Chapter Five
Catherina
I was escorted back to my room. Despite the luxury and the politeness, I was little more than a prisoner. I contemplated escape, but where would I go? It wasn’t like I could slip away and return to my apartment. What was that old American saying, ‘You can’t get there from here?’ I sniffed and wiped my eyes. Nothing had ever been truer.
I heard a chime that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I had no idea what it meant. I heard the chime again. Then a third time. Then the door opened. It was the doorbell.
A lovely woman, tall and full figured with snow white hair entered then fell to her knees just inside the door. Beyond the door, I saw two more women, Fire women, standing at relaxed attention.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
The woman on the floor didn’t look up. “I’ve been assigned to you as a companion.”
“I don’t want a companion. Now leave.”
“Very well. If I don’t please you, I’m sure Lord Stevan will find another more to your liking.”
The woman rose and turned toward the door. I remembered what Stevan had said, and I wondered if this gentle sounding woman would be dealt with most harshly.
“Wait!” I called as the door began to close. “Come back inside.” The woman did and immediately fell to her knees again. I winced. That had to hurt on these hard stone floors. “What will happen if I send you away?”
“I don’t know, my Lady,” the woman said, never looking up.
“I will be assigned another companion?”
“I don’t know, my Lady. I was told that I was to be your guide for the next week and I was to grant you every wish. I offer you my life if I have offended or don’t please you.”
I felt my heart sink. This woman clearly wasn’t Fire. Perhaps she was a prisoner as well.
“Get up, and close the door.” The woman did as instructed. “What’s your name?”
“What do you wish to call me?”
I sighed. “I wish to call you by your name.”
“My name is Quathaul.”
“Okay, Quathaul. Can people hear us if we talk?”
Quathaul touched besides the door, and I heard a tone. “Portals are blocked from this room. It can be overridden, but a chime will sound if it happens. Nobody can hear us.”
“Look at me,” I said. I was tired of talking to the top of her head. She raised her head. In addition to her white hair, she had enormous eyes of such beauty they took my breath. “You’re not a Fire woman, are you?”
“No. I’m Aquallian.”
The correct name was too hard to pronounce, but it sounded vaguely like Aqua.
“Would you mind if I called your planet Water? I’m still having problems pronouncing the correct names.” The woman nodded but said nothing. “Are you a prisoner here too?”
“No, my Lady!”
“Okay, let’s get a few rules straight,” I said, and I saw her cringe. I softened my tone. “I’m Catherina, or Cat if you prefer. I’m not my Lady or anything else like that. And I want you to look at me when you speak to me, okay? And stop falling to your knees all the time. That has to hurt. Okay?”
“Yes, my… Catherina.”
I smiled. “Okay, that’s better.” I smiled. “I have a few questions I hope you can answer.”
-oOo-
Over the next several days, Quathaul was constantly at my side. We even slept in the same bed. The first night it felt strange, sharing my bed with another woman, but the bed was so large, she might as well have been sleeping in another room.
I spent the entire first day talking to her, finding out everything I could about the place I was in. She was lovely and soft-spoken, trying to wait on me like a servant, but I put a stop to that. She was almost like that clingy friend that needed constant reassurance, but she was somehow different. The second night I woke up and she was curled in close with me. There was nothing remotely sexual about her closeness, and I sighed deeply, imagining this was how it felt when your child was curled up close and warm.
The days of Fire were twenty-eight hours long. The longer days were kicking my ass, but I assumed it would be much worse if I weren’t being helped along by the bugs that were running around inside of me. She took me a tour of Fire and her Water. The portal technology was simply amazing. She would simply tell the Biro, which I learned wasn’t a pen, despite what it looked like, but was a device that controlled and generated the portal, where she wanted to go, and then we took two or three steps, and we were there. I’d long stopped trying to understand how things worked and simply chalked it up to magic.
As the days passed, I could see the problem with the Waters. They were so damned passive it made me want to smack Quathaul. I think if I told her to step off a cliff, her only response would be, ‘Which one?’
I had a good chance to observe the Fires as my two guards followed us around. They were always respectful, if occasionally abrupt, but I could tell there was only a thin covering of polish over their aggressive nature. I suppose that made sense. If you were aggressive and disrespectful, they would be killing each other right and left. It was like the Fires and Waters were the opposites of each other, and I wondered how two people that were supposedly descended from the same stock could be so different. The answer was obvious, if hard to believe. It was millions of years of selective breeding.
The Fires prized strength and aggressiveness, so those that were strong and aggressive mated more than those that weren’t, and eventually, the trait became dominate. The Waters were the same, though they prized kindness and gentleness, and eventually, the same thing had happened. But now, they were trapped.
The Fire woman had become so fierce that something had happened to them and they were no longer able to bear children. The Water males had become so passive they were no longer interested in mating. The Water women were just as bad, and when neither sex wanted to fuck, fucking didn’t happen. The Water men were mostly sterile because they weren’t using it, and now they were losing it.
According to Quathaul, the drop in birthrate had started out so slowly nobody noticed. When someone did notice, it was assumed it was just a statistical fluke, and by the time people realized the birthrate was plummeting to quickly, it was too late to save themselves because the traits were to firmly embedded to overcome.
Now Stevan was trying to rally the galaxy. They knew the problem, and they knew the solution, but it wasn’t working. And that was where I came in.
“Don’t you find the Fire men attractive?” I asked as Quathaul and I sat on a mountain peak, overlooking the water forest below.
I’d seen so many things within five days ever since Stevan and I had dinner, the water forest being only the latest in a long line of amazing sights. We were on Water, and even at high noon, as it was now, it was cool and misty, the sun dim and far away. It explained Quathaul’s large eyes. The brightest it got on Water was like twilight back on Earth. I continued to look at the lake, a lake so vast I could only see the nearest edge, covered with trees floating on what I could only describe as Lilly pads a city block in size.
She shrugged. She’d relaxed around me considerably, but she was still too passive by half. “Not really. They’re brutes, hugely muscled and aggressive. They don’t make love, they rape.”
We had been over this topic many times, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She called it rape, but when I pressed her, I found the men weren’t truly forcing themselves on the woman.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because, dear Catherina, I’m trying to save my people.”
“Even by being raped?”
Quathaul lowered her head. “I am but one, trying to do good for the many.”
“And the Fire men are forcing themselves on you?”
She sighed. She was probably as tired of this conversation as I was. “Not in the way you mean. If we deny them our bodies, they do not take them. If we ask them to stop, they do. But we don’t deny them our bodies, and we don’t ask them to stop. But it isn’t pleasurable. They are too aggressive, and we don’t conceive.”
“But Quathaul, that’s the problem!” I cried. “You need to be more aggressive! It’s the lack of aggression that has led you to this point! Don’t you see that?”
“I know,” she said softly. “That’s why I give them my body even though I don’t find it pleasurable.”
“Is the mating painful?”
“No. But neither is it pleasurable.”
“Don’t you ever just want to fuck? To get in there and ride your mate until you’re sweaty and exhausted? To simply take and give pleasure? To feel him inside you?”
Quathaul looked at me with her huge green eyes, and I could see the sadness there. “No.”
I took her hand and held it. “It’s okay. I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m just trying to understand you. The Fires, I get them, but the Waters, you’re a puzzle.”
“Perhaps it is our time to go into the long darkness.”
That wasn’t the first time she said that, and it pissed me off. I sat and stared at the water forest, thinking. I realized then that I’d decided to stay once I became friends with Quathaul. I wanted to help her and her people, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. I also had to admit I hadn’t fully understood the problem Stevan was up against.
Quathaul and I did a tour of fifty worlds, and without exception, all the peoples of the galaxy preferred to mate with their kind. I didn’t think it was a racial thing, only that after millions of years, each of the races had bred into themselves the traits they prized. It was no different than me preferring strong men that knew what they wanted and the fact I was put off by a man I could wrap around my little finger. It had nothing to do with skin color or anything else; I just had certain things I wanted in a mate and certain things I didn’t.
I sniffed. I’d wanted to work with the public again? Did I want to return to HeartMatch? I thought I was good at my job? Well here was a chance to do what I loved and make a difference. If I could get the Fire and Waters to mate and breed, two people who were as opposite as the elements I’d given them as names, I could do anything. If I could crack this nut, then I could solve any problem Stevan could throw at me.
I smiled to myself. Besides, how often does a bird like me have a chance to save the galaxy? Fire Planet Dating, at your service. Step right up and choose your mate! No waiting! Satisfaction guaranteed!
My lips twisted into a private smile. This would be a lot easier if they would just go to Earth. All the Peoples I’d seen on my travels were, without exception, stunningly gorgeous. Even the Water males. If you were in lithe men with gentle features, they were your cup of tea.
If there was one thing I’d learned working at HeartMatch, there was a someone for everyone. You just had to find them. If Stevan turns us Humans lose on the galaxy, we will single handed fuck them back from the edge. God knows I’d seen more men I’d fuck stupid in the last week than the entire rest of my life. I’d always had a healthy sex drive, but since I’d arrived here? I was horny all the time. I didn’t know if it was because of all the beautiful people around me, the nanites had juiced me up, or both. I smiled. Seven whatever billion people on Earth fucking the six trillion or so in the galaxy? The way I felt these days, I’d take those odds.
“We should go,” I said as I rose to my feet. I turned to Trebac and Graffute. “I need to see Lord Stevan at his earliest opportunity.”
Trebac nodded. “I’ll let him know you wish an audience with him. What reason should I tell him?”
“Tell him I’ve made my decision.”
Trebac smiled. The Fire women may look like premium athletes and had only the thinnest veils of femininity surrounding them, but I liked them. I’d liked all the Peoples I’d met, each unique and interesting in their way.
Quathaul opened the portal, and I could see my room beyond. They wouldn’t let me handle the PCD, short for Portal Control Device, the nickname I’d given the pen-like instrument that controlled the portals. Perhaps they were afraid I’d dump us in an ocean, or in the middle of space somewhere. Not an unreasonable concern considering I hadn’t the faintest idea how they controlled the damn thing. It was just more magic.
We stepped through, and I was standing in my room again. I shook my head. We’d just traveled, by my understanding, six hundred light years as easily as I crossed from the front room to the bedroom in my apartment.
My two guards for the day, Trebac and Graffute, left us and I stripped out of my clothes as I moved to the shower. Modesty wasn’t the same thing here as back on Earth, and why should it be when everyone looked like a god or goddess? People didn’t walk down the streets nude, but undressing in front of trusted friends rated about the same amount of thought as removing shoes back on Earth.
If Stevan saw me today, I wanted to look my best. It was funny how I was thinking of Earth as my home less and less. Sure, it’d only been a week, and I hadn’t had time for the homesickness to set in, but there was so much to see and do, my two hundred year lifespan wasn’t nearly enough to accomplish it all.
I stepped out of the shower. I loved how I felt, tingly and clean, and the fact I didn’t have to dry myself off in a hot and damp bathroom. Step out of the shower, dress, and done. I admired myself in the mirror. I’d dropped at least ten pounds in the past five days, and I looked even better now than I had after I first arrived. Catherina Hume’s patented weight loss program. All it took was being kidnapped, transported halfway across the galaxy and having your body shot full of microscopic machines. Simple! Anyone could do it!
“Catherina? Lord Stevan will see you in two hours. He invites you to his table,” Graffute’s voice said out of thin air.
I nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
I smiled again. It was amazing what a person could get used to.
-oOo-
“My Lord,” I said as I knelt, my head held low. I wasn’t keen about the reason I was doing this, offering Stevan my life, but it was protocol. He’d been patient with me so far, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
“Better,” Stevan said, but I held my position as Sereni, one of my guards, had instructed me. I was to hold this position until I was told to rise. “Very good. Rise and approach.” I stood and walked to his table where I stopped. He smiled. “You’ve learned a great deal in the past week. Very good. Please, sit and enjoy,” he said, motioning to the chair to his left, his weak side, a sign of trust and respect. I smiled and slid into my seat. “Speak freely. What have you decided?”
“My Lord, I’ve decided to stay, with some conditions.”
Making demands on perhaps the most powerful man in the galaxy was incredibly bold of me, but he needed me and I wanted to get the ground rules understood right at the front.
“Conditions?” he said with a smile. “What conditions?”
He was humoring me, but I pressed on. “When I want to return to Earth, you’ll let me go.”
“Agreed. But if you return home, you can’t change your mind and return here. You’ll have no way to contact us.”
I nodded. “I understand. I want a box of those diamond.”
“How big a box?” he asked, and I made a cube with my hands about two-foot square. “Agreed. Anything else?”
I felt my heart flutter. A box of diamonds that large would be worth… I didn’t know how much, but a lot. “I want my place and some reasonable income to live on.”
“No. You’ll stay in the palace.”
I shook my head. “No. Those are my conditions. Take them or leave them.”
I saw his face harden. “Don’t forget who you’re addressing, Catherina,” he said, his voice low and hard. “I’ll give you your income, but you’ll stay in the palace. It’s for your protection.”
“From who? Everyone I’ve met has been unfailingly polite.”
“You haven’t met everyone. Not everyone agrees that we should fight to avoid going into the long darkness, and you had my palace guards at your side.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I feel like a bug on a plate. Everyone is always watching me. If I sneeze, someone pops out of nowhere with a tissue. I’m not used to living like this.”
His face softened. “Very well. I’ll allow you to live someplace other than the palace, but there will be a contingent of my guards at your side at all times. All times, Catherina. I think you fail to understand how important you are. The fate of the galaxy is literally in your hands. I can’t risk having you hurt or killed.”
“That’s worse than living here!”
He shrugged. “Those are your only two options. In the palace, you can be kept safe by guards that control the grounds and the palace's defenses. That’s not true elsewhere. I’m sorry, Catherina, but I have to keep you safe.”
I stewed. At least in the palace, I had my room where I could be alone if I wanted to be. “Fine, dammit! I’ll stay in the palace.”
He smiled. “The matter is settled then. Any other demands?”
“Order your staff to stop doting on me.”
He chuckled. “Done. Anything else.”
I smiled. “No.”
“You have asked a great deal,” he said seriously, and I felt my heart flutter. “Not jumping at your every sneeze is going cause the palace staff lots of stress,” he added with a grin. “Some may suffer through many sleepless nights.”
I giggled. He was having me on now. “I’m sure they’ll get through it. They’re Fires. Surely they can handle a single unruly guest.”
He chuckled. “We’ve never had to deal with the likes of you, Catherina Hume. Leave us!” He ordered with a wave of his hand, and six people, three of who I didn’t even know was there, left the room. “Now we’re alone. Better?”
I smiled. “Much. Thank you.”