‘Horrifying?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not alone in that. Explaining the business to kids always results in a raised eyebrow or two.’

‘A raised . . . ah, yes, yes. Is it not painful?’

‘. . . giving birth, not raising eyebrows, correct?’

Ghuh’loloan laughed. ‘Correct.’

‘It is. But not the . . . the discarding of an organ. That part’s not so bad, or so I hear. Everything else is, though.’ She spread her arms as they came to the end of the ramp. ‘Here we are,’ she said. They’d come to a broad platform, fitted with benches and picnic tables, guarded with a waist-high railing around the edge. Below the platform lay a fibre farm, overflowing with thickets of bamboo standing in orderly rows under a ceiling painted with blue sky. The tall plants had plenty of room to stretch up and up and up until finally bowing under their own leafy weight. Farmers made themselves busy in the walkways between, some harvesting, some testing the soil, some planting new seedlings. A caretaker was at work as well, pulling her heavy wagon behind her.

Isabel kept waiting for something that did not elate her colleague, but that moment had yet to arrive. ‘Oh, marvellous!’ Ghuh’loloan cried. ‘Stars, look at them! What curious trees!’

‘Grass, in fact,’ Isabel said.

‘No!’

‘Yes. That’s what makes it a much better crop for us. It reaches full height quickly.’

Ghuh’loloan’s dactyli undulated in a gesture Isabel had come to learn meant appreciation. ‘A grass forest,’ she said. ‘Ahh, I can smell the new oxygen. Wonderful.’

Isabel sat on a nearby bench and considered the Harmagian’s phrasing. ‘Does your species have a sense of smell?’ She could’ve sworn she’d heard they didn’t.

Ghuh’loloan parked alongside her, so they were both facing the farm. ‘Well caught, dear host,’ she said. ‘We do not, not in the same manner as you. You know that we do not breathe, yes?’

Isabel turned that statement over. She’d never thought about it before, but . . . but yes, other than their mouths, Harmagians didn’t have visible breathing holes. ‘Then . . . how . . .’ She searched for the right words. ‘You’re speaking.’

Had she not been in alien company for several tendays, what happened next might’ve sent Isabel running – and even so, she had to steel herself through it. To say that Ghuh’loloan opened her mouth wide was an understatement. There was no word Isabel knew that could properly describe what she saw. Not a gape, not a yawn, but an unfolding, an expanding, a hideous extension of empty space. Ghuh’loloan pointed one of her tentacles toward her gullet, and with a smothered shiver, Isabel understood. Ghuh’loloan wanted her to look inside her throat. And so Isabel did, with all the grace she could muster, leaning forward – not into her mouth, of course, there were limits – and spotting an unfamiliar structure at the back. A large, fleshy sack, unconnected to what was presumably Ghuh’loloan’s oesophagus (or equivalent thereof), every bit as yellow as her exterior.

Thankfully, Ghuh’loloan closed her mouth, and Isabel leaned back. ‘Now watch carefully,’ Ghuh’loloan said, pointing at her mouth again. She formed each word that came next with exaggerated precision, as a teacher might speak to a child. ‘Watch – what – is – happening – in – my – throat.’

Isabel could see it, though she wasn’t sure that she wanted to. The oesophagus did not move, but the sack did, expanding to give the words life, contracting to push them out. ‘So you don’t . . . you don’t use that to breathe.’

‘No,’ Ghuh’loloan said, speaking normally now. ‘It is my kurrakibat, a wholly self-contained organ. An airbag, in essence. It pulls in air and it makes sounds. That is all.’

Isabel tried to imagine how she was going to relay this part of her day to Tamsin when she got home, and came up empty. ‘Then how do you breathe?’

‘Through my skin. All over, front to back. And in the same manner, I can detect chemicals in the air around me, and this produces . . . it is difficult to explain. In Hanto, the word is kur’hon.’ She considered. ‘“Air-touch” is a rudimentary translation, but it does not envelop the full meaning.’

‘I understand.’

Ghuh’loloan curled her front tentacles. ‘It is a full-body sensation, and much like smell – or, that is, what I understand of smell – it can be pleasurable or distasteful. It is easier, then, for us to use words like smell or scent in Klip, as the end effect is the same.’

‘I see.’ A question arose in Isabel’s mind, a childish thing she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to. ‘I have . . . I have heard that other species often . . .’ She sucked air through her teeth with an embarrassed smile. ‘I have heard that other species sometimes find the way Humans smell to be . . . unpleasant.’

Ghuh’loloan’s entire body gave way to a mighty laugh. ‘Oh, dear host, do not ask me this!’

Isabel laughed as well. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Do not be,’ Ghuh’loloan said, her skin rippling with mirth. ‘And please do not take offence.’

‘I won’t.’

‘If it is any consolation, I stopped noticing it within a few hours of arriving.’