Four weeks ago Dru had been abducted by aliens and informed she was now an envoy, a neutral party from an isolated and backwards planet, whose job for the foreseeable future was to solve disputes between aliens in greater galactic society.

Fine, sure, whatever. It was better than being picked up by the police for public drunkenness. But now Dru had had enough. Even if her only way back to Earth was doing this job she’d been dragooned into, she had limits. Or at least she suspected she did. She glared into the single, gray-green half-lidded eye of the Arbitration Corporation’s ship captain and pointed out the viewscreen. “Just to be clear. You want me to board that ship out there and bang an alien?”

Fungi made up the core of the Arbitration Corporation’s employees, even though they weren’t like fungi Dru had ever seen on Earth. They stretched over sections of the ship wall in organic webs, what passed for their eyes, mouths, and hands appearing grafted on rather than natural. This made it hard for the captain to shrug, and so it did the fungi equivalent: it exuded a puff of bad-smelling air.

“Envoy, we have done extensive research into the habits of your homeworld.” The captain’s voice had the dulcet tones of a Shakespearean actor with collapsed lungs. “We have confirmed that humanity solves most of their problems through sexual relations.”

“That is…not true,” Dru said.

“You are incorrect,” the captain informed her.

Dru clenched her teeth. If there’s anything she’d learned about these aliens over the past four weeks, it was that you couldn’t teach them anything they already thought they knew. If they believed CEOs of Fortune 500 companies finessed trade deals through mutual oral pleasuring, then that was how things were done. And sometimes Dru envied the Arbitration Corporation’s view of the world, an entire galactic civilization blind to anything outside of their strict understanding. On their version of Earth, at least, wars would be so much more fun.

“Okay, sure, humans solve problems with sex. Still, there have got to be a dozen more qualified envoys on this ship. My last assignment ended with a race giving themselves up for ritual sacrifice.”

The captain blinked. “The clients were satisfied with your decision.”

“That’s not the point,” Dru protested.

“It is exactly the point.”

Dru sighed. The captain sighed, too, the scent of lavender filling the air around them.

They were on the bridge of the ship. It was a long tube leading to what appeared to be a screen that was an entire wall, and on that wall the other alien ship hovered, the area around it dusted with cold, bluish stars. All around Dru, other Arbitration Corporation crew dotted the metal walls like lichen on steroids, grown into and around the ship’s controls. A wide walkway centered the room for the non-crew to use.

Dru had only been in this room once before, right after she’d been abducted, and she barely remembered a thing. Being kidnapped by aliens and then informed you’re going to be a galactic envoy solving the problems of the universe has a way of destabilizing the mind, or so she phrased it in the official intake report required of all incoming envoys.

She walked slowly down toward the screen inspecting the ship pictured on it. What the Arbitration Corporation ship looked like was a mystery to her, but she’d imagined it like all those UFOs on TV shows she inhaled in college. Aerodynamic, smooth, made up of saucers and cylinders. But the ship on the screen was nothing like that. It looked like a bush, a misshapen collection of individual leaves, each moving at a slightly different rate.

“It’s beautiful,” Dru said.

The screen was so clear and detailed the ship looked exactly like a toy model, something she could reach out and brush her fingers over. Leaning closer, she swore she could see tiny windows on the leaves, and maybe even tinier figures within those windows, as though it wasn’t a ship at all, but some sort of intergalactic apartment complex. There were no pixels on the screen, so the closer she got, the more she could see. Her nose was almost touching as is, but she wanted to see more, to see everything.

“Please do not exit the ship until you have agreed to the assignment,” the captain boomed.

Dru hurriedly stepped back. “This isn’t a screen?”

“It is a permeable, pressurized anti-vacuum field.”

An Arbitration Corporation crewmember chirped, the tone of its voice like a fire alarm on valium. “The Hrmnhrms are threatening us again. Their weapons systems are armed.”

“What are they saying?” the captain asked, fearfully.

“That we need to provide arbitration or die.” The crewmember blinked. “But mostly curse words.”

The captain turned its eye back to Dru. “There isn’t much time, envoy.”

From every corner of the bridge, the fungi crew stared at her expectantly. Through the permeable, pressurized anti-vacuum field, the other ship gently compressed and expanded like the chest of a sleeping dog. A dog with leaves for fur. A dog which could apparently destroy the Arbitration Corporation ship without a second thought, like snapping a fly from the air.

“Sure, I’ll do it.”

Dru felt like she was about to step out into deep space, so unprepared did she feel. What did she know about negotiating? Nothing. Her previous assignment was successful purely as the result of a single sarcastic comment she made. On Earth, she solved problems by cracking a joke or opening a bottle of wine. She could make a mean lasagna known all over Houston for quieting angry stomachs. In fact, pans of it had successfully satisfied drug dealers eager to collect on bags of weed she “borrowed.”

“Good.” The captain’s voice was a breathy mixture of relief and fear. Dru realized, at that moment, that the captain didn’t have much faith in her. “You may now exit the ship.”

“What?”

“Exit the ship, please.” The captain sighed. All of the crew sighed. The smell of lavender was overwhelming. “You need to negotiate on their ship, which means leaving this ship.”

Dru shook her head and stepped back as if the permeable, pressurized anti-vacuum field was about to reach out and grab her.

“I can’t survive out—”

There was a loud whoosh of air and Dru was picked up off of the walkway and flung towards the end of the room at the permeable, pressurized anti-vacuum field, which proved just as permeable as its name suggested. It felt like slipping through the surface of a pool. Dru screamed. At some point she remembered reading that having empty lungs was the best way to counteract the vacuum of space, to keep the body from collapsing in on itself, and screaming was an effective way of getting that air out. She closed her eyes to keep them from freezing over. She couldn’t think of anything else to do which would help her stay alive, which was just as well, she thought, since she didn’t want to suffer too long.

But when she finished screaming, she instinctively took a breath and found air to breathe. Something shimmered around her, a bubble protecting her from open space. Cold still leaked through, chilling her bare arms and face. If she was out here too long, she’d certainly freeze to death. Her stomach was unmoored with fear or the lack of gravity, and she felt nauseous. Dru wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t, as if the majesty of the universe surrounding her forced her eyes open, saying, Look at me and realize how small you are.

Behind her, the Arbitration Corporation ship grew smaller. She could see, now, that it resembled a muffin, top-heavy, the base of it spiky with antennae and other less identifiable instruments. All of the crew stared at her as she drifted towards the client ship. She flicked her middle fingers at them, though the gesture probably had no meaning to them, so they undoubtedly believed she was saying farewell or expressing confidence at her assured success.

Dru twisted away from them to find the client ship looming in front of her, its internal lights making it glow like a tree whose trunk was on fire. A small area of leaves folded back to reveal a silver metal circle like a puddle of mercury. That is where she was headed.

It was impossible to tell how fast she was moving. The ship ahead grew so quickly she was sure she was going to smash against its hull like an egg on concrete. What could she do to prevent it? She had as much control over her destination as a bullet.

Fatalism overcame her, and with it a sense of calm. This is how it was going to be. Abducted from Earth and carted across the galaxy to die in an attempt to broker peace between two alien species using sex as the ultimate negotiation tool. It was an adventure, Dru supposed, though she wished she could’ve seen the star gardens in the galactic core, said to be so beautiful anyone viewing them would go blind for a week, their optic nerve was stunned into submission. Or visited the bazaar on K25 where everything for sale was dredged from a local white hole. Or at least gotten to say goodbye to the other envoys. After all, they were her only real friends out here, and only one of them wanted to eat her.

Hurtling towards the ship ahead, Dru refused to close her eyes. If this was her last moment, she’d meet it head on. She held her breath—it was instinctive—and when she slammed into the ship her breath spilled out in relief, because it embraced her in a cold, silver cocoon, slowing her inertia completely before spitting her out into a dim room.

Directly in front of her stood a man. Well, he was bipedal, anyway. The Hrmnhrm’s head was a mushroom, with dark spots like dirt or rot where eyes should be, and a wide slit of a mouth with just the barest suggestion of lips. He wore earth-colored clothing, tiny mushrooms sprouting from various places on it. He was completely motionless except for the slight accordioning of the gills around his face.

The room Dru stood in was wide and deep and full of stumps. Actual tree stumps. The stumps were hollow and packed with dark soil and a narrow contraption hung above each of them, feeding water drop by drop into the soil. The sound of a light wind dragging itself through leafy branches kept the room from being completely silent. When Dru shifted her weight, her shoes bit into the decaying wood floor.

The mushroom man stared at her. He had the patience of a vegetable. If Dru was going to return to her new home, she’d simply have to do her job, and get whatever unpleasantness was about to happen over with.

“So, you have a problem with the Arbitration Corporation?”

“We agreed to arbitration,” the mushroom man said. His voice was a velvet liquid, each word running gloriously together in her ears.

Dru nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

“No, we agreed to arbitration before, between ourselves and our lovers.”

Did these aliens always talk in the plural? Other than the slight flutter of its lips, the alien didn’t move. The stillness made Dru uncomfortable, so she walked further into the room, past the alien, between the tree stumps, straight towards the door.

“So, uh, your relationship fell apart, I guess. Do you want your money back?” she asked. She didn’t know what the Arbitration Corporation charged for their services, or even if they charged at all. They seemed the exact sort of moralistic evangelists who’d do their work for the good of the universe, their payment collected in self-righteous, self-satisfied sighs.

“Our experience was satisfactory.”

End of argument. She’d heard this before, the willingness to take any result of an arbitration as gospel, as though once they agreed participants lost all ability to complain. Perhaps they just really believed it was their own fault for agreeing in the first place.

Dru stared down the hallway leading from the room. It was almost organic in the way it twisted, like a leaf stem hollowed out, as though the bush-like ship was exactly what it appeared to be: a giant plant pressed into service. Down the hall, other doorways spotted the walls. Another mushroom person poked its head out slowly, considered Dru for a long moment, then went back into its room.

“Then why are you here?”

“As before, our lives are at a point of evolution. We need arbitration again.”

“Between you and who else?”

“Between us and ourselves.”

Dru turned to find the alien directly behind her, only inches away. He smelled like a cave. Like earth turned over. She wanted to never stop breathing that scent in.

She stepped back, bumping up against the wall. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

The mushroom man looked away, then, maybe conscious of her discomfort, and knelt by one of the stumps. He began to tell her a story, his hands sifting through the inside of the stump as he did so, his attention so focused and intimate it was almost embarrassing. Whatever he was doing, it should be private.

“We are unable to handle the loss. The last arbitration resulted in our leaving our loved ones forever, because they no longer wished to be loved. We lived on twin planets, our species designed for each other.” The mushroom man held up a handful of dirt and tasted it. He broke off a sprout from his shoulder and tucked it into the broken soil. “We had loved each other all of our lives, all our history. Shared everything we created. We lived and breathed for only one another. We dreamed the same dreams. But they wanted nothing more to do with us. They said we suffocated them, sucking up all their energy. We were too close.”

At first, Dru was sympathetic, but as the mushroom man continued speaking she realized she’d heard this all before. In bars, late at night, sometimes she’d be caught by a drunk man or woman who wanted nothing to do with her specifically. They’d sit at her table or on the stool beside her but instead of offering to buy her a drink or complimenting her vibrant, electric blue eyes (a phrase she’d heard so many times she automatically translated it in her head as “I’m unimaginative and uninteresting”) they’d immediately start on about their boyfriend or girlfriend and how they’d left them. Or were going to leave them. Or wanted to leave them, and would do so, for sure, if they didn’t change their ways.

These people were always a bore. She’d often end up kissing them just to shut them up, then say she was going to the bathroom and slip out the door.

Here, though, there was no door. The mushroom man’s lips were feathery. She was afraid a strong kiss would break them.

Still, she leaned over and kissed him, gently. For a moment, his lips still moved, still in the midst of explaining his heartbreak. Then he kissed her back just as gently, their lips so light on each other it tickled, making Dru think of butterfly kisses, eyelashes fluttering against her cheek. The mushroom man spoke into her mouth, and she heard the words through the bones in her skull.

“So we are to begin arbitration?”

Dru backed away. Instinct had taken over for a moment, but now it had fled. She was on a spaceship, in the empty depths of the galaxy, pressed into service by one alien race, solving the disputes of other alien races, with only the barest promise of ever getting back home to Earth, and she was about to make out with an alien who only wanted her to fix him.

Maybe the captain was right. Maybe she solved all of her problems through sex.

“Yes,” she told the mushroom man, reaching out to touch the velvety gills underneath his cap. “Let’s begin arbitration.”

They didn’t go anywhere. The room was the temperature of a forest in spring, leaves clouding the sun, warmth even and calming. The floor she drew the mushroom man down to was as chilly as wet dirt, but it excited Dru rather than bothering her. His loose shirt and looser pants came off easily, seeming more a layer of mold than of cloth. He didn’t have pecs. He didn’t have an ass, really. As far as she could tell—knowing very little about plants, and mushrooms weren’t even really plants—he didn’t even have any muscles. But he felt strong under her hands, his skin having no roughness except for the tiny nodules of mushrooms sprouting from his flesh. That skin was every shade of brown carefully arranged, mottled like bruises, lined up next to each other like scars.

Against the floor, they twisted each other into new shapes. The mushroom man was so silent at times, when she closed her eyes to wallow in the sensation of his lips on her breasts, of his hands sliding along her legs, she felt almost alone. Gloriously alone. Fully at peace with herself and being by herself, with herself.

When they kissed, Dru felt like she was burrowing into him, his taste dry and powdery, like baking chocolate. When they kissed, Dru felt like he was planting something in her, a seed that wouldn’t bear fruit for years, for decades, a slow growth which would change who she was from this point onwards, but so subtly she’d never notice until that point in the future when she’d walk on an alien planet, and the clouds would wash clean from an alien sun, and she’d feel completely at ease, comfortable, utterly at home.

Somehow, they fit together, although she felt he was following her lead. Which made sense, after all, her being the envoy, sex being her “arbitration.” And it was so natural that, as she often did in the middle of sex, she wondered briefly if this was the time she’d get pregnant. Even though she was having sex with an alien, there was no condom involved and an entire lifetime of caution couldn’t be erased just like that.

After all, the mushroom man had a penis, a fact which surprised her. Or at least he had a penis-like thing where a penis should be. And it reacted like Dru expected a penis to react, except that when they were done, after orgasm crushed her brain and body back into one insensible, fully sensuous whole, the mushroom’s man penis was gone.

She supposed that’s just the way it was with mushroom men.

They sat next to each other. In the clarity that always followed sex, every part of the room became distinct and equally important, as though she were looking at a photorealistic painting rather than reality. The stumps with their blank ovals of dirt appeared so sad, suddenly, like barren flowerpots. Flowerless. Dead.

“What’s your name?” she asked the mushroom man.

“Let’s not make this personal,” he responded. “Arbitration should be neutral, is that not correct?”

“Of course,” Dru answered, confused enough to agree.

Other Hrmnhrm entered the room, the padding of their feet gentle as cats. Dru was still naked, but she didn’t mind. They were aliens. She was an alien to them. And now that she saw more of the mushroom men, she was less sure that the one she’d had sex with was a man. Though she could distinguish between them—some grayer, some greener, some thinner, some with three arms—there was no distinguishing between them sexually. All male or all female, who knew. Maybe what she’d taken as a penis was just a prosthetic.

The mushroom men—the mushroom people—looked at her and the mushroom person at her side. One of them cleared its throat, a scuffling of leaves on concrete. “Arbitration is finished?”

The mushroom person next to her touched her hand intimately, pressing their soft hand in the center of her palm. It caused her to shiver all over. She could tell it had some meaning to them, the movement so deliberate, almost ritualistic.

“Yes, it is done,” they said. “We will die.”

“What?” Dru spat out. “What the fuck do you mean you’ll die?”

Collectively, the Hrmnhrm nodded. They watched calmly as the mushroom person Dru had just had sex with led her to the wall she’d entered through. It didn’t clear as they neared it. It stayed an impenetrable liquid silver, a blurred mirror that led nowhere.

“We have listened to your arbitration, and agree with your assessment,” the mushroom person told her in a musty voice which carried throughout the room. The next words were for her alone. “Make more of my memory to you then we made of ourselves.”

“Don’t die,” Dru said. “That’s stupid, and I never said you should die.”

But before she could finish even the first few words, the mushroom person pushed her backwards through the wall, and she was again in a bubble of air, facing the bush-like ship of the Hrmnhrm, the leaves folding in to block her view of where she’d been only moments before. She turned around to see the bridge of the Arbitration Corporation ship coming at her quickly.

As she traveled through this short corridor of space, Dru imagined she could feel starlight piercing her skin. Something inconsequential, frail, impossible to see. Something that went straight ahead on its way and never stopped moving.

The captain didn’t even ask her if the job was done, just told her “Good job,” and dismissed her from the bridge. That night, Dru dreamed she was giving birth, but it wasn’t painful or stressful. The birth was easy, the baby slipping right out.

When she woke, she found a tiny mushroom under the covers, nestled into her waist. She picked it up carefully. She cradled it in the palm of her hand. At one end of the mushroom fluttered tiny gills.