Pax Multi Pt. 04

Lou scowled. "That blackguard has some nerve..." he lifted his head up -- and felt her wrists squirming under his hands. But it was her lower arms that hooked around his neck, that slid her fingers through his hair, that dragged him back for a deep, eager kiss. Her lower hand reached down and her palm cupped the bulge that strained against his pants -- and when Bea broke the kiss, Lou bit his lip to keep from letting out a soft crooning moan. His body trembled and his fingers tightened upon her wrists.

"Why...does...additional nerves in several parts of my body c-change utterly the sensation of touching your phallus?" she whispered, her voice soft. "W-Why am I nervous? Why..." She gulped, then whispered. "Is that the right term?"

Lou blushed. "Well, ah..."

"GF says that cock is acceptable too," Beatrice said.

Lou's eyes bugged. "What?"

"I asked him," Beatrice said, then cocked her head. "Dick. Prick. Manhood."

"Oh god, stop," Lou whispered, mortified. "Y-You're talking to him, right now?"

"One of my hellgaunts is. Do not worry, I am being very circumspect," Beatrice said, nodding. "I know that you want to keep our intimate activities private. He suspects nothing."

Lou imagined a drooling, bladed, hellgaunt crawling up to GF and hissing to him: GF, what is a properly erotic term to refer to my husband's phallus? I am asking for no particular reason, do not be suspicious. His eyes closed and he murmured, softly. "W-Well, um...I..." He was about to say 'the proper way to refer to them is not at all.' Instead, what came out of his mouth was soft. "I like cock."

"Cock..." Bea murmured. "Cock. You like the word...cock." She slid her pointer finger along his bulge. "I like...your cock." She grinned. "I fucking like your cock..." She leaned up -- and Lou leaned down. And their mouths met and their tongues met and Lou was so ready to slide off his clothing, to focus upon her, when the faint ding-chime of the dinner bell jerked his attention up -- and his face heated. Bea looked to the side, frowning.

"One of my gnats sees that the dining table is beginning to be prepared." She paused. "Lou, why would it be shocking for you and I to make love? Your father is speaking about it as if he cannot even believe it." Her brow furrowed. "What's a roach?"

Lou coughed. "W-We should get dressed," he said.

Roaches.

As in 'we fried half a million of those fucking roaches' -- standard dialog from any of a million movies made about the Bug War. Beatrice pouted -- but Lou was scrambling to his feet. "You get dressed, and I shall go and make sure that you have time to arrive," he said, wanting, more than anything, to shut his father up before Beatrice heard anything more. He smiled at her, then took her hand, drawing to her feet with effortless ease. His mouth and hers met and then he drew away, nodding to her.

When Lou arrived in the dining room, the servitors were beginning to put the food away -- and he caught the faint glint of a reflected sunlight near the corner of one of the rooms. A gnat, one of the Bug's spy-forms. It reflected more sunlight than a normal dust mote, due to the large size of its optical sensors, and some quantum trickery they used to make up for their relatively smell size. He put it out of his mind as he saw his father and Admiral Bosh were speaking to one another in the corner. Father let out a slightly forced laugh.

"I see that you and your wife are getting on?" he asked.

"Yes, quite," Lou said, nodding. "She simply needed some assistance -- neopolitan clothing is more complex than what she is used too."

"A new Eve for a new garden," Bosch said, his voice so complimentary and calm and buttery that it made Lou want to break him in half. "Upon further reflection, I have to admit, my initial opinion of her was highly unfavorable and entirely unfair." He said.

"Thank you," Lou said. You lying snake, he thought. "Will we be having anyone else or is it just us for the evening?"

"I was thinking of tendering an invitation to the AnComs," Father said. "But they declined rather...rudely. Honestly, Louis, I'm impressed with how well they think of you. It takes a delicate hand and a strong stomach to deal with...those people."

Lou inclined his head. "I found that dealing with them as people works quite well, Father."

"Quite," Father said.

Bosch turned to face Lou directly. "I have to ask about the Procyian," he said -- but before the Admiral could continue the sentence, the door to the ballroom opened and everyone turned -- and Lou felt as if all the air had left the room. Beatrice stood in the entrance, one hand still on the door, the other hands clutched before her belly. Her wings fluttered behind her with a nervous twitch -- but they were almost lost against the frilly splendor of her long gown, her luminous tresses, her bust. Her shoulders were bared by the cut of the hemline, and her antennas made her look even more like a queen, unfurled and peeking out past the short white frizz of her hair. She smiled, shyly, then started to walk down the stairs. Lou stepped over, then offered his hand to her. She took it with her lower left, and he turned, then walked with her to his father, his mother, and Admiral Bosch.

"May I present my wife, Beatrice Benoit," Lou said, bowing his head. "Beatrice Benoit, this is my father, my mother, and Colonel Admiral Bosch."

"My name is Beatrice Benoit?" Bea asked. "I thought it was simply Beatrice. Or Bea."

"When two humans get married," Lou said, trying to sound casual. "They sometimes exchange surnames -- since there are so many individual humans, surnames are often used to tell one apart from another -- there are many Louis, but there's far fewer Louis Benoits."

"Oh," Beatrice said, then smiled. "Also, I enjoy sharing your surname. And your surname, Lou's father. And yours, Lou's mother."

"Well, isn't that...charming," Mother said, sipping heavily from her wineglass.

Lou took Bea's hand and then sat her down at a chair -- which caused her to gasp. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "That's what these feel like!"

"You haven't sat in a chair before?" Mother asked as she settled.

"I have only sat in my husband's lap before," Bea said. Under the table, one of her hand slipped onto his thighs. Caressed. Lou's cheeks heated and he sat up a bit straighter. "And that is not the same." She nodded, happily, as the servitor behind her reached over her shoulder to set a bowl of soup down on the table. Bea looked at the soup, her hand continuing to slide up and down Lou's thigh, while Lou looked down at his soup. It was his favorite -- a fine pheasant tongue and wild rice with saffron and nutmeg. As the servitor laid the soup out for his mother and Admiral Bosch, Admiral Bosch lifted his wine glass.

"A toast, then, to the newlyweds," Bosch said.

Lou leaned in, whispering to Bea. "A toast is...a...commemorative statement, meant to indicate approval. You do it by, uh, lifting your glass, lik-." He picked up his glass. Bea, watching intently, picked up her glass while also sliding lower palm between his thighs, cupping and squeezing, cutting his helpful advice off. He choked, then whispered. "Uh, Bea, uh...not now..."

She pouted -- drew her hand back, but it remained on his thigh, even as she lifted her glass.

"Hear hear," Father rumbled.

"Might I ask a question?" Bosch asked after taking his drink. "I served in several of the major battles in the War, and my father served in several before me -- I'm deeply curious about what things were like from your side of the things. It's not often that two warriors can speak of such things with candor and openness."

Bea blinked at him. "I am not a warrior," she said, her brow furrowing. "I am Lou's wife." Her hand caressed along his thigh, slowly, five hot points of contact that felt searingly intent through his thick pants, despite everything. Lou wanted her to stop and wanted her to go back to doing far more all at once. He opened his mouth- but Bea finished her thoughts. "But what is a battle?"

"You...don't know what a battle is?" Bosch asked.

Bea cocked her head -- but Lou managed to rally. "Yes, uh, a battle is...the term we use to describe a discrete, uh, part of a war. Where forces meet, fight one another, then disengage." He nodded.

"Oh," Bea said. Her antennas drooped slightly. "I am sorry, but I don't remember any of them. I wasn't paying attention to them."

"You...weren't paying attention?" Bosch asked and Lou frowned.

"Admiral," he said, his voice warning. Pistols at dawn, was what flashed through his head. But Bosch chuckled.

"Please, Akin, Louis, Akin. We're not on duty here," he said. "And I'm just more curious than anything else. The Bugs...that is...Beatrice here, used tactics, strategy. Not exceptionally complex ones, but there were logistic trains, forward bases, reconnaissance, even a feint and flank attack or two. Not precisely the byproduct of reflexive action."

Bea blushed. "I..." she looked down at her soup, her brow furrowing. Her antennas twitched and she said. "I..."

"You don't have to talk about it," Lou said, quietly.

"No, it is okay," Bea said, lifting her head. "I just do not know how to describe it. I...when I...time...I see time very differently. The war, for me, was very short -- and I did not devote my full attention to any specific part of it. While it was fought, there was also many other things I had to do. Nitrogen fixing, tectonic realignment...I'm still seeking to move a rocky world away from a star that will begin to expand to consume it in less than half a cycle -- that I am rushing on." She nodded. "So, I...when it comes to the...to what I was doing...I thought you were akin to the viruses and bacteria that could damage my subunits. And so, I created bioforms that could react the same way an immune system could, then let them work without thinking much about it. It was only when...I started to noticed that not only were they not working, they were being pushed back, that I realized I needed to change."

Lou nodded, stepping in as Bea looked back down at her soup. "Beatrice doesn't normally perceive time the same way do either," he said. "After all, her lifespan is measured in millions of years."

Mother dropped her fork. "M...Millions?"

"Our scientists pegged you at similarly evolved as us," Father said, sitting up.

"Oh, no!" Beatrice shook her head. "I am, according to Lou, almost seven hundred and fifty million years old. Do you have a means by which I can inject this material into my stomach?" She pointed at the soup, nodding as she did so. "Lou seems to be enjoying his a great deal, but this body is only made for interaction with him, and so, it lacks the human method of consumption. Instead, it is fed by having feeder grubs injecting with nutrients gathered from a centralized production facility."

"How...unique," mother said.

"How did you design the body?" Bosch asked, narrowing his eyes.

"The same way I have designed all of my bioforms over the past two cycles. Initially, it was a great deal harder." Bea actually sat up slightly, her wings buzzing. "So, you know how when a life form replicates using a complex biological molecule that encodes the information of the life form for future generations, there is a chance for coding errors to produce randomized changes in the future life form, and that then, the life form can breed, and natural forces will select only the life forms that are best adapted to their current situation for survival, allowing for a gradual change in all life?"

"We're aware of it, yes," Bosch said, sounding tolerantly amused. Like she was a child. Lou squeezed her hand under the table and watched Bosch intently -- the Federal admiral was slowly twirling his emptied wine glass between his fingers.

"This is my first method," Bea said, nodding. "When I still used sound waves to communicate between my sub units. So, to create new bioforms, I simply produced them at a great quantity and recycled those that did not fit what they were needed for, until I had generated the types of units I wanted. This was very fast, taking hundreds of years for each subunit, but it did take a lot of energy and was very inefficient..."

"Good lord!" Bosch sounded delighted. "Your wife is a eugenicist."

It took every bit of Lou's decorum training to not flip the table over and fly at Bosch with his bare hands. Bea notice. "Lou, why are you squeezing my hand so hard? Also, your blood pressure and heart rate have spiked, are you all right?"

"The soup is very spicy," Lou said, his voice flat. "My wife is not a eugenicist, Bosch."

"Akin, please," Bosch said.

Father frowned, then coughed. "So, I-"

"What is eugenicist?" Bea asked, her antennas twitching curiously.

"They-" Lou stopped, searching for a good term that wouldn't insult his guest. Even if he badly wanted too. Unfortunately, that silence left an opening, an opening that the Federal filled.

"A eugenicist is someone who seeks to better the species by selective breeding," Bosch said, blithely. "It is unfairly maligned in these degenerate times."

Bea cocked her head. "What is bettering the species?" she asked.

"Improving it," Bosch said, frowning. "What else could it mean?"

Bea blinked. "There is no such thing as improvement," she said, frowning. "This body exists to make my husband happy. But it cannot breathe in ammonia or survive in a gas giant or a photosphere. Oh, I've been trying to work that out, as stars remain stable far longer than planets, so if I could live in and around them, it would be much better." She nodded at Lou, then looked back at Bosch, her antennas perked up happily. "But none of them are improved." She smiled. "Besides, I don't get rid of any of the old bioforms, ever since I learned how to keep their genetic sequences and have acquired more places. I do not have large populations of some, but they are sustainable and are scattered across my places, where they can exist. Because..." She blushed. "Because...I...like...keeping them." She bit her lip. "It makes me feel...nice. Knowing that the universe has more...in it. Then...then it used too?" She looked at Lou, with a look he was growing to recognize.

It was a plaintive: Please, tell me what it is I am trying to say.

Lou smiled. "You make the universe more diverse and beautiful," he said, taking her hand above the table, squeezing it. His heart hammered as he looked into her eyes, Bosch forgotten utterly as she smiled. Then she blinked.

"Oh! Also, I have an amusing Anecdote! That is a word I learned recently, and I wanted to use it!" Bea said, looking at Mother and Father. "May I share my Anecdote?" she asked, speaking the word with such...adorable attentiveness. Ann-Ec-Dote.

"Of course!" Father said, sounding cheerful as he finished off his soup.

Bea beamed. "So! Nitrogen is a vital part of the means by which I fix energy into my planets. Energy comes from stars, and must be collected as most of it simply bounces away into space. The most effective means to collect it is by using bioforms that take in sunlight and combine it with various chemicals in the atmosphere -- what depends on the atmosphere -- and then transforming it into different chemicals and nutrients, which are then fixed into the soil, which are then used by other bioforms that I have created, which are microscopic in size. T-Technically, they are not bioforms, as all bioforms require an organ that allows them to communicate with one another, and I have not made that kind of communication organ small enough." She paused. "O-Oh, well, um..." She looked at Lou, who smiled and nodded at her, wanting to encourage her. She drew a breath. "S-So, um, I had created a new bioform that I thought could fix nitrogen more efficiently! But it turns out that it leached out other essential chemicals from the soil and, if no corrected, would cause a systemic crash of the entire energy collection system within a mere ten million years!" She shook her head. "So, I had to revert to my previous bioforms, which is why it was very good that I kept them around!" She smiled. "That is my Anecdote!"

"It's...quite interesting," Mother said.

Bosch smiled, thinly. "Quite."

***

"NITROGEN FIXING!?"

Bosch grabbed onto the edge of his desk, then flung it upwards. The whole metal contraption went heeling over, papers and slates scattering along the office floor, sweeping past the metallic feet of Dr. Listens-Deeply-And-Considers-All. The Upkin was ignoring him -- his attention was entirely upon his own slate, which was projecting an image of their test subject. Her eyes, barely visible around the glass lenses that had been bolted into her skull, were still twitching and looking in each direction, twitching and wriggling wildly.

"Nitrogen fixing..." Bosch growled, then started to pace. "That's what it talked about for three hours. And that simpering deviant bitch just sat there, looking like a mooning calf..." He shook his head. "That thing killed millions of us and it didn't even notice, Listens Deeply. Do you understand? Do you grasp how monstrous it is?"

"It is irrelevant," Dr. Listens Deeply spoke, his translation collar turning his chirrups and squeaks into language shared by non-cetacean humans. "It could be the most gentle creature in the Milky Way and I would still desire its eradication. Simple pragmatism: If something does not exist to serve and maintain our future, then it is a potential threat, taken in a long enough view. A peace can last for five centuries and be broken in five minutes with the right change in...circumstances." His beady eyes flicked up to look at Bosch. "I ask: Did you complete the ground based laboratories? We require them."

"My crew are still seeking for a secure location. More secure than this." Bosch glared down at the mess he had made, his lips pursing. "Fortunately, the Neos are as bad at spying as they are at cooking..." He shook his head. "Disgusting, do you know they served snails? Chocolate coated ants? Foul."

Dr. Listens Deeply didn't respond. Instead, he flicked to the next image of Echo Three. This was of her, after she had been removed from the probe that had been launched into Proxima. Her body looked as if it had been smeared -- it was easier to grasp on a camera, where it looked like a piece of CGI manipulation rather than the physical reality. His eyes narrowed and he chirruped. "We need a cavern, preferably beneath a shelf of copper or iron ore. The kind of place that would be used for neutrino detectors."

Bosch nodded. "And the other sensors? What about them?"

Dr. Listens Deeply let out a dolphin laugh, transformed into an eerie, robotic monotone by his collar. "Ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha..."

Bosch sat down behind his overturned desk. He felt flushed and trembling and slightly foolish. He was now beginning to think about how much work it was going to be to put the desk back to rights. He frowned, hard.

"What is so funny, dolphin?"

Dr. Listens Deeply looked at him. "The sensors are detecting unique communications from the hive mind. They are analogous to human orgasms." He laughed. "Ha ha ha ha. Your degenerate...is fucking his bug pet! Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

Bosch scowled.

"I wish I had a camera focused upon them right now..."

***

Lou and Bea lay together, on the grassy hill, and looked up at the stars. The suns had set, save for the tiny purple pinprick that was Proxima, and the sky was a luminous sweep of infinite beauty. Bea's eyes, though, were closed. She was focused, entirely upon Lou's voice and his fingers gently brushing through her hair, teasing circles around her antennas. Underneath the stockings and the shoes of her fine dress, her toes were curling. "So, there are actually six other alien species that we know of. At least, they think there are six of them." He smiled. "There are the Perseus Mumblers, the Andromedian Lighthouse, LMG-2..."