Chapter 24

Flotsam

Chapter 24: Embassy

I am standing on a narrow causeway in front of another opulent Terraces mansion. The building is fairly plain, squat and boxy with simple square windows, but it’s surrounded by a wide reflecting pool and has decorative waterfalls that cascade down the facades. It’s the most standing water I’ve seen on the otherwise dry Mesa and I imagine it must be very expensive to maintain. I straighten my grey dress and adjust my facemask, looks like another fancy adventure for Halley-24. “Here we go again…”

I walk across the causeway and try to enjoy the playful trickle of dancing water and ignore that I’m basically crossing a moat. The heavy bronze doors slide open as I approach and I enter a spacious lobby of clean mother-of-pearl tile that’s lined with aquariums filled with bright corals and unfamiliar sea creatures. The lobby lighting has a dappled, flowing quality that makes me feel like I’m swimming underwater and the air has a briny scent like the sea. I stop and look into an aquarium and watch an iridescent frilly corkscrew thing torpedo around. “Can I help you?” A woman asks with bright professional warmth. 

“Oh! Uh, hi.” I see a cute receptionist perched behind an aquarium desk filled with the jagged armored frills of Giger-esque crinoids. The petite human woman has short damp hair like she’s just hopped out of the shower and is wearing a loose cerulean robe over a sky blue one-piece that shows off the round bulge of a pregnant tummy. The outfit has beach vacation vides that seem at odds with the fancy lobby, if not the oceanic decor. The receptionist smiles and says, “Are you here on official business? Do you have an appointment?”

“No?” I say, approaching the reception desk. “I was sent by Gan Ceann to speak with Halley-15.”

The receptionist perks up, “Oh! You’re a Halley too, aren’t you!?”

I blush and squirm, “I am.”

“It’s a little hard to see with that facemask,” the pregnant receptionist gnaws on a knuckle while her hands gesture at a hologram only she can see. “The Embassy is really busy today, buuuut since you’re a Halley I think we can squeeze you in right now. As long as you don’t mind chatting while she works?” 

“That’s perfect.”

“Well then follow me!” The receptionist waddles out from behind her desk and beckons me to follow. Her feet slap on the floor and I realize she’s wearing flip flops. She leads me down a short hallway and into a large room dominated by an Olympic-size pool of water. “Your Excellency, I’m sorry to interrupt, but you have a visitor. It’s a new Halley.”

Halley-15 climbs heavily out of the pool and sits on the ledge, her bare legs dangling in the water. She is dressed only in a pale green one-piece swimsuit that makes it obvious that she’s hugely pregnant. Her belly is enormous, a bulging taut sphere of flesh that encompasses half her body. She looks like she’s already full-term, more than that, like she’s gone into extra gestational innings or has more than one kid in there. Twins, triplets, maybe a whole litter. Her breasts are swollen and enlarged, as big as my own expanded bust, but stretched naturally instead of enhanced, resting heavily on her baby bump. Halley-15 rearranges her wet braided hair and nods to the receptionist, “Thank you Ômné, you did the right thing.”

I’m honestly in a kind of shock. As the proud owner of a uterus I’ve always known that I could get pregnant; the nuns at the orphanage made it very clear that getting knocked up was only ever one horny mistake away, but it had always seemed like an abstract factoid or a phantasm warded off by the IUD I promptly installed in college. A future problem for a wiser Halley who wasn’t a mentally unstable mess to solve. I couldn’t take care of myself, how on Earth could I possibly be a good mother? Apparently this clone of me has figured her shit out: she’s an Excellency at an Embassy and is expecting some number of children too. I try to imagine her at home, looking over dossiers in a sunny breakfast nook while her handsome artist partner sketches her. She rests a hand gently on her belly and feels her twin babies kick and… “What do you want, Halley?”

I snap back to reality and blush. Halley-15 is looking at me with an impatient frown, and I guess I’ve been staring at her. “Gan Ceann sent me…”

“Oh good,” Halley-15 says with an expression that says the opposite,“double the Halley drama.” She sighs and kicks her feet in the water a little, “I’m guessing this is about Prime?”

“It is. We… need your help.”

“Jesus Christ, I do not need this shit.”

This feels like it isn't going well. I suck on my facial labia behind my mask and wish I still had a mouth to make earnest, convincing faces with. How does Gan Ceann manage to emote so well without a head? She should teach acting classes. Okay, deep breath: "Halley-17 found the Black Box flight computer belonging to the spacecraft that abducted us from Earth. We think it holds answers about why we're here and maybe what happened to Prime."

"Okay."

Nothing? No curiosity? “We believe the Serpent of the Reptilian Syndicates has it now, and we want to try and get it back.”

Halley-16 lets out a rude chuckle and splashes her feet. “Incredible! That’s such a spectacularly stupid idea! Steal a valuable secret from the Interim Dragon!? From her own Pyramid!? Idiotic!” She shakes her head, “Can I give you some advice?”

“Sure?”

“Do yourself a favor and stop this idiotic quest before you get yourself killed. Flotsam isn’t a fantasy world and not everyone has your best interests at heart.” Halley-16 tilts her head, “But looking at you, I’m guessing you already know that. I don’t even want to know what you’re hiding under that maxi pad on your face…”

My cheeks go red and I feel suddenly defensive. Sure I have a pussy on my face, and yeah I got myself into trouble, but it’s still my face and actually it’s pretty sexy once you get a little used to it. Which, woah! Did I just want to defend my weird cunt face? Is this how I feel? Focus. “I’m not here looking for your blessings. Just your help.” I unclench my hands, “Gan Ceann told me you owe her a favour, and she wants you to sneak me into the Sepent’s Pyramid. She knows you’re going to an event there.”

Halley-16 leans back, her hugely gravid belly somehow looking bigger and rounder, like she’s protectively puffed up. “I do owe her a favour, a big one, but I’m going to the Pyramid in my Official Capacity. I can’t risk an interstellar incident for Gan Ceann’s dumb scavenger hunt.” She strokes her baby bulge, “I have responsibilities.”

Oh no. “Surely as the Ambassador…”

“I’m not the Ambassador, I’m the Embassy.”

“What?”

“Hold on a minute.” Halley-15 awkwardly scoots closer to the pool edge and spreads her legs. I realize her swimsuit doesn’t have a crotch and her bare pussy is hanging out, swollen and distended from the weight of her pregnancy. She hangs her uncovered vagina just above the water and I watch agog as the surface of the pool writhes and bulges as if it were alive. The water flows together and upward into an impossible column that stretches out into a questing tendril. The water tendril reaches toward Halley-15, who leans back and opens her thighs wider as if presenting herself to the pool. The tendril gently touches her thigh and Halley-16 shivers and bites her lip as rivulets of animated water flow along her skin. The fluid splashes against her cunt and Halley-15 shivers, her pussy now joined to the pool by a long jet of water. She moans and squirms as her vulva are parted wide open and fluid starts to flow into her pussy. She pants and her belly starts to grow, inflating from the pressure and volume, as the fluid tendril pumps itself inside of her. She gasps and her hands clench as more and more liquid pushes inside her body, making her womb bulge even larger, until the fluid tendril detaches itself from the pool surface and sucks itself up into her cunt. Halley strokes the tight skin of her enormously inflated stomach and puffs a couple slow but shallow breaths, her cheeks a rosy red. “As I was saying, I’m the Naiadine Embassy.”

My eyes are wide with shock, “You’re not pregnant?”

“No,” she shakes her head and pats her belly. “I’m a living vessel for the Naiad to travel and experience the world.”

“What? The fuck?”

Halley-15 frowns at me, “The Naiad are a liquid species, and have evolved to exist on purely aquatic worlds. They simply can’t live outside the water. In historic times they kept modified human servants as living vessels for transport on Dry Worlds.” She pauses in that arch way that hints at discomfort “More recently, progressive fluids within the Naiadine Confluence have recognized the sapience of humans and banned the practice of keeping human chattel. This has somewhat curtailed the practice, but the Naiads still need help, especially on an arid world like Flotsam, so now they contract out the work.” Halley-15 smiles, “I’m paid very well for my time and body, and I’m honoured to contribute to the Naiadine Mission.”

So carrying around goo aliens in your cooch? Gross but okay. “There is no way to convince you to help us?”

“Absolutely not, I take my role here very seriously…” Halley-15 blinks her eyes and looks confused, “What? Really? Mixture, respectfully I must object! This human woman’s foolhardy quest is not…” She stops and looks mollified, “Of course your Pellucidness.”

“What’s going on?”

Halley-15 leans back and rests a hand on her belly. “It seems you are in luck after all. The Ambassadorial Mixture has decided to help sneak you into the Pyramid, despite my objections.”

“The Naiad want to help me?”

Halley-15 nods, “They want to see the Interim Dragon embarrassed and replaced by a more favorable candidate. The Mixture thinks your misadventure could serve that purpose, with very little risk to us.”

That’s a little ominous. “That’s fantastic.”

Halley-15 rolls her eyes, “Don’t thank us yet.” She gently slaps her enormous round belly with a damp smack, “First things first, you’re going to have to see a Shaper about a womb upgrade.”

***

Chapter 25