, as we walked back to the embassy after dinner, I felt some sprinkles a
t the back of my neck, and as I turned around I saw her put this little shaker back into her purse. It was a drive-by baptism.”
“It must have been a good date,” Jaaanta said. “Otherwise she would have left you to be digested with the rest of us slobs in the cheap seats. Now you’ll get first-class seating in God’s digestive sac.”
“I’m just worried that now I’m obliged to get digested for all eternity,” I said. “I’m thinking of converting to Catholicism just to hedge my bets.”
Jaaanta snerked. “You’re funny, Charlie,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you I was sort of dreading this date. But I’m actually having fun.”
“It’s the alcohol talking,” I said.
“Sure,” Jaaanta said. “But my alcohol or yours?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s have some more drinks and ask them.”
“So this is what an alien apartment looks like,” I said.
“The apartment’s not alien,” Jaaanta said. “Just the person who lives in it.” She dropped her keys on the coffee table and came over to me, wobbling just a little on her tentacles. “You want a drink?”
“I’ve had way too many,” I said.
“Some coffee, then?” Jaaanta said.
“You drink coffee?” I asked.
“Sure,” Jaaanta said, retreating into the kitchen. “I worship the god Caffeine like any good young sentient being does.”
“Isn’t that weird?” I said. “All the different types of sentient species in the universe, and we’re all different, but we all drink coffee.” I turned and was surprised by a very large abstract painting on wall. “Whoa,” I said.
“We all do a lot of the same things,” Jaaanta said, coming up behind me and putting a tentacle across my shoulder. “We all breathe. We all live. We all die.”
“You’re going pretty deep for me,” I said. “I was just talking about coffee.”
“Sorry, I get philosophical when I’m tipsy,” Jaaanta said. “I also get a little horny.”
“I’d help you with that if I could, but,” I began.
“Okay,” Jaaanta said, and before I could say anything else, my pants were unzipped and a tentacle was wrapped around my penis, massaging it.
“Uh,” I said, and turned somewhat awkwardly toward Jaaanta.
“I’m being forward, aren’t I,” Jaaanta said.
“A bit,” I said.
“You know what’s interesting?” Jaaanta said. “The human penis is actually very close in shape and size to our males’ sexual organ. It even grows the same way when stimulated.” Jaaanta stimulated, as if to accentuate the point. “The tentacle you have on you now is actually designed to accommodate our males’ organ inside of it. It’s our version of the vagina. How does it feel to you?”
“Uh,” I said.
“You feel good to me,” Jaaanta said.
“Look, Jaaanta,” I said. “I’ve had a really great time with you tonight, but I don’t think I can do this.”
“You are doing it,” Jaaanta said. “And from what I can feel, it seems at least part of you isn’t objecting.”
“I mean I shouldn’t do this,” I said. “I think we should just stop and call it a night.”
“There’s a small problem,” Jaaanta said.
“What?” I asked.
“My physiology,” Jaaanta said. “Once we’ve gripped on with our receiving tentacle, it doesn’t come off until the act is complete.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“Try getting out,” Jaaanta said.
Two minutes later I gave up. “Okay,” I said. “What do I have to do now?”
Jaaanta shrugged off her blouse and led my hand to a tight, flat surface on her chest. “Feel that?” she said. I nodded. “Hit it. Hard.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“We need the vibration to begin the ovulation process,” Jaaanta said. “Our men use their tentacles to beat on the tympanum here. You can use your hands.”
“This is so not right,” I said. “If I hit a human during sex, they’d cart me off.”
“I’m not human, Charlie,” Jaaanta said. “And I can guarantee that you can’t hit the tympanum as hard as one of our males can. It doesn’t even have nerve endings that receive pain. You literally can’t hurt me. So hit me, Charlie. Bang on that drum.”
I reached my arm back and brought my hand down with a hard smack, feeling the hit resonate in her chest. Jaaanta’s chest made a sound like a bongo; her tentacle squeezed in time.
“Yes,” she said. “More.”
I straggled in at 4:30 am. Claire was up. She looked at my face.
“Oh, Charlie,” she said, sighed, and then went to bed.
I thought that would be the worst of it, until I saw the rash.
Carl pulled back the curtain of the examination room, stopped, and then appeared to look around to see if he could get another intern to take me. Then he came in anyway.
“So, what’s the problem?” he asked.
“I have a rash,” I said.
“Do you know what you got it from?” he asked.
“From fucking an alien,” Claire said, from the other side of the examination room.
Carl paused, glanced over to Claire, who was staring at a wall, arms folded. “Okay,” he said, all business-like. “let’s take a look.” I lowered my sweat pants. Carl stared. “Hmmm,” he said, after a minute. “I think I need a consult.” He moved out of the examination room at speed.
I turned to Claire, who was still resolutely staring at a wall. “I said I was sorry,” I said. “I’ll keep saying it until you believe me. I honestly didn’t intend to have sex with Jaaanta. It just happened.”
“Aaaagh,” Claire said, shaking her arms in frustration. She turned to me. “You are such an idiot. It’s not about you fucking an alien, Charlie. Okay? It’s about you not thinking. In a week, you’ve been stabbed, covered in goo, baptized and tricked into sex. For what? For a story. Where are your brains, Charlie? Because a smart person probably would have stopped writing this story after the first time he was sent to the hospital.”
“I said I was sorry,” I said.
“I don’t want you to be sorry, Charlie,” Claire said. “I want you to think. One of the things I love about you is that you’re smart. But for this whole thing it’s like someone took your brain and hid it in the trash can. I know you’re trying to make a good impression at your new job. But I don’t think this really is the way to do that. Do you? Look at you. The rash has moved up your neck, you know.”
I reached a hand up. Claire reached over and stopped me. “For God’s sake, Charlie,” she said. “Don’t touch it.”
The curtain opened again. Carl had returned, with a stumpy man. “This is Dr. Schafer,” he said. “He’s our allergist.”
Schafer looked at me. “Let me guess,” he said. “She was a Durang.”
“She was,” I said.
“Oh, good,” Dr. Schafer said, and left, Carl trailing behind.
Claire looked at her watch. “My rotation starts in 25 minutes,” she said. “I’m going to catch a shower upstairs before I begin.” She got up. I took her hand.
“I am sorry,” I said. “For making you angry with me.”
Claire kissed the top of my head. “Well, I am angry,” she said. “But I’ll get over it. But after all this is done, you damn well better not take another story like this. Because then I’ll have to kill you. And then who will I marry? Which is another thing. I think this whole adventure proves I’m with you for better or for worse. You’d better step up on that.”
“I could propose to you now,” I said.
“While you’re covered in a rash from fucking an alien?” Claire said. “I don’t think so, Charlie.” She gave me an affectionate tap aside the head and stepped out of the examining room as Carl and Dr. Schafer came in, Carl bearing a tray loaded down with syringes.
“The good news is that the rash is harmless and we can get rid of it easily with a series o
f injections,” Dr. Schafer said. “The bad news is that you’re really not going to like where the injections go.”
“Make sure you give us the receipt for your injections,” Debbie Austin said. “Your health insurance won’t kick in for another three months, but since this was a story-related expense I’ll see if I can get Ben to pay out. Same with the stitches.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Where is Ben, anyway? I wanted to talk to him about the story.”
“He’s been out all day,” Debbie said. “Anyway, you don’t talk to him about stories, you talk to me. Are you worried about something?”
“I don’t think I can do any more research on this story,” I said.
“Because of the hospital visits?” Debbie said. “Those are par for the course. Nick Venice did a story on alien desserts, and ate one that caused him to hallucinate. He thought cars were made out of marshmallow. Actually walked out in front of a bus.”
“Nick got hit by a bus?” I asked.
“No, the bus stopped in time,” Debbie said. “But then he passed out and broke three teeth on the bumper as he fell. We all have stories like that. Now you know why everyone hates doing the alien stories. But Ben’s right: It’s our thing. We stopped running them once for two issues and the circulation dropped 40%. We all hate the alien stories, but we hate being unemployed more.”
“It’s not just the hospital visits,” I said. “My girlfriend’s tolerance for the story is all used up. Another wacky adventure and I’m going to be unwillingly single.”
“Well, you did have sex with an alien,” Debbie said. “Even for these stories, that’s sort of above and beyond.”
“You’re not helping me,” I said.
Debbie was about to say something but paused when her desk phone rang. Four “uh-huhs” and a glance in my direction later she put the receiver back down. “So, that was Ben,” she said. “Looks like you’re going to talk to him about your story after all. He’s waiting for you.”
“Where is he?” I asked.