Hotel Andromeda Part 29

"Excuse me, brother," I said, "but I need your help." That line always gets them. He stopped dead in his tracks on his way to the front desk.

The Hoojum turned with a great whispering of his optical- illusion robes. He seemed surprised to find another one of his kind wandering the halls of the hotel. "You arc not from our tour group."

"1 have fallen into the pit of sin, and I must find someone to help me climb out of it."

I watched him shudder, possibly from the incredible favor I had just asked or from a personal revulsion at talking to a genuine sinner. Hoojums arc primarily reptilian in features, with ma.s.sive bony plates on the face, squarish teeth, and a ridged crest on top of the head. In order for me to read squea- mishness through all that armor, his reaction must have been extreme indeed.

"I was just going to request some extra towels. We're hav- ing a charismatic verse sing tonight. Perhaps if you join us-"

"No' I need you to help me. Now! Or I am forever lost."

THE HAPPY HOOKERMORPH.

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He hesitated. "Please!" I added just the right begging tone to my voice.

He sighed, a long hiss, then took me aside. "Very well, my child. Tell me of your predicament."

"Only if you promise to help me. There is only one way I can be saved."

"I promise. Now tell me."

"We had best go to my room, where I can speak of this in private. I am so ashamed, I do not want to risk anyone over- hearing."

He balked at that, and I could see him searching his mind for some sort of acceptable excuse. "You promised me," I said. Finally, the Hoojum agreed.

John-23 had held this room for me for the last couple of days, as a special favor. Now it paid off- Inside, it was dec- orated in the bland grayness and muted lighting the Hoojums preferred in their accomodations-fewer worldly distractions that way, I suppose.

"I have been stranded in this hotel for too long, after fool- ishly fleeing from our homeworld," I told the Hoojum. "I have found myself tempted. I have fantasized of s.e.xual plea- sures and perversions with any number of alien beings here.

I might have acted out some of my desires ... but after seeing your righteous group, I repented of my sinful thoughts, in hor- ror at what I have been contemplating. But I must be cleansed."

The Hoojum looked doubly squeamish. I clutched at his robe, and he flinched. "But what do you need me to do?"

"The scripture is clear on this point." I allowed myself an inner smirk at that one. "To purge all sin from me, I must face the horrors of that which I had once considered. I must have s.e.x with a complete stranger. Only then can I see how horrible it really is."

The Hoojum's jaw dropped open in total astonishment.

"But not only that," I pressed on, "but I must charge money for this act, so that 1 myself can experience the awful punish- ment of the lowliest of all beings-a prost.i.tute!"

He gasped and choked and tried to break away, but my grip on his robe was firm. "Please! You promised! Do this in the name of the Deity and you will be exalted for all time."

"But I must not!"

218 Kevin J. Anderson So, I hit him with the scriptures I had memorized, quoting verse after verse of the vague poetry that seemed to sh.o.r.e up my claim. He countered a few of them, but 1 came up with even more. In the end, I think I exhausted him with my piety, and he began to crumble under his own doubts.

When he took off the moire robe, I was surprised to see a rather scrawny being underneath. The billowing cloth and their overlarge heads make the Hoojums look much more ma.s.sive than they really are. I tried not to stare. He already seemed embarra.s.sed enough.

The s.e.xual act with him was mercifully brief, and he didn't appear to enjoy it at all. He grudgingly paid me with his credit scanner, then fled my room, muttering prayers to him- self. I wondered if the charismatic verse sing had started with- out him.

I transformed again into a more comfortable form, then se- creted a carefully contained packet filled with Hoojum s.e.m.e.n-a packet somehow worth a thousand credits to a Rybet.

In his own quarters, the Rybet leaped up and down with de- light. "You got it!" He splashed off the fungus mound on which he had been napping and waded over to me, his huge mouth hanging open in delight. The semi-mobile algae could not move out of his way quickly enough, and wet green strands clung to his waist and thighs, slowly trying to flee back into the lukewarm water.

"How did you ever get it? Never mind. I don't want to know. Just give it to me."

"Give me my thousand credits first," I countered. Even though I didn't wear a Rybet form this time, I could still be rude.

"Fine, fine." He dumped the money into my account with his credit scanner, and I handed the package over to him.

He held it up to the dim light of the two simulated red suns and looked at the thick gray-blue liquid. "Looks right," he said, bobbing his head up and down in a vigorous nod. "You can't find details like the color of Hoojum s.e.m.e.n in the Lex- icon."

"It's real," I said. "Now are you going to tell me what you want it for?"

THE HAPPY HOOKERMORPH.

219.

In reply, he removed a thin, diamondlike needle from a pouch at his waist. The Rybet dipped the tip of the needle into the clotted Hoojum sperm, swirled it around a few times, then withdrew the needle. A single drop hung like a tiny, cloudy pearl on the point.

The Rybet closed his lantern eyes, took a deep breath of antic.i.p.ation, then jabbed the needle into his fat lips.

His reaction was nearly instantaneous. He let out a loud keening sound from the bottom of his throat. "Yes, oh yes!"

His eyes flung open wide, and his body shuddered so much he almost dropped the rest of the s.e.m.e.n sample. He gulped in a deep breath. "Wow! This is fantastic!"

In my line of work you see a lot of strange things.

Then the Rybet began to jabber at me, stomping around in the wading pool so rapidly that he churned the surface into a froth. "Hoojum sperm is the most intense, stimulating drug we Rybets have ever found. It is so precious, so rare-and so marvelous! Just obtaining it is nearly impossible. What you've given me will be worth millions on the Rybet open market! Oh, you are marvelous, wonderful!"

He looked like he wanted to mate with me again. I think 1 preferred it when he was merely rude. "Here," he said, grab- bing for his credit scanner again. "Just to show how much mis really means to me."

Barely looking at his own stubby fingers, the Rybet punched another 200 credits into my account. At that point I decided to leave, before the drug's euphoria wore off and his rudeness settled back in.

The mysterious Borrak was sitting on the same ill-fitting barstool as if waiting to pounce. 1 looked at its insectile form, wondering what I had botched so badly during my first attempt-after all, if I could succeed in seducing a repressed Hoojum and make him pay for the pleasure, what could pos- sibly be so difficult about a Borrak? I summoned up the spa.r.s.e Lexicon listing again, and immediately noticed the ob- vious.

This specimen was female, not male as I had originally as- sumed. By making my body into a beautiful female as well, I had set myself up as a rival. Hotel Andromeda must be a lonely place for Borraks, and the last thing a single female 220 Kevin J. Anderson would want to see is another more beautiful female on the make!

I slipped out of sight into an unoccupied slaughter lounge where carnivores could select creatures and kill them there or cage them for later consumption in the hotel room- With no one looking, I transformed into my best approximation of a male Borrak this time, with a jagged crest on top of the head and a full blush of mating coloration.

Becoming male doesn't bother me. Hookennorphs are basi- cally genderiess, thought most of my clients are males looking for females. I can do whatever a species wishes-sometimes they are skeptical when I say "anything you want," but believe me, with all the races and all the societies in the galaxy, I can't think of many things that aren't taboo in one culture or another.

Some races express their pa.s.sion through kissing, while others consider the pressing of one's eating orifice against another eat- ing orifice to be the most disgusting thing imaginable. No, be- ing a male Borrak didn't bother me at all.

When I strutted into the bar, concentrating to keep a proper gait with all those segmented legs, I saw the female Borrak straighten from her perch on the barstool and turn both gleaming eyes toward me. Her feelers quivered. I could see her top forelegs fidgeting with nervous antic.i.p.ation.

I walked directly up to her, showed off my mating color- ation. "Hi. Come here often?"

She could barely contain herself and trilled. "Where have you been all my life?" She gestured to the empty barstool be- side her. 1 struggled to clamber onto the stool, wondering how she had ever managed it herself. I was looking like a clumsy fool, but she didn't seem to mind. The Borrak seemed very, very receptive.

In my own excitement at breaking new ground with a little- known species, I did not notice when John-23 stepped into the bar, looking around with his cyborg eye. Beside him was a smartly dressed human woman; the jewels studding her clothes reflected the pearlescent light. He pointed to me.

"Would you be interested in doing something about our ob- vious mutual attraction?*' I asked the Borrak. The tips of her feelers touched mine.

A hand touched my wing casing, a human hand. "There, I've found you, Ilkiy. Could we talk to you for a minute?"

THE HAPPY HOOKERMORPH.

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I turned to see John-23 and his lady companion next to me.

Intimidated by the fearsome appearance of the Borrak, she still looked secretly pleased. "I'm busy at the moment. I'd be happy to arrange a more convenient time."

The woman wasn't John-23's wife, nor anyone else I had *> seen before. "I'll pay you twice whatever this creature is pay- ing you," she said.

The female Borrak reared up in an attack posture, clutching at me with one of her forelegs in a gesture of despair. I stopped the Borrak from doing anything that would have been embarra.s.sing to all concerned, including the hotel manage- ment.

"Relax," 1 told the Borrak. "Enjoy yourself, have another drink." I motioned for one of the robo-bartenders to bring a new slab of the gelatinous intoxicant the Borrak preferred.

"John-23 is paying for it. I'll be back, don't worry." I combed one of the Borrak's feelers through my claws, and she cooed with pleasure. Then I followed John-23 and his lady compan- ion into one of the lobby lounges, out of sight.

"Sorry to interrupt you while you were working, Ilkiy. She asked me to find you right away," John-23 said apologetically.

"This is Mrs. Wenda Cochran. I'll let her explain the rest."

He strode off down the corridor, leaving the two of us alone.

The woman folded her fingers together. I noticed she was wearing a lot of rings. From what I knew of humans, she ^ would have been considered quite beautiful, although she had ^ a hard look to her, like an invisible exoskeleton of her own.

1 could have transformed into something more amenable to * conversation, but I was annoyed at having my all-but- guaranteed score with the Borrak ruined, so I remained in threatening alien form.

"I've heard about what your kind can do," Wenda Cochran said. "I need your services, and I will pay well for them."

I found that rather odd, since she was an attractive member of her own species and should have had little trouble picking an available human male from the other hotel guests. How- ever, she wore her human marriage-bonding ring a bit too prominently for active s.e.xual hunting. But she had requested my services for something, and business is business. "I'm sure I can give you pleasure," I said. "That is my job."

"Oh, you'll give me pleasure, all right," Wenda Cochran 222 Kevin J. Anderson said, "but not in the way you think. I want you to sleep with my husband."

It was a good thing the chitinous face of the Borrak regis- tered little emotion. "Why?" I asked.

She sighed. Her body temperature went up, and I could see an emotional outburst simmering inside her. Tears appeared in her eyes. "My husband is a cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He goes on business trips all over the galaxy and he jumps into bed with any humanoid with compatible s.e.xual organs. I am sick and tired of it. He doesn't know I've followed him here."

I still didn't know where I supposedly fit in. "You are tired of him mating with females other than yourself," I said, con- fused, "and so you wish to hire me to sleep with him?"

"Oh that's not alt. I want you to take him to bed and then scare the bejesus out of him." She snickered then, a harsh and mirthless laugh. "That'll shrivel his little peeper once and for all. I want you to teach him a lesson he'll never forget if he ever gets wandering hormones again."

"I think I understand," 1 said.

"1*11 pay you three times your usual rate," Wenda Cochran said. "It's his own money, and somehow I don't think he'll dispute me charge when it comes through on the credit re- port."

"Rex," I said with a cooing tone in my voice. "I like that name." I stroked his forearm with my enameled fingernails.

Picking up Rex Cochran had been embarra.s.singly easy. I wore a body and face cobbled together from Lexicon entries of gorgeous human female models. I had only to walk slowly into the lounge and bat my eyes ... and Rex was on me like a Lupine male sniffing estrus in the air.

He had short blond hair, broad shoulders, a s.h.i.+rt that fit too tightly, letting curls of chest hair poke through the fabric. A necklace of gold and onyx dangled at his throat. I allowed Rex to buy me a drink, something perfumy and feminine. I laughed at his jokes, I flirted with him. I let him catch me no- ticing his body.

It took him all of fifteen minutes to ask me up to his room.

Since human mating practices are such a matter of public rec- ord, 1 won't go into the details of how he rapidly "seduced"

me. wheedling one item of my clothing off after another, try- THE HAPPY HOOKERMORPH.

223.

ing to hide his wolfish glances. His actions so closely fol- lowed the general description in the Lexicon entry, I had an odd sensation of deja vu.

I thought of his wife Wenda, knowing what Rex did on so many of his "business trips," how she had finally followed him here to the Hotel Andromeda to teach him a well- deserved lesson. As a hookermorph, I try not to be moralistic in such things-but in this case, Wenda Cochran was the ac- tual customer ... and the customer is always right.

When Rex was on top of me and inside me, moving faster and faster after a puzzlingly brief foreplay session, I knew the time had, er, come. I waited a second longer, feeling Rex reach his peak.

Then I let my imagination roam free as I transformed.

Rex looked down to see the voluptuous naked woman he had lured into his bed turn into an octopoid Slimedurg with 'f sulfuric acid hissing out of her pores. I wrapped five tentacles around him like whips and pulled him against me in what seemed a hilarious parody of what I had just been doing as a human female. I tried to draw his face close to my clacking beak for a little kiss. I let greenish saliva dribble out the cor- ner of my mouth.

Rex shrieked and tried to scramble away, sobbing and . howling loud enough to rattle the windows in his room.

^ I rose up from the bed, raising all tentacles and reaching toward him. Then I s.h.i.+fted into a glaring Ice Medusa, with " crystalline claws extending longer than my fingers. "What's the matter, Rex? Don't you want to play anymore?" I took a step toward him, laughing my best imitation of a maniacal beast.

.^ Rex stumbled against the far wall. He couldn't seem to find the door, but he had managed to lose control of his sphincters in a terrible mess.

Just at the moment he found the door and pounded on it.

screaming all the while and trying to activate the mechanism, ^ I transformed my monstrous body into a perfect imitation of Wenda Cochran. "Watch yourself, Rex," I said in her voice, "you keep fooling around on me and you never know what you might pick up."

His eyes bulged out of their sockets again, and Rex Cochran fled naked and shrieking into the corridor.

224 Kevin J. Anderson Just before he turned around for the last time, I observed that Wenda had been right-the experience had certainly shriveled his little peeper.

When I saw the female Borrak still waiting for me at the bar, I decided not to wait long enough for anything else to mess things up. Meeting new clients isn't difficult, but finding a way to contribute to the Lexicon doesn't happen every day, and I wasn't going to let this opportunity slip away from me.

Not many hookermorphs get to be xenosociologists.

I came up behind her, wearing full mating coloration and exuding all the right pheromones. She whirled, looking like a blur of sharp-edged joints and legs. "I knew you'd come back! I've been waiting for so long."

"Sony about that," I said. She didn't seem the least bit in- terested in what the whole business with John-23 and Wenda Cochran had been about. Maybe curiosity wasn't part of the Borrak psyche; that would be in keeping with a lot of other insectile species.

"Please tell me it isn't some cruel joke," she said to me.