[center][b]Attraction Planning[/b][/center]

[center]By Kaydrien Iceclaw[/center]



“How did you get this past the funding committee?” Nuvoil hissed. “To clarify, I do actually want an answer, in case this thing rendered that as a rhetorical.”

The Seban tapped at the metallic medallion around her primary neck, built with the finest commercially available circuitry and software to render her sibilants and shrieks into something understandable by her listener. No similar device existed to read body language, but Traakyk Qov was familiar enough with her to think he read some admiration in the curve of her secondary necks/upper arms/however you chose to translate the two grey-blue plated extremities that came from her ‘shoulders’, above her primary manipulating arms.

“It wasn’t nearly as difficult as you’d think.” Traakyk knew the sounds his own translator was making were the Seban equivalents of his graceful, eloquent squawks and trills. On an emotional level he always had trouble believing that; one of these days he was going to have to take her up on the suggestion that they take some genuine language lessons. When there was time, of course. “It’s all how you describe it. If I told them ‘I want money to set up a chain of interspecies sex clubs’, then of course they would have plucked me before they had me thrown out.”

“I bet it would have worked on a T’jell committee.” Nuvoil replied wryly. It must have been his imagination, but Traakyk’s first thought was that she had layered enough humor into her statement to come through even an electronic voice. He had to grip his tripartite beak to keep him from clacking it in the sound that served his species as laughter. The T’jell probably [i]would[/i] go for that, and it wouldn’t surprise him if they already had competing brand names for the niche. “So, what [i]did[/i] you tell them?”

“Easy. I called it ‘a series of facilities designed to expedite interspecies social mingling, communication, and recreation in a relaxed environment’.” He chirped smugly, settling back into his chair to let her look past him to the details he had on his computing terminal. “With dining, live entertainment, merchandising, and private rooms rentable for special occasions.”

“By which you mean suggestive date food, strippers-“ Her translator took a detour from her main statement to append ‘ALTERNATE MEANINGS: HOOKERS, COURTESANS, SEX WORKERS; ORIGINAL WORD HAS LIGHTHEARTED OR HUMOROUS CONNOTATIONS’, in a more mechanical voice, to the term ‘strippers’. As a result it finished her statement well after she did. “-sex toys, and temporary fuck-nests for anyone in too much of a hurry to bring their new friends home.”

“Or too shy to get intimate in the club booths.” Traakyk clapped his feathered hands together in what was, he had often been assured, incredibly easy to mistake for the rudest of all rude gestures to a Seban. He knew Nuvoil would take it for the encouragement it was. “I’m surprised your software considered ‘strippers’ worthy of a footnote but not ‘fuck-nest’.”

Nuvoil wriggled her head in a sine-wave; a shrug. “And none of them caught on?”

“To be honest, I didn’t really expect to get away with it. My people either didn’t notice or didn’t feel the need to start moralizing about it. Which means they didn’t notice. I think the T’jell consultant worked it out immediately, bless their deviant little heart, and gave me their full support before I even finished my pitch.” The avian moved his chair enough to allow his friend to page through his files on her own. “I don’t know if your guy- the Seban consultant, I mean- put the pieces together or not and I’m not sure it matters…”

“My people don’t give a damn as long as overall cooperation gets the federation off their backs about the size of our fleets.” She agreed. The Seban Polity had an unhealthy attachment to their ships and every one of the ridiculous number of guns they sported. They were proud of it, too. “Head office would tell him to whore himself out at your new club if it saved them another round of nitpicking ship classifications.”

“That’s about what I figured. I think he was just giving everything a pass. And as for the Qvarg representative…” Traakyk took advantage of his honest-to-ancestors shoulders to perform an [i]actual[/i] shrug, watching the Seban poring over his plans with an infrared adaptor to account for her sense of ‘sight’. “He was the one I was worried about most, but he said yes almost as fast as the T’jell. Who knows what that means.”

“Maybe one of the magic lizard-rocks likes your idea. Who knows?” Leaning back, the extremely intelligent mollusk ‘looked’ back at him through blank infrared-sensitive skin. “Okay, I can see how you managed. You still have some serious courage putting that in front of your uptight credit-pinchers.”

“You think [i]I’m[/i] brazen, you should see some of the other stuff that got through. In addition to my little clubs, the new resort world is going to have at least one religion fetishism ‘shrine’.”

“…You’re [i]kidding[/i].” Nuvoil felt this was absurd enough to warrant flipping the switch for a tone of added emphasis.

“I am not.” Traakyk preened, waiting for the absurdity of the situation to sink in fully for his friend. “Not that she called it that. I thought my doubletalk was pretty good after I practiced my speech for three days straight, but this woman was an absolute con artist.”

“I have no idea what to say to that. Except ‘why does it not surprise me that your species found a way to fetishize religion?’”

“I probably can’t argue. So, this brings me around to my reason for bringing this up.” The birdlike sapient ground his lower beaks together for a moment, gathering up the nerve to ask what he wanted to. “Would you be my business partner on this one?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Traakyk.” Nuvoil reared back, clacking together her manipulator claws. Traakyk felt himself begin to deflate, the tension of high hopes dashed. 

“Of [i]course[/i] I’m in.”

To her great satisfaction, he froze totally motionless for a full minute before leaping high into the air, feathers puffing out in his shirt and around his head. She considered this an absolutely adorable display of shocked happiness, and one she rarely got to see. He darted forward to hug her, rubbing against her leathery plates in a gesture that seemed universal to those sapient species with a pair each of arms and legs. She returned it, with some difficulty; It always felt awkward, a little too much like she was grasping a prey-fish for consumption.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Traakyk’s raucous gratitude made her glad most Ikar structures were soundproofed by default. “You absolutely won’t regret it, I assure you.”

“I think that regret is rather unlikely.” Nuvoil agreed, nuzzling in between his shoulder blades with one of her secondary mouths. She brought the display back up with her off-claw. “I do have a few questions though. Things to make sure of.”

“By all means.” The bird pulled back, smoothing his feathers to something less ridiculously puffy. “I asked you because I know you’ll cover my blind spots, after all.”

“[UNTRANSLATABLE, NEAREST APPROXIMATION ‘Hmmmm.’]” Scrolling through the display, the Seban started out with her most immediate concern. “So, what is your plan to keep from being shut down the instant they see what you’re really doing?”

“You’ll need to talk with Kurrritk about the details, she’s going to be my main legal resource.” He opened a second display to begin a list of contacts and information he would need to send his new business partner. “But as I understand it, since we’re technically under the federation interspecies outreach program, it will actually be very difficult to withdraw our permissions once we first open. [i]Especially[/i] if our patrons are happy with the services.”

“Which we’ll do our best on. Shouldn’t be hard, our target audience is pretty starved of good opportunities to indulge.” She twined one of her lower tentacle-legs with the Ikar male’s ankle. “What’s this?”

“That’s the budget for keeping a few-“ Traakyk’s beak clapped shut, and he cringed, making himself small in his seat. The tentacle around his ankle had gone still. “Gra’anar Pond Feeders.”

“As in the livestock?” Nuvoil was leaned in close to the screen, double-clicking into the details of that budget item and scanning through the floorplan allocations. “Why.”

The xenophilic sociologist-turned-entrepreneur twitched his head nervously. He didn’t need to speak Seban fluently to know it was more a statement of disbelief and/or disgust and/or awe than a question. Probably a bit of all three.

“It wasn’t my idea.” Traakyk assured her. “One of my backers suggested it. He has the numbers to support it as a net profit, Kurrritk say’s it’s legally workable- she said it surprised her just [i]how[/i] workable- and I’ve already had two discrete inquiries about pricing from interested parties.”

After a long moment, Nuvoil’s arms and neck unstiffened, moving back into her more relaxed state of unceasing gentle undulations. 

“All right, I suppose. Just don’t expect me to manage anything related to that part.”

“Of course not.” The avian let himself unfurl a little bit.

“And I would definitely un-target any marketing about that as far as Seban customers go. In fact, move these down to the basements of the locations you expect the fewest of my people. It would be awkward.”

“We can certainly do that. …You must admit that as much as your species considers them crude farm animals, they’re pretty spot on for an awful many people’s tentacle monster fantasies.”

“So I should switch from being offended that you’re going to be peddling sexual favors from livestock, to being offended because my position is threatened?” The tone of her hissing strongly suggested that she was already over her initial dismay.

“Hardly. You’re so much more refined. No comparison.” Traakyk risked a clack-laugh. “This corners the kitsch market though. And I’m told we might be able to do something with Clorroil Stalkers, if we can find some as volunteers.”

“Now you’re talking. Tell me the minute you find any takers.” She flicked the upper beak of the impertinently chattering bird. “Enough of that. You mentioned a Qvarg is supporting this. Have you made plans for Qvarg patrons? They’re lithoid.”

“Amazingly, they’re the least problematic federation member species to accommodate.”

“Really?”

“Their biochemistry is so different that they sidestep all of the allergy and toxicology concerns entirely, and the heavy metals issue is just a myth. No problem at all if nobody ingests their internal organs, which I’m not expecting. On top of that, Qvarg secretions are silicone based, and their sexual organs range from glassy for some subspecies to rubbery.”

Nuvoil’s head bobbled in mirth. “You’re telling me that they’re all self-lubricating sex toys?”

“You could say the comparison is unavoidable.” Traakyk brought up a photograph on his display. “That’s actually one of our few problems in dealing with them. We’ll need to avoid low-grade silicone toys for merchandise purposes, because of the risk of those, ah, melting in use. Silver lining: Low-grade silicone toys could be added to our catering for Qvarg customers if we can find makers with a consistently tasty formula.”

 “Well, it doesn’t hurt to be known for quality. You’ll want informational packets on do’s and don’ts with other species to mention not to swallow after blowing one of these guys.”

“Good catch. I mean, that’s good practice in general but it is probably worth giving a specific mention.” The bird made a note of it on his terminal. “What else?”

“I’ll need to take a closer look over the files, and check my reference materials.” She was, of course, referring to her carefully hoarded stash of difficult-to-acquire amateur interspecies pornography. The federation hadn’t been officially allowing most casual interspecies contact outside of diplomatic channels for more than a few years, so it was a much smaller collection than she would have liked. “I’ve got one other thing though. You don’t have condoms for Seban males on the supplies list.”

“…I couldn’t find a good supply.” Traakyk admitted. “Seban penises are just too complicated.”

“Hardly our fault if the rest of the federation’s males are so boring.” She teased. “I can help you out on that one, easy. Might be best to get some prophylactic fabricators too. They’re a little pricy, but they’ll pay for themselves when you start getting customers from client and immigrant species.”

“They make those? In the age of temporary sterilizations and convenient chemical preventatives?” The bird stared at the tentacled, beaky mollusk regarding him tolerantly from less than a meter away. “Not that many of those are widely accepted in Republic space, of course. Too many of the cults don’t like them.”

“There’s more reasons than just preventing inconvenient young to use a barrier device.” Nuvoil tolerantly avoided poking fun at some of her friend’s species’ ‘primitive superstitions’. Truth be told she didn’t care one way or the other, and it wasn’t her problem. “Even with most social diseases being biologically incompatible. There’s the potential allergy problem- which, I assume, is why you have a handy supply for everyone else on here-“

“And I hear the T’jell are working on a way to hybridize without complicated technological intervention. Just thinking ahead. The Qvarg too, supposedly, but I don’t believe that one for a second: How would that even work?”

The mollusk paused to shake away the absurdity of one of the mobile and chatty geodes (lizardlike appearance notwithstanding) having children with anyone made of carbon-based meat. “…Interesting. But anyway, there’s also people who just like using them for their own sake.”

“I have trouble believing that.” Traakyk poised himself to make notes anyway. If Nuvoil bothered to say it, the chances of her being wrong approached nil. “Why?”

“Some just like the feel. Some go for something a little thicker as a way to last longer. Some enjoy being able to see how much spunk they put out. Some use them to keep score. Some like to minimize cleanup. Probably other reasons I don’t know anything about.”

“If you say so.” He tapped away at his input pad. “I guess I’d better budget in some of those ridiculous flavored and textured variations I saw on the commnet then too.” Traakyk squawked once indignantly. “And ‘boring’? Please, I’ll have you know we Ikar are plenty exotic.”

“Sure you are. [WORDING SUGGESTS STATEMENT IS SARCASTIC OR HUMOROUS.]” Nuvoil slithered closer. Or rather pulled him closer to her, chair and all. with her lower appendages. “Last I heard birdy boys like you don’t have anything at all down there.”

“Must I extoll the virtues of the humble cloaca? The intimacy of the kiss that gives life? The closeness that comes of such subtle twining?” Traakyk puffed himself up, drawing his chest up full with a large breath and flaring the colorful tufts of feathers at the sides of his head. He began to croon in a trilling sing-song. “I shall sing of the beauty of our plumage, I sing of the winds of our mighty passions, I have sung of our sweet undervents in the warmth of lovemaking-“

One tendril, the left secondary mouth, wrapped around his beak to cut off further singing, turning the monologue into a lilting whistle through his nares. Still a rather pretty sound, in her estimation. 

“You needn’t advertise to me, little bird. But I could never get tired of listening.” Nuvoil’s sibilants sounded rather threatening to the Ikar ear, and the translation voice while pleasant was anything but seductive, but the tendril she snaked into the collar of his loose robe more than got her intent across. She bumped her beak against his, releasing it from her grip. “Did you have something more you wanted to suggest? If not, I really should get back to my home to familiarize myself with your operations.”

“Would you like to- that is.” Traakyk fought down his first crude suggestion, tried to think of something more romantic while she smoothed a limb over one of his tufts. “I may not have other parts, but I am a hard worker.”

“I liked where your first try was going.” Now nearly resting her large central mass on his lap, Nuvoil deftly undid the fastenings on his robe from the inside and out at the same time. She nibbled at the top of his beak with her own, hard enough to scuff its smooth surface. “But we’ll call that good enough. I’m interested in what you can do with this funny clam-cracker of yours.”

The Ikar tittered, nuzzling against the side of her neck while she continued to undo his clothing. He struggled not to start singing again, not entirely successful. “I don’t… know if you did that on purpose, or… if your translator made a dirty joke all on its own.”

“Oh?” She had his robe open to his waist, revealing the way his feathers were puffed out around his slender chest. One of her lower ‘legs’ took up where her arm left off. “What dirty joke is that?”

“The, ah…” Traakyk wished Sebans typically wore clothing so he could return the favor of undressing her. But really, there was very little practical way to get more than a belt on a central bulbous body ringed by a variety of differently designed tendrils and limbs. He wondered if he could design some sort of silky harem-girl accoutrements for any Seban dancers he employed going forward, and settled for rubbing over the large smooth plates of her front. “’Clam’ is sometimes used as slang for a female’s…”

“Oh, I [i]see[/i].” The emphasis tone of the translator-voice would have been humorous under other circumstances, but right now the avian under Nuvoil’s increasingly handsy coils it was hard to think of it that way. “What do you call a male’s cloaca then?”

She’d made enough progress to dive one tendril into the mostly-open folds of the robe and brush up against his vent, making him shake slightly. “Ah! Careful! I’m sensiti- yes, thank you. We call it a mussel.”

“[Laughter]” Nuvoil reached the end of the fastenings, lifting herself to pull his robe open entirely and settle her smoothness against his puffed-out front and black-feathered hips, looping three arms around his back. “Now you’ve done it as well. I’ll explain the pun later. For now, I need you in a more convenient position.”

She cut off his attempt to ask what she meant by lifting herself away from the chair, and him with her. The surprisingly strong limbs put them both on the thin rug of the floor, her weight on his chest forcing out his breath with a whistle before she took a little more of her own heft off using the arms she’d wrapped around him. The mollusk rotated herself around, spinning above him to face her body the opposite way even as she used her long neck to look back at him with her smooth eyeless face.

“There we go. Your lovely [i]clam-cracker[/i] all lined up with my clam.” She burbled another chuckle, rubbing her front against the still-poofed feathers along his belly in a way that waved the ‘clam’ through his field of view. “I think you can figure out the rest.”

“Just as soon as I get over you bruising my ribs.” Traakyk made a cawing hack, rubbing at his sides. “Careful please! Hollow bones.”

“The poor, delicate little Ikar should have thought of that before making love-songs to the aggressive Seban warrioress.” She responded happily. “Perhaps I can distract my fragile little bird from his war-wounds, like this.”

One of her secondary mouths, smaller and thinner than her main head, nipped at the inside of his thigh, just to the side of his exposed and unfeathered pink hole, which winked once in the dry air of the sitting room. His jerk stabbed his beak into an off-white part of her underside, causing her no apparent discomfort through her rubbery hide. “Gah! Warn me next time!”

“Maybe I’ll have more mercy if you get to work sooner.” Nuvoil swayed her pendulous body from side to side, barb-bristled tail-tentacle curled up and over to sway in loops around her head. “Don’t keep me waiting. That could be dangerous.”

Deciding that his impromptu lover might have a point, Traakyk reached up to grab the edges of her body on either side of her tail, just inside the back pair of ‘legs’ suspending her over him, and took a look at his assigned project. It was a long slit, bordered on either side by a raised lip. The muscle of that lip had pulled back, exposing a diamond of pale off-white flesh glistening like the skin of some strange sea-slug (an entirely appropriate comparison, considering the Seban evolutionary tree). One small unremarkable hole was tightly closed in a star at the upper end, and below that…

“I take it back. The rest of us really are boring if this is what Seban females have.” Her inner slit was lined by interlocking nubs, slithering over each other wetly as the sides moved counter to each other in the alien’s arousal.

“Never seen a Seban’s shellfish? I’m surprised.” She never took her gaze off him. With her other mouths teasing at the feathers on either side of Traakyk’s vent, she didn’t need to.

“Not up close. Only a few bootleg holos.” He traced a thumb over the zippered bumps, watching her entrance pull open slightly under the stimulation. “Your pornographers seem more interested in what you do with your limbs.”

“Not something that ever interested me as much. But then I always was a [STATEMENT CUT OFF. PREDICTED LAST WORD: PERVERT.]” Not feeling like waiting for the deviant mollusk to get bored and nip him again, Traakyk had darted forward to poke his curved beak-tip into her female entrance. He bobbed his head, dragging his hard mouth up and down over the (apparently quite sensitive) rows of nubs at her entrance. “[NONVERBAL VOCALIZATIONS. 96.3% MATCH FOR SEXUAL PLEASURE.]”

He pulled back out to speak, beaktip glistening with Nuvoil’s secretions. “Let’s stop talking for a while and concentrate.”

“Agreed.” Her head darted out of view, and an instant later Traakyk felt the bridge of her chitinous beak rubbing gently against his cloaca, and her other mouths preening at his tailfeathers where they were pressed against the floor. Likely they would be thoroughly mussed up. Oh well.

He returned his beak to her bumpy snatch, repeating his vertical rub along the shallows before delving a little deeper. The Ikar had worried for a while that the sharp tip of his hard black mouth might be painful to the female, but one accidental jab into the side of her heavily irregular inner walls produced a [98% MATCH FOR SEXUAL PLEASURE] rather than the expected shriek of pain, and he set out to stab her on purpose every once in a while instead.

Meanwhile she explored his ‘less interesting’ nether regions. In contrast to her lower vent, his opened directly onto a single passage which would only branch off into his reproductive tract a little further in. Pink smooth walls were lined with a surprising amount of muscle, which kissed back at the smooth surface of her beak. Ample evidence that the avians could quite effectively ‘make out’, as the T’jell termed it, with no lips at all on their heads. Mindful of his comparative sensitivity she only ground the bridge of her face against his lower entrance for now while it worked around her hardness.

Traakyk continued his exploration of the seemingly endless fleshy depth, having to stop every once in a while to pull back and open his beak against her muscled walls enough to let him draw in more air. A salty seafood flavor came in along with it, trickling in a few lonely drips into his mouth. Down below he felt Nuvoil prod at his hole in her own initial attempt at spelunking, nosing her own much broader beak against a hole intended as exit only. He didn’t mind, jabbing himself back in to return the favor and getting a closer view of those nubs than he could have any other way. At this rate he would fit his entire beak into the Seban on top of him before this was over.

That happened much sooner than he expected. The muscled walls around him convulsed, tightening and actively pulling him further in until feathers pressed against both sets of her outer lips. Her vagina pulsed and squeezed rhythmically around his tripartite beak, suction never letting up.

“[98.2% MATCH FOR SEXUAL PLEASURE, PROBABLE ORGASM.]”

Nuvoil had pulled away from his cloaca, any unoccupied tentacles writhing in the air and against the floor, her body wobbling threateningly above him. Thankfully she managed to keep herself supported. Traakyk didn’t think he would have been able to take that along with the way her orgasm seemed to drag on and on. The firm grip her female parts had on his beak was so tight that he couldn’t pull back, forced to stay deeply inside her for so long his lungs started to burn. He couldn’t open his mouth to breath against the clenching force of her pussy, and if he could it was pulling him so deep he wouldn’t be able to do more than futilely strain to inhale her very flesh.

Finally, just when his vision was starting to go gray around the edges and he was beginning to actually worry about suffocating in the snatch of the many-limbed woman, her climax ended. He pulled back, banging his head against the carpeted floor to expel the used-up air in his lungs with a loud [i]caw[/i] and gasp in more life-giving oxygen. “Ancestors. Do you always-”

Nuvoil must not have been interested in his question in the wake of her climax, because she interrupted him with a nip at the edge of his cloaca. She shoved the tip of her face into him as hard as she could, spreading him to a degree that would have been uncomfortable if not for the degree of his arousal, and rhythmically tried her level best to batter her entire head into him.

“Oh ancestors! Sky and storm, you caAAAAAAAK C-“ He dissolved into incoherent trilling that he was pretty sure she would hear translated as a near 100% certainty of sexual pleasure, consciousness melting into the relentless stimulation of his vent. Whether she got a warning of his impending climax or not he couldn’t tell, but she chose the exact moment to pull her primary mouth away and drive one of her secondary mouth-limbs entirely into his spasming cloaca, sliding it in and out in shallow thrusts while he twitched around her. Watery white semen spurted and squelched around the intrusion, his orgasm drawn out by the absurd degree of stimulation.

When he’d emptied himself entirely, or rather several minutes afterward once Nuvoil was done railing his poor overstimulated hole, she pulled out with a wet [i]schlorp[/i]. The Seban lifted herself up and away from him and took one sidestep to let herself bonelessly (literally bonelessly) to the rug beside him. She didn’t turn her body, just curling her long neck back to rest her ‘head’ on his heaving chest. (Really, her brain was located somewhere in her trunk, but Traakyk thought it counted.)

“Not boring at all, my little birdy.” If she made any equivalent to his out-of-breath pleasured pants, her translator didn’t bother to mention them. “You can eat my clam any time.”

“I think I will cultivate a taste for seafood.” He agreed, staring up at the abstract geometry of the ceiling. “I might need to get a rebreather though, because-“

The angry buzz of his front doorbell cut him off before giving way to a familiar squawking tirade.

“Traak, you degenerate xenofucker! The entire building could hear that you wretched tinniktli.” The Ikar haranguing him through the speaker used an archaic and, to a non-Ikar, mostly incomprehensible religious slur. Traakyk idly wondered how Nuvoil’s translator rendered it. “If you bring your horrible T’jell whore around just [i]one more time,[/i] I’m reporting you for disturbing the peace.”

“Good luck on that.” He knew the annoyed neighbor couldn’t hear him and was probably already stomping off down the hall back to their own domicile. Well, he wasn’t worried. He’d already checked, and he wasn’t in breach of any secular, or major religious, laws.

“T’jell whore? Should I be jealous?” Nuvoil stroked down his side with one of her limbs, not moving her main mouth from where she had rested it.

“Ambassadorial goodwill attaché.” Which, if one went by the half-true jokes, meant about the same as ‘whore’. Just somehow classier [i]and[/i] cheaper. “He’s visited once or twice. It’s done terrible things to my reputation.” Traakyk admitted without a shred of regret.

“Sounds like your neighbors know you better than your investors.”

“Thank the ancestors for that.” Traakyk sighed in contentment. “Regular meetings to discuss the project?”

“Why, certainly. We have a lot to discuss. Do you think you would be able to invite this T’jell? I’d be very interested in his… viewpoint.”

“As the prophets say, many eyes together see all. I’m sure he’d be happy to lend his expertise.”



[center]The End[/center]