Children of the Sky (The Talari Subversion Book 1)

by Houston V. Grant

  “Except you, of course,” I said.

  Tati rolled here eyes but smiled.

  The waitress was back with our drinks. Tati handed me one and made a face as she sipped from hers. “I’m so sorry,” she said to the bartender. “I was looking for something a little more bitter.”

  The bartender didn’t flinch for even a second. “How bitter do you want it?” she asked.

  Tati looked over the bar. “How about axolotl instead?”

  The bartender just nodded and moved off. I wasn’t convinced she was in on it. I expected some glimmer of recognition, but she didn’t show any reaction at all. But when she brought the axolotl, Tati took a sip, then handed it to me. I took the napkin. It was definitely an electrofilm.

  Neither one of us wanted to finish the drink. It tasted good, but we had no idea what effect Tkosi drinks would have on us. We slipped away to set the drink down and I gestured to Tati that I needed to use the lavatory. She said she needed to go too and we made our way.

  The lavatory area in the bar was surprisingly just like those on Earth—we could’ve been in Chicago. I went in to scout it out. There were three tiny stalls, all of them empty, and no one else inside. I went back into the hall. Tati was there, pretending to wait for me, and there were a couple of Tkosi farther away. I motioned Tati to join me and after taking a quick look around, she did.

  I locked the door, then rushed Tati into the last stall and joined her, closing the door behind me. The quarters were extremely close and Tati turned to face me. I put my arm around her waist and pulled her close. “I don’t know what’s about to happen,” I said. “But if we’re jumping into a whirlwind, I want to feel you pressed against me one more time.”

  She didn’t say anything, just kissed me. Her lips were soft and full and just feeling them got me hard. She pressed herself against me and her hand slid down to rub my dick through my chumahai. “You can’t go fighting Enki in this condition,” she said. “If we’re jumping into a whirlwind, I want you to fuck me first.”

  We both swiped our suits open to expose what we needed. Tati took my penis in her hand, then turned around and bent over as far as she could, bracing against the wall. The way her chumahai had opened perfectly framed her perfect ass, and accentuated its perfect heart shape. Fuck the mile-high club—I was about to join the parallel universe club. I slid into her easily and we started moving together in a fluid rhythm. Even though I knew we had to be quiet for our own safety, I was doing my best to make it impossible for her. I clamped a hand over her mouth as she pumped her hips against mine and grabbed a fistful of her hair with my other hand, pulling her head back like I was guiding a horse. We only had time for a quickie, but I was stroking her deep and we were both so turned on by the circumstances that when we heard someone out in the hall say, “I think they’re fucking in there,” that was all it took to push Tati over the edge. I felt her vagina clench and spasm on me and I rode her all the way through her orgasm. I was still hard and working her towards another one when someone started banging on the door.

  “Shit, we gotta get outta here,” I said.

  She whimpered when I pulled out, but she spun around and kissed me again. “Round two will have to wait,” I said, putting my hard dick in the most comfortable position and returning my chumahai to its normal shape.

  “I’m gonna hold you to that,” she said, fixing hers.

  “Open up in there!”

  I pulled the electrofilm from my sleeve. “Ready?” I asked.

  She nodded just as the door to the hallway burst open.

  “Security! Who’s in here?”

  I pressed the film to the wall and an opening immediately appeared. It was dark on the other side, but with my Electrosense activated and probing, I could tell that on the other side was flat, solid ground and nothing but open space for at least the first 30 feet. I stepped through with Tati right after me and the wall closed behind us.

  Questing out with my Electrosense, I got a pulsed return like I’d felt with the guy who’d led us to the bar.

  “There’s something in this direction,” I whispered to Tati. It was still pitch dark, but Electrosense really was better than seeing in some ways. I could run in that darkness without the slightest worry. I took her hand and started off to the left. I could feel the hesitancy in her steps.

  “Try to walk normally,” I whispered to her. “I can sense what’s around us.”

  I quested down a short corridor and discovered the return signal was coming from what I assumed was another electrofilm on the far wall. I touched it and let a slight trickle of electricity flow into it. The wall opened.

  “I think we’ve found it,” I whispered to Tati, who squeezed my hand in return. We stepped in and the door closed behind us. This was a large chamber, maybe fifteen by twenty feet and there were chairs and a table inside. I felt a door open across the room and my heart rate went up.

  I was ready to fight if necessary, but whoever came in said, “at ease,” and I felt the electrofilm on my arm squeeze and release at the pulse of the correct electrosignal. Two more people came into the chamber and the door closed behind them.

  “Please take a seat,” the voice said. “You’ve found us.”

  Hesitantly, I led Tati to a pair of chairs and did as asked. “Who are you?” I said. The newcomers settled into chairs across the table from me and Tati and then the lights came up.

  Two of the three Tkosi were wearing copper-colored chumahai like mine. The one who’d been speaking sat on the left. And then the door opened to admit one more.

  Resplendent in her silvery chumahai, in walked Tashmit.

  “Congratulations,” she said, clapping her hands.

  I shot to my feet simultaneously pulling up the strongest electrical field I could manage. There only appeared to be two ways out of this chamber—the way we’d come, and the way the newcomers had come.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “Just relax,” Tashmit said, gesturing calmly. “We’re still on the same side. This isn’t a doublecross.”

  I glanced over at Tati, who was reacting much more calmly than I was. I sat back down. “Explain.”

  “You passed the test,” Tashmit said. “If you can’t tell, we’re in Enlil right now. We are, in fact, in Jedda. But Jedda’s an Enlil city, not an Enki one. We knew that portal, if it still existed, opened here, and we needed to see how you’d handle yourself in a tough situation with limited information. Because as much as we can teach you, you will be confronted with alien situations when you get to Enki.” She clapped again. “We’ve identified some areas to work on, but overall you did extremely welI. As I expected you would.”

  “So all this was for nothing?” Tati asked, incredulous.

  Tashmit fixed her black eyes on her. She regarded Tati for a moment before speaking, but when she did, her tone was warm. “I assure you it wasn’t for nothing. We were monitoring the situation closely. But we did need to see your reactions in an environment where you didn’t know you weren’t in real danger. You handled it extremely well—you completed the mission, you mostly hid yourselves within the population, you reacted well to changing circumstances and did well with the technology.” She raised a lascivious grin that took in both me and Tati. “Even found time for a quick session. Was it good?”

  This last little tidbit of information shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. To my surprise, Tati’s only reaction was a slight shrug of her shoulders. I might’ve expected that from a girl who’d been living in 2019 and wasn’t shocked by sex tapes, but Tati had only spent about two weeks in the modern world.

  Tashmit bit her lip to cut off a laugh. “I might have something I could show you,” she said. “But it’s going to have to wait. Work before pleasure. And we’ve got a lot to do.”

  Tashmit opened the door they’d come through and gestured for us to follow. Tati was right behind her and I realized, with mixed emotions, that I was just as eager to follow.

  9

  We w
ere in a similar complex to the one we’d been in when I first arrived in Enlil. I hadn’t finished during my episode with Tati in the lavatory stall, and walking behind her and Tashmit with their swaying asses in their skin tight chumahai wasn’t helping. Both of them noticed my condition and seemed to revel in it. Tashmit was in the lead, but kept turning around to talk and I caught her and Tati smiling between themselves more than once.

  “So now that we passed, are we going to get a real mission?” Tati asked.

  “Soon. You demonstrated that you have the aptitude and the guts to do what’s needed, but we’re going to keep you for more training,” Tashmit said. She glanced openly at my crotch. “And there are some abilities you already have that I’d like to know more about.”

  I braced for Tatiana to be jealous and protective, but to my great surprise, she appeared more amused than anything. She and Tashmit seemed to have formed some sort of bond of mutual understanding.

  That day we were given Enki clothing for our disguises—including Imperial officer uniforms—plus briefings on Enki customs, and on each of the cities they thought it most likely that any portal we found would open into. Over the next few days, they gave us detailed backstories in case we had to share them with anyone, and drilled us on them. We met with mission specialists who dissected every aspect of our performance since the time we entered the portal. Although I was initially irritated by the deception, the information they shared was quite useful.

  Tashmit came to gather us after our third morning session on operating covertly in Enki, or what I called Spying on Aliens 101.

  “I’ve asked Kelel to give you two a background briefing, so he’s put some material together,” she said, leading us to Kelel’s office.

  Kelel stood and touched forehead and heart when we arrived, then invited us to sit.

  “Tashmit asked me to give you some background information on the history between the Tkosi and the people of Earth,” he began. “A lot of information on what exactly took place when our kind were active on Earth was destroyed in the wars and the times that followed. So we do a lot of reconstructive puzzle building—piecing together what information we have, together with observations of modern humans, and working backwards to come to conclusions.”

  “You’re an ancient alien theorist!” I blurted out.

  He looked at me quizzically. “I don’t know that that means.”

  I explained. “A lot of people on Earth look for evidence that aliens were involved with humans in the past. It’s considered pseudo-science, so it’s kind of a joke, but it’s funny that the actual aliens have their own version of ancient alien theorists too.”

  He smiled patiently. “Yes, there is very little direct evidence left on Earth—much was destroyed during the wars and what little remains can often be explained away through other means. I study the ways that humanity has explained our presence and our involvement in your development. It’s largely a study of human religion and mythology. The importance to you is that I can offer some insight into abilities that you should have, based on what we know and what we can infer.

  “You’re a Talaris type—for lack of a better word, a Courier—which means that you, together with your chumahai, likely have a variety of abilities that you’re not yet fully accessing. “Are you very familiar with human mythology? Many of the tales humans think are supernatural in origin are not.”

  “Which mythology?” I asked. “Pretty much every culture on Earth has its own mythology.”

  “Accurate. But I just told you about being a Courier variant and the powers that are derived from that type. Does that jolt your brain at all?”

  “A Courier?” I asked. “Like a messenger?”

  “Like the messenger god,” Tati said.

  “That’s right,” Kelel said approvingly. “Well done. The myth of Mercury the god came from ancient peoples observing Talari in action. What do you know about Mercury?”

  “Not much,” I said. “He was the messenger god. And I think he had winged feet. Was he known for being fast?”

  “He was not the messenger god, he was the messenger of the gods, and a god in his own right. The patron god of trade, travelers and crossings. Known to move freely between the world of men and the world of the gods.” Kelel chuckled at this. “Talari alone had the ability to access portals, which were more plentiful at the time. You can imagine how primitive man would have viewed someone entering or exiting a portal.”

  I was modern man and seeing someone go through a portal would trip me out—I could only imagine what it would’ve looked like to someone thousands of years ago. “And yes,” he continued, “he was known to move very quickly. Talari can electrically stimulate muscle fibers for increased speed and strength. And their chumahai are, of course, designed to amplify the ability. What else do we know about Mercury?” he asked.

  He reminded me of one of my college professors. I loved his class even though I found it incredibly frustrating. I only got a B-, but I learned more in that class than in any other. He taught by asking questions and making us think about the answers. It was great for instilling curiosity and making you think critically, but it sucked when it came to test time.

  I tried to remember what I knew about the god Mercury. “Mercury was the same as the Greek god Hermes,” I said.

  Kelel nodded and waved his hands as if to say keep going.

  “I don’t know who his parents were. I think he carried some kind of staff.”

  “Very good,” Kelel said. “A ‘caduceus,’ they called it. A short rod with wings, entwined with two serpents. And what did they say he could do with his staff?”

  He waved his arms around for dramatic effect. “Wave it and set tinder ablaze, knock people out. Send the dying to a quick death and bring the dead back to life. What does that sound like to you?”

  Without even thinking about it, I felt a temptation to activate a field. “Electricity,” I said.

  “Precisely. Talari were known for their pronounced use of bioelectricity. More so than any other class. Used it for sensory perception, navigation, and for defense and attack.”

  “Like electric eels,” I said, thinking of a conversation I’d once had with Luis.

  “Yes, that’s right. In fact, we got the idea from electric eels on Earth and actually used some of their genes to encode the Talari.”

  My grin gave me away.

  “You knew that already,” he correctly surmised.

  I nodded.

  “Hm. Well, I like attentive students. Now, why did they give Mercury a caduceus? And why does it have wings and serpents wrapped around it?”

  Tati and I couldn’t think of the reason and eventually I just shook my head.

  “It was a trick question,” Kelel said. “Truth is, I don’t know, either. The Romans borrowed the design from the Sumerians, who came up with it several thousand years earlier. I don’t want to go too far afield, but my strong suspicion is that the serpents entwined around the staff represent the double-helix of DNA.”

  “We didn’t discover DNA until the ‘50s,” Tati said. “At least not in modern times. Did humans know about it all the way back then?”

  Kelel shrugged. “There is evidence that there was an Enlil public information campaign geared towards educating the populace about genetic engineering. But trying to teach humans with no understanding of science about something as complex as genetic engineering may not have been the best idea.

  “As far as the purpose, I’m fairly certain that the caduceus carried by our Talari was primarily an amplification device to improve electrical conductivity through air. As you know, electricity conducts well through water and some other mediums. It does not conduct well through air. I surmise that the caduceus was a tool to remedy that little deficiency. But until Nate appeared, we’d never recovered a real one so had no way of knowing.”

  He continued. “We do know that at some point, our ancestors used the humans’ ignorance of science against them. Rather than trying to elevate them
further, they instead chose to embrace the mythology—pose as gods and supernatural beings in order to keep them under control.”

  “I thought you were advanced beings,” Tati said. “You just came to a planet that was less advanced and used your superior technology to dupe us? That doesn’t sound so advanced to me.”

  “You’re right. This was the historical genesis of the rift that led to the wars that ended Tkosi involvement on your planet,” Kelel said. “The Enki actively wanted to feed the god mythology and exploit the Earth as fully as possible. The Enlil, while not fully opposed to the god-mythology, felt that we had a responsibility to be good stewards of Earth. The Enlil wanted to conserve the Earth and guide its development so that it would one day be in a position to join the advanced civilizations of the multiverse. They built cities replete with their best technology, gave technology to humans, and guided your development. The Enki sought to exploit the Earth for resources—both material and genetic.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “So how much of our mythology and religions throughout history have really been about the Tkosi? You talked about the god Mercury, but what about Zeus and Odin and all that?”

  Kelel shrugged almost guiltily. “The stories have changed over the years—embellished, altered, lost and rediscovered, but if you were to discover the origins of many of the stories…yes, they were really about our people. And as I was saying, the Enki actively encouraged it. I don’t want to make it sound as if the Enlil were great stewards of humanity. They gave technology to the Earth, but they were just as self-interested as the Enki. The Enlil wanted to guide human development slowly and create a dependent vassal state, albeit versed in science and technology. It would be centuries before the humans were fully capable of embracing the technology they intended to bring them, but when they did, they would be as dependent serfs are to their feudal lords.”

  “The Enlil wanted pets,” I said. “Like the song. We’d make great pets.”

  “And the Enki just wanted slaves,” Tati added.