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“I’m fine up here,” I said.
Cypra stood up, coffee sloshing out of her cup. “You’re not. You’re in a rut. And there are possibly more donen men out there. What do we think about them, that they’re in a weird fertility cult or something? Is that what we said? And if that one woman we saw who got killed by that vvoln is any indication, then there could be other women. You go out there, you’ll scent one, and you’ll have to fight off whatever other man who’s already claimed her, and he might kill you, or a vvoln might get you, or—”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I can take care of myself. That’s why you hired me.”
“But it’s my fault you’re in the rut,” she said. “I can’t let you—”
“It’s my fault for forgetting my suppressant,” I countered.
“What’s a rut?” said Jini.
Cypra and I both turned to look at her.
“I mean, no, it’s okay,” said Jini, glancing at my crotch. “I think I can mostly put that together for myself. What are vvoln?”
“Nasty tusked predators that like to play with their food,” said Cypra, sitting back down in her chair.
“Okay, but we’re safe from mindless predators in the ship,” said Jini. “What’s this fertility cult thing?”
“They’re in the rut too,” said Cypra. “Some of them came for me. They tried to…” She looked away. “Anyway, they’re dead now, but there might be more of them.”
“They tried to, like, mate you?” said Jini. “Because that’s what a rut is?” She looked at my crotch again.
I was starting to feel uncomfortable. And I was getting hard, which didn’t make any sense, at least I didn’t think it did. Discomfort and arousal should not happen at the same time. It was confusing.
Cypra nodded, gulping some of her coffee. Her voice was low. “But they didn’t. They didn’t do anything at all to me.”
“Uh huh,” said Jini. “Why is it your fault that Holston is, um, in a rut?”
“It’s not,” I said.
“We’re not leaving him,” said Cypra.
“We can get him on a transport back home,” said Jini. “The resistance will arrange that for him. I’m sure that can be dealt with.”
“Look,” I said, “I’m not going into space on this ship just because—”
“Youare,” said Cypra sharply. “I can’t stand it if something happens to you.”
Not entirely pretend, then. Maybe not for either of us. I hung my head and worried at one of the tips of my antlers. “All right. Whatever.” I turned and walked out of the room.
cypra
I was on the bridge, chewing on my bottom lip as Jini sat at one of the consoles, furiously typing on one of the keyboards and staring up at the holoscreen. The chair where Grilin had been sitting was stained with blood, and we would have taken it out of there, but it was bolted into the floor.
Jini shook her head. “I’m having trouble getting the override system to let me access the messaging system. I’m going to have to use the distress signal and modify that.”
“Can you do that?” I said.
“Uh, theoretically,” she said. “Have I done it before? Not exactly.” She swung around to another console and started typing there instead.
“The thing with Holston? I don’t do things like that very often,” I said. “It was really… it just happened. We tried not to, but it’s… there’s this instinct thing—”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I know how lonely the resistance thing can be. More than once, I have bemoaned the lack of male sex workers for women. Why don’t they have that?” She looked over her shoulder at me. “You think it’s because there’s no market for it or just because women don’t need to pay if they’re really desperate?”
I laughed softly. “Probably the latter.”
“Yeah.” She turned back to the console. “Still, that’s a lot of work I’d rather not do. I’d really like to just order up something on my bracelet. What about you?”
