by Gabi Moore
But Nemlach closed his eyes. The air was still too thin here, and this was too much. She’d been right there, within his reach. What on earth had happened?
“What happened?!” Taren echoed his thoughts frantically. “Where is—she?!”
“I don’t know,” Nemlach answered weakly. “All I saw… was the light… she’s gone.”
“Gone?!” Taren was growing hysterical; his pale face was turning blue at the nose. Nemlach knew they’d have to get back down the mountain, and soon. “Gone? She couldn’t have just disappeared!”
“She did.”
“Laova!” Taren carried on. The situation was terrible, but to Nemlach that horrible fruitless shouting into the night was the worst of it. He couldn’t stand to hear it. He reached out and grabbed Taren’s arm.
“Stop it!” He shook the kid, until Taren wrestled away. “Stop it! She’s not here!”
“She has to be here… somewhere!”
“What are you not understanding? She’s gone!” Nemlach paused; they really had to get down from this mountain. They would both die up here slowly, otherwise.
Taren stood there, panting. “Nemlach,” he moaned. “She can’t! She has to, we have to… find her!”
“Look at yourself!” Nemlach insisted. “We can’t even breathe here!”
“You want to leave?” Taren asked in disbelief.
No, he didn’t. The truth was, Nemlach didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to move from this spot again. He’d worked and labored to reach her, to save her. And at the last second, right out from his grasp… Nemlach didn’t want to leave. He wanted to lie down and die, freeze to die or suffocate, whichever came first.
“Yes,” Nemlach lied. “We have to… she wouldn’t want us to… die here.”
Taren opened his mouth, as if to argue.
A cringing zap of light and pressure enveloped them again.
It blinded him, just as it had the first time. Nemlach blinked, heart pounding, waiting for his vision to clear and for the night to reappear. Appear it did, slowly—Taren was blinking too, trying to get his sight back.
But there was a third silhouette, as Nemlach fought to see straight. The mountain summit was just as it had been, except for the addition of a familiar figure, standing just where he’d last seen her.
“Laova!” Nemlach saw her before Taren did, and ran instantly to her side, as he should have done the first time around. She seemed a little stunned, blinking in confusion. It was her face, certainly, just as she’d left…
But her black hair had turned white.
Nemlach stared at it; afraid his eyes might have been damaged by the light flashes. Taren had caught up now, and was standing beside them, staring openly at Laova’s hair.
“Laova! What happened?” he asked, still unable to stop staring.
She didn’t respond at first. Clearly disoriented, she clung to Nemlach’s arms.
“It worked,” she whispered. There was a ghostly look to her, both wistful and baffled. “I… I’m back.”
Nemlach hadn’t thought there was anything left that could possibly confuse him more. But then, without warning, Laova’s face crumpled, and she sobbed. Great tears froze on her face and he brushed them away carefully.
“Oh, Nemlach!” she cried, and let herself be gathered up into his arms. He hugged her close.
Nemlach froze.
Slowly, he pulled back. He hadn’t paid much attention to her clothes before; her hair was startling enough, if he needed more surprises after her abrupt disappearance and reappearance. But now that he looked, they were not the same as the ones she had left in. Similar, yes. They were made of hides and furs, and cut in a fashion that almost seemed… intentionally similar to what she’d had. This was not what had drawn his attention.
Laova watched him with great, dark, unreadable eyes as he felt carefully down her abdomen, to her distended, very pregnant, stomach.
Just yesterday he’d lain beside her, touching her intimately, becoming familiar with all the lines and planes of her body.
This was impossible.
Taren stared, dumbstruck.
Laova stared into Nemlach’s eyes, waiting. Things had changed in her; it was obvious, now that the jolt of her sudden return was passed. Her face… she was older. Not, perhaps, in years, but in knowledge.
“Laova…” he whispered. Nemlach hadn’t meant to whisper. “Where have you been?”
Her lips parted, and Nemlach watched as doors closed in her heart at the very question. Sadness quieted her voice as she answered. “Many places. Oh, gods, Nemlach, many places.”
He laid a hand on her stomach. “How… long?”
“I don’t know,” she replied.
He glanced down at the swell of her belly; a prickle of hurt twisted inside him. “Who?”
Laova squeezed his arm. “A god. He goes by many names. But this is the child of a god.”
***
It was easier to descend from the mountain; without the storm, the only obstacle was occasionally slippery footing. It had been cloudy for days; they hadn’t been able to see the sky lighten over the past week, preparing to receive a reborn sun.
But as the three of them stood on the high slopes of Star-Reach, Nemlach holding Laova’s hand, watching her every step, the brightening sky unexpectedly broke open. A sliver of sunlight struck them, and after so long in the dark it was blinding. Except to Laova; it was as if she had been in a lighter place, where sunlight had never fled.
She looked out over the world that lay below, beneath scuttling clouds and towering mountains. It was a wronged and ravaged world, one that her people did not understand. She set a hand on her burgeoning stomach and thought that despite everything that had happened, perhaps all was not dark.
Not yet.
- THE END -
Chosen
A Sci-Fi
Medea drove her rental car to the top of the longest drive she’d ever seen in her entire twenty-five years in order to reach the dwelling at the top.
She couldn’t imagine the cost involved in the upkeep on the place; surely, it was beyond her pathetic pay grade with the agency. Right now, all she cared about was making sure this assignment went off according to plan. She needed to complete it and get credit if she would make the next pay grade. With all the cutbacks in the agency, there was a severe lack of upward mobility in the government body for which she worked.
The car sputtered and Medea worried the engine wouldn’t survive the trip to the top of the hill. Dammit, couldn’t they spring for some decent transportation?
She was certain her boss never had a problem with requisitioning the best car money could afford from the motor pool. Not that Mrs. Carpenter ever went out on an assignment these days. That queen bitch sat behind her desk and did her reports while the new hires, those lucky enough to pass the test and make the right connections, where sent out on a trial by fire to investigate foreign spies, local drug cartels and suspected dealers in sex slaves.
Medea, being part of the latter, needed the credits this mission would give her and she couldn’t afford to be choosey. The last two women who were tapped to do the mission quit rather than be sent into the Torzinite den of spies, saboteurs and flesh merchants. Well, the hell with them and their pedigrees. She was made of tougher skin and could handle this job. It would advance her to the next rank in her career, or so Mrs. Carpenter hinted when she called Medea into the office one week ago, humming a familiar, but annoying tune.
“You want me to do what?” Medea asked the older woman who sat behind the big desk in the enormous office. Jesus, did the government pay for all of this?
“Your president wants you to infiltrate the latest Torzinite ring we’ve uncovered,” she explained.
Mrs. Carpenter, who always wanted everyone to know that the “Mrs.” prefix was to be used, was a career officer who’d been a legend in her day. She found the first Torzinite cell before there was any formal contact between the aliens and humans. The word around
the office had her busting their first operation when she found out the human traffickers were about to ship her into outer space and not to the kingdom of some oil rich human dictator. No one ever did find out how she discovered her final destination, but the evidence she brought back to the agency came very close to starting an interplanetary war.
“Another group of Torzinites?” Medea asked. “Isn’t this the sixth one this year?”
The news media was full of stories of young, impressionable women seduced into the arms of strong men who turned out not to be human. By the time they woke up, the silk sheets were gone and they were in chains with an ownership number tattooed on their ankle. It was hard to prove the sale wasn’t “voluntary” at that stage. Before they could voice a complaint, most of them were in the harem of some off-world warlord.
“I think we’ll find more if you get inside this one and discover where they’re stashing the women they buy,” she told Medea. “I met with the president last night and he wants more evidence of treaty violations. We bring it to him, he can slam it down on the negotiation table and show the other governments the aliens are violating every point of the treaty the UN signed five years ago.”
Once the presence of aliens on Earth was made clear to the other nations, the outrage almost gave the United Nations full war powers. The aliens were accused of exploiting innocent and impressionable women who wanted a better life. Several governments nearly went down in revolutions when it came to light that the ministers were paid to look the other way while the Torzinites shipped women to their distant star system. When the knowledge went public, three orbital stations identified as belonging to the aliens were destroyed by missiles before the crew could evacuate. The Torzinites demanded payment and compensation for their losses. They claimed no human women were taken off world without due process. They claimed they had to work in secret because the humans didn’t want them on their precious soil.
Both species were locked in a dead heat over the presence of the Torzinites on Earth. The aliens wanted the women; the humans needed their technology. Early contacts between the two were productive, but the good feelings between them evaporated when the nations of Earth found out what the aliens really wanted. The Torzinites were from a planet where the female part of their race was a rare thing due to a genetic abnormality. It had taken place thousands of years ago. The ratio of women to men was in the nature of one thousand to one. When the aliens discovered Earth, they found a goldmine. No longer would whole nations fight each other to the death over the dwindling supply of women. Best of all, the two species were compatible and Torzinite men could produce children with human women. It should have solved both species’ problems.
But it didn’t.
The Torzinites found it was easy to obtain working-class human women for the right amount of funds and did so without telling anyone. The women they obtained could live lives of luxury on the home worlds, but enough of them wanted to return to Earth to cause a problem. When the governments of Earth found out what had taken place, they were outraged. The immediate return of all terrestrial women was demanded or war would be declared. The Torzinites claimed the human women taken off world were happy and saw no reason to comply. A treaty was eventually signed after a Torzinites trading post on the moon was destroyed by a nuclear weapon. It later turned out the trading post housed two hundred women from Earth awaiting transfer to the Torzinite home worlds.
In the aftermath of the catastrophe, a delegation from each species negotiated a treaty in terrestrial orbit. A set number of human females would be allowed to travel to the Torzinites worlds in return for access to alien technology. No Torzinites presence would be allowed on Earth. If one were discovered, it would be grounds for war.
“They are risking another war for this?” Medea asked her director, smoothing out her skirt as she sat in the chair. “Do they want to lose all access to women from Earth?”
“We don’t think the governments in their home worlds have full control over these posts,” Mrs. Carpenter told her. “It may be smugglers. Remember the ratios they claim? Each woman they can send back pays for the trip many times over. We may be two women on the street here in Philadelphia, but to the Torzinites, we’re made of silver.”
Medea pulled the car over to a full stop in front of the mansion at the top of the hill.
If the trade in human wives was as good as they suspected, the Torzinites were spending their money to attract new prospects. They had video evidence proving that the aliens were scouting through the poorer sections of the cities under the guise of “overseas” recruiters for domestic jobs. They prized women with a reasonable amount of education and virgins brought a premium on the market. One lady who was recruited before college returned to her family on Earth loaded down with gifts and cash. But just as many of the others were bored in the home worlds and found a reason to come home. Mistreatment and deceit were two reasons for the ban.
A manservant took the car from Medea as she stepped out.
She adjusted her business jacket. Her cover was of a recently divorced woman interested in the job advertised on-line for a hostess on a cruise liner in Italy. The agency tapped the ad as a front for an alien recruitment firm when they investigated it and found out that the cruise line was bogus. She was wired for sound and video with the best recording devices the agency could afford. This would be the crown of the investigation and would provide the executive branch with what it needed to return to the beginning table. If the aliens wanted human women so much, they could damn well pay in gold.
“Mr. Eglise will see you in the foyer,” the servant said to her as she handed him the keys. “My name is Simon and I will park your car for you. The interview should last only an hour and if you decide not to take the position I will bring the car around.”
Medea thanked him and took her purse out of the car as her heels clicked on the marble steps. Someone wanted to make a good first impression, she realized, as she approached the double doors to the mansion. She was a little perturbed about the assumption she might take the job on the spot. This wasn’t a good idea under any circumstance. It told her someone was desperate to have the slot filled. In one sense, it was good for her, because it allowed her some bargaining room. If they wanted someone that bad, they might not be looking too carefully into whom they hired.
She put her hand out to rap on the door, but another handsome young man opened it for her. This one appeared to be of a northern European background, while the man who took her car looked Asian. He held the door open as she walked in and looked the antechamber over.
“Please wait here, Ma’am,” he said to her. “Mr. Eglise will be by in a minute. Are you thirsty or need to use the powder room?”
Powder room? Did people still use that term? What kind of place was this? She looked around at the travertine on the walls and the inlaid tile on the floor. They’d discovered that the mansion was purchased three months ago and that the help was hired through an employment agency. Which meant this work was all accomplished by the former owner, a mutual fund broker from New York City who needed a place to stash his girlfriends. The FTC caught up with him during an insider trading investigation and the house went empty for several years before the current occupant rented it. Given they were deep in the Pocono Mountains, he’d gone to a lot of trouble to establish himself.
“Your shoes, Ma’am?” The servant held out his hand.
Medea was still in awe of the place and hadn’t even responded to the first question.
“Please, Ma’am, your shoes. Mr. Eglise doesn’t allow his interviewees to wear shoes in the house. I can provide you with a pair of flip-flops if you want.”
“No, that will be all right,” she told him, slipping off her department store pumps and handing them to the servant. The air was warm this time of year and she could go barefoot. Oh, thank god. She’d remembered to have her feet done before the trip up here. She glanced down and made sure her nails on her hands matched. At least she didn’t forget to
tell the nail lady to have them both done the same color.
“Was you trip difficult?” she heard a voice call to her from a doorway.
Medea turned to see a tall man in a tailored suit standing in the entrance to a private office. He appeared to be in his thirties and wore a pair of mirror shade sunglasses. His skin hue appeared normal, but makeup could hide texture. What it couldn’t hide was the shape of his eyes. The aliens had very distinct eyes, which resembled that of a cat. The best guess involved their evolution on a planet where the sun was not as intense as Earth. It accounted for their tendency to wear sunglasses. The simply could not tolerate the level of ultraviolet radiation humans were accustomed to. The only time they were ever seen without the shades was at night. Still, she thought it obvious why he wore them indoors in the late afternoon. Perhaps he felt the effect was not so dramatic with them on.
“Please come into my office,” he said to her, holding the door open, “I’m sorry about the regulations involving shoes, but I have a particular aversion to dirt.”
Another thing she’d read about the aliens was their obsessive-compulsive attitude toward contamination from germs. The reading she’d done seemed to indicate they didn’t have any contagion problems with Earth microbes, but the sex ratio on their home worlds were skewed because of some rare disease, which caused them to develop and intense fear toward contamination.
Medea walked across the tile, which felt cool on her feet. She walked past her potential employer, and target, as he continued to hold the door open. As she went past him, Medea felt the heat from his body on her face. The aliens were equipped with a higher body temperature, which was another way they could be identified. Women who made love with them described the sensation as having a hot water spray turned inside you. Not painful, but much more intense than the sensation of a human male’s climax.
