Xeno Relations

by Trisha McNary

  Pooquali walked to Nestgorm’s computer and pulled up some files.

  “Let’s see. Tree genes for extended life—they need that so the slaves will be long-lasting. Cockroach genes for strength and durability. And some of their own Woogah genes to make them more susceptible to the Woogah hypnosis spells. Sounds good?” Pooquali asked Eegor.

  “Actually, no. That doesn’t sound good,” said Eegor.

  He had made a disgusted face at the mention of cockroach genes.

  “Do we really have to get all that? Did Antaska get that? Yuck! Can’t we just call over and cancel that part or send an email,” Eegor asked.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Eegor,” said Apostrophe in a sweet, reasonable voice. “If we ask for something different, they’ll be suspicious. They might send someone over here to check things out. What if they sent over their police or something?”

  “Yeah, Eegor, we don’t want that,” said Pooquali. “We were able to control one of these Woogahs, but I don’t know if we could handle a bunch of them. They’ve got some strong telepathic powers, you know.”

  “OK, OK. We’ll just take her with all that weird gene stuff,” said Eegor. “I guess I can get used to it.”

  He shuddered just a bit. Eegor wondered if this wild plan could really work out.

  “You know,” he said. “This sounds good, but I’ve been thinking about things a lot lately. All alone here by myself. I’ve been thinking about the big picture. And I’m starting to wonder if no matter what, I’m going to end up taking the punishment for what I did to Antaska. I mean, I tried to run away, but I ended up in solitary again. I’ve thought about what I did, and now I know it was really bad. Maybe I can’t get away from paying the price. What do you think?” he asked the Eeeepps.

  “But Eegor, we did bad things too, and we aren’t being punished,” said Pooquali.

  “Yeah, but not as bad as what I did,” said Eegor. He leaned back in his chair and sighed.

  “No. We did some bad things before we met you that you don’t know about,” said Apostrophe.

  “But we’re sorry!” Pooquali insisted. “We were just going along with the others!”

  Apostrophe nodded her head in agreement.

  “Well maybe you’ll get your punishment later,” said Eegor.

  The two Eeeepps turned and stared at each other with wide yellow eyes.

  Chapter 18

  Warp space…

  About two months later, Pweet sat in her chair on Marroo’s bridge. Marroo sat across from her in the captain’s chair. The handsome blue alien leaned toward her, smiled, and spoke.

  “It’s not long now before we reach the Woogah planet. Just a few weeks. Have you decided about getting the genetic enhancement treatment for females I told you about? I can schedule it as soon as we break out of warp space.”

  “But isn’t it very expensive?” Pweet asked. “I don’t want you to have to spend so much on me.”

  Marroo waved a blue hand and smiled broadly.

  “Don’t worry about the expense,” he said. “I value you as my companion and have your best interest in mind, so no expense is too much for you.”

  Pweet looked over at the hunky alien man. So good looking, yet not so great on the inside. In the last two months, she’d become telepathic without him realizing it. And she had heard his constant mental talk. About her and about an Earthling female named Antaska. Mostly about Antaska. Pweet knew that he did not have her best interest in mind. She kept her own face neutral.

  She’d thought about the genetic treatment. A lot. And, unknown to Marroo, she’d done research on it while he was off the bridge. The real reason for this treatment was to make females more valuable as work slaves. There was no other reason. It was a very creepy and disturbing process. Cockroach, tree, and Woogah genes would be added to her own genetic makeup. She would no longer be one hundred percent human. She would be some kind of mutant.

  Pweet repressed a shudder. Nonetheless, she thought about agreeing to the treatment. From watching the forbidden videos, she’d learned that captured females weren’t usually asked if they wanted it or not. They arrived on the Woogah planet in a catatonic state after being hypnotized by slave hunters like Marroo. But Marroo’s hypnotic powers weren’t working right now, for whatever reason. So he was asking her permission.

  This gene alteration sounds awful and disgusting to me, but there would be some real benefits if I get it, Pweet thought. It would make me stronger and live longer and increase my telepathic abilities. The only female who ever fought back against the Woogahs was a Verdante with extreme physical and telepathic powers. As I am, I don’t have much to fight back with, but maybe that would help. In all this time, I haven’t been able to figure out a way to get away from this man who’s going to sell me into slavery on his planet. I need to be as strong as I can.

  Marroo stared at her, waiting for her answer.

  “OK. I’ll do it,” Pweet agreed.

  “That’s wonderful! Fantastic!” he said.

  He clapped his hands together, stood up from his chair, and walked toward her. Pweet tried not to flinch. She heard him talk to himself telepathically.

  “Yes! All will go as planned after all! My powers haven’t been working on her all this time because her own telepathic power is so weak. As soon as she becomes more telepathic with the addition of my race’s genes, she’ll fall right under my spell. No woman can resist!”

  He stopped in front of Pweet and stood smiling down at her. She forced a smile on her own face. By now, she knew he couldn’t molest her physically because of the problem he kept talking about. Somehow his race’s virility depended on the male putting the female under a hypnotic spell, but that wasn’t happening. And of course, he blamed her.

  Pweet didn’t say anything, and Marroo stood there talking to himself telepathically some more.

  “Yes. It won’t be long now. I’ll slake my thirst for an Earth woman’s pleasures, and then I’ll be rid of the desire for Antaska for once and all!”

  Somehow, Pweet didn’t think he was right about that, but she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t supposed to be able to hear his mental speech after all. But she thought that maybe there was more to it than he realized. Could he be in love with this Antaska? On Earth, falling in love had been discouraged for this very reason. It made it difficult for people to leave on their way to wherever they would be going with the Verdantes.

  Marroo looked deep into Pweet’s eyes. She knew what would come next. Another attempt to ignite her telepathic powers by screaming mentally at her. And yes, she was right.

  “Pweet! Pweet! Can you hear me?” he screamed at her mentally from inches away.

  “Ouch! Ow!” Pweet groaned on cue. “My headache is back again! I have to go rest in my room. Alone. I’ll see you later at dinner.”

  She got up from the chair. Marroo was standing close, and she swerved to avoid touching him.

  “Soon. Soon. You will not avoid my touch!” he said telepathically as she walked past. “Soon you will beg for my touch. And maybe I will grant it, and maybe not.”

  Pweet headed out the door without slowing down.

  “You’ll see! You’ll see! No woman can resist me! No woman walks away from me!” Marroo yelled after her mentally.

  Is he starting to crack up? Pweet wondered. Or was he always this crazy? I wonder if that Antaska he keeps talking about knows what a crazy man he is.

  She reached her room, went inside, and closed and locked the door. Pweet stared at the door lock. For the first time, she wondered if it would really keep him out.

  Later that same night—the space ship’s artificial night—Marroo couldn’t sleep. He paced through the hallways of his ship thinking about Pweet. Why was she so resistant to his hypnotic powers? Frustratingly, his thoughts kept returning to Antaska. She was the only reason that Pweet was here, after all.

  “How much longer will that Earth woman plague my mind?” he asked the empty hallway telepathically
.

  Marroo passed by Pweet’s room. As he had done many times on this trip, he adjusted the door’s controls so it would be transparent. Looking in, not looking out, of course.

  Pweet lay asleep on a bed in one of the rooms he had for the women he transported after capturing them. Not so long ago, Antaska had lain in that same bed. But unlike Pweet, Antaska spent the entire trip in a semi-comatose state. And Marroo had spent many hours staring through this same door at her. Thinking of that trip, Marroo began talking to himself telepathically again.

  “Ah! Antaska looked so beautiful and vulnerable lying there. I wonder if things would have been different with her if I hadn’t deepened her trance with Woogah technology. If she’d been awake and fully herself on the trip like Pweet has been. Would she have fallen for me then?” he asked himself.

  “But no woman has ever refused me!” he repeated the words he’d told himself so many times. “It’s true they were under my hypnotic spell, but the spell doesn’t work unless there is at least some desire on their part. Isn’t that why all Woogah hunters are genetically designed to be irresistible to females? And aren’t I one of the most attractive of them all?”

  He thought more about Pweet. She had perhaps shown some interest, in the beginning anyway, and she was always pleasant and friendly now. But she was the first female who didn’t throw herself at him, making her desire clear. Marroo’s romantic trysts with females had always been with their agreement. So far, Pweet hadn’t agreed to anything like that. Marroo was starting to think that she never would. Would she agree even if she were under his hypnotic love spell?

  “Am I losing my powers? My charms? Why is this happening? I’m still in my prime,” he spoke out mentally in the empty hallway.

  Marroo closed his eyes, and Antaska’s face, framed by its halo of bright pink hair, filled his mind. When he opened his eyes and looked back in the room at Pweet, she looked different. Was it a trick of the light reflecting the pinkish walls and blue bedspread that gave her hair a pink glow? No longer stick straight in sleep, it crumpled around her head in waves just like Antaska’s hair. And the features of Pweet’s face, blurred in the dim light, now seemed distinctly like Antaska’s features.

  A surge of desire rushed through Marroo. Unexpected and uncontrollable. And for the first time in the many months since he had last seen Antaska, he felt his full hypnotic power return as well. Deep layers of thick white clouds formed and swirled in his eyes.

  “Yes! It is meant to be!” he said telepathically. “I must try now!”

  Driven by his desire and restored power, and without thought to the consequences, Marroo adjusted his ship’s security controls and unlocked Pweet’s door. She didn’t wake as the door rose up. She still didn’t wake when Marroo entered the room and crossed over to stand looking down at her.

  He stood for a few moments. The power rushed through his mind and body, demanding a release, blurring his mental sharpness. In the dimness, his mind held the image of Antaska superimposed over Pweet’s true appearance.

  Her cheeks looked fuller and rounder in Marroo’s wishfully warped mind. He reached out a hand and brushed her soft skin. It didn’t feel quite the same, but he didn’t notice.

  “Ah!” he said telepathically.

  Pweet jerked away from his hand. Her whole body lunged to the side, and she let out a high, loud shriek. Marroo pulled his hand back, stunned. He stood frozen in place, staring at her.

  What am I doing? he thought at the same time that she yelled the same question at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Marroo apologized out loud. He searched for the words to explain himself but couldn’t think of any.

  Pweet jumped out of the bed and stood facing him with her chest heaving and fists clenched as if she might strike him.

  “You’re sorry! You’re sorry!” she screamed at him. “I don’t care if you’re sorry! How dare you come in here when I’m sleeping and start touching me! Did I tell you to do that? No!”

  Marroo waved his hands in a calming motion. “I just don’t know what came over me,” he tried to explain in between her screaming.

  “I don’t care what came over you! You don’t ever come in here when I’m asleep! I thought my door was locked! I don’t have any privacy from you on this ship? Any security?”

  “Well, it is my ship,” said Marroo.

  “I don’t care if it’s your ship, and I don’t care who you are. You don’t ever do that again!” she yelled.

  Then her voice grew lower and calmer but more intensely threatening. “You will not ever do that again. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes. I understand. I won’t come in here again without your permission. I promise you,” Marroo assured her.

  He didn’t believe she could really harm him, but the tone of her voice told him she would try. And one should never underestimate the power of an angry female. A lesson learned the hard way by many slave hunters who had crossed one.

  “I’ll go now,” Marroo told her. “This was my mistake, and I’m truly sorry. Don’t worry. I’ve never forced myself on a female, and I never will. I’ll wait for your invitation to your bed.”

  “Huh!” She crossed her arms and let out an offended snort. “Like that’s going to happen!”

  Marroo turned and walked out. He closed the door behind him and removed its transparency. At last he felt tired enough to be able to sleep this ship’s night.

  Yes! My powers are returning! Marroo thought as he walked down the hallway to his own room. It’s only a matter of time before I enjoy the pleasure of her body. And then Antaska will be erased from my mind forever.

  He sighed at the thought of Antaska. He noticed that the familiar pulling deep inside him felt stronger too.

  I’m getting closer to her, he realized. But of course, she is nearby on the Woogah planet, and we will be there soon. Perhaps I can see her one last time. I’m sure Nestgorm won’t mind. I’ll be bringing him a new slave after all. He can grant me this one favor.

  Marroo stopped and stood still, realizing the direction his thoughts had just been taking. That wasn’t the plan! The plan was to forget about her!

  “Argh! What am I thinking!” he asked himself telepathically. “Are these Earth women driving me mad between the two of them?”

  Pweet sat on her bed and shook uncontrollably after Marroo had left her room. She crossed her arms and hugged herself, trying to get a grip on her emotions. Rage mixed with fear, and her heart pounded fast against her arms.

  “The evil, awful, creep!” she said out loud over and over.

  Pweet took some deep breaths. After a few minutes, she felt calmer but still angry and scared. She flopped back down on the bed and stared at the ceiling in the darkened room.

  Well, this should be no surprise after everything I’ve learned about his species, she told herself. They hunt women, hypnotize and capture them, and then sell them as slaves. Why would I expect he’d treat me with any respect or like a sentient being?

  Still, he did leave when she’d asked him to, and in more than two months on the space ship with him, he hadn’t tried to force himself on her. Pweet knew that had a lot to do with his species weird mating habits that also involved or maybe required hypnosis. And she knew that Marroo was having some kind of problem with his hypnotic powers.

  Hopefully that will keep up till we reach his planet, she thought.

  She twisted restlessly on the bed.

  I wonder if I’ll be able to sleep at all tonight, she thought. Probably not. But then I can sleep though part of the ship’s daytime tomorrow and avoid him. Meanwhile, I need to come up with a plan. He’s going to try that hypnosis thing on me again after I go through his gene alteration treatment. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work though. Then what?

  Pweet knew all about the slave work farms from the forbidden Woogah videos she’d watched.

  For sure I’ll be sent there, she realized. I’ll just have to make the best of it. At least it sounds like I won’t be raped ther
e. I’ll pretend to be hypnotized and go along with it, and then I’ll plan my escape. It will be tough, but I know what some of their weaknesses are.

  She sighed. With her rage gone, dark depression moved in.

  Why oh why did I jump onto this space ship with this strange crazy man? she asked herself. I can keep blaming the Verdantes and the Earth administrators, but I made a big mistake, and now I’m paying for it. They’re not the ones who have to pay for it.

  She sighed again, still feeling resentful.

  I’m mad at them, and I’m mad at myself too, she thought. The only one I’m not mad at is that little black kitten I met on Earth right before I left. I wish he was here with me right now!

  Then along with that wish, Pweet spoke her first telepathic words. “Oh little black kitten! I wish you were here! Where are you?”

  A familiar black cat face appeared in her mind. It looked just like the kitten only bigger.

  “Hi Pweet. It’s me, Murrie. I’m on my way,” said the furry black cat face.

  Am I going crazy from all this insanity? From spending all this time with the crazy man? Pweet wondered.

  But for some reason, she felt better now. Much more relaxed. And very tired. She pulled the covers up over her, closed her eyes, and was soon asleep.

  Chapter 19

  A week later…

  High above the atmosphere of the Woogah planet, M. Mort and the crew of the space ship Jalapeno prepared to exit warp space.

  “Are the stealth shields in place, Lieutenant XoXo?” Captain Kamphone asked telepathically.

  “Aye, aye, captain,” the lieutenant replied.

  “Is everyone strapped down for zero g?” the captain asked.

  “Aye, aye, captain,” everyone answered, including M. Mort.

  Everyone except one, M. Mort noticed.

  “Not me,” said the little cat Murrie. “I don’t need to be strapped down. Un uh.”

  “Very well. If that’s your choice, Private Murrie.” the captain answered.

  M. Mort turned and looked at Murrie sitting on the counter next to him. He’d grown fast since they first met on Earth three months ago. Now he was about half the size of an adult cat.