Prologue
Catherina Hume, late of Earth and now the bonded mate of perhaps the most powerful man in the universe, looked over the crowd of people assembled to hear her speak. She was smiling and nodding as the assembled throng pounded their fists into an open palm, waiting for their applause to stop. She’d been giving speeches once or twice a week for the past six months, and while she was still nervous standing in front of such a large crowd, at least her legs had stopped shaking before she had to take the stage. Today she was on Thatherious, one of the more than three thousand planets that formed the Peoples of the universe.
“Thank you,” she said as she paced back and forth on the platform that had been erected for her so she was out of the large pool the rest of the Thath were lounging in.
Moving helped her burn off her nervous energy, and as she paced, smiling and waving at the crowd, she wondered if the Earth legends of mermaids and mermen came from the Thath. Thatherious was a water world, and though the Thath were capable of walking on land, they much preferred to spend their time in the water. They didn’t have fish tails, but they had evolved long and deeply webbed fingers and toes and beautifully elongated arms and legs. Tall and slim, they could put the fastest Olympic swimmers on Earth to shame. She was visiting their largest land mass, an island not much larger than the combined size of her native UK and Ireland, giving her normal speech about celebrating and embracing the differences in the People.
“Thank you for inviting me here,” she continued in her normal conversational voice, trying to quieten the crowd. There was no need to speak loudly. She couldn’t speak Thath anyway, but the nanites in her body provided seamless translation from English into Thath and transmitted it to the assembled crowd. “It’s a privilege to be invited to speak to you.”
She had never performed public speaking before bonding with Stevan Gerrett, the nearest approximation to his real name she could pronounce, but with months of practice, she was getting better. It helped that she was seen a savior of the universe and the People seemed to adore her. As the crowd quieted, she launched into her speech.
The Thath were easy to talk to with no taboos she had to be careful to avoid. She was a demonstrative speaker, talking with her hands, and on Xzarettery, she had struggled to keep her hands still because waving hands in the air was considered rude, like giving someone the finger back on Earth. Having to worry about keeping her hands still had thrown her off her game, and that speech hadn’t been one of her better efforts. People were being patient and understanding with her as she learned all the customs, but she tried not to deliberately insult anyone.
Her speech was typically short, only fifteen minutes or so. Everyone knew what she was saying was the truth, that the Peoples of the universe had to interbreed to ensure the continued survival of the Peoples, so her job was simply to put a positive spin on it to make it sound fun and exciting. It must be working because after hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, the Peoples were beginning to mate outside their own cultures.
“We have a saying on Earth,” Catherina continued, wrapping up her speech. “’When in Rome, do as the Romans do,’ which means embrace other cultures and ways of looking at life and the universe around us. We, the Peoples of the universe, are all children of the Ancient Ones. We’re all the same, and yet we’re each unique and special. Each of us, individually and together, are beautiful in our own way.”
She always tried to incorporate a prop from the planet she was on to drive the point home, so she pulled a small shell from a hidden fold in her garment.
“We’re like the bouh shell,” she said, holding the shell up so her audience could see what she was holding. “No two exactly alike, and yet, each exquisitely beautiful all the same. As we see the beauty in each Bouh shell; we should see the beauty in our differences.” She paused and smiled at the crowd. “Find your own Bouh shell, no matter where it might lie.” She paused again, letting the thought sink in. “Thank you… and good luck in your search.”
The Thath began pounding their fists into their hands with gusto. She walked back and forth across the stage, waving to the crowd and thanking them. When she returned to center stage she began to peel out of her outerwear. Tradition on Firaspatciti, Fire as she called it to save her from the tongue twister of the Firaspatciti language, said her dominate side—the right in her case—shoulder and arm should remain uncovered so she could effectively wield a sword, but today she’d made an exception. Underneath her Fire clothing was a skintight material the Thath favored. The slightly iridescent material clung to her like a second skin and left nothing to the imagination, but it was comfortable and didn’t bind or drag when in the water.
Two years ago she would have been uncomfortable undressing in front of hundreds of strangers, even with a swimsuit on underneath, but no longer. Living on Fire had reduced her modesty by a factor of ten. Stripping naked in front of a close friend on Fire didn’t even warrant a second glance or a moment’s thought. The fact the nanites that allowed her to move freely between the planets had also rehabilitated her body didn’t hurt her confidence either.
When she’d been on earth she’d been twenty to twenty-five pounds overweight, she didn’t work out, and she didn’t eat as healthy as she should. In short, she was a typical thirty-two-year-old woman. Now she looked like a model. The nanites had transformed her, making her look and feel twenty again, but twenty as she might have been if back on Earth she’d had a personal trainer, a personal chef, the best possible medical care, and the time to whip herself into perfect shape.
Leaving her Fire clothing on the stage, she jumped into the pool three feet below. She wasn’t a strong swimmer, even by Earth standards, and nothing compared to the fish-like Thath, but she could stand on the bottom and paddle around to interact with her hosts, all under the watchful eyes of Tokalas and Peval, her two personal bodyguards, who remained on the stage.
She spent the next two hours talking with the Thath as they clustered around her, everyone wanting to have a word with the exotic woman from the faraway Earth. They spoke with her, asking questions and listening to her responses with rapt attention, almost as if she were an oracle divulging hidden knowledge of great value.
She found it amusing that the Thath were fascinated by how her skin puckered from being in the water. Humans were part of the Ancient Ones stock, just like the rest of the Peoples of the universe, but as a culture, humans were barely more than children compared to the rest of the universe. She still exhibited many involuntary traits that seemed to have disappeared in other Peoples, such as the puckering of skin when soaked in water or the changing colors of her skin if she became embarrassed, aroused or frightened.
This was her first visit to Thatherious, but the People welcomed this stranger, the only human among the trillions of Peoples in the universe. She found the Thath friendly, adventuresome and outgoing, and she liked them. This was the best part of her job, getting to meet all the new Peoples that made up the known universe.
She smiled to herself as she held a Thatherious child, a girl of about four Earth years, and one of the youngest on the planet. She told the girl what little she knew about the whales on Earth, a creature the Thath could easily relate too. When Catherina left Earth, astronomers were making headlines when they discovered a planet that could possibly harbor life. If they only knew…