Harry Turtledove - Down to Earth

“What do we do now?” he asked. If there were any answers, he knew she had to be the one who had them.

He depends on me, she realized with a small shock. She’d never had anyone do that before. She’d always been the one who depended on Ttomalss. “Wait,” she told him: the obvious. “Hope the all-clear sounds.” Once past the obvious, she had to pause and think, but not for long. She wished she could form her face into the expression wild Big Uglies used to show amiability. “Also, we ought to go on with what we were doing before the alarm came.”

Jonathan Yeager threw back his head and barked Tosevite laughter. “We have a saying: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” The laughter stopped. “But it may not be tomorrow. It may be the next instant.”

“That is a truth,” Kassquit said. “Because it is a truth, should we not go on? Is there anything else you would rather do?”

“No,” he said, and added an emphatic cough.

“Nor I.” She lay down on her sleeping mat. It was less resilient than the cot brought up from Tosev 3- it fits the Race needs, not mine, she thought-but it would have to do. “Let us continue, then.”

She’d expected him to put on another sheath and continue from exactly the point where they were interrupted. Instead, to her surprise and delight, he knelt beside her and began stimulating her all over again.

She hadn’t realized she could be stimulated on the web of flesh between her thumb and forefinger or the crook of her elbow or her earlobes. She’d always hated her ears, which marred the smooth lines of her head, and wished she had hearing diaphragms instead, as the Race did. Here was a reason to change her mind she hadn’t expected.

His mouth on her breasts gave her more pleasure than her own fingers had. She wasn’t so sure that was true when his head went between her legs. She knew just what to do and when to do it there. He didn’t; he was finding out by experiment. When she’d stroked herself, though, she’d always known what would happen next. With Jonathan Yeager’s caresses, she didn’t. Sometimes the surprises were disappointing. Sometimes they were altogether delightful. She gasped and shuddered, taken to her peak of pleasure almost by surprise.

After that, Jonathan Yeager did reach for the box of sheaths. “Would you not like me to stimulate you as well?” Kassquit asked.

The corners of his mouth turned up. “I am stimulated,” he answered, and pointed to that part of himself which proved the truth of his words. “If you stimulate me much more, I will…” He paused, perhaps looking for a way to put what he wanted to say into the language of the Race. He found one: “I will spill my seed, and then you would have to wait a while before I could mate again.”

That was the first Kassquit had heard of Tosevites having to wait between matings. “How long?” she asked. “A day? Ten days?”

He laughed again. “No, not so long as either of those. Maybe a tenth part of a day, maybe even less than that.”

Kassquit considered. “You gave me pleasure-I would like to return it,” she said at last. “It seems only fair, after all. If you spill your seed before we mate, then you do, that is all, and we will wait. If not, we will go on. Is that all right?”

The corners of his mouth turned up again. “Yes, indeed, superior female,” he said, and lay back on the mat.

Partly remembering the videos of Big Uglies mating she’d watched, partly imitating what Jonathan Yeager had done with her, Kassquit worked her way down his body with her hands and mouth. By the small noises he made, she judged she was succeeding in giving him pleasure. As he had with her, she crouched between his legs and stimulated him with her mouth.

With a small whir, the door to her chamber slid open and Ttomalss walked in. Jonathan Yeager’s reaction astonished Kassquit-he made a noise that sounded something like Eep! jerked away from her so quickly that she almost bit him, and held both hands in front of the organ she’d been stimulating.

Ttomalss said, “I greet you, Kassquit, and you, Jonathan Yeager. I wanted to make certain you were both safe. I am glad to see you are.” He turned to go.

“I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit said as he left. Jonathan Yeager said Eep! again. Kassquit wondered what it meant in his language. She got up and closed the door once more then walked back to him. “Shall we go on?”

He said something else she didn’t understand; it sounded like Jesus! Then he went back to the language of the Race: “After that, I hope I can.”

Kassquit wondered what he meant. She found out: he had wilted. More stimulation seemed called for. She applied it. She wondered what was in his laugh as he rose again. She thought it sounded like relief, but had too little experience with Tosevites to be sure. “There,” she said briskly after a little while. “Now-the sheath.”

“It shall be done,” he said, and did it.

In the videos, she’d seen several possible mating postures. Female astride male seemed as practical as male mounting female. She straddled Jonathan Yeager and joined their organs. As she lowered herself onto him, she stopped in sudden surprise and pain. “This is a mating!” she exclaimed. “It should not hurt!” The idea of mating that gave pain rather than pleasure struck her as addled even by the standards of Tosev 3.

But Jonathan Yeager said, “Female Tosevites have a… membrane that must be broken on the first mating. That can cause pain. After the membrane heals, this does not happen again.”

“I see.” Kassquit sighed. She hadn’t known that. None of her research had shown it. She wondered if the Race even knew it. She shrugged. If she hadn’t found out about it before, it couldn’t matter much, even to wild Big Uglies.

She bore down. The membrane certainly was there. Jonathan Yeager had better information than she did. She bore down again, at the same time as he thrust up from beneath her. The membrane tore. She hissed. It did hurt, and she wasn’t used to physical pain.

“Is it all right?” JonathanYeager asked.

“I-suppose so,” Kassquit answered. “I have no standards of comparison.”

He kept moving inside her. That went on hurting, but less than it had when he first pierced her. It brought a little pleasure with it, but not nearly so much as she got from a hand or from his tongue. She wondered if it would be different after she healed.

Beneath her, Jonathan Yeager’s face went very red. He grunted, clutched her hindquarters ahnost painfully tight, and thrust himself into her to the hilt. Then he relaxed. His eyes, which had squeezed shut, opened again. The corners of his mouth turned upward.

Kassquit slid off him. Her blood streaked the sheath and her inner thighs. “Is it supposed to be like this?” she asked Jonathan Yeager.

“Yes, I think so,” he answered. He took off the sheath, which was messy inside and out. “What do I do with this, superior female?”

She showed him. “Here-this is the trash chute. I do not think it would be wise to send it through the plumbing. It might cause a blockage in the pipes.”

“That would not be good, not in a starship,” he said. “No, it would not,” Kassquit agreed. “Tosevite wastes already give the plumbing difficulties it was not designed to handle.” She went to the sink, wet a tissue, and wiped the blood from her legs and private parts. Then she sent the tissue down the trash chute, too.

Jonathan Yeager imitated everything she did as he washed himself. “You are going to have to show me things here,” he told her. “I do not know how to live on this starship, any more than you would know how to live in my land on Tosev 3.”