by Lisa Lace
I nodded.
“Still…” He looked up then, and he must have been looking directly at the camera because his eyes stared right into mine. “I wish you were here.”
The hologram winked out, leaving me bereft. I lay down, my heart so heavy I thought it would sink to the floor — until I had a thought that lifted me back to a sitting position.
Khellen wanted me to come to Biyaha. I had two weeks off. And Nora said I should go off-planet.
Excitement set me tingling. I would go and visit him. We would finally get to meet, and I would convince him to get married so his government wouldn’t knock him off or do whatever they did to those who broke the rules. I couldn’t bear the idea of him disappearing. His messages brightened my days more than I wanted to admit. I couldn’t take it if the holograms stopped one day.
I started getting excited. I was going off-planet for the first time in my life. Then I would come back and start my new job. Khellen would be married, and I would be single for life.
Both of us would get what we wanted.
Chapter Two
KHELLEN
“Mother, I’m going for a swim and then I’ll be heading to town. I have errands to do.” I hoped to sneak past while she was cooking. We had a fabricator to make meals, but she never used it. I was staying with my mother for the Mistivan season. This year, unfortunately, it coincided with my twenty-fifth birthday.
Mistivan is the main holiday on Biyaha, involving seven days of feasting, going to the temple, and visiting friends and family. We decorate the house and exchange gifts. It’s usually my favorite time of year, but this time, I wasn’t enjoying it very much. It was nearly over. After a few more days, I would be home again, and everything would go back to normal.
As long as I got married, of course. If I didn’t, nothing would ever be normal again.
Still, having the lake nearby and Mom cooking all of my favorite meals almost made up for having to listen to her go on and on about me getting married. It’s not like I didn’t recognize the gravity of the situation. The government did not take it lightly when people defied the Edict of Marriage. And it’s not that I didn’t want to get married. I clung to the childish belief that I should marry a woman I loved.
Mom said that I would grow to love whoever I married, but I didn’t believe her. I wanted to choose a partner myself. I had a vague idea of what I sought in a mate. I would recognize the right woman the moment I laid eyes on her. But I was running out of time, and part of me feared what the government would do to me if I didn’t conform.
I was determined to put it off as long as I could, hoping that somehow the universe would bring a special someone to me. Lately, I’d been walking around all day long, trying to help the universe out a little bit, sizing up every woman I met and wondering if she was the one.
“Why don’t you go up to the public beach?” My mom had her back to me. I could tell she was trying to sound casual and nonchalant. The public beach was probably full of beautiful young women looking for husbands. It would be like throwing myself to the sharks. But maybe she was right. I wouldn’t meet anyone swimming here at our private beach.
“Okay, Mom. That’s not a bad idea.” She gave me a surprised glance. “I’ll see you later.”
I was already in my swim trunks, so I only needed to grab a towel from the walk-in closet near the door. As I walked across the lawn to the pathway leading to the beach, the computer on my arm flashed with an intergalactic message. It was Sophie. I grinned, stopping in the middle of the yard. It wasn’t a hologram like usual, only text.
Khellen,
Sorry to hear you’re still single. LOL. Hang tough. I’m sure whoever you marry will be the right woman for you, even if you don’t think so at first. I have a nice surprise coming for you. Watch for it in a few days. Are you at your Mom’s for Mistivan? I wish you were here instead. We’ll meet someday. I just know it. In the meantime, keep those green eyes open looking for a wife. I have a Khellen message addiction, and I can’t get by without your holograms, so stay alive for me, okay?
Take care. *blows a kiss*
I stared at the message for a moment as a familiar bittersweet feeling of loss swept over me. Sophie and I were good friends even though we lived a galaxy apart. Our correspondence had gotten me through some tough times and I always looked forward to her messages.
I smiled as I read it again. It was ironic that she was such a marriage advocate for me considering her job. Of course, Biyaha didn’t have the same problems as Earth. I wondered what the surprise was. Knowing Sophie, she was sending me a wedding present. How could she afford the intergalactic postal fees?
It only took a minute to write back, telling her I was at my mother’s place for the next few days. I would do my best to get married so she could keep getting her Khellen message fixes. Then I trotted off towards the beach, wondering if my dream woman was lying there in the sun waiting for me.
There wasn’t anyone waiting for me on the beach. I did my twenty laps and went home. When I returned, my mother had put my breakfast aside.
“Khellen, you need to get dressed immediately.” She sounded like I was ten and we were late for an important dinner.
“I know, Mom. I will. I’m capable of dressing myself.”
“No, now. You have to be ready before temple. Someone’s coming over.”
“What kind of someone?” I was instantly suspicious.
My mother’s eyes cut away from me. “A sweet girl. Don’t be difficult, Khellen. I think she’s the one.”
“You think everyone’s the one!” She made it sound like I was being picky about eating my vegetables, not choosing my wife.
“Look, she’s pretty and willing to marry you. She looks like the one to me. Will you meet her, please?”
I was extremely reluctant, but I knew my mother was trying to help me. And part of me grew more fearful every day of what would happen when the government took me away.
We had a peaceful civilization and a mostly good government, but the Edict of Marriage wasn’t something to ignore. People who didn’t get married were never seen again.
I believed they were forced to breed in secret government facilities or taken to slave mines. Maybe it was something worse. The government deliberately left their fate vague enough so people would fill in the blanks with their worst fears. Whatever it was, though, everyone knew those people never saw their families again.
“Mom, it’s not that I don’t want to get married. But marriage is forever, and I don’t want to be stuck with the wrong partner.”
She shook her head. “Disappearing is also forever. You don’t need to love her before you get married. You’ll see, Khellen.”
I wasn’t sure. But I was willing to meet the woman my mother thought was good enough for me.
“Khellen, this is the girl I spoke about earlier.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Morda said. She looked more like a teenager than a grown woman. Mom mentioned she was twenty, but she was small and had a youthful face. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she had lied about her age, but I didn’t know how much. We linked arms, with her holding my elbow in the palm of her hand and me holding hers — the traditional greeting on Biyaha. It was a typical introduction until the end, when she allowed her fingers to trail suggestively up my forearm, instead of releasing me immediately.
“It’s nice to meet you, too.” I gave her a quick once-over as we sat down. She was of medium build with large round breasts and curvy hips. Her face was pretty enough, I supposed. And she was sexy.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” Mom smiled at me and nodded to Morda. There was a long, awkward silence after she left.
“So, what do you do for a living?” I figured an innocent question was polite and a good way to start.
“Khellen,” she said, leaning forward and giving me an excellent view of her cleavage. I wondered if she was positioning her body this way on purpose. “We both know you don’t have many choice
s right now.”
I glanced up at her sharply.
“There’s no point in treating this as a date when it’s a business meeting.”
I was taken aback and practically speechless. “That’s an interesting way of looking at things.”
“The only question that needs to be answered is whether we’re compatible or not. I mean sexually. Why don’t you come sit over here next to me.”
“That seems a little aggressive,” I said.
I was a virgin, of course. There was no sex outside of marriage on our planet. Despite the problems with underpopulation, this seemingly contradictory belief was part of our society. And everyone knew what the punishment for this was - death. There was nothing vague about it, unlike the disappeared.
The church on my planet was influential in our lives. Even as a modern society, we had some ancient laws still on the books. If you were caught, a lynch mob from your temple would come to your house to punish you and string you up.
When I was very young, I had seen a lynching. It didn’t often happen, maybe every twenty years or so, but it was no empty threat. Everybody from the neighborhood was required to watch. The deterrent effect was powerful.
Males and females were separated during school and after-school activities until they turned sixteen. Then they were encouraged to marry immediately. The only reason I had met Sophie when I was fifteen was off-worlders had organized the VR camp. It would never have been allowed on Biyaha.
“We need to find out. Now come over here.”
This woman’s predatory ways were making me uncomfortable, but I had to admit she had a point. If we got married, the only reason would be to make babies, and that required sex. I supposed I would have to sacrifice. I got up and slowly walked over to where she was sitting on the couch. She scooted over, and I sat down. In a moment, she had my pants open and her hand inside. I gasped. I had thought we would start with a kiss.
“I see you’re nice and pink. Pure for me,” she whispered in my ear. And she did kiss me, but she also grabbed my cock firmly and began pumping her hand up and down. I kissed her harder, overcome by lust. No one had ever touched me there before.
With her other hand, she pulled up her shirt, and I saw that she was pure, too. Her breasts were pink, the color of someone from Biyaha, who has never had sex. If I had the opportunity to look between her legs, I knew her pussy would be pink down there, too. Once a person had sex, they would begin turning bright red, and the color got darker over the years.
The people of Biyaha were descendants of the Great Race, just like all the people in the Milky Way galaxy. Sophie’s people on Earth were descendants of the Great Race, too, but there were small differences. For instance, I understood the sexual organs of humans lacked unique coloring. I didn’t know why they ended up that way. On my planet, it was easy to tell if someone was a virgin. The color change only happened when skin met skin inside the woman and couldn’t be triggered any other way.
She took my hand and put it on her breast. I didn’t have any first-hand experience with women, but I had watched videos, of course. Without thinking, my hands started squeezing gently, and she moaned softly, pumping me harder and faster. I had lost the ability to reason and could think of nothing but the feeling of her hands on my cock when the computer on my forearm suddenly flashed with a message. Sophie’s image popped into my head. I pulled my hands away from Morda immediately.
What was I doing?
I took my hand out of Morda’s shirt and removed her hand from my pants, buttoning them up quickly.
“What’s wrong? I thought you liked it.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I knew saying I was thinking of another woman would be a mistake. “Morda, you know the law.”
“We weren’t breaking the law. My mother’s a lawyer. I read up on it. It clearly defines penetration as the violation.”
I felt myself turning red.
“I guess you got a taste of it,” she said, shrugging. “What do you think? Are we compatible? Should we get married?”
I felt stunned as her tone changed. “Or do you want to disappear instead?” Her words brought the taste of fear to the back of my mouth. “We can do it every day. You know you liked it before your computer went off.”
My comm unit. Sophie. Maybe she had written back. I checked the queue and was disappointed to see it was only a message that my bank statement had arrived.
I stared openly at Morda. She was not my dream woman. She was not someone in whom I was remotely interested. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. And she would keep me from disappearing…which meant I could still write to Sophie.
I gave in. “Maybe my mother was right about you.”
When we called my mom back into the room, she squealed and hugged both of us, grinning like a crazy woman. I guess she was excited and relieved because she had managed to save me — her only child — from disappearing from her life forever and had managed to secure grandchildren as well.
I wasn’t nearly as excited. In fact, I felt like throwing up. I had always told myself I would marry for love. And now I was compromising my principles because I was scared. I knew the decision made sense. It was the logical, reasonable thing to do. But I wanted something different.
I wanted to feel the rush I’d heard about, where you feel so happy you could explode. I had wanted to love someone who loved me back. But the wheels were in motion now, and there was no going back. I was marrying Morda, whether I wanted to or not.
“So when’s the date?” she asked casually.
“We’re planning the wedding for the day before my birthday. I don’t want to rush into this.” I knew what my Mom was thinking. I had waited nearly ten years to get married, and that couldn’t be considered rushing. I continued speaking as soon as I saw her start to open her mouth. “Morda’s going to be out of town for a while. But she said she doesn’t mind if you organize everything. Right?” I looked at her for confirmation, and she nodded. “We only want it small. Just a few people.”
My mom had been delighted when I told her she would be allowed to plan the wedding, but her face fell when she learned she had to make it small. I held up a hand to forestall any further arguments. “Those are the conditions, Mom. Non-negotiable.”
“That’s all right. You tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. I’ll take what I can get.”
A few days later, the sun rose as I headed for the water. I needed to move. I needed something to replace the enormous feeling of dread. The wind in the trees and the twittering of the early morning birds made me feel peaceful — something I hadn’t experienced since I had met Morda.
I was staying at my mother’s until the wedding and celebrations were over. It was more convenient to be around for the planning. I was down on the beach about to go into the water for my morning swim when I got a message from Sophie. Seeing her name made me smile for the first time since I had gotten engaged. Spending significant amounts of time with my fiancée had shown me that I liked her less the more I got to know her.
At least I wouldn’t disappear. I held on to that because it was the only thing keeping me in the sham of a relationship.
I swiped the message. All it said was: Surprise!
What was that supposed to mean? I dove into the water and began doing laps out to the island and back. I pushed myself hard, trying not to think about my upcoming marriage or what Sophie’s message could mean. But I couldn’t get my mind off her communication.
Had she sent me something that would arrive today? I wasn’t looking forward to getting it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a present from Sophie, but it was sure to remind me that I was marrying a woman that I didn’t even like to save my ass. I did ten extra laps, trying to work out my frustration, and eventually, I headed back to shore, still tied in knots.
I noticed a figure on the beach as I returned. It was still early. I had gone out in the dim light of predawn to have the beach to myself. It was private, but my mother liked to swim too. Usually, I woul
d get up extra early so I could swim alone.
Who was on the beach, then?
There was no way my mother was up before her usual time. She was a late sleeper, to put it mildly. I kept swimming, trying to peer through my swimmer’s eyelids. They were a technologically advanced version of goggles that helped improve my underwater vision.
When I got closer, I could make out that it was a woman. And she had red hair, not black, so it wasn’t Morda. The swimmer’s eyelids were supposed to allow you to see as clearly out of the water as in, but technology didn’t always work as advertised. I was having trouble making out her features. She started digging in her bag, and her face became completely obscured.
I swam faster, intrigued by the stranger.
She seemed vaguely familiar. Why was she sitting on the beach as if she were waiting patiently for someone?
I reached shallow water finally and stood up, striding out of the lake towards the stranger. She stood up too, and her form and movements reminded me of someone.
“Khellen!” she called out. I tried to tear off the swimmer’s eyelids as quickly as I could to get a good look at her. But they were stuck fast, probably because my hands were fumbling.
For some reason, I felt a strange excitement. It was like I was about to find something that had been missing or like a miracle was about to transpire.
Who did I know with that voice? I racked my brain, searching for a face to match the voice, but there was no one on Biyaha who sounded like that. I tore at the swimmer’s eyelids, peeling each one off at last and looking up at the woman who now stood in front of me.
It couldn’t be.
“Sophie?”
She smiled and threw her arms around me.
“Surprise.”
