My former boss was there too, of course, congratulating me on my
success-quite a change for a man who had had to struggle to keep
from denouncing me for being openly gay. The only reason he
struggled was because he realized my value to the company.
The extravagant doings finally came to an end in the early morn-
ing hours and Kontar and I wound up in his suite. We were sit-
ting on the edge of the enormous bed when Kontar asked, “Have you
got all your things packed for tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Everything that hasn’t already been shipped
up to the starship is right there in those bags over in the
corner.”
Kontar crushed out the last of his joint before he began to undo
the button of my dinner jacket and I began to remove the ceremo-
nial bronze armor he had worn to the party. “Good,” he said as
he licked my ear. “We won’t have anything to distract us for the
rest of the night.”
Well, that all happened a hundred years ago. So you may ask how
can I still appear to be a man of twenty-five? Simple. You
should have figured it out when I mentioned the argument between
Kontar and his triple great grandfather. The Ailourian anti-
aging treatments were easily adapted to human physiology and I
was the first to benefit.
Kontar is now the sovereign of all Ailouros and Emperor of the
Ailourian Hegemony. The relatives who were ahead of him in line
all died in the Saurian and Avoide wars. But Kontar proved to be
a consummate military genius upon his ascent to the throne and
those former enemy empires are now in their proper places. I
don’t have to worry about losing him to a similar death in bat-
tle. Yes, we’re still together. Oh, we’ve both had many others
over the years, of course, Ailourian, human, and many other
species. But we both agree that we are each the one being who
will always be special to the other.