He pulled himself away, turning to face her, though keeping his knees up modestly—not soon enough to hide how he was responding to her, though. “I’m a married man, dammit. How dare you?”

“What?!” she exclaimed. “Sir, I’m just trying to keep you warm! If anyone’s feeling anything sexual, it’s you!” she said, nodding toward the proof.

“You expect me to believe that? I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at me and smiling since we ended up here.”

“Because I think it’s so silly that you feel you have to hide from me!”

“I’m your commanding officer and I love my wife!”

She knew they were miscommunicating. She sometimes forgot that many humans perceived all nudity as sexual, regardless of context. That part of it was a simple cultural misunderstanding, and Riker’s weakened condition wasn’t doing wonders for his judgment or patience. But she was past caring about any of that. He’d struck a far deeper nerve. “Is that what you really think of me, Captain? That I’m nothing but a hedonist? That I can’t be trusted to act responsibly? Do you really have so low an opinion of me?”

“I only expect you to act according to your culture. And that’s fine, for you. Just leave me out of it, that’s all. It’s different for me.”

“You think I can’t understand commitment because I’m a Selkie?” She let out a frustrated growl, lowering herself far enough off the side to replenish her oxygen. “You damn offworlders! We’re all just a bunch of libertines to you, aren’t we? Just like Argelius or Risa, but more exotic. Wetter.” She felt a twinge of guilt at the mention of Risa, which had been thoroughly devastated by the Borg. But she was too angry to take it back. “You come to our world to take advantage of us and you never bother to learn just what it is you’re exploiting. You think that just because we’re Selkies, we’re all alike, all free and uninhibited no matter which phase we’re in.”

“What are you talking about?” Riker shot back. “You certainly weren’t inhibited back when you were amphibious. Not that night at the embassy, anyway.”

“And it never occurred to you that that was the problem?!All you brilliant Starfleet explorers, didn’t you ever think about the implications of a life cycle with less than two decades of fertility?”

He shook his head at the seeming non sequitur. “I know you have large families while you can.”

“Yes! Yes. And who the iesatdo you think is raising those families while we’re off having crazy uninhibited sex all the time, hm? Did it never occur to you that responsibility and hedonism don’t exactly mix?”

She’d vowed never to let him know what he’d been a part of, not wanting to burden him with her guilt. But she no longer cared. She told him the whole thing: how only the mature aquatics were free to indulge themselves; how the amphibious were expected to be responsible; how recreational sex was a selfish thrill they sought, pairing with offworlders because they didn’t know and wouldn’t judge. “Because you’re all a bunch of hypocrites,” she told him. “You don’t bother to figure out that you’re facilitating something improper and irresponsible. Easier for you to pretend we’re all just like the full aquatics, because then you can take advantage of our negligence and convince yourselves it’s a celebration of cultural kyeshing diversity!”

“Is that so?” Riker fired back, as angry as she was now. “ Youchoose to neglect your family responsibilities and that makes it ourfault? Well, tell me something, Ensign Lavena. If your dalliances with offworlders are such a source of shame to you, why did you join Starfleet? You certainly haven’t found it repulsive to sleep your way through a quarter of my crew! Perhaps the lady doth protest too much!”

She wanted to strike him. But on some level she remembered that he was weak and miserable…and he wasn’t the one she was truly angry at. But she was angry enough to swim away and leave him shivering. He wouldn’t accept her warmth anyway, and right now neither of them could stand to be together. So she let Alos cradle her gently in his strong tentacles and carry her the rest of the way.

PLANET LUMBU (UFC 86659-II)

Administrator Ruddle was eager to get home. The latest round of debates would be starting any grytnow, and the canal ferry didn’t have a radio. Ruddle would probably miss the beginning of the coverage. But the sooner she could finish up her hospital business for the day and get out the doors, the more of the debate she could partake in.

Not that Ruddle fancied herself any great philosopher. She could barely follow the intricacies of the ideas the combatants expounded upon—the origins of the cosmos, the gradations of corporeality, the multiplicity of worlds, the dynamics of poetry. But she did have a vested interest in knowing whether Lirht would remain ruled by the Cafmor or be ceded to the Regent of Kump. Those Kumpen had notions of medical ethics that Ruddle had no desire to see implemented here at Hvov Memorial—unless, of course, she could be persuaded of their worth by sufficiently eloquent debate.

But then, that was the major bone of contention being hashed out in tonight’s debate. In principle, the war of words had already ended, and the Regent was claiming victory. But the Cafmor and the Lirhten Council rejected the claim. It all came down to an issue Ruddle felt more qualified to comprehend: was the winner in a debate the one who proved one’s case more thoroughly and substantially, as Lirhten believed, or the one who adhered more skillfully to the traditional rhetorical form, as Kumpen held to be true? No doubt the Regent had debated beautifully, improvising in perfect twelvefold stanzas without a single syllable stressed out of place. No doubt his use of traditional formulas and invocations had been flawless. But the Council was led by reformists who held that the traditional elevation of form was shallow and decadent, that a leader needed to prove actual knowledge and practical ability, not just mastery of conventional formulas. The Cafmor’s arguments had been more informed, more weighted with facts and deduction; but to the Kumpen authorities, that was irrelevant, for her form had been so sloppy and informal that they perceived it as an insult to the Regent himself.

The question Ruddle was dying to hear tested, therefore, was: How would the respective voters decide who won the debate about which set of standards for debate were more valid, when they would be judging that debate using different standards? The recursion involved was dizzying, and Ruddle was mentally assembling a couple of stanzas about it to amuse her cousins with.