Page 29 of Leviathan

I could take my time with her.

To show her that I could be her home.

To do that, I couldn't abuse her, even if her body begged me for it.

ELEVEN

MARIA

I died and went to space heaven.

Well, solitary space heaven, so not quite perfect.

I lay on my back in the heated pool, staring up at the beautiful colors of the nebula projected on the ceiling wall. It was a shimmering aurora of colors that I could see with the naked eye, and I wasn't limited to just that. Lyrien had provided multiple viewing settings so I could look at the recording of a nebula through the wide range of what his sensors had captured. Once we were able to move again, I would be able to see the sights in person.

He was wining, dining, and wooing me.

Anything I could dream of, I was provided with one single exception.

He had held back on seducing me any further. I was growing frustrated, wearing less and less clothing as I lounged against him during our work sessions to hunt down and clear the contaminant from deeper sections of his body, but he didn't take advantage. He kept himself perfectly still, no matter how I positioned myself against his tendrils.

I wasn't quite ready to beg him to play with me like a toy.

So I did what I always did when I got sexually frustrated, and threw myself into my education.

Lyrien had significant resources stored on board that he said he used for trading, and he had something he called his manufacturing bay, which was a series of complex alien 3D printers that could work with different materials. I wanted a specific type of garden; I got a garden grown from alien seeds, lush and colorful. I wanted a pool; now I had a pool. Once I had cleared a section of his body of the contaminant, he was able to reconfigure his internal space to make room for whatever activity I wanted to do, and he was a large ship. I had access to endless downloaded alien entertainment and educational material, and I had spent the time catching up on all the information that had been denied to me.

Lately, I had spent more time trying to learn about Lyrien.

That information about his biology was less readily available unless I asked him direct questions, which I wasn’t quite ready to pry about, but I had learned how to perform minor repairs and upkeep on his manufacturing bay. He didn't normally need me to do things like that, but until I had cleared a section, he couldn't move his filaments to do the repairs himself without risking the spread of the contaminant. He couldn't modify his drones to hunt down the spots; they were only visible to biological eyes. Digital sensors measured photons, locking the wave function of reality to a specific fixed state in the moment it was observed. Biological eyes worked by the brain, filling in the gaps in the blind spots with imagination, both viewing and imagining reality simultaneously. One of its mechanisms for remaining hidden was to vibrate at a frequency that was difficult for digital recording but was easier for analog processing. Its secondary disguise was that the contaminant didn't react to standard light; it only reacted to the bio-electromagnetic fields of smaller biological creatures, activating only in the presence of a small nervous system looking at it.

Lyrien's larger body couldn't trigger it to appear on his viewing sensors, whether biological or mechanical.

"Lyrien," I said, sitting up so suddenly that my legs plunged down into the water as a sudden thought occurred to me. "If you can't see the contaminant, how do you know if your center is unaffected? Wouldn't it be more dangerous for the contaminant to spread there?"

The question had layers to it.

First, I was genuinely concerned. Second, he had mentioned that his breeding organs were kept at his center, and I wanted to see them. I wasn't quite ready to tell him I wanted to see his junk because I was spending every night touching myself, thinking about him.

I wasn't a prude. The thought of fucking an alien was exciting in its own way, but Lyrien wasn't just an alien. He was a gigantic one. He kept living beings inside of him, like his birds in their aviary. From my perspective, he was courting me, showing me the kind of luxurious, meaningful life I could have if I stayed with him. But what if he didn't want me to stay? What if it were casual? Worse than that, what if it was more serious than I ever imagined? Saying I was ready to go all the way with him could mean something different to him. If I begged for him to touch me, what would I be giving permission for him to do with me in his culture?

I needed to know what it meant to him first, and some questions could only be answered by getting a good look.

I needed to know what kind of dick I was dealing with.

"I'm keeping an eye on it," he said.

"You can see it?" I asked.

"In my center, yes," he replied. "There is a spot, but I've kept it from spreading."

"Lyrien," I said, climbing out of the pool. I grabbed a towel and dried off, before slipping on the shreds of underwear I'd taken to wearing about everywhere. "You didn't answer my other question. Is it more dangerous for the contaminant to be there?"

"Yes," he said, a note of reluctance in his voice.

"Then why haven't you had me go there to clear it?" I asked.

"I didn't want you to feel obligated," he said.