His blond hair was slicked back; he had a goatee and wore a too-sharp suit, pinstripe with diamond cufflinks, like an Ennead don. I’d never seen him before. He slid onto to the couch and moved a little closer than a new acquaintance should presume.
There was a momentary shift as the cushions responded, making hundreds of molecular adjustments to accommodate his additional weight. I closed my eyes, resting my face against the soft pile of the upholstery, smelling him. A deep resin smell, labdanum, sandalwood, patchouli, like some kind of incense burned to cover the scent of a head shop, or maybe an opium den. There was a woody note beneath, probably birch. I should know. I’m a botanist, and he’s a tree.
He’s also my husband, which was why the appearance of a strange man in my personal suite didn’t bother me. This sort of thing had happened before. Davy surprised me like this. So did Tarlach, Constantine, Callum, Dermot and Ellery. Actually, I think I’m missing a few.
“I’m Harsh,” he said, leaning closer. His hand left a small depression in the pillow behind me.
“I’ll bet you are.”
“I’m the embodiment of the spiritual virtue of pleasure.”
“Better still. You must be from Ashvattha. To what do I owe the pleasure that is you?”
“We’ve got assignments,” he said, handing me his datapad. It was a tabulated list with a header marked “Experiments.” Each of sixteen experiments was assigned to three emanations.
“Experiments?” I looked straight into the depths of his alien eyes. “All right, Ash. What are you up to?”
He smiled. It was a snake-oil smile. “Now that things have settled down, we need to get back to work. The assignments are our working groups – all including you, of course.”
“I thought you represented pleasure. Do you really want to mix it with business?”
“I said work, not business. We’ve had altogether too much business lately, with the establishment of Shambhala Colony. These scientific experiments have the goal of self-improvement.”
“I assume you’re not talking about home-study or a physical fitness program.” In the past, Ash had made a number of improvements on himself, including becoming the Living God of the Domha’vei and incorporating elements of alien lifeforms such as the SongLuminants and the Denolin Turym. Time for a drink.
I crossed to the bar and mixed myself a vodka and redberri; he indicated the scotch. “The definition of self-improvement is quite specific: understanding and aligning the personae of the emanations with the two most important goals imaginable – the fulfilment of your destiny, and functionality in the flower/fruit cycle,” he explained.
I poked at the ice cube a few times. “The flower-fruit cycle? Perhaps fertilizer would help.”
“I’ll take a RootRiot chaser, but that isn’t what Ashtara has in mind. He wants an improvement in sexual efficiency.”
I scanned the list. “What do you mean by sexual efficiency? And with these working groups? Some of these combinations are hilarious. Others look like trouble, from start to finish. I can’t imagine any sort of efficiency…wait, who the hell is Solomon?”
“The groupings have been made according to their expected ability to successfully complete the exercise. We’ll need 48 emanations to fill out the duty roster. As for the rest, you’ll find out as needed. Rather than waste time explaining, we should just dive in.”
He crossed the room, taking the drink from my hand. He then gestured over the datapad, launching an app called Lab Reporter ProXXX; the set up for the first experiment was already entered. Ash was serious about this, which was remarkable in itself. Cu’enashti, as a species, aren’t interested in science. In fact, Ash was the only Cu’enashti known to me with an emanation who styled himself a scientist. Science is nothing if not methodology. Cu’enashti couldn’t give a rotten root for theory, or logic, or knowledge for knowledge’s sake – they didn’t care to prove anything. They were pragmatists with access to enormous amounts of observational data, and a remarkable sense of intuition. Ash was a genius at figuring out how to accomplish the impossible, but documenting the steps he took to get there was hardly a concern.
If Cüinn or Tarlach played the game and published articles, it was because of me. I did fancy myself a scientist although not a particularly good one. It was an aristocratic dabbling, and the fact that I had become the galaxy’s leading expert on the physiology of the Nau’gsh had much more to do with my wealth and access to the subjects of my research than any talent or dedication on my part. If it weren’t for an odd complication revealed by my research, my work would’ve vanished in the vast sea of xenobotanical data spewed forth on a daily basis by scientists all over the galaxy. The fact that my work concerning an obscure treelike species is considered of import is all down to luck.
The odd complication was that the trees turned out to be intelligent and possessed an amazing ability to manipulate matter on a molecular level. Some of them manifested one or more human forms, called emanations, and had even intermarried with the human population of my homeworld, Dolparessa. That last bit I can attest to personally.
My marriage contract specified that I was legally bonded to all emanations of my husband, Ashtara. Harsh was emanation number forty-seven. Ash took self-improvement very seriously.
Harsh was still smiling, waiting for me to reply. I’d never seen his face before, but I knew his eyes. Whatever game Ash was playing, he was doing it ultimately for my sake. It might seem insane at the outset, but no matter how mystifying his actions, in the end they always made sense.
Besides, if the purpose was to improve the efficiency with which the branches could service me sexually, how bad could it be?