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“It’s nothing,” I said. Why was I embarrassed by her compliments? The truth was I never brought people here. The truth was, I was not a very social person.
“It’s not nothing,” she insisted. “I love that part up there. Is that builtaroundthe tree?”
“Yeah, it’s…” I started that way, and we went up the spiral staircase that was built around the tree to climb up to the little room up here. “This is a guest room now, actually,” I said. “I was thinking I was going to make it my room, but I never got it together enough to pack up my other bedroom. There’s a bathroom through here.” I opened a door to show her. “You’ll be comfortable here?”
“Seriously?” She was looking around the room, which wasn’t really well furnished or decorated or anything. I had gotten a bed for it, but I didn’t really know why. There were four guest rooms in this house, and I told myself I was going to have people over. Have a big thing with food or something? Maybe I’d sit out on one of my porches playing my huuq, which was a stringed instrument from the planet Bothora that I’d picked up on a whim at some point. I wasn’t very good, but I liked to mess around with it from time to time.
Of course, I never did this.
I didn’t even know who I’d ask.
I knew people, but not people who were close enough friends to invite over like that.
“I get to stayhere?” She grinned at me. “I love this place. I love everything about it. Oh, man, if I lived here, I would never leave.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, embarrassed. “It’s isolated and peaceful, which I like.”
“It’s beautiful.” She peered out the windows. This circular room up here was surrounded by windows, and there were inner windows as well, so that the tree trunk it was built around was visible. “The sun comes up over there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “If you want the windows dimmed, there’s a switch—”
“In about four hihors?”
“Yeah,” I said. “About that.”
“Well, I guess I should get some rest, if we’re off with the dawn.” She was still grinning.
“Uh… yeah.” Now, I had to leave her here. I was thinking that I might sleep in a different room myself tonight, one that was closer to the base of this tree, so that if anyone tried to get to her, I’d be able to—
What was wrong with me?
I left her and forced myself to go back to my own room, where I searched on my bracelet for things like,Human scent and donen mating suppressant failure.
But this only led me to a search result that said,Frequently forgetting your mating suppressant? Switch to daily pills.
Forgetting?
Shit.
I took once-a-gemoon pills that I was reminded to take by a reminder set on my bracelet, but some people couldn’t remember to take the suppressants if they were so spread out and preferred taking one pill a day so that it could be a routine. I’d never forgotten one. Never once.
But when I went to my medicine cabinet and took out my little blister pack of pills, there it was. The one I should have taken a fogemoon ago? Right freaking there.
I groaned, popped it out, and swallowed it.
So, this was why I was reacting like this to her. It had nothing to do with her being human and everything to do with the fact that I hadn’t had a suppressant in so long that it had entirely worn off. I guessed that I hadn’t noticed before now because all the women I tended to interact with were similarly suppressed and that human woman was probably fertile or something.
Humans were fertile a ridiculous amount of the time, after all, like six gesuns out of every gemoon or something, twelve times a gecycle. Donens could get pregnant once during our planet’s cycle around our sun, which translated to twice a gecycle—a gecycle was a circuit around Geheri’s sun.
Then I searched on my bracelet for what happened if I took the suppressant late. How soon would it kick in?
The good news was that it should start working within two or three gesuns.
The bad news was that if I went up to the poles where the plants were that triggered my mating instincts and I got worked up, they might not kick in at all.
I traced a finger over my antlers.
Well, lose me in deep space. This wasn’t good.
