by Jen Greyson
“At the time, I was worried for my life.”
“As you should be now. Nothing is guaranteed without her choice, Dirk. Must I remind you of that?”
“I’m calling you, aren’t I? I know the stakes. Now if you’re done giving me advice, tell me her frontrunner.”
“The Hemperklu, Maywak.”
My stomach tightened. “Seriously? A hemp?”
“There has been no official record or statement, but their presentation was phenomenal. Based on her reactions, she was clearly smitten. I believe the duration assisted in the outcome; a Hemperklu day is one Samarian week.”
Twenty-one human days.
Not fair at all, I wanted to shout. How could I accomplish the same given only one seventh of the time?
“Do not let the limitations of your length discourage you. The presentation was designed to maximize the time you have with her.” She pressed her lips together. “You assured me three days would be enough.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Or so I thought. Lility was nothing like I’d expected and I was honesty struggling to find my feet with her. Problem was, I was working in unchartered territory for me and if I was smart, I’d just go back to being me and let the chips fall where they may. While I had told Finfal that three days was plenty, I hadn’t been entirely honest either. Legendary my reputation might be, but as with happens with all legends, facts get magnified over time. It had been years since I’d had to put forth any effort in winning a lady’s affections, and I’d lumped Lility into that same pool. But it wouldn’t have mattered what the conditions, with the stakes as high as they were for me, I’d have told Finfal any lie necessary to make this deal.
Now all I had to do was figure out how to let my conscious do the same to Lility and assure my safety.
“I still have two days.” I ran a hand through my hair. “That’s plenty of time and now that I know the Hemp is what she’s looking for in a mate, I can adjust my course.”
“The presentation is set.” Concern laced her words.
“Nothing to worry about. I can easily stay within the confines of the presentation, I’m just going to make a few tweaks. All good.”
“I hope so.” Her eyes softened. “For all our sakes.”
CHAPTER 10
OH, WHAT HAD I gotten myself into? Calling a halt to the presentation was a foolish move, one that could not only get me reprimanded, but let Dirk know how much he was affecting me. Neither was good this late in the game. I felt the pressure of not only being the pearl, but the last human to hold the position. I had to get this right, and until meeting Dirk, I thought I had.
My thoughts turned to the lengthy conversations I’d had with Maywak, both during his presentation and after. We’d seemed like the perfect alliance. His views on the Bevi ocean conservation were not only revolutionary, but would be easy to get passed in legislation should any opposition come up. We were unbelievably well-suited for a myriad of reasons.
I sighed and paused at the hatch to the spacewatch. The long tube spanned the barracks from the bridge, transparent from top to bottom, made of a polymer that had come from the last union of a Bevi and an Aramo. My greatest joy would come from being able to leave a lasting imprint on my people. The spacewatches had been an instant sensation, and one of many things the polymer had been used for, everything from timegate switches that no longer bowed from the stress and strain of holding the gates open to harnesses on Kiia saddles that could withstand a LinnOw winter. All because of a union. A perfect union.
Until this presentation, I’d thought that I’d made mine.
My feet released the pressure sensitive hatch and the transparent doors swung open for me. I hadn’t been on one yet and when I finally did, I’d looked forward to a mindful evening surrounded by the stars and all the galaxies I could see. Tonight, the weight of my choice and Dirk’s pesky entertainment pressed down on me like a lead robe.
I inhaled the tasteless, scentless air as it sensed me and my race’s perfect concoction of breathability. This was the coolest feature of the spacewatch, its ability to direct within a millimeter of error any participant’s perfect breathing requirement to sustain life. Not only could I stand on this bridge with the Hemperklu but we could have been smooshed up against a Twilip, Mercev, and a Bevi, each of us receiving the exact air requirements to sustain our lifeform.
I breathed in the perfect mixture of oxygen. This was the symbiotic universal amazing things came as the result of Unions. Why was I letting my humanness get in the way? Being the pearl was like standing on the spacewatch amid beings from every galaxy. Our uniqueness didn’t matter, it was what we became as a whole, something vast and capable of so much. For all that Dirk was a Samarian, he was a human first. Creating a union between two humans doomed the universe to eventual destruction. I couldn’t even make it through a presentation without having to call a time out. How would we ever get through ruling together? I didn’t know where he stood on any policies or trade conflicts or anything.
I sighed and walked to the middle of the watch, my feet seemingly floating above nothing and everything, stars so close I could touch them with my toes. To be sure of my decision, I had to start asking the hard questions, had to treat this like a true presentation instead of being along for the ride. Convincing myself that that had been the way to go had been a foolish choice and I’d lost nearly a day to that decision. Yet another reason I couldn’t pick him, he made me want to shirk my duties to do fun things like dive and catch jewels.
Humans were so strange.
I had plowed through a lot of meaningless content looking for answers about my race and had expected similar endless raw data like what we had when we conducted our exposés. It was that discrepancy which had led me to all the data about the human’s demise.
A fascinating downward spiral, that one. It had taken historians a long time to figure out what had caused the seemingly sudden extinction of my entire race. Documentation had consisted of perfect vacations, pristine homes, beautiful children, and zero failures. A massive abyss had existed between what they’d found in the digital histories and what they’d known to be true. When they’d finally discovered that humans had manipulated the truth of what was registered as historical records in their social media, historians dug into the missing piece of the equation and had backtracked how they’d gone extinct. While humans had learned a few worthy things along the course of their evolution, their best had come too late to save them.
In any case, I’d fought to overcome my weak human parts. I reveled in the fact that every moment of a life was accessible for review. I’d never understood why you’d want a potential mate to only know the good things, why you wouldn’t want to reveal the fallacies, the heartbreak, the vulnerable depths of sorrows and fears. I loved going into a presentation knowing the failures that had occurred in a representative’s life. Failures were beacons*, they allowed me to draw pinpricks of significance throughout his life—where he risked big enough to fail and what those failures had in common. Those were topics he was passionate about, topics we could discuss deeply. Words were my music. Where Fransín could sit and listen to a Lyrican for days, I could do the same with a Hemperklu male.
And had.
And not always with the proper representative.
I’d devoured hours of content of Hemperklus waxing on about some topic, a blisteringly beautiful disaster, a potential failure.
Humans had been scared of failure. They’d fought what they feared. They’d destroyed what they feared. It baffled me. They’d feared everything, including each other. To their small minds, different had equaled fear.
And it had killed them.
Sometimes that made me sad, but not really. Humans had been weak. They’d had no place in a universe that didn’t see differences as a detriment. I was glad I was the last one, on to a bigger and brighter union with a potential mate who didn’t fear, but embraced everything that wasn’t like him.
I examined the tips of my fingers, tracing th
e maze of my fingerprints. It still baffled me that humans were still the only species to lay claim to the truth that not another person held the same fingerprints. I rubbed my thumb against my index finger, sending a shiver of tingles across my body. My fingertips had fascinated everyone in both Samaria and Bevi; my fingertips alone could make me orgasm. The human network of nerves had baffled the Mother Divine, a being who knew the far reaches and delights of every star system. There had never been another race quite like us.
Humans had multiple differences from one to another, so unlike all the other universal species. From fingerprints to viewpoints to their very DNA, not one was like another.
But where humans forgave each other for their different maze of uniqueness on their fingers, holding views that were as unique and unlike anyone else’s was an offense punishable by vile hatred to one another. The human’s capacity to feel and love was eclipsed only by their ability to hate and fear.
I set my coffee cup down and pressed my fingertips together, inhaling at the electricity of my own touch. I grazed my fingerprints against each other, feeling each ridge and the shower of sparks that rocketed up my arms. The hair at the base of my skull lifted, sending more tingles over my scalp.
Pity the uniqueness of humans hadn’t been given to a better species, one slow to anger and hatred, one like the Twilips.
CHAPTER 11
HE SENDS HER a message that he’s cancelled diner. Meet again in the morning. Over coffee.
Sends another message as she’s getting ready (what does she do about that robe and all her makeup, etc. Does Fransín come over every morning>> yes. They talk about it. Tells fran he’s human. “Really?” A wistful smile curved her lips.
What’s M doing?
Trying to figure out how to fix Dirk’s ship.
I didn’t know anything was wrong with it.
No, there wasn’t, but then M found some suggested repairs after he scanned it. I think he was hoping to impress Dirk once you guys finished up.
Another message came through. Fransín stood. “I’ll grab it, then I’d better go.”
“Please don’t leave me.”
She smiled. “You’ll be fine. He’s a human, how bad could it be?”
Change of plans. Meet me in the sim room. If you want coffee you better get it on the way.
What’s the sim??
Bevi waterfall.
Hike.
She’s bored. Blah blah —he puts his hand over her mouth. “One, you don’t get to complain in a presentation. Two—” he snapped his fingers and the sim transformed immediately into a massive library, shelves rose above us, reaching toward the sky. The books numbered in the millions. No on in my lifetime had seen this many. Books hadn’t survived so many of the wars. My fingers curled into my palms with the need to touch them. He squeezed my cheeks softly, drawing my attention back to him. “Two, I’ve got this.”
I blinked. Who was he?
His hand slid off my mouth and travel down my jaw to curl around the nape of my neck. The heat of his gaze burned into mine and for all that I wanted to run and search the books, my feet were soldered to the ground beneath like he’d poured molten Tipper sap on them.
Library.
CHAPTER 12
SHE SLEEPS FITFULLY.
After the space walk, they stumble across each other — Race and Kait in the stall.
Reconcile.
Does he almost kiss her?
She changes the subject. Politics! Asks him something she’d ask the Tipper representative. He answers in the most seductive way. Trails his fingers down her throat. Seduction. Has the perfect answer. One not even the hemperklu could have come up with.
Martian_2: Dragon_695
So why get married then if you're not having children? I—are you?—are you having children with the Hemperklu?
Different castes handled species survival—apparently a far different process than how the humans had handled it. If you asked me, maybe if they had been a bit more scientific about it, I wouldn’t be the last one.
“That's not how the Hemperklu society works. This is an alliance. There is a caste of Hemperklus that are perfectly derived and genetically modified to ensure the most evolved of that species is reproducing. Hemperklus and 95% of the galaxies now don't allow random reproduction. That's no longer a worthwhile evolution of reproduction.
“So you don't think about that? You don’t think about having your own kids?” His voice bubbled over with incredulity.
“I’ve never had to think about it. I'm not trained to have children. That's not my job in the “tribe.” If I had kids I would reproduce only the aspects of my DNA that are the strongest and I would probably look for people to reproduce with that are what I'm attracted to in that moment of my cycle.” I laughed, wondering why he didn’t know all this. “For all that we’ve evolved, we’re still just mammals. Hemperklus are something completely different obviously and Grecians, and Tyans, and Parisues…I can list every galaxy beyond ours. Humans were the last to evolve into selective reproduction. We were complete barbarians about it. So, no, I'd don't think about having kids. That doesn't interest me. I have bigger things to do. I love that we’ve became a species that no longer holds that as a milestone for women. I understand that use to be how it was, that if a woman didn't have kids she was ostracized. For hundreds of years those women had this funny name.” I laughed. “They were spinsters. Yet if you look at who those women were, they were totally ahead of their times.” I looked up, startled that he’d let me babble on. I looked down and smoothed my napkin across my lap. “I don’t…You don't want to hear any of this. Let’s talk about I—what—I don’t even—” I looked up and took a breath, drawing on my training. “What do you want to talk about? What do mechanics talk about?” I didn't want to have an evolved conversation with him. I wasn't going to marry a Samarian. He was not the real choice from Samaria, dual citizenship or no. They should've sent a female. This was a complete violation of who they were as a galaxy and honestly I had half a mind to report them. You don't get to just pick a dude simply because I was up for a male-female alliance. The next selection would be female-female and one after that would be male-male. They should've sent a female. I didn’t understand why they’d sent Dirk—of all the choices of living, breathing choices.
He picked his teeth with a fork.
I’d met Samarians. I’d spent nearly 6 of their moon years in school with them. They were in the amazing race; all-female powerful loving. They were some of my closest friends in the geisha house. I'd actually really been looking forward to tonight’s date.
And they’d sent Dirk.
I didn't understand why they’d done this to me, why they hadn’t honored me enough, or respected me enough to send their best female to spend an evening with me. I get that I wouldn't have been able to choose her, but I would've appreciated the evening.
Dirk took a long drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, as I expected from his manners, then he belched, leaned back in his chair, and slung an arm over the one beside him. “We could talk about all the Taxfees new running back, or the Bohemian’s new keeper.” He stared at me intently. “Is that what you think I talk about? Sports?”
Why was coming at me? This wasn't my idea. He wasn't supposed to be here. I’d tried to make it a nice evening. The truth was, I didn't want to be here. We should both just in the evening. This was a waste of my time. This was a waste of his time. “Look, I don’t know why the Samarians sent you. I don't know who you fucked.
“Well, thanks for the evening.”
“And what will you be telling the Samarians about their presentation and choice of representative?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It kind of is.”
“I’m not required to reveal my reasoning to anyone, certainly not during a presentation.”
“You said it was over. This was your last one. You had a frontrunner coming into ton
ight. I was better or worse. You’re either picking me or you’re not. Which is it?”
Worse. So much worse and for a million reasons. “I’m not.” Though there had been fun moments during the date, Dirk was not a better choice over the Hemperklu. An enjoyable evening did not a union make.
He pushes. This is important to him. (Why?? He agreed to the dual-citizenship for a reason. Is there a bounty on his head? The Samarians paid it in agreement for him going on the date—AND BEING CHOSEN. His reputation preceded him. He was a closer. If she doesn’t pick him, the deal is off and he gets handed over to “Jabba the Hut” a LinnOw)
“A Hemperklu??” His eyes widened until he looked like a Grevant. “Wow.” The word was an exhale. He stared at me. “A Hemp? You can’t be serious.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d said too much already, but he’d find out soon enough. I wanted to get rid of him.
His gaze roamed my face, touched my lips, my earlobes, and dipped to stroke my arms. His features tightened and he tipped his head like he was studying me and trying to figure out the mechanics of me and a Hemperklu. I shifted my weight to one foot, pushing a hip out. I would not let him shame me for this choice. It was a good one.
“You really do hate me, don’t you?” He seemed genuinely surprised that I’d pick anyone over him.
LAUGHS.
His POV.
Oh shit. Shit shit shit.
Out of time to fix it. Thought he’d won her over. It didn’t matter that he’d reject her offer, but he’d been certain that she’d have chosen
