She was back for breakfast, hardly able to contain herself. “Guys, come and see!” she said. I jumped over the side with a couple of the others, and there was Carl, laid back as ever, but a notch hungrier, if his bumping against us was anything to go by. And behind him, as if intrigued by this food they’d heard about, was a shoal of clownfish, our other major attraction, or they had been, when they’d been more common around here. “I found out what they were smelling about me,” whispered Swav in my ear as she rocketed past, going round and round the platform in excitement. “I reversed it.”
That night, in her honour, we got the grog out. There’d been a few who were a little awkward around Swav. Mostly I think they felt it was like being around, you know, someone who’s very religious or a tranny or something; you get tense because you want to make sure you do everything right and don’t offend them. But I had to admit, when I caught her in the corner of my eye, or ran into her without expecting to, I did react to her like she was a ghost. In a nanosecond, your brain realises you’re not looking at what you thought you were, only she’s enough like us that it slips gears a bit, and you find yourself jumping a moment
after
the conscious part of you has thought ‘oh, it’s just Swav’. She noticed, the second time it happened, and stopped me from making some sort of awkward apology. “It’s okay,” she said, “it happens to me too. You guys are kind of... large, you know?”
I laughed. “Not as large as your blokes! Oh, sorry –”
“Stop saying sorry! They’re their sort of thing, not the sort of thing I expect to run into in a corridor.”
“Are we ever going to get a visit from one of them?”
She laughed, like she was embarrassed. “Well, let’s see how things work out.” It was like I’d said something a little racy. Then she realised I was looking awkward again. “No, come on, I love them, honestly, but I like to get away, and... you know. Do stuff.” Those huge eyes had been moving quickly, her attention resting briefly on every part of my face, as if she was taking me in. And enjoying it. She was waiting to see what I did next.
You hear blokes saying they fancy a cartoon character: Wilma Flintstone; Daphne from
Scooby Doo
; Mrs Incredible. But Swav kind of brought that feeling front and centre. Confronted you with it. I’d seen some of the other guys look at her, and then look away, awkward. Your eyes got halfway with it, and stayed on a curve or a motion, then they were lured into applying that feeling to something completely outside the lexicon of love. It felt kind of like fancying Carl. The women had started to make jokes about it. “And she walks about starkers,” said Mia, another of the guides. “It’s shameless.” Swav looked puzzled when people said things like that, but now I think that was an affectation, to let everyone stay comfortable. Or maybe it was kind of like someone laughing along with a racist joke about them, I don’t know.
“Is this...?” I wanted to ask her if she was coming on to me, but the thought seemed vastly weird and conceited and hey, potential diplomatic incident, plus all the guys laughing at me, forever. So I shut up again.
But she cocked her head on one side. “I guess. Maybe.” While I was processing that, she took my hand in what felt very like a normal hand. “We’ve got a couple of hours. Let’s have a cuppa.”
S
HE LED ME
into her cabin. I didn’t close the door, she did. I went to the kettle, but she came up behind me and put her hand on my chest. I started to turn around, and she very gently kissed me.
People always used to ask what it was like, before enough of them experienced it for themselves. I’ve got a bit fed up with describing it, honestly. It was great. It didn’t feel very weird. I kept feeling that I wanted to close my eyes and then stopping myself because that might be insulting. What I was seeing might have been more complicated than I was used to, but it was still good. She didn’t have breasts, but a curve that felt like them from behind. Her skin became softer and softer as I touched her. She laughed as she showed me all the incredibly complicated folds and openings and protrusions of her, and put my fingers where it would give her most pleasure, and I felt a huge sense of pride that I was arousing her so much, that I was seeing all this extra detail in what was normally a smooth surface. That she could even want me. She wanted to see me then, so I showed her, and what to do. She took to that! She told me not to worry about her teeth. I enjoyed that for a while, and then told her not to worry about mine. Although, you know, that was like my first time had been; I had no idea if I was doing it right, or even what I was aiming for. She smelt great, not like anything I’d ever smelt before, so there were no associations with it. It didn’t take me back to any other time; there was just this enormous great now, this tremendous focus on this being just her and me. And even now, the smell of Tom takes me back only to her. I thought it was all going to be like teenagers playing around. While that was kind of frustrating, emotionally, for me, I assumed there couldn’t be anything more. But then she told me that there wasn’t really any equivalent of orgasm for her without penetration, that actually it was only the feeling of her partner coming that could set her off. She leaned over the bed, and moved her gorgeous roundness a little. “So, erm... how would you feel about...? I mean, I know it’s a bit scary –”
It was, but no way was that enough to stop me. It had been established pretty quickly that, having evolved in different biospheres, there wasn’t any need to worry about humans and Carviv catching anything off... you know, I regret mentioning that now. “No possibility of biological interaction”, that’s what we thought back then. Well, I guess it’s what a lot of people still think now. A lot of idiots. But that was nowhere in my head just then. I positioned myself behind her and let her reach for me and guide me into one of the many channels. “Push,” she whispered, and I did. Something bigger than it needed to be suddenly contracted around me, until it was just the right size, so welcoming and tight that it felt like an invitation and a violation at the same time. Things were touching me that wouldn’t normally be, let us say. Part of her slid urgently into place to cup me around my balls as I was inside her. She must have heard the noise I made and realised what that was about. She looked over my shoulder and grinned. “You all right there?”
I laughed. “God, you’re beautiful. Is this the first time you’ve... you know, I mean with...?” I had visions in my head of one of those big guys lying in the ocean. I’d wondered about what she was used to, if you know what I mean.
“With anyone. My lot either.”
“Oh –!” I suddenly felt like I should have acted a lot differently, somehow, but I wasn’t sure exactly how.
She laughed again. “Mate, it’s not such a big deal for us. There are plants that have evolved on my world to do basically what you’re... and there’s a lot of jokes about that amongst the shoal, you know, I’m just going to leave Mum and all the guys and go on to the land to have a walk among the pretty flowers. La la la! Your girl friends tell you about it and so then you kind of want a go, and your mum gets all emotional, and the guys all take turns saying surely you’re not ready to go exploring on unsettled land yet, shit like that. Until Mum basically put me in the boat and said do what you like! That’s how the plants pollinate, so you get these enormous forests of flowers on the islands. We look over to them every now and then and go, hey, we were pretty horny this year.” Her voice became softer again, serious. “But I wanted to know what it was like with, you know, someone here. Someone cool. And you don’t need to worry. I shrink. I clutch. You feel...” and she raised one of those things that looked a lot like eyebrows and now her voice dropped to a whisper, “pretty big, actually. So, you just go ahead and... let yourself go.”
So I did.
W
E LAY TOGETHER
afterwards. I watched, fascinated, as her bits sorted themselves out, retracted and relaxed until she looked smooth again. I was feeling pretty emotional. I mean, not that I wouldn’t normally be, but... I felt I’d just gone through something intense, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was meant to feel about it. Had we done something wrong? She must have realised that I wasn’t feeling right. “It’s okay,” she said.
“Was it... all right?”
“It was brilliant. Mate, you’re much better than a flower.”
“I’ve never been told that before.”
She looked suddenly serious. “Now you have to fight one of our males.”
I looked at her shocked, and she burst out laughing. “Sucked in! You should have seen your face!” She wrapped her arms around me and I lay against her chest. “You needn’t worry. I know I’m going home eventually.”
“I wasn’t going to say –!”
“It was fun. Lovely fun.” She kissed me again, and I felt a kind of ache at what she’d just said. But she was right, it couldn’t be more than that. Or so I thought then.
O
VER THE NEXT
few weeks, the crew cottoned on to what we were getting up to. I got a lot of ribbing, but it was all good natured. The only person who seemed to have a problem was Annie, who looked away whenever I tried to make eye contact. I guess that was the start of the jealousy that would lead her to hurt me so much later on.
O
NE NIGHT,
S
WAV
came to my cabin and held me back when I tried to kiss her. “I’ve had a message,” she said, indicating a patch on her sash, “one of our males is on his way here. Now, you mustn’t freak out...”
And she told me that he was coming to the platform in order to mate with her, that something had changed in the water temperature that made it feel like mating season back home, and so the males were all about to swim in various directions, meet up with the females and, well –
“It’s not like you and me,” she said. “I’ve seen it, and... you might want to go ashore rather than wait for –”
“What, and think about you and him? Do you
have
to do this? I mean, are you and he –?”
“It’s not like anything you guys have. You shouldn’t be jealous.”
I asked loads more questions, none of which mattered, and she answered all of them, and, you know, I like to think I’m a guy who accepts different cultures, but I was still left feeling pretty damn small.
I
WATCHED FOR
any sign of mockery from the others. I knew Helena had told them about the forthcoming visit. They didn’t say a word until the evening, when Ben clapped me round the shoulder. “What can I say, mate? You’re about to be publically cuckolded by a fucking enormous whale.”
“It’s like the porn version of
Moby Dick
,” added Mia.
“We can only hope,” finished off Helena, “that he’s not bi-curious.”
I started to laugh. “You bastards.” And we had a few drinks. They’d waited until Swav wasn’t around, and they hadn’t let it stay silent and terrible and I was grateful for that.
E
VERYONE WAS SHOCKED
by how the male arrived. That he surged like a torpedo towards the platform, without any message to us, that it swiftly became clear that that day’s tourists were going to be at the very least alarmed, and not, as expected, entertained by the spectacle of seeing one of the larger Carviv up close. Once we helped them to their feet, Helena elected to give them their money back and send them to dry land on the launch. The kids were already starting to ask awkward questions about the violence of what Swav had said would take place entirely underwater and out of sight. Maybe that had been the male’s choice, and what she’d seen before had been different. Maybe the bastard had just been showing off.
I stayed by the rail, Annie beside me. “Why are you so sure she’ll be back?” I asked.
She shook her head.
At that moment, Swav’s head burst to the surface. We all helped her back on deck. She looked dazed, and she kept putting a hand to her neck. “It’s sealed again,” she said. “My... you know.”
“I don’t think I do,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.
She wrapped her arms around me and I let her, in front of everyone. The smell of her had changed. I realised I still liked it. Only that felt wrong now. Or for just a moment it did. “He’s gone now,” she said. “It’s all going to be okay.”
I helped her back to her cabin.
I
HAD TO
ask how it had been. I had to. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear. It was always going to be bad. “Just this enormous... natural experience,” she said.
“Good?”
She looked pained for me, like she didn’t want to lie to me. After that, she wouldn’t say any more about it. It took us a few nights to get back to our old routine, but we did. I might have been kind of rough with her the first time, I don’t know.
S
WAV APOLOGISED HUGELY
to the crew for what the male’s arrival had been like, even offered Helena her resignation. She hadn’t known he’d make such a show of it, most didn’t. Helena said her leaving was out of the question. Was there going to be a... happy event? Swav looked shocked for a moment at Helena’s directness, then touched her neck and said she didn’t know.
B
UT IN THE
next few weeks, it became obvious. The side of her neck and her lower back swelled, and you could see something shifting inside the translucent skin. She’d been spending a lot more time in the water, going deep under for hours at a stretch, for a long time now, even before there had been visible signs of her pregnancy. “And I’m going to have to be down there,” she told me, “when it bursts.” I spent as much time as I could down there with her. I didn’t know how I felt about what she was carrying, but I wanted to be there for her, to help.
O
F COURSE, WHEN
it finally happened, I was on the platform, making dinner. I heard a weird cry from outside the galley, and rushed out, leaving the others, who hadn’t heard it. Swav, who’d been deep underwater for most of that day, was bobbing on the surface, and in her arms was... Tom.