Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [4]
Even a week earlier, he might not have relied on Jiterica’s expression as an accurate barometer of her Nizhrak feelings. But she had gotten so good at mimicking human reactions, he allowed himself to be reassured by it.
After all, it was a big step they were taking. He didn’t want to rush it and ruin everything. But at the same time, he could barely wait. His pulse was already racing in anticipation.
“Ready?” asked Jiterica.
What a question. “Hell, yes,” he said.
Taking that as her cue, Jiterica reached up with the gloves of her containment suit and started unfastening her helmet. Her manual dexterity still left something to be desired, so it wasn’t as smooth a process as it could have been.
“Do you need help?” Paris asked.
“No,” said Jiterica. “I can manage it.”
It took her a while, but she finally released the latch and pushed back her helmet. The act exposed her ghostly head, which tilted ever so slightly as she returned Paris’s gaze. For a heartbeat or two, Jiterica remained in her vaguely humanoid shape, even without the help of the suit’s built-in containment field. Then her features twisted away like smoke in a strong breeze, and the suit dropped precipitously to the floor.
But there was a cloud looming over it, a gradually expanding complex of shifting, sparkling particles, which was no less the essence of Jiterica than what had been squeezed into the suit. If anything, the cloud was more her, because she was allowing herself to revert to her natural state—that of a low-density being whose species had evolved in the chaotic upper atmosphere of a high-gravity gas giant.
As Paris watched, spellbound, Jiterica grew to fill the confines of her quarters—and they truly were confines, because she could have easily filled a larger space. But compared with the compression she had endured in her suit, the chance to fill even a modest compartment had to seem like a great relief.
As Jiterica encompassed Paris, taking him inside herself, he could feel her alien touch—first on the exposed skin of his face, neck, and hands, and then all over his body. It reached him right through the fabric of his clothes, cold and sharp as any needle, as if he were standing naked in a shower of ice shards.
Then he heard Jiterica speak to him, not in the suit’s mechanical voice but in a language without sound. And it wasn’t a mouth she was speaking with, but every energy-charged molecule of her body.
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to hear every word, every sensation, every sentiment. He breathed her in, exhaled, and breathed her in again.
Like fairy dust, Paris thought. Like a deeply intoxicating liqueur, except it was alive and intelligent and basking in an array of unheard-of emotions.
Beautiful, exquisite emotions. The kind he hadn’t imagined he would ever know.
But it wasn’t just the intoxication, or the novelty, or the sense of joining that Paris loved. It was the fact that Jiterica was part of it. With some other Nizhrak the experience might still have been an appealing one, but it was Jiterica who took his breath away.
It was bliss, complete and utter bliss. And somehow, Paris knew that Jiterica felt the same way.
For what seemed like a long time, he drifted on the electric pleasure of her currents, immersed and immersing, embracing and embraced. Then, with a pang of deep regret, Paris felt Jiterica stir as if to withdraw.
Don’t, he thought.
But she gave him the sense that she needed to—that they both needed to. So Paris opened his eyes and watched her go.
He was still in touch with her, if not quite as intimately as before, when she began to force herself back into her containment suit. He had known that it was difficult for her to compress, but he had never appreciated how difficult.
First, Jiterica filled up the suit’s arms and legs, so she would have use of them. Then, with what seemed like an intense effort, she used the gloves to pull her helmet back into place.
As before, Paris was moved to help her, but he could tell that she wanted to do this herself. She had worked hard to gain