Chapter 3
Mara
That was hot. He is hot. I am having a good time.
I’m not supposed to be having a good time. I’m supposed to be sacrificing myself to save the colony, not to mention finding my lost father. I have missions to accomplish, and instead I am spreading my legs for an advanced alien who sees me as little more than a possession.
I feel guilty as I remember all of that, once the arousal settles down, the thrill of punishment wanes, and even the afterglow of orgasm starts to dissipate.
The colony sent me to the sun because they believed my blood would bring rain. The rains more or less evaporated after my father left. I do not understand how the two events were linked, but it seems like they must have been.
The only reason the colony hasn’t dried up and blown away is because of the machines we use to make hydrogen dioxide.
Hydrogen and oxygen are fortunately plentiful.
There’s drinking water and water for farm stock and plants.
Some say that’s enough. But nature is not surviving the way it used to, the planet itself is dying, and that has ramifications.
Freak catches my mood shift, because he is so sensitive to energy and because he can probably read my mind. Sometimes that feels intrusive. Other times, it feels like I’m being saved a lot of communication work.
“Why do you look so solemn, pet?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about how to restore rain to the planet without burning up in the sun.”
He gives me a slightly pained expression. “You do understand that plan was never going to bring the rains back. You burning up in the sun does nothing to change the ecology of a planet. Your colony is going to have to adjust to a changing world. It may be best for them to seek new worlds.”
“They don’t want to do that. It’s one of the original colonies.”
He directs my attention to his eyes with a gesture. “Pet,” he says. “I want you to understand that is not your responsibility, and even if it were—and I repeat, it is not—you could not change the rains. A planet’s water cycle is greater than the efforts of a single human.”
“I mean, couldn’t we get more rain by raising temperatures? Or, shouldn’t the water we’re manufacturing be going into the atmosphere and being recycled as precipitation?”
“Perhaps,” he says. “But again, sweetheart, you are the daughter of a merchant. You are not a water scientist.”
“I could be.”
“Do you want to be?”
“Not really.”
He chuckles. “You were given an unreasonable mission that was designed to end your bloodline. I believe it was a political move.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Because,” he says. “The alternative is believing that intelligent creatures thought sending you to space would fix their water cycling problems and that is…”
“It’s very human,” I say. “We’ve always believed that giving up something precious can get something else that is important.”
“Yes,” he says, his lips quirking in that way people’s do when they’re trying not to laugh in your face. A lot of his expressions are rather human and easily readable for me.
I’m going to get them rain.
My dad would have gotten them rain.
I’m going to do what he would have done.
* * *
Freak
My pet is adorable, and she cannot help the limitations of her human intellect.
I have not spent a great deal of time among humans, I must admit.
My travels took me among other sentient life forms of similar capacity though.
I do admit I used to look down upon them with a certain amount of smugness.
I don’t feel that with my pet. I feel an intense affection that makes me honor her.
The moment I felt her inside her capsule, struggling to escape a fate she did not deserve, I knew I had to have her.
There was something about her that just fit with me.
It is hard for a creature who knows that time and space are persistent illusions to believe in things like fate, but we Psyons do know that we do not know everything.
In our culture, the unknown is where a spark of divinity may yet hide.
Meeting Mara was always going to happen, but it still surprised me. And taking her as my pet felt like the right thing to do. It feels better than simply abducting a woman, which, I suppose, I have also technically done.
I am starting to feel peace inside myself of a deeper kind, a possessive kind of wellness. She is mine. The weakness I felt at the hands of my captives is gone. I have not only freed myself, but I have found another, and in caring for her, I will care for myself.
It is time to go home.
* * *
Mara
Freak is standing over me, hot and practically naked.
He is so tall, so strong, so muscular. Some of his scars and spikes seem to be going away, almost like they were never there at all.
He looks more like a big handsome blue man right now.
Well, sort of. He still has those magnetic eyes and the thick mane of hair, and a smattering of scales and marks.
I tilt my head as I look at him, noting the way he seems to shift in appearance depending on my perspective.
“It’s time, pet,” he says. “Your training is only just begun, but I think you’ve got the general gist of it. We’ll work on the rest of it as it comes up.”
He leans down and re-fits and re-zips my suit, leaving some of his seed trapped inside with me.
“It’s time to go back to your world?”
“We’re going to the home realm,” he says.
“But I have so much to do in this realm, and can humans even live in your home realm, and…”
He ignores my objections as he scoops me up into his arms. The way I fit against him feels so comfortable. He can hold me without effort. I could climb him like a tree if I wanted.
“How long has it been since you were last there?” I ask the question from somewhere near his shoulder as he shifts me in his arms.
“It depends,” he says.
Sometimes I find his comments annoyingly vague. This is one of those times. “What do you mean, it depends? You don’t know how long it’s been?”
“I was in the research facility for three years of your time. But my home exists out of the regular flow of existence. It may have been an hour since I was there, or a thousand years. Which one of those is true will depend on what is happening.”
I have a faint feeling of nausea, like seasickness, but it’s more about my brain being twisted in weird and uncomfortable ways. It’s like I understand what he’s saying, sort of, but I also know there are things about it I can’t understand because my brain literally can’t get there.
“So how do we get there? It’s a port somewhere?”
“We’re going to be getting off the ship at the next port of call, yes, but we won’t be disembarking the usual way.”
“Please, be harder to understand.”
“There’s a port we’re about to reach, but the ship won’t be docking because the ship doesn’t know it is there. It’s a moment in time that we will take advantage of.”
I think he’s actually trying to explain this to me. The fact that none of it makes any sense at all is not really his fault, I suppose.
“We are about to meet others of my kind. I need for you to stay close when we arrive. Do not go further from me than our hands can reach. Arm’s length only.
Humans are a rarity in our world. Please don’t run off.
I might not be able to find you if you do, and it’s possible you won’t be able to find yourself either. ”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“We do not live in the same space time concept as you do, to put it simply. If you stay with me, you will be safe enough. I will anchor you to me. But if you are out of my sight, reality might cease to undergo the formality of bothering to exist for you.”
“Sounds like I could go crazy.”
“You could go all sorts of things,” he says.
He snugs me closer, and I am glad he does. I don’t know exactly what I’m being threatened with, but it sounds like a bad time.
“What’s going to happen?”
I ask the question as the world around us shimmers.
The ship stops being a ship, and starts being a big marble plane that stretches out for what feels like ever.
Freak takes a step, the same way you do at the top of an escalator.
There’s a pause and a sort of heft and then no motion at all.
The ship is gone completely and we are standing beneath a bright blue sky covered in white puffy clouds strung out in line after line.
I see a marble platform surrounded by big buildings with domes and vaulted ceilings. They are all made to a stunning super scale, and many of them are covered in what looks to me like gold. This is a place of peace and riches. I can see the opulence, and I can sense the tranquility.
Freak said they were at war, but I don’t think anybody has ever so much as had an argument here.
There is an overwhelming sense of calm that pervades the air.
I expect bird song, but there is none. I don’t think there are animals here.
I think this is a place reserved exclusively for Freak’s kind.
It’s a little eerie, now that I think about it.
I think I am not supposed to be here. There’s a pressure around me, sort of like gravity, but oriented at every part of me.
It’s pushing up on me, against me, around me, maybe even through me.
It wants to expel me, like a human body tries to expel a splinter.
I squirm in Freak’s arms and lean closer to him and it feels a little better.
“Tasin!”
A female voice rings out like a clear bell.
Freak turns around with me in his arms, and I watch some of the buildings fade in and out, shifting and moving around.
There’s an ancient Earth artist name Escher who used to draw buildings like these.
I wonder now if he had been to this place, where great construction seems to morph and mold into impossible geometry every moment or two.