Blue Light of Home (2 page)

The speakers clicked. “Secure your possessions now,” the voice said, sounding just the slightest bit annoyed.

Skye towed the first case over, the one with her clothes, and pulled the web out to push it under. The web promptly stretched out to cover the suitcase and brought it up tight to the wall. Skye kicked away to find a second web for her other case, became ensnared in one briefly, and heard the speakers click again, although the voice chose not to speak, not even to blow a long-suffering sigh at her.

When she was free and both her suitcases were securely bound to the wall, the voice came back: “Locate one of the stabilizer grips along the wall and place your feet on the floor.”

Stabilizer grips. Okay, there were a number of evenly-spaced objects like towel-rings all around the wall. Skye swam over to one, got hold of it with both hands, and pushed her feet down until she could touch the floor.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, with a great hiss and a dizzying pulse of perception, gravity slammed down on top of her. Suddenly the floor was “below” and she had weight. One hundred and seventeen pounds dropped into her bones; she lost her grip on the towel-ring and landed on her butt, slapping her hands up hard against her helmet as vertigo churned in her head.

Gradually, the leaden effect of gravity waned. Eventually, she was even able to turn her head without wanting to throw up.

Another hiss. The voice said, “Recover your possessions and come up to the main deck.”

Up? Sky looked and sure enough, a hatchway had opened in the ceiling. As she stared at it, a lift-panel detached from the floor and rose about three inches before stopping again, expectant.

Well. At least she wouldn’t have to lug her suitcases up a ladder.

She lugged them onto the lift instead, and tried to stand as small as possible in the space remaining to her, looking queasily up as the lift began to rise. She was about to see an alien. She was about to see the alien she would be having sex with for the next two years. She hoped he wouldn’t be…squishy.

It was not well-lit on the main deck. In fact, apart from the consoles that ringed the room, it didn’t appear to be lit at all. The alien blended into the shadows. She didn’t see him until he stood up from his chair and came a step toward her. Then, in spite of all her mental bracing, she tried to leap back and fell right off the stupid lift.

He finished his cool stride forward in a lunge, clawed hands sinking into her suit-sleeves and yanking her roughly around before she could either take a nasty drop into the pressure chamber below or, more likely, get pinned between the still-rising lift and the floor of the main deck and be crushed. She supposed she should be grateful. Instead, she wanted to scream.

He wasn’t squishy. He had that going for him at least. His skin had kind of a gleam to it, but that was more the luster of healthy scales than slime, and it was healthy scales over a very hard, muscular, male body. He was wearing clothes: a kind of complicated harness or vest, some armor-plated shorts, and a cuff or something over one ankle. The rest of him was very dark green in color, so dark that he was black everywhere that light didn’t fall directly on him, and his eyes were huge, ovoid, and shark-empty. The back of his bald head grew out in an elongated bulge and came to something of a blunt point; the front of his head mimicked this with a long, broad snout or skin-covered beak. He had no nostrils that she could see, but there were some slits along his throat that might be either a nose or gills. Or anything at all, she guessed, because in spite of his more or less familiar bipedal and symmetrical shape, this was an alien life form. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t human. It was holding her in his inhuman hands and looking at her with his alien eyes.

The urge to cry was very strong.

Slowly, the alien set her on her feet and let her find her balance. It was difficult to tell just where he was looking, as he had no whites or pupils in his black eyes, but he seemed to be inspecting her just as intently, although without her obvious alarm.

Without warning, he brought his hands up and gripped the spacesuit’s helmet. One quick twist and he pulled it away, releasing a hiss of trapped oxygen. He studied her face as she gasped on alien air that was, in retrospect, more or less exactly like Earth air only staler and warmer. Then he dropped the helmet indifferently, unlocked and removed her gloves. He picked up one of her small, pale hands and held it in his slick, scaly, three-fingered one, turning it over and examining it in silence. Finally, he undid the closure at her neck and peeled the whole rest of the suit down so that she stood there in her clunky boots, white tank-tee, and plain jane panties.

He straightened up with a thoughtful grunt, his gaze moving over her without emotion. Finally, he came back to her eyes.

“Do you know why you are here?” he asked.

Skye shivered in the warm air. “I’m here to represent Earth’s people and to answer any questions you may have about humans.”

He waited, and then his thin lips curled around the edges of his beaked face in a deep frown. “Did no one tell you there would be sexual services required?”

Skye swallowed hard, trying not to drop her eyes, to look at those clawed hands, those contorted legs, that powerful and wholly inhuman body. “There was an implication,” she admitted.

He kept frowning. “You agreed to this duty.”

Was that a question or a reminder? Skye forced a smile of sorts. “They gave me the choice of being locked up for an indefinite amount of time, or dropping off a dumptruck full of money in front of my new house in the Caiman Islands when I get back. I’m not an experienced prostitute, but seeing as those were my options, yes, I am willing to make one hell of a prostitutorial debut.”

The fingers of one hand flexed, drumming on his armored thigh in a preoccupied manner. He glanced at her suitcases, then turned around. Without another word, he went out through a doorless opening and into a narrow hall.

Well, she guessed the interview was over. Skye stepped out of her boots, gathered up the spacesuit and spent a few minutes trying to juggle it and both suitcases (which, thanks to the gravity, were now both heavy as hell), and finally trudged after him.

It wasn’t a long walk. He was waiting by a closed door maybe ten feet away, and while he did not offer to hold one damned thing for her, he did open the door. “This will be your room,” he said.

Grand. She got everything inside, let the suit drop, and looked around. The room wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Low-ceilinged, but bigger than her bedroom back home. There were cupboards all along the walls, a nice view of the Earthrise out the window, and, of course, a fairly good-sized egg-shaped bed.

She stared at the bed, wondering if the next phase of orientation included a trial run of “sexual services”.

“Here,” the alien said behind her, and when she turned, he thumbed a panel on the wall. Out came an oddly-shaped but perfectly recognizable toilet bowl, with a sink where the tank should be.

“Waste,” said the alien, toggling each of three switches in turn. The toilet hissed a flush. “Wash.” Water jetted up from the sides of the bowl. “Dry.” Another hiss of air. He hit the panel again and the toilet took itself away.

Much nicer than Earth’s space-faring setup, she had to admit, although she wasn’t sure how she was going to feel about a power-wash and an assertive breeze.

“There is ample room for your possessions,” he continued, gesturing towards the cupboards. “I can adjust the temperature controls if you are too uncomfortable.” He paused, but when Skye just stood there, went on, “Put your soiled bedding in the washer behind you. It’s all automatic.”

“Okay,” said Skye, since she supposed she had to say something.

The alien pointed to a dark bubble on the wall right behind the bed. “The light will come on when I want you. You will come to my room. This way.”

Skye followed him back into the narrow, curving hall, past another closed door—”The exercise room,” the alien remarked. “Daily regimes are recommended. I will show you how to work the devices.”—to his room.

It was exactly the same size as hers, which came as something of an illogical comfort to her. It was all pretty Spartan; he had a spare harness tossed over the foot of the bed, a couple alien devices casually strewn over a small side-table, and one dark stone object of unclear purpose sitting on a narrow ledge, perhaps as decoration. There was no light above his bed, but there was a small panel within easy reach of it, so he wouldn’t even have to get up when he decided he wanted her.

Wanted her.

Again, her nerve tried to fail her. Again, she refused to let it. She was going to be here for a whole year, maybe two. She’d just better learn to deal.

The alien decided she’d had enough of a look and shut the door. Without comment, he continued along the hall and back to the main room through a second door.

“When you are hungry,” he began once she joined him, and thumbed at a wide panel above a small alcove in the wall. The first button he pressed opened a cupboard full of what appeared to be gravy tureens. He took one and placed it in the alcove, then touched a second button. A thick, colorless gel began to plop heavily into the tureen; It was about the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen. “This will satisfy your nutritional needs,” he continued, watching the tureen fill. “You will require two servings each day. I require three. Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” she lied. She wasn’t ready to down a gravy boat of clear snot yet.

He grunted again, took the filled tureen and drank it in ten deep swallows. “Emptied vessels are placed here,” he said, wiping his snout, and set the tureen in another cupboard. He pressed a button. “For sterilization.”

They waited while the wall hummed. He drummed his fingers now and then, glanced at her and away. The wall sounded a tone. He took the tureen and put it with the clean ones in the cupboard.

“You can sit to eat if you like,” he added, and indicated yet another touch-panel without activating it. “Apart from these things, you will not touch anything on the bridge. That—” He pointed straight up at another hatch in the ceiling. “—is the navigations deck. You won’t be going up there. Neither will I, until my work is done. If you are unsure at all which controls are which, ask me.”

She was pretty sure she could keep it all straight, but she nodded anyway.

He looked at her again, from head to toe and back again. “There is certain to be a need for disciplinary measures before our time is ended. How would you prefer them handled?”

“Disciplinary measures?” she echoed, feeling her eyes bug out slightly. “No, sir, I swear I’ll be good!”

He rested his eyes heavily on hers. It was a singularly unamused look. He began to walk around her, inspecting her closely. “If you were one of my people, a light slap to the snout would be sufficient deterrent, but—” He came back before her and eyed her nose. “—I wouldn’t want to break anything. Where should I strike you?”

“Does it have to be violent like that?”

“Violence is effective,” he said evenly, and began to circle her again. “The threat of violence is particularly effective once violence has already been implemented. The object is to discourage conflicts before they occur.”

“I can do that just fine without getting hit.”

“This is not a negotiation. Here?” His claw brushed at her stomach and her hands flew up at once to cover herself.

“No. I keep my organs there. Can’t I just promise to behave?”

“It is unreasonable to expect there to be no conflict between us. I would like a firm understanding of expectations before we reach our inevitable difficulties. I dislike improvisation and I greatly dislike surprises. Here?”

He was touching her back.

Skye flinched away again. “Not there, it’s…look, why can’t we just solve our problems with mutual discussion and respect?”

“Because this is not a partnership. You are not my equal. You are here to serve my needs. I do not plan to discuss things with you. Understand, human, that what we are doing here is as symbolic as it is vital to a peaceful assimilation. You will learn to live according to my ways, and my discipline shall be painful and uncompromising, an example to all humanity.”

“How is this fair?”

“It isn’t. In your own histories, when two peoples meet and make a treaty between them, even in peacetime, the strongest walks away with the better deal. The Empire is strongest. We are subjugating you, make no mistake, but we are doing so precisely because we wish to avoid a bloody conquest, whether you believe me or not. Here?”

His hand brushed across her bottom.

Skye hopped forward, one hand flying back to clutch protectively at her nether cheeks. “What, like a spanking? No!”

He came back to stand in front of her, his eyes narrowing. “Explain this.”

She didn’t want to, and it was on the tip of her tongue to refuse, but then she realized all at once that if he was here to study Earth’s satellites and all the information on the internet, he could easily find out about spankings for himself, and then he’d just punish her for not telling him. Stammering, she tried to explain whatever there was to explain about getting spanked, but it was difficult to think of the words when he was just standing there, staring narrowly into her eyes, silent.

At last he said, “So there’s a precedent.”

“Yeah, when you’re five!”

“I don’t anticipate a frequent need.” He angled his head around to look at her bottom and grunted again. “I haven’t many demands. Pick up after yourself and don’t touch the controls, come when I send for you and do what you’re told. Don’t argue with me.”

She opened her mouth for a final desperate protest, ready to suggest slapping her hands or, heck, slapping her snout, anything that was not the indignity of a spanking, but that might be construed as arguing with him. She closed it again unhappily and stared at her feet.

“Do you have any questions?” he asked.

She looked at him. “What’s your name?”