14. THALIA

Dizzying spell broken, I sat up straight. “What? Why?”

“I may as well show you the concourse. I don’t trust you not to find trouble.”

“Awww, you sound so grumpy, Prince Red, but I know you’re just a big squish.”

He paused while the translator supplied squish to him. “I am not soft.”

“On the outside.” I spun off my stool and went to get my No Humans Here costume.

“All taproot species are soft on the inside.” His tone was brittle and exasperated.

I pulled the cloak over my shoulders first. “Want to know a fun fact about Humans?”

“…not especially.”

“It’s estimated about two percent of our bodyweight is bacteria.” I pointed at my full-of-moth-slop belly

“Lies.”

“Well, there’s some debate on if it’s one percent or four percent, but it’s a lot.”

His reaction was somewhere between she’s lying and that explains everything. “That cannot be true.”

“Think I’m full of it?” I quipped.

“Well—”

“Full of bacteria?” And random facts.

He threw up his claws.

“Humans also tend to carry assorted viruses, and we’ve even got some ancient virus plague that swept around the world like… eons ago when we were like… lizards and it’s embedded in our DNA.”

“Humans think they’re descended from lizards?”

“Well, the Humans that believe in evolution do.”

“There are Humans who do not believe in evolution? What do they believe?”

“That we were shaped by divine entities in their image,” I said.

Ahane tilted his head so far it damn near turned upside down. “I am not sure if Humans realize that image is not that impressive.”

If I’d been drinking something, I’d have launched it all over him from choking on it. “They felt that burn back on Earth.”

“And if you were shaped by divine entities, those entities are not from this reality, and it becomes a very concerning trans-dimensional situation.”

“Oh, it’s not them believing that that gets me?—”

“How nice for you.”

“It’s that a lot of them actually think that ancient fossils are some conspiracy that has been perpetuated for the past… ten generations or so... Globally. Around the world.”

“Your species cannot even manage a common language for commerce and they think they deserve the credit for a global conspiracy spanning ten generations?”

“Hah. A lot of Humans have a complicated relationship with reality. There are also Humans that believe the ‘ancient alien’ theory. Where we are either an abandoned alien colony orancient aliens visited Earth and genetically modified the existing sentient life to be a slave race to mine gold.”

“Gold? Why would anyone create a slave race to mine gold? Gold is abundant. Please stop. This is causing me literal pain. Humans are clearly a taproot species.”

“Are we, or is it convergent evolution? Because according to Human science, we’re actually descended from things that crawled out of primordial oceans billions of years ago.”

“… Well, yes, that is—” he stopped talking.

“Did this just get weird?”

“Weirder than you claiming to be a walking biological disaster waiting to happen. Is there really an ancient virus in your DNA?”

“Supposedly, about ten percent of our DNA is the remains of ancient viruses. Like eons and eons and eons of ancient viruses. Pandemics going back hundreds of millions of years. Like before Humans were Humans. They’ve discovered some of the genes we acquired from the viruses actually had advantages and were useful, so…” I put on my breather mask.

He could achieve a very attractive shade of ‘80s mohawk when properly shocked.

I smirked. “I guess that sounds strange to a super-advanced spacefaring empire that probably has solved all the usual woes of sentient existence.”

Ahane looked around our surroundings, then back at me. “I think you have us confused with some other empire. Perhaps the one that built your depraved system.”

That joke hadn’t gone over well with the Greys, either. Although I had been a little nastier about it when I’d flung it at them. Definitely a dud. And I needed to not share Human trivia with Ahane, because while Humans might get a kick out of finding out that a measurable percentage of our existence was ancient viruses or present-day bacteria, your typical Gestalt citizen might be more please go stand over there and less that’s a weird and random fact, and you are weird for knowing it.

I finished securing my mask, then donned my four-finger gloves. The cloak was a look, and the hood deep enough for me to conceal my face in the shadows, complete with a little strange tassel at the center to keep the hood low. The gloves were too large, and it was awkward having two fingers crammed into the one finger. I fiddled with what worked best and decided my ring finger and pinky would be the most effective combination.

Ahane arranged my cloak over my shoulders, with the left crossing at a sharper angle across my breasts and the long point of the triangle draped to my back, as opposed to just falling straight across my front. “This is the style.”

“There’s style out this way?” The cloak was big enough that my bare feet and legs were disguised pretty well wearing it like this.

“Only Temple members wear a cloak the other way. The right wrap is a neutral style that is generally appropriate for all situations and cultures. It also allows you to use your right hand without exposing your entire body.”

“Huh.” I slipped my hand out from the right side. The wrap across my body kept me pretty covered. “So it does.”

“It also won’t allow you to easily conceal or draw a weapon. This style says you are wearing the cloak for comfort and reservation.”

The translator said reservation, but it seemed more like he meant modesty/privacy. Just to be covered out of preference.

When we stepped into the narrow middle hallway, he turned to me in the close space. “Stay close.”

“I am not going to wander off.”

“…learned your lesson the first time. Good.”

I growled and punched him in the side. “Ass.”

He looked down at his slab, back at me, sighed, and brushed his claw along the panel on the second door. The locks all went click click click, and the door creaked open with a low, tormented groan.

He stepped outside, pulled me over the threshold, and slammed the door behind him.

Click click click.

Everyone who had previously looked at us like hungry cats hearing the food bag rustle went back to business as usual.

Ahane led me into the massive indoor, intergalactic flea market/mechanics shop/truck stop. The air was hazy with fine dust, the lighting yellow, and noise broiled against the domed shape of the structure. The background chatter was trills, chirps, clicks, words. Some people moved around, while others stood watching or talking. Some had laid out assorted wares on the grate-metal floor and stood over their makeshift shops. There were probably three dozen people, so the space was by no means filled out, but it wasn’t a desolate truck stop either.

Through the grated metal floor was a network of battered pipes, wires, and fittings. Heat rose through the grate, while air flowed from massive vents bolted to spars in the ceiling.

A line of mostly undressed people waited off a large hallway to the left. There was an illuminated sign in glowing green over it, and little designs in the Gestalt equivalent of neon that looked like a cockroach being blasted with a ray gun and a stick figure amid streamers.

Those must have been the showers.

I gawked at the wares being peddled from the safety of my deep hood. These guys would have jumped into an Earth junkyard like a desperate college kid into a pool full of hundred-dollar bills. Everything seemed to be busted up trash that had been picked off the side of some intergalactic highway. Wires, twisted metal, cables, cracked panels, bags of what looked like popcorn, very large cornflake-looking things, tiny tubes of powders and crystals, dirty fabric, chewed-on tie straps, and boxes, crates, mysterious mismatched sacks bulging with who knew what…

The wares were all laid out on heavy tarps while the owner stood guard. No one had a table or even a milk crate. The vibe was oddly oppressive. Not the scavenger vibe or casual gold-digging of storage unit auctions or hitting up the neighbor’s garage sale. I’d grown up with my dad (on the weekends he’d had me, and had actually come to get me) loading me and my sisters up into his car and he’d drive around looking for yard sale signs. He’d fancied himself a picker, and it was just a matter of time before he found a lost Da Vinci or teacup or something.

We’d always ended up with plenty of toys that only needed some cleaning and a bit of fixing, or books. Usually books had been sold by the bag and Dad had never bothered to look at what we’d bought. We had set up a pretty good side hustle at school renting cheesy romance novels to the local tweens. Once we’d scored a bag of old magazines that had been Knitter’s Monthly and Granny Squares For Modern Style on top and vintage-but-raunchy porno mags on the bottom.

We’d sold out of those in about a day, and by the time the administration heard, the evidence was in the wind. Vintage porn had had a bit of a revival. Parents policed phones, didn’t think to look what was under the bed.

This place had the same sort of vibe as a sad roadside casino and the best comp you’d get would be a free shower, but you’d never use it because you can’t leave your machine because you know it’s about to hit.

Ahane led me down the length of the concourse. There were two more wide hallways to the left: one to the toilets (which he told me were paid only), and the other led to the scrapyard/hangar we’d seen on our way in. Most people seemed to be coming through the two front doors that overlooked the boardwalk. The flashing lights added a grungy, sad vibe to all of it.

“…what… is that?” I stopped dead.

The concourse ended in a triple-wide doorway sea of flashing colorful lights and distant ding bing biff noises. On two square boxes outside, flanking the entrance, were… well, dancers, I guess. One cockroach/centipede wearing jangly bangly belts around various body plates and shapes, waving her (his? its?) feelers in hypnotic motions, while the other was a taproot female with four breasts, eight nipples, and mermaid-like green hair that flowed and shimmied over her body. A little triangle made of reflective fabric covered her front lady bits, but there was nothing over her rump. She jiggled and wriggled and beckoned with her very long four-jointed fingers.

“The games,” Ahane said. “Where people play games in hopes of winning money.”

“But they mostly lose money?” I asked.

He nodded.

“We call those casinos.”

He cocked his head. “My translator doesn’t know that term. But I will remember it.”

“We also call them gambling dens.”

“That is exactly what it is.”

The dancing cockroach waved her feelers at me. Something told me she was, in fact, a she, and her two little eyes were focused right on me.

“Let’s go see.” I tugged his hand.

“Thalia,” he said, tone a warning.

“I just want to look. Aren’t you curious?” Sexy alien cockroaches doing the dance of the seven feelers while beckoning me into a cheap alien truck stop casino had not been on my bingo card for the year.

He grumbled. “No.”

“Come on!” I tugged his arm.

“Why?” he demanded harshly. “You’ve seen this sort of thing before, apparently.”

Because I was a Human bumpkin from the backwater side of the galaxy and I had gone from aspiring meteorology student to masquerading as a not-Human waitress at an alien dive diner/strip club/casino/flea market/truck stop that was so far off the map only the sketchy locals knew about it. That’s why. “I haven’t seen this particular thing before.”

“It is like all the other things.” Ahane brushed his tail at Miss Four Boobs and told her dryly, “I’m the new Cook.”

She ran her hands over her breasts, cupping and squeezing them in a hypnotic fashion with the many joints of her long fingers and said, “I know.”

Her I know sent a jolt of fuck off, bitch through me along with wow, her fingers look amazing and a haha, someone needs sensitivity training, that’s sexual harassment. Miss Seven Feelers waved her super-long delicate feelers at us and caressed Ahane around the shoulders and chin while she made a soft trilling noise by rubbing her plates together.

Miss Four Boobs shot Miss Seven Feelers an obvious I saw him first look.

Miss Seven Feelers somehow conveyed but I’m touching him now.

I did not contribute my get your feelers and eyeballs off him and skipped to the edge of the casino instead. Another cockroach type alien—this one looked more like a beetle, complete with horn on its oblong head—lurked in the shadows and I instantly felt the sweep of his eyes. He had eight of them, so it was an intense gaze.

The casino was a mixture of dark purples, lighter violets, and jolts of bright blue. The carpet (because what was a shitty casino without shitty carpet?) was done up in matching patterns that reflected the slowly rotating lights above. There was some vague electric-trance-smoky-jazz playing at low volume. There weren’t any slot machines and all the patrons sat clustered around tables illuminated by single overhead lights playing assorted games. A few tables had a game that looked like triple-decker 4D chess but with a lot more rainbows, some games looked like a version of Go, and the rest were a total mystery.

There was what seemed to be a small bar in the back tended by a surly-looking chap with dull gray scales, and a very small stage with another dancer twining and wrapping themself around some poles and an upright free-standing wall that had increasingly small holes cut in it.

The dancer seemed to be a very squishy caterpillar that had a white body with a moving pattern of colors complimented by the light show. They slowly twined themselves around a pole, then through one of the holes, progressively weaving their body (which stretched and thinned, and went from softly plush to svelte and shiny) like they were a living shoelace.

Two patrons (one obviously taproot, one… looked like a werewolf?) at the small stage were entranced by the show, and became more and more excited the more (and the smaller) the holes the dancer twisted through. It was the hottest thing they’d ever seen. What really got them going was when the dancer started to remove themselves from the holes with a sort of artistic pop and a weird air-escaping-a-balloon noise emanating from colored protrusions along their sides that made even stupid Human me go oh, wow, that’s fucking LEWD. This place is RAUNCHY.

There was also a sign by the stage, very large, showing stick figures of various body types doing… things that made no sense until I got to the taproot stick figure and it showed a stick figure with a huge erection and a stick figure hand attached to it, and then, next to it, another stick figure with legs in a deep V and a stick figure arm between the V.

Given the size of the sign, they wanted to cover all their bases: look. Don’t touch. Not the talent, and not yourself.

If that was the talent at a dive like this, I wanted to see what happened a top-end club. Or even a medium-end club. Or one that was on a map.

Ahane had extracted himself from his coworkers and now was at my side. I nudged him. Several times. My brain played pingpong with itself over all the fabulous fucking lights and noises and the caterpillar going pop pop pop pop.

He bent to my level. “We are not playing.”

“No, no, I know that. But you don’t just fuck your own species, right? That’s not weird or anything, right? There are cross-species relationships. That’s allowed.”

“What is considered sexually enticing varies, of course. Why, is this to your taste?”

The sexual charge in the area was so thick it practically had a taste. “Not really, but it’s not not. I don’t even know what I’m saying right now.”

“Have you satisfied your curiosity, or are we going to stand here and become a curiosity?”

Bah. This was probably just Tuesday to him, or he’d been in better clubs and had standards.

I kind of wanted to see how the shoelace show ended, but I let Ahane take my wrist and drag me away.