Page 4 of Topping Off the Alien

I’m not sure what he means by that, so I ignore it. “Can I ask you something? Is this some kind of weird sex cult thing?”

“What’s a sex cult?”

“Uh, never mind.”

I know I should be leaving. He’s told me twice now that I can go. But that’d mean I’d never see him again, and when I realize it, my curiosity gets its hands around my throat and squeezes.

“So… why do you need to have sex with me? And sorry, the wording of that is already weird, but. Are you having a dry spell or something? Because a guy who looks like you can’t be hurting for options.”

Solverian regards me for a long moment. Then he crosses to an armchair near the platform and lowers himself into it too carefully.

“Our conduit is burned out. He’s lying comatose in the hospital wing. He has been there for eleven days, and he won’t wake.” He reaches up and loosens the standing collar of his suit, two fingers hooked into the V at his chest, and exhales. “I am now the only person on this ship who can open a wormhole.”

“A warm hole?!”

He gives me a wry look, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “A wormhole. A door, of a kind, in the fabric of space. It shortens the distance between two points. Without one, the journey home for my crew is measured in years. With one, it is hours.”

“Okay.”

“Wormholes are temporary. They must be opened, and only a conduit can do it.”

“What’s a conduit?”

“A person who can gather energy and spend it.” He pauses, then decides to keep going. “Conduits take energy in. They cannot generate it within themselves.”

“And you get that energy from—”

“Intimate contact.”

“Sex.”

“It’s the most effective way.” His voice stays level. “There are lesser methods. Proximity. Touch. But they are teaspoons, and what I require is an ocean.”

He stops talking and watches me work through it. This is the weirdest bit anyone has ever run on me, and if it’s true (I’m not saying it is), it’s insane. But it’s also the most entertained I’ve been all month, so I let it play out.

“Why can’t you just do it with someone from your crew? They were falling over themselves out there. Very eager to please you, Your Highness.”

“It’s more effective when it’s genuine desire. Those people are like family to me, so I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“Okay, but why me, then? You don’t even know me. For all you know I’m a terrible person. I could be into model trains.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Doesn’t matter. Answer the question.”

He looks away from me then, and I catch a deepening of color at his cheekbones. It takes me a second to realize he’s blushing.

“I think you’re… as humans say it, my type.”

“You think?” Now it’s my turn to blush. “That’s, uh. Thank you? It doesn’t change my answer, though. I’m only into women. Sorry.”

He nods. “I understand. You may go now.” He reaches toward a panel set into the arm of the chair. “I apologize that I cannot see you out myself. I will call someone to escort you.”

His hand stops halfway and hangs there. Now that I’m paying attention, there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his breathing has gone shallow. The composure I’d read as granite is going, all at once.

“Hey.” I take a few steps toward him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. You should go.”