"Oh! Well, no. I'm not sure I can. But those protrusions, the ones in the ceiling that you located in the unfinished room, Maeve...those are not lightening fixtures. I believe I have discovered what they are."
"Well?" Steven said. His shoulder relaxed and one of the bottles slipped from his hold to the floor. He placed the lamp back on Lillian's bedside table. Maeve let go of Lillian. Casper smiled.
"Eggs," he said. "They are eggs!"
Maeve snorted. "That's crazy. What the hell lays an egg the size of a chandelier?"
"That I don't know. But they are most definitely eggs with the most incredibly durable shells. It took me all night to drill a hole in one."
"What are we talking about here? Dinosaurs?" Lillian snorted like she wanted to laugh, but was afraid she might be right.
"Improbable," Casper said, "but it may be a successor. A genetic abnormality resulting from unknown factors occurring on the surface."
"Factors?" Lillian's voice climbed. Maeve had to put a lid on the vocal panic before Lillian woke everyone in the surrounding suites. Last thing they needed were dinosaurs. This wasn't included in the Archive brochures. It was supposed to be a better world, not an old world starting over again. There were supposed to be riches grown and harvested by the Archive Investor Team, not enormous eggs laid by prehistoric creatures. The present and past collided in Maeve's head and her guts squirmed.
"I know you're a scientist, Casper," she said, "but you must've gotten something wrong."
"Nope," he sounded joyful. "It's egg. It even had both the yolk and the white. Tastes a lot like a chicken egg."
"You ate one?" Steven balked. Another hairspray bottle slid from his arms and hit the floor.
"Not a whole one," Casper chuckled. "That would be impossible. There was approximately seven gallons of egg white and four of yolk."
"That's one hell of an omelet." Lillian said, stepping away from Maeve. She crossed the room to Steven and picked up the bottle he had dropped. "What do you think put them there?"
"Who cares?" Steven said. Absently, he handed the bottles in his arms to Lillian, one at a time. She lined them on her dresser as he spoke. "If something dug into the ground to put the eggs there, than whatever it is can dig right down into the Archive."
"Technically, yes." Casper said.
"There's nothing technical about it!" Steven shouted. "It's absolute! There's something on the surface that can dig down to bury its enormous eggs in our ceiling, we better do something about it! What if it gets a smell of us? You think an animal isn't going to dig us up like turnips? Did you even shut the door to the room, Casper? We need to get people up and barricade the whole wing, right now!"
Doors were already opening in the hallway at the noise Steven was making. Maeve winced.
"You may have a point, but then again, accessibility to the eggs means we have a food supply," Casper said. Sleepy faces appeared over Casper's shoulder, peering into Lillian's suite from the hall.
"What's going on?" Amber asked.
"Eggs," Casper said with a casual grin, as if he was mentioning the menu for a Sunday breakfast.
"Great," Maeve said as a murmur circulated in the hall. "So much for keeping things calm."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hot Season Six, Year 2095
Phuck stood, blinking, at Diem. The human must be full of malfunctions to ask for something so planetary—so galactic—as freedom. Phuck didn't have it himself, but if he did possess it, why would he give it to the one who worked for him? Certainly, Phuck had insinuated it to make the dragon trainer produce his best efforts, but did the human actually believe it possible?
"I have given you a great measure of freedom already. I've allowed you to possess my dragon." Phuck said. He was proud that he had studied human linguistics. He prided himself on not only the extent of his human vocabulary, but also his ability to use it, in order to get what he wanted. And he wanted Diem to train dragons for him.
"Only because the dragon would kill you, if given the chance," Diem said. "I want Fly House out of the Hope Market. I want the freedom to rebuild my race. I don't want the Houses competing. I want them united and working together. From one male to another, I think you can understand my desire."
Phuck understood desire, but not in the way Diem was relating it. There was no desire larger than Phuck's own, to barter enough dragons to gain his own independence from Pluto. Still, he wanted to follow Diem's train of thought, so he could locate the easiest juncture to derail it. "Mating is a powerful urge in all of us."
"I'm not speaking only of mating," Diem said. "I mean to have security for my people, for our children, for our planet."
"You say our planet..." Phuck tapped his sensory digits together. "But the planet belongs to Pluto and Pluto allows humans to live upon it."
Diem's mouth dropped into a flat line. A sign of disagreement. Possibly disappointment. Or boredom. Who knew? Humans had so many ways to arrange their faces and the subtle nuances made it much more confusing when trying to decipher their moods. Phuck found it easier to either guess or just ignore their emotions.
"Will you give me my freedom or not?"
"Not," Phuck said, his hands in an excited flutter. It was his master plan, but the first time he'd voiced it. His urine straw even twitched a little, he was so excited. "But I can give you something else. I will give you dominion. You can have control over the Houses. How would you like that? You will be my overseer."
Diem shook his head. "I will not rule over humans. Especially if I am expected to answer to Pluto."
"Someone must," Phuck pointed out. His desperation bubbled. He needed the dragons to make it all work. Needing the human was dangerous, but not acquiring him meant that Phuck would remain as he was—a common Plutian. He meant nothing to 1295, Phuck was only an entity that would either do 1295’s bidding, or die. Phuck needed his independence and to acquire it, he needed the dragon trainer. "It may as well be you. Someone must Rha of all the Houses."
"Not me," Diem said.
"I am giving you what you want!" the Plutian cried. "I am doing it, and you are still being difficult!"
"I said I wanted freedom, not another job."
Phuck was at his wit's end. The human wouldn't budge. He had to do something and in the end, he realized the only thing left to do was lie. And lie well.
"Alright then." Phuck clasped his hands in front of himself. "You will have what you want. Freedom. You will train the dragons and give me your sister for mating, and I will give you your freedom."
It didn't work as smoothly as Phuck had expected.
"My sister?" Diem flared.
"Yes. I am giving so much, I think you can spare one sister."
"I only have one," Diem growled. "And she is not for mating."
Phuck rolled his eyes. Another lie would have to do, since he fully expected to have Diem's sister. "Alright then. Freedom."
"How will I have it, if you are not leaving Earth?"
Phuck hadn't thought this far, but an answer was necessary.
"The Houses will remain mine," Phuck said. "But you can have the Outer Earth. So long as you are where I can find you for dragon training."
"What is there beyond the walls?"
"Nothing." Phuck hoped it would be discouraging, but the human was mulling it over.
"I'll take it," Diem said. "And my sister comes with me. As well as my Gra, Journey, and Eon."
"No. You can have a woman for mating, but your family must remain within the walls, so that I know you will return and train the dragons as agreed."
Phuck was positive Diem would never agree to the conditions. But then, the human extended a hand.
"Alright," Diem said.
Phuck peered at the hand. "Alright," he said, without extending his own hand. Diem finally dropped his.
"We will need more hens."
"I have them already." Phuck giggled. "You're standing on them."
Diem looked down at his feet. The humans were nearly adora
ble in their blankness. Phuck giggled again.
"I decided not to tell you, until I knew you would train them. I've buried the eggs, for just this right moment. We have a heathen now. He can fertilize the eggs I've been keeping. Maybe we will be lucky. Maybe we will have a whole catch of heathens."
Diem ran a hand over his face. "It takes longer this way. If the eggs are not fertilized within the sheathen during her swol."
"But they can be fertilized."
"Yes. Most likely."
"Most likely or yes?"
"Most likely," Diem said. Then he nodded. "It should work. It just takes longer."
"How long will it take?"
"It will take until the end of Hot Season Six to let the heathen mature. If he fertilizes them immediately, the eggs will still not be ready to open until Cold Season One, at the earliest. It's not all bad. They will be in slowed hibernation then, and the hens will be easier to train."
"Easier," Phuck said. "That is good. We need to begin."
"Fine. Where exactly are the eggs?" Diem asked. Phuck giggled again.
"In the ground, beneath your dragon. Six of them," he said, waving a hand at the lounging sheathen. Forge blinked at Diem as the hens frolicked around her, the young heathen diving into the iron-plated pouch of her belly.
***
Wind followed the overseer to the mouth of a hill cave. Hollowed from a mound, the smell of char and soil wafted from within and Wind held back, covering her nose with her fingers.
"Stay," Dick-Edd told her, pointing to the ground. "The greases are in there."
She stood, humiliated but needing what he had, as he retreated into the shadows. She heard the clanking of vessels before Dick-Edd emerged. He dropped a jug with a wide mouth at her feet. The cover appeared to be made of a hampig pelt, as were the plugs that Dick-Edd stuffed into his human-ish nostrils. He pushed them up in a way that made Wind wince to see it, but then he peeled away the hampig cap from the jug and the scent from the bottle rose up in a sweet burst.
Sweeping over her with his slight movement, the scent penetrated her and softened her spine. It flowed like desire from the jug, the earthy smell of a competent man and the sensual smell of a wanting woman. Wind closed her eyes, dragging in a deep breath. Her eyelids drooped with the pleasure of it and she licked her lips.
"Yes," Dick-Edd murmured, "it has not gone rancid after all."
"What is in there?" She stalked closer, her voice a soft moan. "How did you make that?"
"I call the mixture Sex, as that is what it brings. The act of reproduction is so simple to bring on," he said, reaching in through the wide mouth of the jug. He retrieved a handful of clear mud. It dripped from his fingertips, glistening like thick water in the sun. "Stimulating human bodies is such easy work."
His fingers applied the cool goop to her arm as she drew in another breath. The heady scent and the tingle of the translucent mud would have been enough, but his touch—that weird Plutian skin that was a little too rough and bristly to be human—licked at her skin. The Sex-slurry absorbed into her flesh within seconds, but in the moments before it disappeared, Wind was at the height of ecstasy. She threw back her head and a rumbling moan escaped her.
She wanted the overseer. Truly wanted him. As repulsed as her mind insisted she should be, her cleft throbbed as if the tiny, pleasure-full knot inside were an urn, filling deliciously, until it overflowed with her desire. She wanted to bury Dick-Edd's staff inside her and milk the weird little Plutian babies right out of him.
When she looked back at him, she did it beneath lowered lashes, her mouth slightly agape. Dick-Edd retrieved another drizzling handful from the jug, slapping it on her legs. Wind spread wide and ground her hips toward his hands. Dick-Edd frowned.
"Don't you want me?" She asked. She pressed toward him again, but he drew his hand away. She frowned. "You said you did."
"I am not affected." He pointed to the hunks of hampig pelt shoved deep in his nostrils. "I cannot send you to Fly House exhausted and dripping with seed."
"Dripping," she snorted, throwing her head back. It sounded delicious. He scooped up another handful and she reached out to tickle his nose plug. He slapped her hand away and readjusted the plugs, pushing them further into his nasal cavities.
"You must remain fresh," he said. He took a seat on a gorne stump and pulled the jug close. He reached in for more Sex and then, with a bothered sigh, "You have to remove your clothing."
Wind shucked every shred of fabric off her skin, as if they were fire against her flesh. Instantly naked, her skin bumped with the tingle of the Sex along with the shade of the trees. The bumps may have been a symptom of her buried repulsion for the overseer, but as much as she was aware that she disliked him, in the moment, she could not, for the life of her, figure out how to dislike him enough. Moving into the arc of his open knees, she lifted his dripping fingertips between her legs. His neck bobbed as he swallowed down a gulp. Nose plugs or not, it was affecting him too. She drew a sharp breath as his skin spread the slime toward her mound. She purred when his fingers finally stroked along her lowest lips, smoothing the glossy Sex mixture over her most intimate places.
He pulled his hand back, snuffing the burning wick on her release. She snapped up her head, centering her smoldering glare on him.
"Finish me," she pleaded. He bit his lip so hard that a tiny trail of blood ran down his chin, but he only lifted his cupped hand full of Sex to her stomach and rubbed it in. Her belly button spit out the sludge. He skimmed upward, cresting the lower swell of her breast and Wind forgot all about the first source of pleasure in order to focus in on the second.
"Yes," she panted, jutting her breasts.
"No," he said. He made quick work of sloshing the Sex over the rest of her and then stepped away. "Once you are dry, the urge will pass, but the coating will be active for approximately three hours, so you must find Rha Diem quickly. Put your clothes on and I will deliver you back to the wall myself. The House Party is tonight and I will allow your crossing for it myself. We will both have what we want very soon."
"Ohhh," Wind licked her lips at the thought. "Diem..."
***
Phuck had only one full pant leg left by the time he departed the dragon grounds. Diem had insisted Phuck familiarize himself to the hens and the moment he got close to the first one, it had belched a flash of fire that charred Phuck's clothing and melted off one of his pant legs, right below the knee. He was quite sure he saw the human smirk at the misfortune.
"That's quite enough," Phuck backed away, thin trails of smoke curling from his hair, shirt, and pants. "You said they would not damage me."
"My sorrows," Diem laughed, "but you have to expect some of that when training dragons."
"That's why I have you, so I don't have to do this," Phuck said, slapping the singed bits from his clothing. "I'm finished."
Phuck went off in more of a huff than he would've liked to show, but his clothes were in tatters and parts of his body were exposed: the nipple of his chest, the tip of his urine straw peeking from his pant leg, the purplish bulge of one of his pain berries from a singed hole. He turned from Diem and stomped off into the spindlings, sure that the human was laughing at him, but unsure of what to do about it.
He trundled back toward Fly House, the light fading, until the woods were only long shadows in the dark. A sliver of the moon out, Phuck could see well enough to make his way along. As he did, he also made out the silhouette of a woman, slipping through the trees like a dark sprite.
She headed in the opposite direction, toward Diem's private grounds. Phuck perked at the sight, imagining Karma was making the evening trip to visit her brother, back at his shack. The overseer told himself it was for her own protection, but he knew that a possible mating was the real reason that he decided to double back. He maintained a wide gap between them, so as not to surprise and frighten her, at least, until he was ready.
She skipped over a patch of shorb brush and that was when it happened.
>
The scent of her plowed right into his face—the beautiful, nubile scent of a woman's darkest places. He froze at the foot of a spindling, reaching a hand to the trunk to steady himself. The enchanting aroma clung to him, caught in his charred clothes and mingling with the barbecue scent of himself. The resulting aroma was a tumbling of sex, turned on a spit over a moonlit fire; it was the pair of his pain berries, pressed to the surface of the sun; it was an intimate conversation between a hiccupping sheathen and his urine straw.
He drifted after the dark form, imagining himself gaining footing until he came upon Karma, catching her, stumbling with her, and falling onto a soft patch of gorne. He thrilled with the idea of turning over and over upon it with her, his urine straw dipping into the soft, mewling mouth between her thighs. Putting his nose to the air, he shut his eyes and breathed deeply again, trying to put himself on the trail of her scent.
She was quick, but Phuck was quicker, serpentining behind trees until he was so close that her scent filled his nose and permeated him with a longing. The urge marinated in his hips. When he reached out to catch her arm, his desire was to drive into her, spike her to a tree with his urine straw alone.
She gasped.
"Phuck?" she said.
"Wind?" His lip cocked, just like the rest of him. It was a grave disappointment that it was not Karma he'd caught, although no other part of him, but his mind, reflected the sentiment. "Where are you going?"
"To see..." She caught her lip in thought and held it a moment, before releasing a broad smile. "You," she finished. "I was coming to see you."
The simple sound of her voice conjured fantasies for him of her moaning. He inhaled, to prevent himself from responding in kind, and her scent pierced his throat, shredding down his wind pipe and into his stomach, zagging through his organs. It stimulated a flood that tightened the sacks of his delicate pain berries like overripe grapes in need of juicing. His urine straw bounced at the thought of Wind plucking at him, until his appendage got caught in the seared opening of his pants. He winced, pushing the sagging fruit back behind the shredded curtain of his charred pocket.
The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Page 13