Falling for Kindred Claus Read online

  “Oh, of course. I wouldn’t want to give offense,” Lisa said, gratefully belting the robe—which felt like it was made of feathers—around her waist.

  “Come then—let us go.” And Lambada glided away, leading Lisa out of the changing area and into a whole other part of the baths.

  If the purification process he’d had to go through was only of the medium variety, he would hate to see what the maximum level was, Asher thought grimly as he followed Natillus to the holy mists.

  First he had been stripped and then submerged in a pool of icy cold liquid which was a shock to his entire system. Then Natillus led him shivering to another pool—this one boiling hot—which left his skin lobster-red. After that it was back to the icy pool again and then on to the “tunnel of scouring.”

  This turned out to be a long passageway he had to walk through filled with dozens of mechanical arms, each tipped with a type of brush. Some had soft bristles but some were stiff and harsh and all of them seemed to be scrubbing various parts of his body at once as he walked slowly through the gauntlet of arms.

  At last he was relieved when Natillus pronounced him pure enough to enter the holy mists. Asher only hoped that when he saw Lisa there, she would not have undergone the same treatment he had. Even the emergency and holiday pay wouldn’t be enough to off-set such a punishing routine and she might be very upset—even traumatized—at this point, and wishing she had never come with him in the first place.

  So he was eager to see her, to make certain she was all right. But as they entered the mists, though he looked high and low, he didn’t see her anywhere.

  Twenty-Two

  The holy mists turned out to be a huge room—about twice as big as a basketball court, Lisa estimated—filled with a warm, steamy mist like a sauna.

  She and Lambada took off their robes and hung them on hooks on the wall by the door that led into the area and then Lisa stood there, with her arms wrapped around herself. She was shivering despite the warmth, mostly because she disliked feeling so exposed.

  But this is what you signed up for, she reminded herself sternly. You knew you were going to have to wear the crazy underwear and walk around in public. Kat warned you and you agreed to it. Remember how much you’re getting paid by the hour, Lisa. It’s time to suck it up and do this!

  Her inner pep-talk strengthened her resolve so when Lambada said,

  “Are you ready to enter the mists, Lady Lisa?”

  Lisa nodded firmly.

  “Let’s go,” she said, thinking that the sooner they started this, the sooner it would be over. “Uh—where are we going, though?” she added uncertainly. She hoped they weren’t going to wander around in the warm, steamy room in their obscene underwear for hours. How long, exactly, did it take to be “purified?”

  “Natillus and I always like to meet under the mouth of Thufar when we come to be purified,” Lambada said serenely. “It is in the very center of the room,” she added by way of explanation and then glided away into the mists with her chewchie chattering happily on her head.

  Lisa followed quickly, not wanting to lose sight of her guide. The mist swirling around the vast room was so thick it was difficult to see more than three feet in front of her and it would be easy to get lost.

  As they walked, she occasionally saw more of the Chorkay people wandering through the large room. They appeared out of the warm vapor like ghosts coming out of a fog, Lisa thought—sometimes a single male or female but most often in pairs or threes and she remembered that they apparently viewed group marriages here as valid as couples joining.

  All of the Chorkay she saw had chewchies riding on their heads and all of them were naked—or at least they looked naked, in the case of the females. They gave Lisa curious looks, though no one said anything to her, and she had to confess, she looked back. The Chorkays were just so strange looking—strange but interesting. And she had to admit, she wanted to know if the male Chorkay genitals were as different as the female ones.

  Of course, she couldn’t just stare at someone’s crotch so she tried to be subtle about it and only look from the corner of her eye as she passed someone in the mists.

  She had just determined that while the Chorkay men had only one penis, (which appeared to curve upward at the end in a startling-kind of corkscrew shape,) they certainly had three testicles…when Lisa realized she was lost.

  She looked around and then turned in a circle, frowning. Where was Lambada? She couldn’t remember hearing the other woman’s voice in some time and Lisa didn’t see her anywhere.

  Maybe she ought to call for her? But the silence in the large, misty room stopped her. Nobody seemed to be talking much at all, except for a murmur here or there to their mate or mates. Lisa remembered that this was a sacred space—she didn’t want to offend anyone by “shouting down the house” as her mom would have said.

  Well, Lambada had said they were going to meet at the mouth of Thufar—whatever that was—in the middle of the room. Of course, it was impossible to tell in the thick mists where the middle might be, but it seemed to Lisa that her only option was to keep wandering around the room and hope that she ran into someone she knew. Also, she would keep her eye out for the landmark—the mouth of Thufar—though she had no idea what it might look like—and just hope for the best.

  It seemed she had been wandering for hours when she nearly ran into a Chorkay man who seemed to appear out of nowhere. He was completely naked, of course, with a bright orange chewchie nesting in his fringe of turquoise hair.

  “Oh, excuse me,” she mumbled and tried to duck around him. But the Chorkay man moved to block her path.

  “Hello, lovely one,” he said to Lisa, his three red eyes raking over her body. “You must be from a different place, as I am myself.”

  “I’m from Earth,” Lisa said, surprised into talking to him, though she really didn’t want to.

  “And I am a representative from the Southern continent,” the man said.

  “The, uh, Southern continent? I didn’t know you had a Southern continent here on Helios Beta,” Lisa remarked, not knowing what else to say.

  Now that she looked at him, he didn’t look like a regular Chorkay. His skin was deep purple instead of blue and one of his eyes—the third one in the middle—was shrunken and slitted, almost like it was blind. The red eyeball inside the tiny shrunken socket was blurry and clouded and didn’t seem to see anything. However, the alien male made up for this by staring at her avidly with his two good eyes.

  She tried to not notice the way he was looking her over and made an effort not to look below his waistline herself. She concentrated, instead, on his chewchie, which was different from any of the others she had seen.

  The little creature didn’t seem to have the light, feathery fur she’d seen on other chewchies for one thing. Instead it seemed to have scales, rather like a snake. Other than that, it still looked like a cross between a monkey and a cat but she thought it might have been less horrific looking if it appeared to be a kind of reptile, as the scales seemed to imply. As it was, it reminded her a little of one of those awful-looking hairless Sphinx cats but with tiny clawed hands and large, luminous poison-green eyes that glowed in the misty room.

  “Ah yes, the Southern continent,” the strange Chorkay male mused, sounding both proud and homesick at the same time. “We still live above ground there, you know—instead of dwelling in these stifling tunnels,” he added with a grimace of distaste.

  “Ah…I see.” Lisa nodded, wishing she knew how to extract herself from the conversation without offending him. “And are you here for the coronation tomorrow?” she asked politely.

  “Most assuredly.” He nodded. “I am a special envoy sent from my people to make peace. For years we of the Southern continent have warred with the people of the Northern desert lands,” he went on. “But what more auspicious time than at the coronation of the new Potentate to call a truce to our endless war?”

  “Um, of course. That seems like a very, uh, au