Walking quietly down the hallway, fleshy floor under her feet, walking in step with a couple dozen other nude women, not thinking anything in particular—it was surprisingly... relaxing. Soothing.
Also very very weird. Candaes was thankful for the weirdness. It meant that she was still sane.
Where all of these women were going was still largely a mystery. The hallway curved, so Candaes could never see more than fifty meters ahead of herself, and she had a sense that it was descending. Other corridors branched off outward, and from time to time women would turn and exit down these corridors, or enter from them and join the main traffic flow.
She saw several bugs; the first time one of them walked towards her, Candaes felt the skin on the back of her neck tingle. It walked by her on those strange, pendulum-swinging legs without appearing to pay her any attention. Why should it? She was just another nude human among nude humans, all walking in sync.
She also saw several more of the pinkish, giant-breasted and rubber-skinned women. They paid her no more attention with their blank white eyes than the bugs had.
Something flickered and Candaes let her eyes turn to look at it. The inner wall of the corridor, which had so far had no corridors running into it, had moved.
She debated slowing down, but that would single her out. Luckily, as she watched, it moved again.
It opened, revealing a blank-faced woman. She stepped out, turned in place, and walked away.
These walls had doors.
The place where the wall had opened nictated back shut. It reminded her of the eyelid of a frog she had seen somewhere.
A woman stopped in front of the patch of wall which had opened—Candaes could see now that it was slightly smoother, not roped with alien hallway muscle—and touched it lightly. It flicked back open, an oval hole which she stepped through. Then it flicked closed again.
Someplace important? A dormitory? It could be anything, but Candaes was tired of walking aimlessly. She stopped in front of the wall, and reached out with her fingertips to gently touch its surface.
It sprang open. Inside was a large room filled with rows of two-meter high lumps of some sort. Candaes stepped in.
At first the room seemed unoccupied. It was closely packed with slick grey humps rising chest-height from the floor. There was no sign of the woman who had just entered.
Candaes walked further into the room. She passed between the closest pair of lumps. She turned her head to look down at one, and paused.
A woman was seated in it.
It was as though the woman had sat down in an overstuffed grey plastic easy chair—and somehow pulled part of it over her head. From her feet up to her mouth her nude body was exposed, hands on top of her thighs, feet on the floor, her torso reclining at a slight angle. Her head above the nose was encased in an not-quite-opaque grey blob.
Colors swam dimly within it.
The woman’s mouth was open and she was breathing heavily. Huskily. Candaes looked briefly between the woman’s legs—and then back again. There was motion there, slight undulations, and she realized that the chair was... was fucking the woman.
The woman moaned quietly.
Candaes looked at the chair-thing on the other side of her. Sure enough, another nude woman was seated in it, mouth open, breathing heavily. Her nipples were taut and sweat was beading on her body. Above her nose, her head was encased in a glossy grey bead.
The fuck was going on here?
Candaes walked deeper into the room—it was closely packed with these chair-blobs, fifty or more, and so far they were all occupied. Some of the women’s mouths just hung open, slack; others pursed and moaned and licked their lips. All of them faced the same way, and they all had the slightly translucent blobs over their heads, like grey glass beads with opal colors swimming within them. Candaes wondered what the women were looking at, as the chairs slowly played with them.
It was arousing and disturbing at the same time.
Candaes came to a set of empty chairs; they had human-sized depressions in them and blobs on top, ready to ooze down onto a female head. No obvious dildos protruded from the seat—instead there were a pair—a pair!—of sphincters, from which whatever organs would doubtless emerge to push up into the body of the occupant.
She didn’t seriously consider having a seat, which given how erotic she was finding them was a little reassuring. Time to go—
The door nictated open, and an antennae-woman came in. She was leading another woman, tall and lean (and of course nude), who was already wearing a milky-grey blob on her head.
They walked directly towards Candaes.
She realized that she hadn’t hidden as she should have; the antennae-woman was looking directly at her.
Bluff, girl.
Rotating to more directly face the door, Candaes stared forward and began to walk. Measured, slow footsteps.
I am a zombie. I am a zombie.
She passed the two of them with only one chair-blob between them, and the antennae-woman paid her no heed. The woman behind the antennae woman followed, hands loose at her sides, the blob on her head having a strange bubble on the very top of it—
The bubble opened up and looked at Candaes.
It was an eye.
She almost—almost!—broke her stride. It was an eye—an eye atop the blob on the woman’s head. But Candaes kept walking and did not turn to look. Her hands were trembling just slightly. She wanted to duck down, to turn and see what the antennae-woman was going to do, how exactly she would seat the other woman into the sex chair and what would become of the blob already on her head, but that eye had turned to follow her and was probably still watching Candaes’ ass. So Candaes did not turn her head, she walked slowly but surely to the membrane, and touched it.
It flicked open, and she stepped out. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned in place to walk away.
An antennae-woman was right there, smiling at her.
“Hello,” the antennae-woman said.
* * *
She was shorter than Candaes, with pageboy-cut brown hair and a slightly cleft chin. Her eyes were liquid black but her smile curled at the ends.
“Hello,” she repeated. “My name is Terry-instructive. You seem... lost. I can help you.”
“I...” Candaes swallowed. Should she run? Had the bug-woman already summoned backup?
“Let me help you,” the woman said in a warm, calm voice. “I can help you. Tell me your name.”
Candaes’ body felt like it was vibrating, ready to run.
“Tell me your name,” the antennae woman repeated. “Let’s talk. I won’t do anything. Let’s just talk. Will you talk to me?”
Candaes squared her shoulders. Maybe... maybe she could find something out.
“Sure. I’ll talk to you.”
The woman smiled broadly, showing her full set of white teeth. “That’s great,” she said. “I’d like to talk with you. Will you tell me your name?”
“It’s, uh, Candaes.”
“Candaes. That’s a lovely name. You were... United Colonies?”
“American.”
“American! Yes, we have many of those here. Thank you for telling me that. Candaes, do you have any questions for me?”
“I, uh...”
The woman smiled up at her, those black eyes liquid and wide and... innocent.
There were all sorts of choices but they were jumbled together. A question flickered at Candaes and she asked it. “What do you mean, ‘instructive’?” Candaes asked. “In your name?”
The antennae-woman nodded, her face becoming solemn. “That’s my purpose. I am an instructive. I instruct the drones in their duties to the Hive.”
“Why the, uh,” Candaes waved her hand vaguely. “The antennae?”
“Resk-Omphalids communicate with scent and vibration. I have been altered in this way that I may communicate with them. My antennae are how I talk to the Resk.” She grinned. “The bugs.”
Candaes found herself smiling in response. This pixie-like woman was disarming. “So where are we, anyway?”
“We’re deep within an Omphalid Hiveship. It has a name but not in human speech. You’d have to have a pair of these—” she wiggled her antennae “-to understand it.”
Candaes giggled, and the woman took her hands.
“Candaes,” she said, “I want you to look into my eyes.”
Candaes did so. They were black, wet, and deep. Something moved across them, like a circle of reflected light.
“Good girl, Candaes. Look deep into my eyes. You are happy and safe, Candaes. Everything is fine, you are happy now. Look deep into my eyes.”
She was happy and safe. Terry-instructive squeezed her hands and Candaes smiled and did not look away from those deep, dark, obsidian eyes. She felt as though she were being pulled into them, down into the liquid dark. It felt good.
“Good girl, Candaes. Good girl. Relax now, you are happy and safe, and you can relax and let yourself grow calm. Placid. Look into my eyes, Candaes, and let your mind just... drift.”
Candaes sighed happily, and felt her whole body relax. She was looking deep, so deep, into those lovely black eyes and she wanted only to sink down into them forever.
Terry-instructive was speaking softly but Candaes could no longer follow the words; she knew she was hearing them and she knew that she would obey. She was receiving instruction like a good girl, as a drone ought to. Receiving her instruction from an instructive and she would obey.