19. Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Nineteen
In the days that followed, I was extremely pleased to discover that I was suddenly no longer an outcast on the Trojan Horse.
Zenny was still as rude and aloof as ever, but many of the men had become much friendlier.
They would stop and make conversation with me in the corridor; they would smile at me across the galley when we were gathered for meals; and they would offer to help me with whatever task I’d been assigned for the day.
Whatever the case, I was at first too pleased by this development to look a gift horse in the mouth. Only, it soon became clear to me that there was a marked pattern of when the men—and it was only the men—decided to be friendly with me.
Whenever Ursa wasn’t around.
If Ursa was at my side, the men continued to treat me like a ghost whose presence they were only vaguely aware of.
I could say something to them directly, and they would pass by, as if they hadn’t heard me.
But the moment I was alone, the same man would be tripping over himself, laughing at all my jokes—even the ones that weren’t, strictly speaking, jokes—and behaving rather oddly all around.
Frequently touching my arm and leaning on the wall next to me, for example.
I was utterly perplexed by this behavior. Was it some kind of hazing that the crew members had decided I needed to undergo to really be one of the crew . . . ?
Val must have eventually grown tired of witnessing all the back and forth.
One day, after Alexei—who had cooked the morning’s meal—kept asking me how I liked his sausage,2 I finally admitted that I found it rather tasteless and chewy.
That wasn’t his fault, of course; there were very limited spices onboard, and we all accepted that no one, aside from Burt, was much good at cooking anything remotely palatable.
So I was surprised when Alexei huffed off into the kitchen and began slamming pots and pans around as if I’d insulted his home settlement.
I hadn’t realized Val was paying attention to the exchange. She’d been sitting at one of the other tables, but as soon as Alexei left, she called over to me, “It isn’t about the sausage, sweetling. He wants to know if you’re open.”
She looked at me expectantly. I looked back at her blankly. “Open for what?”
Huffing a laugh, Val shook her head. Then, leaning back on the bench, she deliberately spread her legs wide. “Open.”
My jaw dropped. If there had been pearls round my neck, I likely would have been clutching them. “But . . . I’m a mycologist.” At Val’s eyebrow raise, I persisted, “And I’m with Ursa.”
I don’t know why I whispered that last part. We were the only two people in the room now, and it was hardly a secret these days.
“Yes, that was obvious to everyone when he groped your tits in front of the group.” Val gave me a patronizing sort of smile that I might have taken more personally if we were discussing something in my field of expertise—mushrooms, for example, or Earth survival, or obscure twelfth-century musical compositions.
A conversation of this nature was entirely out of my realm of knowledge, so perhaps she was right to look so supercilious.
“It’s common on long-haul ships like these for women to have more than one partner, especially when we’re so outnumbered.” Something in my expression must have relayed my alarm, because she held up a hand. “Common, not expected or required.”
I breathed a sigh of relief—which proved to be premature, since Val was not finished yet. “I have three companions myself. And Zenny’s a floater—not attached to anyone on the regular, but she’s slept with most of the crew at some point or another.”
I’m astonished I managed to keep my face neutral at this revelation.
Not so much the part about Zenny having multiple partners among the crew; that much had seemed fairly obvious.
I saw her sitting on a different man’s lap practically every night, and it was always a surprise to see who would be coming out of her quarters early in the morning.
But I was surprised by the fact that Val had three companions . . . lovers, I surmised. She certainly wasn’t talking about three chess partners, even I wasn’t that naive. I’d only ever seen her with Burt, though, so I’d assumed they were a couple.
As if she’d read my thoughts, Val elaborated, “Burt is my primary. But I do have an emotional and sometimes physical bond with Rune. Felix is just occasional sex.”
I choked on the coffee that I had, unfortunately, been sipping at just that moment. Good Havens. That sounded like it would require an awful lot of stamina, to maintain physical relationships with three different men. I had enough of a time trying to keep up with Ursa.
Without going into too much detail, it was as though all of Ursa’s pent-up energy was finally being released.
Poor man, he’d been living on his own for so long, and without Pleasure Machines.
I could hardly begrudge him the almost constant need to be touching me, kissing me.
Biting me. Licking me. Sheathing himself inside me every chance he got.
And if I’m being honest . . . I suppose I must have had some pent-up energy, too, that I had not fully realized until I met Ursa. I’d always thought the Pleasure Machines fulfilled all of my sexual needs, and further, that my needs in this particular area were quite minimal.
But wasn’t I reaching for Ursa almost as often as he was reaching for me? Pulling him closer, wrapping my legs around him, moaning his name. Rubbing my body against him and begging him, Please, Ursa, please . . .
I wondered, purely out of curiosity, if perhaps I’d have enough stamina to sustain three men’s needs.
Or even an entire crew, like Zenny. Perhaps if none of them was Ursa.
He was like an entire army unto himself.
I couldn’t imagine having more than one of him.
3 And I also couldn’t imagine anyone other than him touching me, holding me, kissing me.
The idea of it made me physically recoil. I was Ursa’s, and Ursa’s alone.
“No,” I told Val decisively. “I’m not open. Can you help me get the word out to the men?”
It might mean that all of this newfound friendliness would cease.
So be it. I didn’t want the sorts of friends who were only trying to get into my pants.
And perhaps if the men knew I wasn’t an option, they would stop thinking of me as a sexual prospect and would then see me as simply a person.
Perhaps we could actually become true colleagues.
And believe me, it had not escaped my attention, the ridiculousness of the situation I was in. I, Minerva Eloise Smithe-Canfield, longtime spinster, suddenly turning away suitors left and right because I was so irresistible. What a preposterous position I’d found myself in.
Val nodded back to me, rising to her feet. “Sure. But you might want to consider it a little longer. We non-mods might as well benefit while we can before we get back to the Havens and the space goggles come off . . .”
I confess it took me some time to realize what Val was inferring.
I’d not heard that term—space goggles—before, but I was familiar with the concept of scarcity.
On many spacebound vessels, including the Trojan Horse, women were vastly outnumbered by men.
On smaller ships like these, which could not provide the luxuries of bigger transport vessels such as Pleasure Machines, most people resorted to physical stimulation to satisfy those urges.
Copulation, etcetera. Thus, women became highly coveted because they were so few in number, not because they themselves were particularly attractive.
To put it more plainly, my desirability was infinitely increased aboard this isolated vessel. Here, I would receive more attention than anywhere else—not because I was suddenly irresistible, but because there were no better options.
It put the behavior of some of my shipmates into clearer perspective.
No one ever ventured too close if Ursa was nearby, but I did one time drop a pen in the cargo deck only to have three men lunge for it all at once and grapple with each other over who got to hand it back to me.
At the time, I chalked this up to unexpected smuggler chivalry, but with this new information in mind, I realized they might have actually been fighting over who would get the chance to interact with me.
They were terrifically horny; it had been too long between ports; and I was here. That was the extent of my allure.
It ought to have been flattering, I suppose. No one has ever accused Minerva Eloise Smithe-Canfield of being a great beauty, so I ought to have been grateful for the scraps.
Instead, I was deeply irritated. Honestly, what nonsense.
Why didn’t the men just pool their resources together and splurge on a pleasure unit, instead of propositioning every woman who came onboard?
How could I possibly have my ego stroked by knowing I was only desired because no one better was around?
Rolling my eyes to myself, I resolved to clean up my tray and head back to my room.
Perhaps if I was surlier with the crewmates, in combination with Val spreading the word about my lack of availability, that would buy me some peace from these unwanted solicitations.
The thought of multiple partners already held no appeal to me, but especially now when I considered how little their attraction to me would mean, and how much Ursa’s did.
Out of everyone he’d encountered on Earth—all the smuggling vessels, all the research expeditions—he’d singled me out, chosen me.
Pleased by this recognition, I resolved to find Ursa and kiss him senseless and show him just how much his devotion meant to me.
But then a sudden thought drew me up short.
Was that true? I’d grown up on Haven 3, surrounded by potential sexual partners of every shape and size. I knew what my options were. I knew that Ursa was the person I would choose, again and again, above anyone else in the universe.
Could the same be said for Ursa, though?
His pool of partners had been so much smaller than mine.
The expeditions to Earth were difficult to coordinate and thus infrequent, and assuming he was primarily attracted to women, Ursa’s sample size would have been very limited, since women were (unfortunately) still statistically less likely to be chosen for lengthy expeditions.
How many women could he have actually seen over the years?
Not many, I’d wager. Less than one hundred over the span of his lifetime?
It was scarcity of a different but no less profound kind. Earth goggles, maybe, rather than space goggles.
For the first time, it struck me that things might change once we reached civilization. People. So many people. I knew what else was out there, but did Ursa, really?
Would the Earth goggles come off?
1. Never!
2. Protein-substitute sausage, to be clear. Our rations were not nearly that fancy aboard a smuggling ship.
3. Well, strictly speaking, once the thought crossed my mind of having more than one Ursa at a time, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant prospect, even if somewhat impractical.