Alien Blood (Diaspora Worlds)

by Melisse Aires

  With Gema just an arm length away. Touching distance. But no touching allowed. Kellac sighed. He was on a constant level of sexual frustration. It wasn’t as if they were ever apart enough for him to even have a good yank. The swarm was always present, except in the lavatory, made of a tarp. And the primitive lavatory was not a place where anyone wanted to linger.

  Gema made him hot. He thought about her sexually dozens of times every day. She acted as though they were sexless. Buddies. Co-workers. They hadn’t talked about sexual matters since the first day, but he didn’t think Gema had changed her mind even a little bit.

  At bedtime shortly after sundown, Kellac slid the door in place and put the locking sapling across it. It was a wise precaution, they’d seen a pack of slinky swift golden furred creatures run down to the river several evenings, some type of predator. They also found claw marks high on a tree when they'd explored the higher hills one day. From the highest hill they could see mountains in the distance with an expanse of forest, leafy trees on the lower land, conifers higher up. Wild country.

  “Beautiful. Imagine being a settler here. So many resources,” Gema said.

  “You want to be a settler?”

  “Yes, but first I would pay for training, some skill in demand in a colony. If I had the credits. And it wouldn't be here, this will be a PureGen colony. You could settle here.”

  Kellac chuckled. “I have no interest in being a colonist, even if this is a beautiful world. My interests and background are all military. One I get off Toph I plan to go back and join my unit.”

  “You can?”

  “Yes. The charges against me are not part of the Allied Military Agreement with Toph. I was only held because I was on Toph and a high official pulled strings. New Prague was working to get me released when I was selected for the game.”

  “Are you homesick?”

  “In a way. I miss meeting up with my brothers and friends on leave. I miss the work I did every day. I want to see all my brothers together at once. We were in the Military Academy on Terra, so we continued through school and into the military. We’ve been separated a lot. It has been years since all four of us have been together.” He paused. “Are you homesick?”

  Gema laughed. “For the Toph’s Women’s Pen? No. I have nothing to go back too, there. I will move on.”

  They hiked back to camp in quiet thought. Kellac stopped to grab wood for the fire. They had stacks of limbs and sticks piled together but hadn’t yet hauled them from the small wooded area to the dugout.

  Gema was already on her grass bed, with her back to him, when he was done making the small fire. She always slept in a baggy shirt and shorts. The shirt hid her torso but the shorts cupped her bottom the way his hands wanted to do.

  Kellac flopped down on his grass mound and sighed. His attraction for her was not returned, he was pretty sure. She never touched him, never flirted, never tried to get his attention in a sexual way. Normally women tried to get his notice. His buddies tried to drag him places to use as bait for the ladies. But Gema didn’t seem to be attracted to him.

  It was probably for the best. Even now in the twilight the swarm flitted around, taking boring shots of their faces and dugout the Viewcast editors would cut.

  If they had sex, every camera would be right there, recording every breath every exposed body part. He was pretty sure after all this time, and all this longing, he'd be noisy if it ever happened. He'd pull in the viewers for sure.

  Gema would never go for it.

  He forced his thoughts to other matters, which didn't involve lush breasts or pink lips.

  “We’ll be getting a visit from the Game Master soon. What do you think the challenge will be?’

  Gema sighed. “Something physical, I’m sure. The audience will be amused at my efforts to climb some rocks or something. They will enjoy seeing me fail.”

  Kellac had a serious look in his eyes. “Our banks are pretty low already.”

  They hadn’t gained points on their housing.

  “We can make a counter offer,” he continued. “Three players have died, you know, trying to do challenges. A counter offer gives us more control.”

  She was silent for a moment. He could hear the call of a night bird they heard every night, the rush of the stream… Gema moving on her pallet an arm’s length away, trying to get comfortable.

  “How did your leg get hurt?” He asked.

  She was silent for a moment. “I guess it doesn’t matter if the viewers know. We were emigrating out to Yonder, a planet with free colonization. At night they can see the gas Chasm in the sky. My family and some of my cousins, we all went together. Free land, but not premium land like this area will be. Dry and hot, not suitable for big farms. Our parents worked on the ship for our transport, which made many stops in the system until it was time to go into spacer sleep for the trip to Yonder.”

  “Spacer sleep? I didn’t know anyone used it anymore.”

  “We came from a small system, without PureGen tech. Jump ships didn’t even come to our system. It was exciting to watch them when we were in some of the big ports. A flash of light and they were gone.” She paused, and sighed.

  “The ship’s systems started to fail, it was old and not well maintained. So they brought us down to Toph, which was the nearest port of call. But the ship wasn’t made to land… The pilots came down too hard and the landing systems didn’t work quite right. The company hadn’t trained the pilots on landing because the ship was supposed to stay in orbit. My parents were killed on landing. I was thrown from a bunk, and passed out, and came to in a Toph infirmary.”

  “Why didn’t your leg get fixed?”

  “They splinted it, but it required a procedure. I was a ward of the council, and my parents weren’t alive to bring a claim against the transport company, so they refused to pay. The Toph council refused to pay, too, saying it was a responsibility of the transport company—but no one cared to bring it before a justice council. The transport company either never got notification, or just didn't care. And I was just a child and knew nothing about most of this, I was sad because my parents were gone and my cousins had left without me. I think now they were forced to leave. I wasn’t and couldn’t be a citizen of Toph since I wasn’t PureGen. So it healed wrong.”

  “How’d you get in jail?”

  “I lost a job and housing, then was accused of theft, and by then I was a vagrant . I never was a citizen but they weren't sure what my homeworld was, I had few official papers. I told them where I was from, but they needed documentation and for some reason it wasn’t found in time. So, to prison I went.”

  “There was no justice there, just incompetence. After they found the documentation, couldn’t they retry you?”

  “They could have, I guess. There was no one to negotiate for me.”

  Kellac’s already low opinion of the Toph government went even lower. To leave a child with an injury they could fix was criminal. Even if she wasn’t PureGen. She was still human.

  Gema was silent for a while. She enjoyed the quiet talks they had at night. “It wasn’t bad, actually. Food every day, a bed. It was a well run prison, there was little threat of violence. Some of the women were kind and willing to be friends even though I wasn't PureGen.”

  She yawned. “How’d you end up in prison? You must come from a wealthy family.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Well, I don’t know everything about PureGens, but I know you are an exotic, and exotic lab work requires wealth.”

  He shifted again and his bare foot brushed against hers. Shivers of pleasure ran through her at the whisper soft touch.

  “Did you hear about the son of a Toph military commander who was killed in a weapons demo?”

  “I vaguely remember. It was a year ago or so?”

  “Yes. I was running the training demo as a guest military instructor. It was my homeworld's technology. It was an accident, but the Commander wanted a head to roll.”

  He shift
ed on his meadow grass bed, and she knew she could touch him, so easily.

  “My family is PureGen. My parents owned a mining business on New Prague and they are well off.” He snorted. “This issue with Toph… they dragged their feet investigating the incident and let the official insist I be jailed. Anyway, in hindsight, we should have insisted on a contract clause which would not hold me or my men responsible for any accidents.” He sighed. “The boy would have been fine if he'd just listened.”

  “Will you return to New Prague someday?”

  “Yes, it is my home, though most of my family lives off world and travels to New Prague to handle business matters. New Prague is domed. I’d rather live somewhere natural. Even Terra has some beautiful restored areas. I guess it is something my brothers and I should talk about someday. We could get homes together.” There was a touch of longing in his voice and she knew he missed his family.

  “I would consider moving to Selene, if I get enough credits. It doesn’t have a PureGen constitution, and it isn’t a big desert like Yonder… Selene sounds nice. They take in thousands of immigrants each year. No DNA test.”

  The DNA test was used on many planets to keep Zh Cle’ and Zh Cle’ human crossbreeds from immigrating to their planet. Terrans were shocked to find out they could breed with the Zh Cle’ humanoids Terrans found when they first ventured onto habitable planets. While quite close to humans in biology, they had some characteristics that were startling, reminding Terrans of bugs and insects. They were called insects or Bugs by many Terrans, and learning humans could marry and produce half breed children had set off the PureGen movement, eventually leading to entire planetary systems adopting PureGen constitutions, so only humans with no Zh Cle’ DNA could be citizens. Eventually wealthier communities began refining their children’s genetics in labs, as part of the PureGen movement.

  “I’ll have to check out Selene. Maybe my brothers would enjoy a place there. Somewhere we can all share.”

  A little thrill of excitement ran through Gema, which she quickly crushed. He doesn’t mean anything about me being with him. Stars, she could be such a fool!

  “Maybe,” she said. “I thought about going back to my homeworld. I probably still have relatives there.”

  Kellac answered after a moment, his speech slow with drowsiness. “It’s important to be near family.”

  With the shelter finally done, they started on saplings for a protective fence, and Gema examined plants when they took breaks. The work was much easier. The Game Master seemed to be ignoring them.

  “He must really be planning something,” Gema said as they cut down saplings in the wooded area near the river.

  “I wonder when he'll show. But we can use the time to get our camp together.”

  The next day, still no Game Master, they worked hard on the fence in the morning, then took some time to explore the land around their dugout. They set a leisurely pace, and Gema took the time to enter plants into her com.

  Somehow the editors made this quiet activity appealing to their audience, perhaps slicing in shots of predators, or showing viewer videos commenting on the two of them. Knowing the types of speculation and remarks the viewers made, Gema was glad she would never see this show. Though she might, someday, download a picture of Kellac so she could remember him. She had several on the com, taken when he wasn’t watching her.

  Gema stopped abruptly. “Kellac! I have to go back to the dugout!” He looked at her with raised eyebrows until she made a scribbling motion with her finger. They hurried back to the dugout.

  She ran into the shelter with Kellac following, wrote on her pad, and shoved it into his hand.

  “We are on Duseault 9, slated for colonization in two years. There are records of climate, edible foods—everything.”

  Kellac read it carefully, covering it with his hand before stoking up their fire and tossing it in. “Good to know,” he said in a casual voice, but he smiled. “We should go for a soak.”

  His white toothed smile and deep dimples captured her attention. A glide of heat ran through her body stopping to tingle her nipples before rushing deep between her legs. She blinked. He was a force of nature or something… if he should decide to seduce her she feared her ‘no sex in front of the swarm’ stance would fly into the breeze.

  He leaped up and went back into the dugout. His hand pressed a slip of paper into her hand and the touch made her hair stand on end. She couldn’t help it, her body reacted to his nearness without her brain even getting involved.

  “What next?”

  She got up and went to the pad inside a bag. Was it her imagination or was he watching her? Sometimes she thought he watched her as though he wanted her, but at other times she couldn't believe a PureGen Exotic would find her attractive. Her heart beat faster when she had to touch his hand to slide the note into it.

  “I should know soon what continent and region we are in. Also we can calculate the time of the season. When we know that I can make a file of native edibles.”

  “You concentrate on the data, and I’ll build the fence,” he said.

  Gema started to protest—he did so much of their physical labor already.

  He shook his head. “Fair exchange.”

  So they agreed. Gema spent part of the day foraging food, while Kellac planted tall limbs into holes in a semi-circle in front of the dugout.

  The next challenge came a few days later.

  “Resting on the bed of this river are two golden balls,” the Game Master boomed. “We have even designated the areas where these balls can be found.”

  With a sweep of his spangled gloved hand he indicated two floats attached to ropes. “The challenge is simple. Dive down to the bottom of the river and retrieve one ball. You get six chances. For completing this challenge you will receive five hundred points and one week’s food supply.”

  The Game Master turned his smarmy smile on them. “Oh, and this is not a team challenge. You will compete individually.”

  Kellac yanked off his shirt and pants, revealing his broad shouldered, muscular physique. “I’ll go first. I’ll try to locate both the balls. It shouldn’t be too difficult. I sink like a rock.”

  He’s the delight of the female audience, now, if he wasn’t before, Gema thought.

  He walked to the river in just his thin undergarment and Gema couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  The Game, Gema, she chided herself. Think about The Game.

  Kellac made it look easy. He grabbed his ball on the second dive and came out of the water with his bronze skin glistening in the sunshine.

  He smiled for the swarm, then loped over to her.

  “The current is strong. If you start to get pulled down stream, surface so you can catch the rope.”

  He walked with her to the river’s edge and explained where the ball was situated.

  Gema chose not to take off her clothing. She walked until she was at chest height, then dived. She could swim a little, but she'd never tried to swim a river. While they paddled and bathed along the river's edge, she'd never once thought it would be safe to swim in the deeper water. She stayed in knee high water.

  The water pulled her immediately but she was able to reach the rope and pull herself back to shore. The initial pulls, before she could get her feet on the river bottom, took a great deal of effort against the current and her arms and wrists ached.

  The second time she decided to duck under and look for the globe before diving. She saw it, gleaming in the bright afternoon sun amidst rocks. She dived hard, pushing with her legs, but again she got swept downstream by the current.

  This time when she grabbed the rope she got a rope burn on her hand, very painful. She waited for a moment for the pain to diminish, but pulling herself to the shallows was difficult.

  The third time she decided to dive from shallower water. Maybe she would get more depth. Angle downward toward the globe.

  It didn’t work. This time the current tumbled her over and she wasn’t sure which dire
ction was the surface. Panic swept through her. She swallowed a mouthful of water but bobbed to the surface, where she coughed and gagged before going under again.

  She felt the scrape of the rope and for a moment was able to grab it, but between the coughing and the pain in her hand she was not able to keep her grip. She rushed downstream.

  This is it. This is how I die.

  Kellac would grieve for her, and feel responsible. With renewed effort Gema struggled to keep her head up. The current was taking her right down the center, far from either bank. She flailed toward the side of the river, seeing Kellac running to keep pace with her. Her strokes didn't have the power to move her toward land against the strong current. Exhaustion and cold had settled in her limbs, she could barely move them.