“We keep the exact location hidden from Earth, I believe,” Malik said, eying her cautiously.
“Yes, of course. It’s just I have spent so many years going over star maps of the universe, well, our known universe, which is probably not as big at all as your known universe … sorry, I never realised I could talk so much.”
He kind of smiled, and a hint of blue crept up his face as if he was blushing. “I never knew a female from Earth would be so interested in space.”
“I have been since I was a little girl. My dad used to be an astronaut,” she said, and then her vision became cloudy as tears formed. He had experienced this, had experienced the wonder of leaving your home planet behind,
and he too had never come back
.
“You are sad?” he asked.
“No, just a little overwhelmed. I trained as a space cadet, but when the Karal arrived, the programme got cancelled. I gave up believing I would go into space, let alone go to another planet.
And see the moon
.” Her voice drifted off in awe.
Chrissi leaned forward. If she could, she would have squashed her face against the window of the space ship to get a closer look at the moon as it loomed large in front of them.
She was only slightly aware of him watching her as they burst out of the Earth’s atmosphere and into the deep dark of space. Only it wasn’t dark: their field of vision was filled with the silver-white of the moon, giant, ethereal, and so close she wanted to tell him to take a detour so they could land on it. “It’s more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
He tilted the control lever he clutched in his hand and took them nearer. “You cannot see your moon clearly from Earth anymore?”
“No, the pollution is too thick. When I was little we could still see it. Once or twice a year, usually in the fall, we caught clear glimpses.”
They flew around the face of the moon, Chrissi looking for all the craters, all the moon landmarks she had read about in books and seen in old photographs. “There’s the Sea of Tranquillity, and the Copernicus Crater,” she said as they swept around, the cruiser slowing so she could look properly.
“Karal doesn’t have a moon. But we have two suns; they circle each other in an endless dance through time and space,” he said. “Much like your moon goes around the Earth, endless.”
This news made her drag her attention away from the moon’s surface for a moment. “Two suns. I can’t wait to see them. And your stars? Is your sky clear, will I be able to watch them, do you have telescopes?”
He laughed, she was sure he laughed, but then he answered cryptically, “Yes we do. But you won’t be there long enough to get to know them.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, a sense of dread trickling down her back. Wasn’t she going to Karal to breed? Or was that some kind of trick and really the Karal were cannibals, or perhaps the baby she conceived made its entrance into the world through the walls of her abdomen.
“I mean, you are only staying on Karal for a day, and then we are going on a mission into deep space. One of the other warriors could not go; his potential mate became ill and the Hier Council will not allow her to travel to our planet. There was some panic that the mission would have to be delayed, but then Darl found you. Apparently, we are a perfect match.”
This was sounding more preposterous by the moment. “You mean I got matched to you yesterday, when I entered the lottery? So it’s not random?” she asked. Why was she not surprised?
“No, we are matched by our DNA and how compatible we are,” he said.
“Wow. And there was me thinking my dad was looking down on me and making my dream real,” she said, her eyes stuck on the moon as they cruised around it, now passing the dark side. Was that what she really thought? That her dad was somewhere in heaven and had made this happen? No, there was no such thing. If there was, she would have travelled into space with Saviour, and not had to enter some stupid lottery or be tied to an alien male whom she did not know, and might not even like.
Yet he couldn’t be that bad; he had shown her the moon.
“Now we must head through the beacons,” Malik said. “They are expecting us at the space station. From there we will travel to Karal.”
“Is this the last time I will see Earth?” she asked, looking back at the planet far below them. It still looked beautiful, blue, although the pollution muted the colour. It had been her home for so many years, and now, despite wanting to go out and see the universe, she also didn’t want to say goodbye to the planet where her dad had held her in his arms and watched the stars with her.
“Yes. There are no plans for the females who breed our children to come back.”
“The females who breed our children. You make it sound so romantic,” she said.
“You won the lottery, Chrissi. No one promised you romance,” he said bluntly.
“I know, but a girl can dream,” she said. “Is that the entrance to the wormhole?”
“Yes. Are you ready for a new adventure, Chrissi?” he said as he pushed the throttle forward and the ship raced towards the hole in space that had opened up in front of them.
“I think I am,” she said, and then let out a scream of pure delight as the wormhole swallowed them and they hurtled along a tunnel filled with colours, vast seas of stars, that went on and on forever. They slowed several times, and she worried they were stuck in this no man’s land of space, and then they would be off again, the space ship spinning wildly, before turning upside down, only to right itself as they exited the wormhole, back in normal space.
Well, the space might be normal, but it was not the space she was used to. None of the planets she had longed to see close up, such as Jupiter and Saturn were visible; instead, there was a large planet, with a violet haze around it, below them, and in the distance she could see the two suns orbiting each other and she knew this was Malik’s planet, this was Karal.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“I know. I never tire of coming home.”
He steered the space ship away from the wormhole, heading towards a small lump of what looked like silver, shining in the light of the two suns. As they flew closer, she could see it was a space station, and that was where they were going to dock.
“Why don’t we go straight to Karal?” she asked.
“We have to go through decon’ first. So that you are clean.”
She looked down at herself, and said. “You mean it’s a decontamination?”
“Yes,” he said, looking surprised.
“Makes sense,” she said. “No space nasties finding their way to Karal.”
“No space nasties,” he repeated. “It won’t take long. We have to hurry, there is so much else I have to do before we leave tomorrow. Someone else should have come and picked you up from Earth, really, while I concentrated on the mission,” he said, not thinking of the way that might sound to her.
“Then why did you come, if you had something better you would rather be doing?” she asked.
“Because Okil insisted. He said it would be better for you if I came. Since you are to be the mother of my child.” He left the full meaning of his words hanging in the air, and Chrissi had to gulp down her panic. Suddenly the excitement of the moment was lost, overtaken by the thought of having to have sex with a man, no, an alien, she didn’t know.
To Chrissi, love and marriage went hand in hand with sex. That was how it had worked for her parents. Now, maybe even today, she was going to have to go to bed with Malik, and he would have sex with her. It was what was expected, what she had agreed to when she entered the lottery.
“Do you feel unwell?” he asked. “Please do not tell me you feel travel-sick.”
“No, of course not. It’s all a bit sudden, that’s all. Yesterday I hadn’t ever thought of entering the lottery, not until I went to the store and … well, you don’t need the whole story. But now, I am about to leave a space ship and go on board a space station, hanging in space above a planet you can’t even see from Earth.”
“A cruiser,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
“This is a space cruiser,” he said matter-of-factly, “although you can drive it on the ground too. And it can hover over the sea.”
“Oh my goodness, are you a Karalian space nerd?” she asked.
“What is a space nerd?” he asked, his face solemn.
She began to laugh. “Nothing, just someone who knows a lot about space and talks about it a lot. I’ve met a few, believe me.”
“Ahh, so you are a space nerd too?” he asked.
She laughed, tears running down her face, the sensation of being near hysterics filling her body as she fought for control. “Yes,” she said at last. “I think I probably am.”
“Then Darl is right. We are a perfect match.”
Suddenly feeling the weight of his words, said with such innocence, she sobered. “Yes, Malik. I believe we probably are.”
“Now we can go to Karal,” he said as she came out of the decon’ room.
“Good, because I think I’ve had enough surprises for one day. The Karal never mentioned having to strip down so that you can be cleansed with … what was that?” she asked, pointing back to the decon’ chamber she had been in for the last twenty minutes.
“Gas is piped in that is colourless, odourless, and harmless.”
“So you’re not going to tell me what exactly it was,” she said,
“No. As a warrior I have always been told to share as little information about our technology as possible,” Malik said, ushering her back to the space cruiser.
“Because you don’t trust humans,” she said.
“No, it’s not just humans,” he said. “We don’t share our information with any species.”
He got back into his seat, and she sat beside him, and already he felt relaxed around her. This was not going to be as awkward as he thought. Although they hadn’t got as far as mating yet, the thought of being with her in bed both excited him and made him nervous. Would their easy-going relationship shift once they had been together intimately? Would she please him? Would he please her? The sim had always acted accordingly, but he had no idea if that was what the sim did to make his confidence grow.
“It looks like a jewel,” she said, looking out of the window at Karal as they pulled away from the space station and began the final part of the journey.
“Yes, the brightest jewel. Once our mission is over, and we return here, I will show you the whole of my planet, we can take the cruiser and go to the Island of Grenvit, and perhaps ride the hegara…” He cut himself off; he was beginning to sound like the romantic she wanted him to be. How could she have brought a change out in him so soon after their meeting?
“What is a hegara?” she asked.
“You ride them, like your horses, only crossed with a big cat.”
“That I have to see,” she said. “You know I am going to hate leaving Karal tomorrow.”
“You haven’t even set foot on land yet,” he said.
“I know, but the way you talk about it makes me know I am going to love it here.”
“Then I am sorry about the mission,” he said.
“Don’t be. I am torn between which I am more excited about. But I suppose you don’t take females on too many deep space missions, so this is my only chance. Why is that?” she said.
“Because my prime may be over soon, so the Council ruled each warrior must take a mate,” he said.
“Your prime? What’s that? You aren’t going to die are you, once you’ve … you know, impregnated me?” she asked.
“No. But I will begin to age,” he said.
“We all age. How old are you, by the way?” she asked.
“I am one hundred and ten of your Earth years,” he said.
Her head snapped round to look at him, her mouth open, making the bruise on her chin look more pronounced. He still intended to find out exactly what had happened to her. Whatever it was, he suspected it was recent. The bruising was still coming out, deepening in colour.
“You are over a hundred years old!” she said when she had got over her shock.
“Yes, we age slowly, until we reach our prime. It gives us time to learn about our world, and gather wisdom to pass on, and it has given recent generations time to go out and find a female to breed with,” he said, guiding the ship into Karal’s atmosphere.
“Wow, we are so different,” she said. “What about the colours on your skin?”
“They flare up when we experience strong emotions,” he said.
“It’s amazing,” she said, and reached out and touched his cheek. He felt the colour pulse where her fingers touched him. “There is so much I want to learn about you, and Karal, and everything. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for this opportunity.”
“It is not done out of charity. We need you; we need the females from Earth to breed with,” he said, his voice harsher than he meant, but the words had to be driven home. “You are here for one purpose, Chrissi. You are accompanying me into space for one purpose, and that is to give me a child.”
His words offended her, and she half turned away from him. At that moment Malik felt a pang of guilt and red crept up from under his sleeve and across the back of his hand. No doubt he had spoiled this moment for her; it shouldn’t matter to him, but it did. Only by concentrating on the descent into Karal did he stop himself from apologising.
He was beginning to think by the time they came back from this mission, he would be trained like a pet
Marmoto
to fetch and carry and roll over for her to tickle his belly. Trying to let those thoughts make him angry failed. He liked the way she spoke to him. Unlike the other warriors, or any other male Karalian, she was easy to talk to and excited about the world around her.
In that moment he understood Okil a little more. This was what humans could give the Karal, a depth of feeling his species shut out every time they tried to control their colours. Maybe once the Karal had daughters as well as sons, this might change.
He certainly hoped so.
Chrissi let his words jerk her back to reality. Of course, he was right; and yes, she had somehow let the excitement of the day over take her. Her training seemed to have left her. Instead, she had behaved like an excited schoolgirl. He hadn’t meant to be mean: in fact, he was probably being kind, reminding her that they weren’t friends, they were simply two beings who had to learn to live together while he put a baby in her womb. After that, who knew?